‘You Could Call It Magic’: What Parents and Siblings Tell Preschoolers About Unobservable Entities

How can we explain children's understanding of the unseen world? Young children are generally able to distinguish between real unobservable entities and fantastical ones, but they attribute different characteristics to and show less confidence in their decisions about fantastical entities generally endorsed by adults, such as Santa Claus. One explanation for these conceptual differences is that the testimony children hear from others about unobservable entities varies in meaningful ways. Although this theory has some experimental support, its viability in actual conversation has yet to be investigated. Study 1 sought to examine this question in parent–child conversation and showed that parents provide similar types of content information when talking to children about both real entities and entities that they generally endorse. However, parents use different pragmatic cues when they communicate about endorsed entities than they do when talking about real ones. Study 2 showed that older siblings used discourse strategies similar to those used by parents when talking to young children about unobservable entities. These studies indicate that the types of cues children use to form their conceptions of unobservable entities are present in naturalistic conversations with others, supporting a role for testimony in children's early beliefs.     

A COMPARISON OF BRIEF FUNCTIONAL ANALYSES WITH AND WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES

Variations to traditional functional analysis methodology, such as brief functional analyses (BFAs), are prevalent in the literature. In the current evaluation, two types of BFAs were each conducted with five participants. In one, potential motivating operations (MOs) were presented, and problem behavior resulted in delivery of an associated consequence. In the other, the same MOs were presented, but no consequences were delivered. Results of the two BFAs were compared with respect to the conditions in which problem behavior occurred and the degree of differentiation between test and control conditions. Results across the BFA methodologies generally matched across all five participants. However, greater differentiation was observed in the BFA that did not include consequences. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Aging and Spatial Navigation: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go?

Spatial navigation is a complex cognitive skill that is necessary for everyday functioning in the environment. However, navigational skills are not typically measured in most test batteries assessing cognitive aging. The present paper reviews what we know about behavioral differences between older and younger adults in navigational skill and reviews the putative neural mechanisms that may underlie these behavioral differences. Empirical studies to date clearly identify navigation as an aspect of cognitive function that is vulnerable to the aging process. The few functional and structural neuroimaging studies that speak to neurological correlates of these age-related differences point to the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus (retrosplenial cortex), parietal lobes and pre-frontal cortex as structures critically involved in age effects on navigation. Outstanding issues in the field are addressed and productive avenues of future research are suggested. Among these outstanding issues include the necessity of performing longitudinal studies and differentiating between hippocampal and extra-hippocampal contributions to aging in navigation. The field may also be advanced by empirical assessment of navigational strategies and investigations into the multisensory nature of navigation including assessing the relative contributions of visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive function to age differences in navigational skill.     

The development of prospective memory in young schoolchildren: The impact of ongoing task absorption,cue salience,and cue centrality

This study presents evidence that 9- and 10-year-old children outperform 6- and 7-year-old children on a measure of event-based prospective memory and that retrieval-based factors systematically influence performance and age differences. All experiments revealed significant age effects in prospective memory even after controlling for ongoing task performance. In addition, the provision of a less absorbing ongoing task (Experiment 1), higher cue salience (Experiment 2), and cues appearing in the center of attention (Experiment 3) were each associated with better performance. Of particular developmental importance was an age by cue centrality (in or outside of the center of attention) interaction that emerged in Experiment 3. Thus, age effects were restricted to prospective memory cues appearing outside of the center of attention, suggesting that the development of prospective memory across early school years may be modulated by whether a cue requires overt monitoring beyond the immediate attentional context. Because whether a cue is in or outside of the center of attention might determine the amount of executive control needed in a prospective memory task, findings suggest that developing executive control resources may drive prospective memory development across primary school age.     

Using the Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic (MBMD) to Evaluate the Need for Mental Health Services in Association with Biomarkers of Disease Status Among HIV Positive Men and Women

Psychological distress states have been related to rate of disease progression among HIV-positive individuals. However, the measures that have been used in this research as well as the treatment context of the populations studied are highly variable, making it challenging for clinicians to incorporate such measures into screening batteries. The present study examined the association of two summary scales of the Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic (MBMD; Millon et al., Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic. NCS Assessments, Minneapolis, 2001), with markers of HIV disease status (CD4 and CD8 cell counts, viral load) among an ethnically diverse sample of 147 HIV-positive individuals (52 men who have sex with men, 34 men who have sex with women, and 51 women) who had recently initiated Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART). After controlling for age and months since HIV diagnosis, we found that higher scores on the overall MBMD Psych Referral Summary Scale, reflecting a need for mental health treatment, were related to greater HIV viral load but did not relate to CD4 or CD8 cell counts. Subgroup analyses revealed that Psych Referral scores were related to greater HIV viral load only for the men who have sex with men (MSM) subgroup. These results suggest that the MBMD may help in identifying psychosocial characteristics associated with some markers of disease status in persons with HIV and perhaps may also be useful in identifying individual differences in response to treatment and eventual disease outcome.     

Tracking speakers’ false beliefs: is theory of mind available earlier for word learning?

Happé and Loth (2002) describe word learning as a 'privileged domain' in the development of a theory of mind. We test this claim in a series of experiments based on the Sally-Anne paradigm. Three- and 4-year-old children's ability to represent others' false beliefs was investigated in tasks that required the child either to predict the actions of a protagonist in a story or to learn the meaning of a new word used by the protagonist. Experiment 1 replicated previous findings of better performance in a false belief word-learning task compared to a false belief action-prediction task. However, systematic manipulation of the task parameters in Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that this performance discrepancy disappeared when tasks were equated in their 'referential pull' (Perner, Rendl & Garnham, 2007). We conclude that the notion of a precocious theory of mind for word learning is not required to explain dissociations in performance on false belief tasks.     

Child Behavior Checklist Scores for School-Aged Children with Autism: Preliminary Evidence of Patterns Suggesting the Need for Referral

The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is a widely used questionnaire to assess behavioral and emotional problems. It is often used as a diagnostic screener, but autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are not included in the CBCL for school-aged children. This study investigated patterns of CBCL scores in 108 children with high-functioning ASD from two independent samples, and 67 IQ- and age-matched controls. Scores on the CBCL Thought and Social Problems scales significantly differentiated children with ASD from controls. Both independent ASD samples had the same pattern of elevations, with mean scores over two standard deviations above the mean for Social, Thought, and Attention Problems. The Withdrawn/Depressed scale was elevated to at least the borderline clinical range for half of the ASD sample. This pattern of elevations is consistent with two prior studies of the CBCL with school-aged children with ASD, and therefore may warrant follow-up assessment to rule out an ASD.     

TMS to the “occipital face area” affects recognition but not categorization of faces

The human cortical system for face perception is comprised of a network of connected regions including the middle fusiform gyrus (“fusiform face area” or FFA), the inferior occipital cortex (“occipital face area” or OFA), and the superior temporal sulcus. The traditional hierarchical feedforward model of visual processing suggests information flows from early visual cortex to the OFA for initial face feature analysis to higher order regions including the FFA for identity recognition. However, patient data suggest an alternative model. Patients with acquired prosopagnosia, an inability to visually recognize faces, have been documented with lesions to the OFA but who nevertheless show face-selective activation in the FFA. Moreover, their ability to categorize faces remains intact. This suggests that the FFA is not solely responsible for face recognition and the network is not strictly hierarchical, but may be organized in a reverse hierarchical fashion. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt processing in the OFA in neurologically-intact individuals and found participants’ ability to categorize intact versus scrambled faces was unaffected, however face identity discrimination was significantly impaired. This suggests that face categorization but not recognition can occur without the “earlier” OFA being online and indicates that “lower level” face category processing may be assumed by other intact face network regions such as the FFA. These results are consistent with the patient data and support a non-hierarchical, global-to-local model with re-entrant connections between the OFA and other face processing areas.     

Exploring the social aspects of goose bumps and their role in awe and envy

Both awe and envy are emotions that can result from observing a powerful other, but awe should stabilize social hierarchies while envy should undermine them. Three studies explored how the physiological reaction of goose bumps might help in understanding these distinctive reactions to powerful others, as goose bumps should be associated with awe rather than envy. In Study 1, participants kept a four-week journal and made a detailed entry each time they experienced goose bumps. Goose bumps resulting from the emotion of awe were the second most frequently occurring type after reactions to cold. Consistent with understanding awe as an emotional reaction to powerful or superior others (Keltner and Haidt in Cogn Emot 17:297?C314, 2003), many of these experiences had social triggers. In Study 2, accounts of goose bumps resulting from exposure to powerful or superior others contained greater awe than envy. Also, the intensity of goose bumps was positively correlated with awe and negatively correlated with envy. In Study 3, accounts of awe contained more goose bumps than accounts of envy, and goose bumps were positively correlated with awe.