The nature of skilled adult reading varies with type of instruction in childhood

Does the type of reading instruction experienced during the initial years at school have any continuing effect on the ways in which adults read words? The question has arisen in current discussions about computational models of mature word-reading processes. We tested predicted continuing effects by comparing matched samples of skilled adult readers of English who had received explicit phonics instruction in childhood and those who had not. In responding to nonwords that can receive alternative legitimate pronunciations, those adults having childhood phonics instruction used more regular grapheme-phoneme correspondences that were context free and used fewer vocabulary-based contextually dependent correspondences than did adults who had no phonics instruction. These differences in regularization of naming responses also extended to some low-frequency words. This apparent cognitive footprint of childhood phonics instruction is a phenomenon requiring consideration when researchers attempt to model adult word reading and when they select participants to test the models.     

Interpersonal attachment predicts identification with groups

We propose a model documenting the relationship between interpersonal attachment style and identification with groups. We hypothesized that following threat to a romantic interpersonal relationship higher attachment anxiety would be associated with lowered tendencies to identify with groups. In two studies using varied social groups we observed support for this hypothesis. In Experiment 1 we found that participants higher in attachment anxiety identified less with a salient ingroup after imagining a distressing argument with their romantic partner. In Experiment 2 we replicated these findings using an implicit measure of social identification and additionally observed a moderating role for attachment avoidance. We discuss the implications of these findings for theoretical models of interpersonal attachment and social identification.     

Assessing the Role of Body Image Coping Strategies as Mediators or Moderators of the Links Between Self-Objectification, Body Shame, and Well-Being

We examined self-objectification in relation to well-being, and the potential moderating versus mediating role of body image coping strategies (appearance fixing, avoidance, positive rational acceptance). Undergraduate women from southern Ontario, Canada (Sample 1, n?=?104; Sample 2, n?=?314) completed measures of depression, disordered eating attitudes, subjective well-being, and body-image coping. Self-objectification was related to greater depression, disordered eating attitudes, and lower subjective well-being. A two-stage mediation model was supported: Body shame and body image coping strategies (appearance fixing and avoidance) partially mediated the associations between self-objectification and outcomes; appearance fixing and avoidance partially mediated the associations between body shame and outcomes. Body image coping strategies did not moderate any of the relations between body shame and outcomes.     

d-Serine facilitates the effects of extinction to reduce cocaine-primed reinstatement of drug-seeking behavior

Male Sprague Dawley rats were allowed to self-administer cocaine (0.5 mg/kg) during 90 min sessions for a period of 15 days. On day 16, rats were either held abstinent in their home cage environment or experienced an extinction session in which the active lever had no programmed consequences. Facilitating N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor activity with the coagonist d-serine (100 mg/kg i.p.) before or following the extinction session significantly reduced the subsequent cocaine-primed reinstatement of drug-seeking behavior tested on day 17. d-Serine significantly reduced drug-primed reinstatement only when combined with extinction, and its effectiveness when administered following the training session suggested that an enhancement of consolidation of extinction learning had occurred. In contrast, d-serine treatment did not reduce sucrose-primed reinstatement, indicating that the beneficial effects of this adjunct pharmacotherapy with extinction training were specific to an addictive substance (cocaine) and did not generalize to a natural reward (sucrose).     

Une étude de la pratique professionnelle de jeunes juristes : la nécessaire compétence en relations humaines

Some professions require more than others competences in human relations. It is the case of the profession of judge. Thus, Gangloff and Hardy (2006), noted that students in right did not use any criteria of social order for better knowing the person than they had to judge. This led them to take decisions without references to the individual contrary to what envisages the penal code of procedure. In the study which follows, young lawyers are confronted with actors of the school world. Cases where they have to evaluate the responsibility for actors in various situations of attacks (verbal, with the goods and physics) are submitted to them, to pupils of class of third and teachers of secondary school. It is noted that the decisions of the future lawyers are particularly different from other groups in particular on the cases of verbal attacks. Those, indeed, take little account of these kinds of damages, whereas they are very present in mind for the others. How then, not to generate incomprehension between worlds which have more and more the occasion to meet in this societal context where the right supplants morals?To prolong this reflection, it is permissible to think that additional training in human relations within the framework of the legal studies would make it possible to support the competence of the judges.     

Effect of mental imagery on realizing affordances

Using a reaction time experiment, we examined whether imagining a response would lead to an increase in the frequency of its execution. During a pre-test and a post-test, participants had to respond as quickly as possible with either their left or their right hand, as they preferred, to the illumination of one of 17 target positions arrayed in front of them in a semicircle. Between these two phases, participants performed a practice condition. Each of 40 right-handed participants was assigned to one of four groups that differed in their practice condition: One group made only dominant-hand responses to all target locations, two imagery groups imagined dominant hand responses to all target locations, and the last group received a no-practice, control task. One imagery group received instructions emphasizing that imagery has a strong effect; the second group received instructions suggesting that imagery was not effective. The results showed an increased incidence of the practised response for both imagery groups during the post-test. No effect was found for the physical performance group and the control group. The change in performance for the imagery groups was not accompanied by a change in reaction time. The results are discussed in terms of imagining the realization of action possibilities and from a neuropsychological point of view.     

An ecological analysis of binocular vision

Summary Underlying the classic binocularity problems of singleness and three-dimensionality is a theory that the stimulus for binocular vision constitutes two two-dimensional images and metric differences between parts of those images. This characterization of the stimulus is criticized here and in its stead an ecologically-based characterization is presented wherein a binocular transformational invariant is shown to specify absolute (body-scaled) size, shape, and distance. The transformation is characterized as a rotation and its specificity to distance assumes a constant interocular distance and either homogeneously textured or extended surfaces. Four experiments demonstrate perceivers' abilities to detect this information and report (verbally or by reaching) the absolute distances of surfaces in stereograms. A fifth experiment revealed that accurate performance did not depend on oculomotor information. The assumptions of texture extent and distribution and constant interocular distance and their possible violations were discussed. A sixth experiment demonstrated that violations of interocular distance are absorbed by surface shapes. The existence and detection of a binocular rotation dissolves the putative problems of singleness and stereopsis, indicates that the importance of having two frontal eyes is for perception of absolute distance, and reformulates the problems for an algorithmic (physiological) theory of vision.     

Perceptions of mothers: Effects of employment status,marital status,and age of child

Ninety-six female and 96 male college students evaluated a briefly described adult female stimulus person on 24 7-point bipolar scales that described personality traits and professional performance characteristics. Each subject rated 1 of 8 mothers, who was described as either employed or nonemployed, either divorced or married, and as having either a 1-year-old or 11-year-old child. Employed mothers were viewed as less family oriented, but as more instrumental than nonemployed mothers. Divorced mothers were perceived as less well adjusted but more instrumental than married mothers. Employed mothers with a 1-year-old child were rated as most professionally competent, while employed mothers with an 11-year-old child were rated as most instrumental.Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, May 1987.     

A psychological pulse train: how young children use this cognitive framework to structure simple rhythms

Summary This paper examines the reproduction of both regular rhythms and irregular sequences by 5- and 7-year-old children, concentrating on the important role played by their organization around a pulse train. It is shown that: (a) the closer rhythms are to a regular beat the easier they are to reproduce and the greater are the improvements with age; (b) memory capacity is limited by the number of pulses around which the rhythm is organized rather than by the number of elements it contains; (c) all the children's productions contain two interval lengths that are in a ratio close to 1:2 and arranged in preferential sequences which we have called stereotypes; (d) arrhythmic sequences can only be reproduced if the intervals undergo a systematic distortion towards regularity. These results are interpreted in relation to a pulse-train hypothesis which states that on hearing a rhythm an internal clock or time base is evoked around which the rhythm is structured.     

Restrained eating: Mediator of gender differences on cognitive restructuring tasks?

This study examined the hypothesis that gender differences in eating restraint might mediate previously reported gender differences in cognitive restructuring tasks. Thirty female and 30 male college students matched for dietary restraint were administered two tests that had differentiated females from males and obese from normal-weight individuals in previous research: Luchins' water jar problems, and the Embedded Figures Test. On the water jar problems, use of the initial solution when no longer most efficient was greater for restrained eaters than for unrestrained eaters and no gender differences were found, supporting the hypothesis. On the Embedded Figures Test, males performed better than females, with restrained females tending to perform most poorly.Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, May 1985.