Maternal regulation of infant reactivity from 2 to 6 months

Previous research has investigated the effect of maternal soothing behaviors on reducing infant reactivity but not the differential effects of specific maternal behaviors on infant stress responses. The present study investigated maternal regulation of 2- and 6-month-olds' responses to an inoculation and found a significant decline with age in both the intensity and duration of infants' crying. Maternal affection and touching decreased from 2 to 6 months, whereas maternal vocalizing and distraction behaviors increased. At both ages, the combination of maternal holding/rocking and vocalizing was associated with decreases in all levels of infant reactivity. Neither strategy alone, however, was found to be effective. Feeding/ pacifying behaviors were effective only when initial distress was at a low or moderate level, which suggests that the effectiveness of maternal regulatory behaviors may depend on the intensity of infants' crying.     

Temporal specificity of extinction in autoshaping

Three experiments investigated the effects of varying the conditioned stimulus (CS) duration between training and extinction. Ring doves (Streptopelia risoria) were autoshaped on a fixed CS-unconditioned stimulus (US) interval and extinguished with CS presentations that were longer, shorter, or the same as the training duration. During a subsequent test session, the training CS duration was reintroduced. Results suggest that the cessation of responding during an extinction session is controlled by generalization of excitation between the training and extinction CSs and by the number of nonreinforced CS presentations. Transfer of extinction to the training CS is controlled by the similarity between the extinction and training CSs. Extinction learning is temporally specific.     

Bimanual coordination dynamics in poststroke hemiparetics

Poststroke hemiparetic individuals (n = 9) and a control group (n = 9) completed a frequency-scaled circle-drawing task in unimanual and bimanual conditions. Measures of intralimb spatial and temporal task accuracy and interlimb coordination parameters were analyzed. Significant reductions in task performance were seen in both limbs of the patients and controls with the introduction of bimanual movement. Spatial performance parameters suggested that the 2 groups focused on different hands during bimanual conditions. In the controls, interlimb coordination variables indicated predictable hand dominance effects, whereas in the patient group, dominance was influenced by the side of impairment and prior handedness of the individual. Therefore, in this particular bimanual task, performance improvements in the hemiplegic side could not be elicited. Intrinsic coupling asymmetries between the hands can be altered by unilateral motor deficits.     

Verb deficits in Alzheimer's disease and agrammatism: implications for lexical organization

This study examined the nature of verb deficits in 14 individuals with probable Alzheimer's Disease (PrAD) and nine with agrammatic aphasia. Production was tested, controlling both semantic and syntactic features of verbs, using noun and verb naming, sentence completion, and narrative tasks. Noun and verb comprehension and a grammaticality judgment task also were administered. Results showed that while both PrAD and agrammatic subjects showed impaired verb naming, the syntactic features of verbs (i.e., argument structure) influenced agrammatic, but not Alzheimer's disease patients' verb production ability. That is, agrammatic patients showed progressively greater difficulty with verbs associated with more arguments, as has been shown in previous studies (e.g., Kim & Thompson, 2000; Thompson, 2003; Thompson, Lange, Schneider, & Shapiro, 1997), and suggest a syntactic basis for verb production deficits in agrammatism. Conversely, the semantic complexity of verbs affected PrAD, but not agrammatic, patients' performance, suggesting "bottom-up" breakdown in their verb lexicon, paralleling that of nouns, resulting from the degradation or loss of semantic features of verbs.     

An outcome evaluation of the implementation of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program in Hong Kong

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of the Positive Parenting Program (Triple P) with a sample of Chinese parents of children with early onset conduct-related problems in Hong Kong. The participants consisted of 91 parents whose children attended maternal and child health centers and child assessment centers for service, and were between three to seven years old. Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention (TP) and a waitlist control group (WL). There was no significant difference in pre-intervention measures between the two groups. However, at post intervention, participants in the TP group reported significantly lower levels of child behavior problems, lower dysfunctional parenting styles, and higher parent sense of competence, compared to the WL group. Implications of these findings for the use of Triple P with families of Chinese descent are discussed.     

The Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale,a brief version: psychometric data

As a measure of mathematics anxiety, the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS) has been a major scale used for research and clinical studies since 1972. Despite the usefulness of the original scale, researchers have sought a shorter version of the scale partly to reduce the administration time of the original 98-item scale. This study created a shorter version of the MARS and provides reliability and validity information for the new version. The Cronbach alpha of .96 indicated high internal consistency, while the test-retest reliability for the MARS 30-item was .90 (p<.001). The validity data confirm that the MARS 30-item test is comparable to the original MARS 98-item scale.     

Learning myopia: an adaptive recency effect in category learning

Recency effects (REs) have been well established in memory and probability learning paradigms but have received little attention in category earning research. Extant categorization models predict REs to be unaffected by learning, whereas a functional interpretation of REs, suggested by results in other domains, predicts that people are able to learn sequential dependencies and incorporate this information into their responses. These contrasting predictions were tested in 2 experiments involving a classification task in which outcome sequences were autocorrelated. Experiment 1 showed that reliance on recent outcomes adapts to the structure of the task, in contrast to models' predictions. Experiment 2 provided constraints on how sequential information is learned and suggested possible extensions to current models to account for this learning.     

Utility of Behavior Ratings by Examiners During Assessments of Preschool Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

This study examines the clinical utility of behavior ratings made by nonclinician examiners during assessments of preschool children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). Matched samples of children with (n = 127) and without (n = 125) AD/HD were utilized to test the internal, convergent, concurrent, and incremental validity of ratings completed by examiners on the Hillside Behavior Rating Scale (HBRS). Results indicated that HBRS ratings were internally consistent, possessed sufficient interrater reliability, and were significantly associated with parent and teacher reports of AD/HD when controlling for age, gender, intelligence, and symptoms of other psychopathology. HBRS ratings also were significantly associated with other measures of functioning, and provided a significant increment in the prediction of impairment over parent and teacher report alone. These findings suggest that behavioral ratings during testing provide a unique source of clinical information that may be useful as a supplement to parent and teacher reports.