Object updating and the flash-lag effect

Flash lag is a misperception of spatial relations between a moving object and a briefly flashed stationary one. This study began with the observation that the illusion occurs when the moving object continues following the flash, but is eliminated if the object's motion path ends with the flash. The data show that disrupting the continuity of the moving object, via a transient change in size or color, also eliminates the illusion. We propose that this is because a large feature change leads to the formation of a second object representation. Direct evidence for this proposal is provided by the results for a corollary perceptual feature of the disruption in object continuity: the perception of two objects, rather than only one, on the motion path.     

On the relative contributions of positive reinforcement and escape extinction in the treatment of food refusal

We compared the effects of positive reinforcement alone, escape extinction alone, and positive reinforcement with escape extinction in the treatment of the food and fluid refusal of 4 children who had been diagnosed with a pediatric feeding disorder. Consumption did not increase when positive reinforcement was implemented alone. By contrast, consumption increased for all participants when escape extinction was implemented, independent of the presence or absence of positive reinforcement. However, the addition of positive reinforcement to escape extinction was associated with beneficial effects (e.g., greater decreases in negative vocalizations and inappropriate behavior) for some participants.     

The Contribution of Physical Activity to Health-Related Quality of Life: New Population Estimates from National Survey Data

Sedentary lifestyles have been linked to higher rates of stroke, hypertension, depression, certain types of cancers, and cardiovascular disease, and increased risk of mortality. The link between physical inactivity and health has led to research on how physical activity (PA) interventions might improve health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Estimates of HRQoL improvements are typically focused on targeted at-risk groups, however. Given that almost half of the U.S. adult population is physically inactive, it would be helpful to broaden our understanding of how PA relates to quality of life for the population at large. In this study, we calculated the HRQoL gains attributable to PA across three nationally representative data sets that use different quality of life measures, and assessed the reliability in the results. The data sets used were the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Quasi-likelihood regression modeling with a beta distribution was used to generate the estimates. We found mean HRQoL scores were very similar across the three data sets and the estimated HRQoLs gained from PA varied only slightly, suggesting that all three provide reliable estimates for the general population.

     

In great-grandma's nursery

In recent decades, interest in the development of the baby during the first year of life has led to a prodigious explosion of information. Advantages and disadvantages of different methods of feeding infants have been considered, and many parents and professionals have advocated a return to breast-feeding. Parents of today make choices from a vast array of equipment available to stimulate and amuse their infants. Family relationships have been investigated in detail by researchers and discussed endlessly by the media. In particular, the father as caregiver has emerged as a topic of interest, and the role of this “New Father” has received extensive attention. Are these roles and concerns new? Or do they reflect a zeitgeist favoring their return? The purpose of this article is to provide a brief look at the advice given to parents of turn-of-the-century infants in the United States and at baby products advertised during this period.     

Determinants of Employee Participation in Organizations’ Family-friendly Programs: A Multi-level Approach

Many organizations have become more “family-friendly” by initiating programs to help employees meet their family needs. In return, family-friendly organizations are said to benefit from the positive attitudes and behavior of appreciative employees. However, long-term positive outcomes may not emerge if employees are reluctant to participate in work–family programs because they are concerned that their organization or manager does not support their participation. We propose two parallel conceptual models of the complex, multi-level mechanisms behind employees’ decisions to participate in their organization’s family-friendly programs.     

The effects of attrition on baseline comparability in randomized experiments in education: a meta-analysis

Using meta-analysis, randomized experiments in education that either clearly did or clearly did not experience student attrition were examined for the baseline comparability of groups. Results from 35 studies suggested that after attrition, the observed measures of baseline comparability of groups did not differ more than would be expected given sampling error. The degree of either overall or differential attrition did not relate to baseline comparability, a finding that held under sensitivity analyses. Also, both overall and differential attrition rates were unrelated to posttest effect sizes. All of these analyses, however, lacked sufficient statistical power to detect small but potentially meaningful effects. Results suggest caution is warranted when applying quality scales and other blanket rules pertaining to attrition that are meant to either serve as inclusion-exclusion criteria or in scoring study quality. Much greater attention is needed to both the reporting of attrition in primary studies and to the development of conceptual and empirical models of the attrition process. These developments would aid further investigation of the relation between attrition and study outcomes.     

Treating food selectivity as resistance to change in children with autism spectrum disorder

Change-resistant behavior, such as rigid and selective food consumption, is a core symptom of autism that can have significant negative consequences for the child (Flygare Wallén et al., 2018; Levy et al., 2019). In the current study, we used a matching-law-based intervention (Fisher et al., 2019) to treat the change-resistant feeding behavior of 7 young children with autism. The feeder gave the participant a choice between a change-resistant and an alternative food during free- and asymmetrical-choice conditions. Alternative-food consumption increased for 2 participants during asymmetrical choice when the feeder provided a preferred item for consuming the alternative food and no programmed consequence for consuming the change-resistant food. Alternative-food consumption increased for the other 5 participants after the feeder exposed at least 1 food to single choice in which the feeder guided the participant to put the bite of alternative food in his or her mouth if he or she did not do so within 8 s of presentation. Effects of the single-choice contingencies maintained during reversals and generalized to other alternative foods the feeder did not expose to single choice. These results are important because participants consumed alternative foods even when their change-resistant foods were present, which is similar to typical mealtime contexts in which children have choices among foods.     

The flanker effect does not reflect the processing of “task-irrelevant” stimuli: Evidence from inattentional blindness

It is often the case that stimuli (or aspects of a stimulus) are referred to as being “task-irrelevant.” Here, we recount where this label originated and argue that the use of this label is at odds with the concept of “relevance” that has arisen in the contingent-capture literature. This is not merely a matter of labels, but a matter of inference: When people describe a flanker stimulus as being “task-irrelevant,” they may be (and sometimes are) tempted to infer that the conditions that were studied in the flanker task generalize to other tasks and other types of stimuli. Here, we show that this generalization is not warranted. The flanker effect exists not because attention has failed at selecting only the target from the display, but rather, the effect arises precisely because attention succeeded at selecting target-like (i.e., attentionally relevant) stimuli from the display. As a result, the flanker effect should not be used to infer how stimuli that are entirely unrelated to a participant’s main task would be processed. We propose the use of a new terminology to replace this potentially misleading label.