Antecedent Influences on Children's Extrinsic Motivation to Go Online

From a social psychological process framework, this study examines how children's self-esteem influences whether their friends motivate them to go online. Children (ages 8–14; n  = 293) completed an online questionnaire. Locus of control orientation is included as mediating the relationship between self-esteem and motivation. Hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model. Results reveal that children with healthy self-esteem perceive themselves as having control of their environments. This positively influences peer-related motivation to go online. Children with lower self-esteem see the world as controlled by others or as the result of luck. This external locus also positively influences peer-related motivation to go online. Girls maintained higher self-esteem, and boys were influenced by external factors.     

Using MEL in a networked classroom

With Micro Experimental Laboratory (MEL) and network software in a computer-assisted classroom, an instructor can run class demonstrations and projects with great control and flexibility. The network allows quick file transfer between the instructor’s and the students’ machines. MEL allows easy reprogramming of experiments for more interactive demonstrations, and data merging for comparison of individual and group data. In this article, the pros and cons of running MEL on a network are discussed, and its use at the University of California at Berkeley is outlined.     

Characteristics of Personal Networks Associated with Physical and Psychological Quality of Life Among Demobilized Individuals from the Colombian Armed Conflict

The study identifies relationships between the characteristics of personal networks of demobilized individuals and their quality of life, through the evaluation of a sample of 102 ex‐combatants from a demilitarized zone in Colombia's Caribbean coast. The data was processed using centrality values calculation and statistical analysis through the Pearson correlation coefficient. Results showed moderate levels of nodality, proximity and intermediation degrees regarding small, closed networks with an unsatisfied high demand for support resources. Quality of life showed medium performance levels, with inverse relationships between mental health (p = .009 < .05) and vitality (p = .011 < .05) and intermediation. Positive feedback related significantly to general health (p = .041 < .05), while negative interactions showed inverse relationships to physical functioning (p = .012 < .05), physical role (p = .005), mental health (p = .001 < .05), and emotional role (p = .009 < .05). In conclusion, among the highly cohesive personal networks, there were less observations of social support that fosters increased energy and psychological health, given that access to this support is limited to a small number of members of the personal network. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

No Association between Music Ability and Hand Preference in Children

Hand preference was studied in 2 groups of children—children with musical ability and children without musical ability—to examine whether particular markers that may connect with handedness patterns, such as bias away from dextrality or mixed-handedness, stabilize during childhood and are associated with musical ability. Children were administered the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory to determine levels of right, left, and mixed handedness. Results demonstrated no differences in hand preference between both cohorts of children, suggesting the relative independence of musical ability and handedness. However, the inclusion of handedness as a motor marker for musical ability in children in conjunction with other preexisting neurocognitive factors cannot be entirely discounted.     

The decline of cooperation,the rise of competition: developmental effects of long‐term social change in Mexico

Using Greenfield's theory of sociocultural change and human development as a point of departure, we carried out two experimental studies exploring the implications of decades of globalised social change in Mexico for children's development of cooperation and competition. In rural San Vicente, Baja California, the baseline was 1970 and the historical comparison took place 40 years later. In Veracruz, the baseline was 1985 and the historical comparison took place 20 years later. In Veracruz, children were tested in both rural and urban settings. We hypothesized that cooperative behavior would decrease in all three settings as a result of the sociocultural transformations of the past decades in Mexico. The Madsen Marble Pull Game was used to assess cooperative and competitive behavior. As predicted by Greenfield's theory of social change and human development, the Marble Pull procedure revealed a striking decrease over time in levels of cooperative behavior, with a corresponding rise in competitive behavior, in all three settings.     

Old Age,Finitude and Meaning: Reflections on the Care of Older Adults Based on Logotherapy

Due to the steady increase in the number of older adults among the Brazilian population, the aim of the present article is to reflect on the care provided to the elderly based on Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy as an alternative approach to understanding more deeply what this life stage means. For this purpose, demographic data on the population of older adults are provided, together with distinct views on aging and its relationship to the quality of life. Next, logotherapy, from its conceptions about the relationship of the person to finitude and to the person’s possibilities for existence, is presented as a psychological theory likely to improve the understanding of aging and to represent a possible approach to the care of older adults. Based on an understanding of humans as beings of power and therefore as self-transcendent and endowed with the will to meaning, the possibility of psychology investing in the relationship with alterity as the grounds for interventions targeting older adults is emphasized.     

Development of a measure of experiential avoidance: the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire

Experiential avoidance (EA) has been conceptualized as the tendency to avoid negative internal experiences and is an important concept in numerous conceptualizations of psychopathology as well as theories of psychotherapy. Existing measures of EA have either been narrowly defined or demonstrated unsatisfactory internal consistency and/or evidence of poor discriminant validity vis-à-vis neuroticism. To help address these problems, we developed a reliable self-report questionnaire assessing a broad range of EA content that was distinguishable from higher order personality traits. An initial pool of 170 items was administered to a sample of undergraduates (N = 312) to help evaluate individual items and establish a structure via exploratory factor analyses. A revised set of items was then administered to another sample of undergraduates (N = 314) and a sample of psychiatric outpatients (N = 201). A 2nd round of item evaluation was performed, resulting in a final 62-item measure consisting of 6 subscales. Cross-validation data were gathered in 3 new, independent samples (students, N = 363; patients, N = 265; community adults, N = 215). The resulting measure (the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire, or MEAQ) exhibited good internal consistency, was substantially associated with other measures of avoidance, and demonstrated greater discrimination vis-à-vis neuroticism relative to preexisting measures of EA. Furthermore, the MEAQ was broadly associated with psychopathology and quality of life, even after controlling for the effects of neuroticism.     

Bidirectional priming in infants

In associative priming, the direct activation of one concept indirectly activates others that are associated with it, depending on the directionality of the association. We asked whether associative priming in preverbal infants is bidirectional. Infants associated a puppet imitation task with an operant train task by watching an adult model target actions on the puppet in the incidental context of the train. Later, priming of the forgotten memory of the train task reactivated the infants' memory of the puppet task (Experiment 1), and priming of the infants' forgotten memory of the puppet task reactivated their memory of the train task (Experiment 2). The finding that associative priming was bidirectional offers new insights into the nature of the mnemonic networks formed early in infancy. Additionally, the fact that the present association was formed rapidly and incidentally suggests that a fast mapping, general learning mechanism, like that posited to mediate word-object learning, was responsible for its encoding.     

Temporal generalization gradients following an interdimensional discrimination protocol

We investigated the effects of interdimensional discrimination training in the temporal generalization gradient. In a matching-to-sample task, pigeons learned to choose key S after a T–s houselight sample and key NS in the absence of the houselight sample. For one group of pigeons, T?=?20?s; for another, T?=?10?s. Subsequently, houselight duration was varied to obtain temporal generalization gradients. Results showed that (a) proportion S increased as houselight duration ranged from 0?s to T?s and then remained high for houselight durations longer than T; (b) the gradients were well described by negative-exponential functions; (c) these non-flat gradients were present from the beginning of testing, and; (d) the average gradients obtained with T?=?20?s and T?=?10?s overlapped when plotted in relative time. We conclude that temporal control does not require explicit discrimination training along the temporal dimension, and that temporal generalization gradients obtained with an interdimensional protocol show the scalar property of timing. We discuss how these findings challenge current models of timing.