Age‐related changes in the dynamics of fear‐related regulation in early childhood

Self‐regulation is a dynamic process wherein executive processes (EP) delay, minimize or desist prepotent responses (PR) that arise in situations that threaten well‐being. It is generally assumed that, over the course of early childhood, children expand and more effectively deploy their repertoire of EP‐related strategies to regulate PR. However, longitudinal tests of these assumptions are scarce in part because self‐regulation has been mostly studied as a static construct. This study engages dynamic systems modeling to examine developmental changes in self‐regulation between ages 2 and 5 years. Second‐by‐second time‐series data derived from behavioral observations of 112 children (63 boys) faced with novel laboratory‐based situations designed to elicit wariness, hesitation, and fear were modeled using differential equation models designed to capture age‐related changes in the intrinsic dynamics and bidirectional coupling of PR (fear/wariness) and EP (strategy use). Results revealed that dynamic models allow for the conceptualization and measurement of fear regulation as intrinsic processes as well as direct and indirect coupling between PR and EP. Several patterns of age‐related changes were in line with developmental theory suggesting that PR weakened and was regulated more quickly and efficiently by EP at age 5 than at age 2. However, most findings were in the intrinsic dynamics and moderating influences between PR and EP rather than direct influences. The findings illustrate the precision with which specific aspects of self‐regulation can be articulated using dynamic systems models, and how such models can be used to describe the development of self‐regulation in nuanced and theoretically meaningful ways.     

The cost of simplifying complex developmental phenomena: a new perspective on learning to walk

Researchers can study complex developmental phenomena with all the inherent noise and complexity or simplify behaviors to hone in on the essential aspects of a phenomenon. We used the development of walking as a model system to compare the costs and benefits of simplifying a complex, noisy behavior. Traditionally, researchers simplify infant walking by recording gait measures as infants take continuous, forward steps along straight paths. Here, we compared the traditional straight‐path task with spontaneous walking during 20 minutes of free play in 97 infants (10.75–19.99 months of age). We recorded infants’ footfalls on an instrumented floor to calculate gait measures in the straight‐path and free‐play tasks. In addition, we scored videos for other critical aspects of spontaneous walking—steps per bout, shape of walking path, and step direction. Studying infant walking during free play incurred no cost compared with the straight‐path task, but considerable benefits. Straight‐path gait was highly correlated with spontaneous gait and both sets of measures improved with walking age, validating use of the straight‐path task as an index of development. However, a large proportion of free‐play bouts were too short to permit standard gait measures, and most bouts were curved with omnidirectional steps. The high prevalence of these “non‐canonical” bouts was constant over development. We propose that a focus on spontaneous walking, the phenomenon we ostensibly wish to explain, yields important insights into the problems infants solve while learning to walk. Other areas of developmental research may also benefit from retaining the complexity of complex phenomena.     

How social is social inhibition of return?

A number of studies have shown that the motor actions of one individual can affect the attention of an observer. In one notable example, “social inhibition of return,” observers are relatively slow to initiate a response to a location where another individual has just responded. In the present article we examine the degree to which this phenomenon can be considered a social effect. We find that unlike the related social, or “joint,” Simon effect, social inhibition of return is not influenced by competitive versus cooperative interaction, nor by live versus recorded interaction. We do find however that co-actors need to turn-take in order for the effect to occur. Thus, so-called “social” inhibition of return only reaches a minimal threshold to be considered a social phenomenon.     

Women’s Ideals for Masculinity Across Social Contexts: Patriarchal Agentic Masculinity is Valued in Work,Family, and Romance but Communal Masculinity in Friendship

The present study explores women’s ideals for masculinity in different social contexts (work, family/romance, and friendship) and compares how traditional (agentic) and non-patriarchal (communal) masculinity are valued in each context. Survey data were collected from one international (N = 159) and three South African samples (Ns = 86, 100, 161) of women. Results show that although women value patriarchal ideals for masculinity, agentic and communal versions of masculinity are valued differently across contexts. Specifically, traditional agentic versions of masculinity were most valued in the contexts most important to the long-term production of viable identity (family/romance and work). It was only in friendship that non-patriarchal communal masculinity was consistently idealized over traditional agentic masculinity. The results are discussed in relation to hegemonic masculinity (HM) and system justification theory (SJT). Congruent with SJT, women idealized versions of masculinity that may not be in their own or their group’s best interests, but in line with HM, the results emphasized the fluidity of masculinity and that the same individual can simultaneously idealize different versions of masculinity depending on the context. Because stereotypes are both explanations for the status quo and warrants for behaving in one way or another, these collective ideals for masculinity and contextual boundaries may be important obstacles to achieving gender equity.     

Stages of Learning Motivation: Development and Validation of a Measure1

Prochaska and colleagues’(e.g., Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992) stages‐of‐change theory was employed in the current study to reconceptualize the assessment of motivation to learn. We used the stages‐of‐change framework to develop and test a multidimensional measure of learning motivation using 3 independent samples. The pattern of relationships among the learning stages and learning criteria provided strong support for the appropriateness of using a stage‐based perspective to frame learning motivation. In addition, hierarchical regression analysis showed that the Stages of Learning Motivation Inventory (SOLMI) explained variance in the criteria (e.g., exam average, class satisfaction) beyond controls and a commonly used measure of learning motivation. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

The vision in “blind” justice: Expert perception,judgment, and visual cognition in forensic pattern recognition

Many forensic disciplines require experts to judge whether two complex patterns are sufficiently similar to conclude that both originate from the same source. Studies in this area have revealed that there are a number of factors that affect perception and judgment and that decisions are subjective and susceptible to extraneous influences (such as emotional context, expectation, and motivation). Some studies have shown that the same expert examiner, examining the same prints but within different contexts, may reach different and contradictory decisions. However, such effects are not always present; some examiners seem more susceptible to such influences than do others—especially when the pattern matching is “hard to call” and when the forensic experts are not aware that they are being observed in an experimental study. Studying forensic examiners can contribute to our understanding of expertise and decision making, as well as have implications for forensic science and other areas of expertise.     

The effect of number of options on choices involving delayed causation

A video game was adapted to investigate the effect of the number of alternatives on causal judgment in a complex environment involving targets with delayed outcomes. Participants were presented with groups of potential targets. Each target (the candidate cause) fired at random relative to the others, with one target in each group causing a delayed explosion (the effect).The participants were tasked with discriminating which of the potential targets was producing the effect. Experiment 1 revealed a main effect of delay on discriminability but no effect of the number of alternatives. However, latencies did increase as the number of alternatives increased, suggesting that discriminability was maintained by compensating with longer observation times. But, a similar increase in latency for longer delays did not offset the detrimental impact of an increase in cause-effect delay. Experiment 2 replicated the outcome under conditions in which participants were always required to observe for 16 s before making a decision; under the most difficult conditions, however, the limited viewing time started to reveal an effect of the number of alternatives on the participants' ability to discriminate a true cause from foils. Evidence suggests that participants' decisions were determined primarily by differences in the number of cause-effect contiguities experienced for the true cause versus the foils.     

In the Eye of the Beholder: Differences Across Ethnicity and Gender in Evaluating Creative Work

Creativity has been proposed as a supplement to ability tests as a way to reduce bias, as a result of the typical lack of ethnic or gender differences. Yet, creativity is usually measured through a consensus of rater judgment. Could there be implicit biases against people of different ethnicities or gender? This study examined stories and poems written by 205 students and rated by 108 different students. Females wrote poems that were judged to be more creative; there were no significant differences by ethnicity across all raters. Among notable findings, European Americans and African Americans both preferred stories written by European Americans. Reasons for this and other findings are discussed.     

Zero-Inflated Regime-Switching Stochastic Differential Equation Models for Highly Unbalanced Multivariate,Multi-Subject Time-Series Data

Psychometrika - In the study of human dynamics, the behavior under study is often operationalized by tallying the frequencies and intensities of a collection of lower-order processes. For instance,...     

Police endorsement of color‐blind racial beliefs and propensity to interact with youth of color

The beliefs of police, as the point of first contact with the justice system, may help to explain disproportionate minority contact between police and young people. Color‐blind racial beliefs, a form of implicit racism in which racial differences are denied, are more strongly endorsed by police than by laypeople. Using a 2 (youth race) × 3 (offense severity) experimental design, 339 officers participated in an online study examining the influence of youth race, offense severity, and officers' color‐blind racial beliefs on officers' reported likelihood of interacting with young people. Officers with lower levels of color‐blind beliefs reported they would be less likely to interact with Black youth. Additionally, attrition analyses indicated that officers assigned to the Black youth condition were more likely to drop out when asked to complete the measure of color‐blind beliefs. Policy and practice implications are discussed, with a focus on promoting greater discussion of color‐blind ideologies in multicultural trainings for police officers and increasing frank discussions about race and racial issues.