Visual laterality in the domestic horse (Equus caballus) interacting with humans

Most horses have a side on which they are easier to handle and a direction they favour when working on a circle, and recent studies have suggested a correlation between emotion and visual laterality when horses observe inanimate objects. As such lateralisation could provide important clues regarding the horse’s cognitive processes, we investigated whether horses also show laterality in association with people. We gave horses the choice of entering a chute to left or right, with and without the passive, non-interactive presence of a person unknown to them. The left eye was preferred for scanning under both conditions, but significantly more so when a person was present. Traditionally, riders handle horses only from the left, so we repeated the experiment with horses specifically trained on both sides. Again, there was a consistent preference for left eye scanning in the presence of a person, whether known to the horses or not. We also examined horses interacting with a person, using both traditionally and bilaterally trained horses. Both groups showed left eye preference for viewing the person, regardless of training and test procedure. For those horses tested under both passive and interactive conditions, the left eye was preferred significantly more during interaction. We suggest that most horses prefer to use their left eye for assessment and evaluation, and that there is an emotional aspect to the choice which may be positive or negative, depending on the circumstances. We believe these results have important practical implications and that emotional laterality should be taken into account in training methods.     

The interactive effects of conscientiousness, work effort, and psychological climate on job performance

Historically, conscientiousness-performance relationships have been modest, suggesting the need to examine theoretically-relevant moderating variables. Based on theory and empirical research suggesting that performance variance is maximally predicted in the presence of person and situation variables, we examined the moderating potential of work effort and psychological climate on the conscientiousness-performance relationship. Data gathered from 139 predominately part-time restaurant employees revealed that conscientiousness predicted performance in the simultaneous presence of high levels of work effort and positive psychological climate. Conversely, conscientiousness had no empirical association with performance when coupled with other combinations (e.g., high-negative; low-positive; low-negative) of work effort and psychological climate. Implications for research, strengths, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

A Preliminary Study of COVID-19-related Stressors,Parenting Stress,and Parental Psychological Well-being Among Parents of School-age Children

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial health, social, and economic effects on families. Consequent lockdowns and school closures heightened the burden on...     

Sensory laterality in affiliative interactions in domestic horses and ponies (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Equus caballus</Emphasis>)

Many studies have been carried out into both motor and sensory laterality of horses in agonistic and stressful situations. Here we examine sensory laterality in affiliative interactions within four groups of domestic horses and ponies (N?=?31), living in stable social groups, housed at a single complex close to Vienna, Austria, and demonstrate for the first time a significant population preference for the left side in affiliative approaches and interactions. No effects were observed for gender, rank, sociability, phenotype, group, or age. Our results suggest that right hemisphere specialization in horses is not limited to the processing of stressful or agonistic situations, but rather appears to be the norm for processing in all social interactions, as has been demonstrated in other species including chicks and a range of vertebrates. In domestic horses, hemispheric specialization for sensory input appears not to be based on a designation of positive versus negative, but more on the perceived need to respond quickly and appropriately in any given situation.     

Adolescent lifestyle profiles and personal and community competences

Revealing how health-related lifestyle behaviors are associated with competences during adolescence can contribute to understanding the complexity of factors that intervene in adolescents’ health. The objectives of this study were to explore the clustering of different lifestyle behaviors and their connection to personal and community competence. Participants were 795 adolescents who were taking part in the initial assessment of a Spanish community-based intervention program. They were asked to complete four self-report measures: the Lifestyle Questionnaire, the Self-Concept and Social Realization Questionnaire, the Coping Scale for Children and Youth Questionnaire, and the Perceived Community Support Questionnaire. Cluster analysis was then used to discover different patterns of lifestyle behaviors and associate them with sociodemographic and competence factors. The cluster analysis revealed three groups of adolescents: a first group that presented all-round healthy habits, a second group with abusive screen use and a third group with unhealthy habits related to going out at night. These clusters were modulated by age, student status, psychosocial risk status and mothers’ level of education. Further analysis showed higher levels of Self-worth, Task-oriented strategy, Empathy and Community participation in the Healthy group compared to those in the Unhealthy group, whereas the Screen-user group had more Behavioral avoidance than the Healthy group and less Community integration than both of the other groups. The identification of personal and community competences as health-promoting factors associated with adolescents’ lifestyles may help professionals to prioritize certain strengths for best results in intervention programs.     

A Cross-Lagged Model of the Development of ADHD Inattention Symptoms and Rapid Naming Speed

Although previous research has identified contemporaneous associations between cognitive deficits and symptom phenotypes in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, no studies have as yet attempted to identify direction of effect. The present study used cross-lagged path modeling to examine competing hypotheses about longitudinal associations between rapid naming speed and symptoms of inattention in children. 1,506 school-age twins from Australia and the U.S. were tested for inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and rapid naming speed at three and four time points, respectively. Symptom severity of inattention from Kindergarten to fourth grade is consistently predicted by previous rapid naming, over and above auto-regressive and correlational associations in the model. Likewise, inattention symptoms have a small but significant predictive effect on subsequent rapid naming. The findings support a reciprocal relationship between naming speed and ADHD inattentive symptoms.     

Test-retest reliability and practice effects of the Wechsler Memory Scale-III

Although serial administration of cognitive tests is increasingly common, there is a paucity of research on test-retest reliabilities and practice effects, both of which are important for evaluating changes in functioning. Reliability is generally conceptualized as involving short-lasting changes in performance. However, when repeated testing occurs over a period of years, there will be some longer lasting effects. The implications of these longer lasting effects and practice effects on reliability were examined in the context of repeated administrations of the Wechsler Memory Scale-III in 339 community-dwelling women aged 40-79 years over 2 to 7 years. The results showed that Logical Memory and Verbal Paired Associates subtests were consistently the most reliable subtests across the age cohorts. The magnitude of practice effects varied as a function of subtests and age. The largest practice effects were found in the youngest age cohort, especially on the Faces, Logical Memory, and Verbal Paired Associates subtests.     

Weightlifting exercise and the size–weight illusion

In the size–weight illusion (SWI), large objects feel lighter than equally weighted small objects. In the present study, we investigated whether this powerful weight illusion could influence real-lift behavior—namely, whether individuals would perform more bicep curls with a dumbbell that felt subjectively lighter than with an identically weighted, but heavier-feeling, dumbbell. Participants performed bicep curls until they were unable to continue with both a large, light-feeling 5-lb dumbbell and a smaller, heavy-feeling 5-lb dumbbell. No differences emerged in the amounts of exercise that participants performed with each dumbbell, even though they felt that the large dumbbell was lighter than the small dumbbell. Furthermore, in a second experiment, we found no differences in how subjectively tired participants felt after exercising for a set time with either dumbbell. We did find, however, differences in the lifting dynamics, such that the small dumbbell was moved at a higher average velocity and peak acceleration. These results suggest that the SWI does not appear to influence exercise outcomes, suggesting that perceptual illusions are unlikely to affect one’s ability to persevere with lifting weights.     

Dual processes of emotion and reason in judgments about moral dilemmas

We report the results of two experiments that show that participants rely on both emotion and reason in moral judgments. Experiment 1 showed that when participants were primed to communicate feelings, they provided emotive justifications not only for personal dilemmas, e.g., pushing a man from a bridge that will result in his death but save the lives of five others, but also for impersonal dilemmas, e.g., hitting a switch on a runaway train that will result in the death of one man but save the lives of five others; when they were primed to communicate thoughts, they provided non-emotive justifications for both personal and impersonal dilemmas. Experiment 2 showed that participants read about a protagonist's emotions more quickly when the protagonist was faced with a personal dilemma than an impersonal one, but they read about the protagonist's decision to act or not act equally quickly for personal and impersonal dilemmas.