Korean transracial and international adoptees: Ethnic identity and sense of belonging and exclusion in relation to birth and adoptive groups

Past quantitative ethnic identity research on transracial and international adoptees (TRIAs) has focused on their birth culture. Given that adoptees may also identify with their adoptive family’s culture, we examined Korean and White European American ethnic identities in Korean American adoptees. Identity exploration and commitment were significantly positively correlated within each referent group. Results also indicated relatively higher levels of birth group identity exploration and higher adoptive group identity commitment. In addition, we used cluster analysis to create ethnic identity profiles and investigated the relations between identity profiles and sense of belonging and exclusion. Our findings signal a need to support TRIAs to develop inclusive flexible ethnic identities and suggest future research should examine multiple referent groups and the intersection of these identities.     

Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration performance in children with traumatic brain injury and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Evaluation of visuoconstructional abilities is a common part of clinical neuropsychological assessment, and the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI; K. E. Beery & N. A. Beery, 2004) is often used for this purpose. However, few studies have examined its psychometric properties when used to assess children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI) or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), even though these are among the most common acquired and neurodevelopmental forms of brain dysfunction in children. This study examined the validity of VMI scores in 123 children with TBI and 65 with ADHD. The TBI and ADHD groups performed significantly worse than the standardization sample, obtaining VMI mean scores of 87.2 (SD = 13.7) and 93.5 (SD = 11.27). Previous research has noted decrements in visuoconstructional abilities in TBI but relative sparing in ADHD. To examine the criterion validity of VMI scores, the authors therefore compared these 2 groups. As anticipated, the TBI group performed significantly worse than the ADHD group, but receiver operator characteristic analysis indicated that VMI scores were poor at discriminating between groups. Nonetheless, convergent validity evidence supported interpretation of VMI scores as measuring perceptual organization in both groups. In particular, principal components analysis indicated that VMI total scores loaded with perceptual organization tests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 3rd ed. (WISC-III; D. Wechsler, 1997), and its highest correlation was with the WISC-III Perceptual Organization Index. Also, the VMI correlated significantly with the Grooved Pegboard test for the group with TBI. These findings suggest that VMI scores are sensitive to visuoconstructional and motor deficits in children with developmental and acquired brain dysfunction.     

Understanding complexity in the human brain

Although the ultimate aim of neuroscientific enquiry is to gain an understanding of the brain and how its workings relate to the mind, the majority of current efforts are largely focused on small questions using increasingly detailed data. However, it might be possible to successfully address the larger question of mind-brain mechanisms if the cumulative findings from these neuroscientific studies are coupled with complementary approaches from physics and philosophy. The brain, we argue, can be understood as a complex system or network, in which mental states emerge from the interaction between multiple physical and functional levels. Achieving further conceptual progress will crucially depend on broad-scale discussions regarding the properties of cognition and the tools that are currently available or must be developed in order to study mind-brain mechanisms.     

The value of genuine and polite smiles

Humans show remarkable ability to adapt their social behavior to suit the changing requirements of their interactions. An interaction partner's social cues, particularly facial expressions, likely play an important role in motivating and reinforcing this behavioral adaptation. Over three studies, we test a key aspect of this idea. Specifically, we ask how the reinforcement value of facial expressions compares to that of nonsocial feedback and to what degree two frequently occurring expressions (genuine and polite smiles) differ in reinforcement value. Our findings show that social feedback is preferred over nonsocial feedback and that genuine smiles are preferred over polite smiles. Based on a logistic model of our data, we show that both monetary and social values of stimuli contribute significantly to participants' decisions. Indeed, participants were willing to sacrifice the chance of a monetary reward to receive a genuine smile and produced inflated estimates of the value of genuinely smiling faces. These findings suggest that genuine smiles, and potentially other social cues, may be useful social reinforcers and therefore important in the control of social behavior on a moment-to-moment basis during interaction.     

Conditions under which function information attenuates name extension via shape

Children often extend names to novel artifacts on the basis of overall shape rather than core properties (e.g., function). This bias is claimed to reflect the fact that nonrandom structure is a reliable cue to an object having a specific designed function. In this article, we show that information about an object's design (i.e., about its creator's intentions) is neither necessary nor sufficient for children to override the shape bias. Children extend names on the basis of any information specifying the artifact's function (e.g., information about design, current use, or possible use), especially when this information is made salient when candidate objects for extension are introduced. Possible mechanisms via which children come to rely less on easily observable cues (e.g., shape) and more on core properties (e.g., function) are discussed.     

The time course for language acquisition in biologically distinct populations: evidence from deaf individuals

The present study provides evidence that individuals who have different patterns of cerebral lateralization and who develop along different maturational time courses can attain comparable levels of language proficiency. Right-handed individuals with left-handed family members (left-handed familials, LHFs) showed a shorter sensitive period for language acquisition than did right-handed individuals with only right-handed family members (right-handed familials, RHFs). The shorter sensitive period for LHFs may be due to a focus on non-linguistic, word-based conceptual information during language acquisition. RHFs may focus on grammatical relations during language acquisition, which matures later than lexical knowledge. This suggests that there may be different patterns of cerebral lateralization for language in all normal populations as a function of familial handedness.     

The 4 year stability of psychopathic traits in non-referred youth

One significant limitation in research extending the construct of psychopathy to youth has been the absence of longitudinal studies testing the stability of psychopathic traits prior to adulthood. To begin to address this limitation, the current study estimated the stability of psychopathic traits over a 4 year period in a sample of non-referred children in the third, fourth, sixth, and seventh grades at the first assessment. For parent ratings of psychopathic traits, stability estimates using intra-class correlation coefficients ranged from 0.80 to 0.88 across 2-4 years, with a stability estimate of 0.93 across all four assessments. There were also distinct trends in the patterns of stability found in the sample. Specifically, children rated as being initially high on these traits were more likely to be rated lower at later assessments than was the case for children rated initially low on these traits. Finally, the child's level of conduct problems, the socioeconomic status of the child's family, and the quality of parenting the child received were the most consistent predictors of stability of psychopathic traits.     

Gender,Race, and Speech Style Stereotypes

Considerable research has shown that people have stereotypical beliefs about the speech and communication style of women and men. There is less research about stereotypes of Black people's speech, and none that jointly or comparably investigates communication stereotypes as a function of both gender and race. In this study, White college students (n = 111) rated a fictional character's speech on 36 pairs of words characteristic of communication style (e.g., emotional–unemotional) and also generated dialogue for the character. Targets' race and sex were varied. Results showed that beliefs about speech style were stronger for race than gender. Black speakers, both women and men, were rated as more direct and emotional, and less socially appropriate and playful, than White speakers. The dialogue generated by participants for Black speakers was less grammatical and more profane than for White speakers. Gender effects were consistent with earlier research but suggest a weakening of stereotypes; women's speech was seen as somewhat less direct and more emotional than men's speech. Beliefs about speech and communication style are important because they may function not only to describe what is but to prescribe what should be in social interaction.     

Great Expectations: The Negative Consequences of Falling Short1

The present study shows conditions under which a positive stereotypic belief–Asians are good in mathematics–can have negative consequences. Participants graded a poorly performed mathematical assignment that they believed was the work of an Asian or a White target person. Under no accuracy instructions, participants who spent less time grading (unmotivated participants) assigned fewer points to the Asian than the White target. There was no difference in assignment of points to the Asian or the White target when participants were given accuracy instructions or spent more time grading (motivated participants). The findings suggest that group members may experience negative consequences when they fall short of “great expectations” stemming from a positive stereotypic belief about their group.     

Exposure effects on music preference and recognition

In three experiments, the effects of exposure to melodies on their subsequent liking and recognition were explored. In each experiment, the subjects first listened to a set of familiar and unfamiliar melodies in a study phase. In the subsequent test phase, the melodies were repeated, along with a set of distractors matched in familiarity. Half the subjects were required to rate their liking of each melody, and half had to identify the melodies they had heard earlier in the study phase. Repetition of the studied melodies was found to increase liking of the unfamiliar melodies in the affect task and to be best for detection of familiar melodies in the recognition task (Experiments 1, 2, and 3). These memory effects were found to fade at different time delays between study and test in the affect and recognition tasks, with the latter leading to the most persistent effects (Experiment 2). Both study-to-test changes in melody timbre and manipulation of study tasks had a marked impact on recognition and little influence on liking judgments (Experiment 3). Thus, all manipulated variables were found to dissociate the memory effects in the two tasks. The results are consistent with the view that memory effects in the affect and recognition tasks pertain to the implicit and explicit forms of memory, respectively. Part of the results are, however, at variance with the literature on implicit and explicit memory in the auditory domain. Attribution of these differences to the use of musical material is discussed.