Frontal brain electrical activity (EEG) and heart rate in response to affective infant-directed (ID) speech in 9-month-old infants

Many studies have shown that infants prefer infant-directed (ID) speech to adult-directed (AD) speech. ID speech functions to aid language learning, obtain and/or maintain an infant's attention, and create emotional communication between the infant and caregiver. We examined psychophysiological responses to ID speech that varied in affective content (i.e., love/comfort, surprise, fear) in a group of typically developing 9-month-old infants. Regional EEG and heart rate were collected continuously during stimulus presentation. We found the pattern of overall frontal EEG power was linearly related to affective intensity of the ID speech, such that EEG power was greatest in response to fear, than surprise than love/comfort; this linear pattern was specific to the frontal region. We also noted that heart rate decelerated to ID speech independent of affective content. As well, infants who were reported by their mothers as temperamentally distressed tended to exhibit greater relative right frontal EEG activity during baseline and in response to affective ID speech, consistent with previous work with visual stimuli and extending it to the auditory modality. Findings are discussed in terms of how increases in frontal EEG power in response to different affective intensity may reflect the cognitive aspects of emotional processing across sensory domains in infancy.     

Lying on Job Applications: The Effects of Job Relevance,Commission, and Human Resource Management Experience

This research examined three factors related to misrepresentations on job applications: the job relevance of the information, the effects of overt misrepresentation compared to omission, and the impact of human resource (HR) management experience. Dependent measures included the extent to which misrepresentations were perceived as lies and influenced hiring intentions. In general, higher job relevance and overt misrepresentations increased the perception of misrepresentations as lies and decreased the hiring intentions. Further, persons with HR management experience were less likely to see misrepresentations as lies and more likely to hire applicants. Implications for future research and managerial practice are discussed.

Implicit theories about groups and stereotyping: the role of group entitativity

The consequences of holding an entity (i.e., the belief that a group's characteristics are fixed) or incremental (i.e., the belief that a group's characteristics are malleable) implicit theory about groups was examined for stereotyping and perceptions of group entitativity. Two studies showed that implicit theories about groups affect stereotyping by changing perceptions of group entitativity. Study 1 found that entity theorists were more likely to stereotype than incremental theorists and that perception of group entitativity significantly accounted for this relation. In Study 2, implicit theories of groups were manipulated via instruction set and entity theorists stereotyped more and perceived groups as more entitative than incremental theorists. Again, the effect of implicit theory was significantly, although partially, mediated by perceptions of group entitativity. The roles of implicit theories about groups and perceptions of group entitativity are discussed regarding stereotyping.     

Laying it on thin: analogical cue frequency in the manipulation of choice

Persuasive analogies consist of linguistic cues that invite audiences to represent a problem in terms of an analog and to make choices compatible with this manipulated representation. The authors explore how the frequency of linguistic cues moderates analogical bias in choice behavior. Participants read versions of a managerial decision scenario differing in the number of sports (e.g., game plan) or family (e.g., parent company) idioms used to describe situational attributes and then chose between analogically consistent and inconsistent response options. Analogies consisting of an intermediate number of cues elicited higher rates of analogically consistent responding than those of higher and lower cue frequency. When explaining their responses, participants referred to the sports or family analogies most often to rationalize rejecting the analogically consistent response option after reading high cue frequency versions. These findings indicate that there are lower and upper boundaries to a persuasive analogy's optimal cue frequency.     

The Ohio Scales: Practical Outcome Assessment

The development and initial psychometric studies for the Ohio Youth Problems, Functioning, and Satisfaction Scales (Ohio Scales) are described. The Ohio Scales were developed to be practical yet rigorous, multi-content, multi-source measures of outcome for children and adolescents receiving mental health services. Initial studies suggest that the Ohio Scales are promising (reliable, valid, and sensitive to change) measures that can be used to track the effectiveness of mental health interventions for youth with serious emotional disorders. Additional studies are warranted to expand the situations and populations within which the scales are valid.     

Perception is a two-way junction: Feedback semantics in word recognition

Feedback semantics refers to whether a specific meaning can be represented by only one word (consistent) or by several words (inconsistent)—that is, whether a word has synonyms (e.g.,jail) or not (e.g.,milk). Models of word perception that allow feedback activation from semantics to orthography and phonology predict that performance should be worse for words that are feedback inconsistent (words with a synonym) than for words that are feedback consistent (words without a synonym). The present study showed that both naming and lexical decision responses are faster and more accurate to consistent than to inconsistent words. The results provide support for models that allow feedback activation between phonology, orthography, and semantics.     

Can Voters Predict Changes in Theor Own Attitudes?

Although scholars have established that voters have unstable preferences (e.g., Converse, 1964; Zaller, 1992) and that they are not accurate when recalling past preferences (e.g., Markus, 1986; Niemi, Katz, & Newman, 1980; Smith, 1984), existing research has not systematically explored whether voters can accurately predict the changing nature of their own opinions. The question of whether whether people recognize the instability of their political preferences was explored in a random sample of Pennsylvania registered voters who were surveyed in August and October 1996, during the presidential election campaign. The first survey elicited respondents' positions on two political issues (welfare reform and the environment) and on the two major candidates, and also asked them to estimate the likelihood that each of these positions would change during the next 2 months. The second survey elicited positions at that time and also asked voters to recall their prior positions. Measured both by expectations and recall, respondents tended to underestimate the degree to which their own positions would change or had changed over time. This research has implications for the use of public opinion polling and more broadly for the practice of democratic politics.     

Diversifying counsellor education: a case study of U.S. students of colour

Due to limited research on the experiences of students of colour in counselling programmes, counsellor educators are ill-equipped to implement strategies to promote the graduation of students of colour. In this case study, we explored the protective and risk factors for students of colour enrolled in a counselling programme in the Western U.S. Participants identified three protective factors (diversity, faculty support, and family and friends) and three risk factors (balancing family and school, disconnect from programme, and White dominance) that impacted their post-graduate experience. Implications for the retention of students of colour are discussed.