The role of parents' self-esteem, mastery-orientation and social background in their parenting styles

In order to examine the extent to which parents' levels of education, financial resources, self-esteem, and their mastery-orientation versus task-avoidance are associated with their parenting styles and parental stress, data from two studies were analyzed. In Study I, parents of 105 6 to 7-year old children were asked to fill in scales measuring their parenting styles and parental stress, mastery-orientation, financial resources, and their level of education. In Study II, 235 parents were asked to fill in the same scales. An identical pattern of results was found in the two studies. Parents' self-esteem and their use of mastery-oriented strategy were found to be associated with authoritative parenting and low parental stress, whereas parents' low level of education was related to an authoritarian parenting style. The results further showed that the impact of parents' self-esteem on authoritative parenting and parental stress was partly mediated by their use of a mastery-oriented strategy.     

Visual perception in 'low vision'

'Low vision' has an international classification as an impairment of vision that is defined by loss of visual acuity and the size of the visual field. Functional classification that would depict capability to use vision in different activities has not yet been agreed upon. Abnormal visual information leads to changes in visual perception, and brain-damage-related visual impairment may alter or prevent one or several cognitive visual functions. Abnormal visual perception opens a window into brain mechanisms that the psychophysicists otherwise do not have. Together with clinicians, psychophysicists can help visually impaired persons to understand the nature of their disability by thoroughly studying the nature of the altered image and the profile of cognitive visual functions.     

Do 9-month-olds perceive causation-at-a-distance?

Humans understand mechanical events to involve physical bodies interacting by contact, but intentional events involve agents that can also interact at a distance. We investigated infant sensitivity to causality in a simple event in which one agent appears to react to another without contact. Infants 9 months old were habituated to one of two events involving a computer-animated red square moving nonrigidly--like a caterpillar--towards a green square. In the 'reaction event', the green object moved in turn before the red one stopped, while in the 'pause event' the green object moved after the red one stopped. After habituation, each infant saw the habituation movie played in reverse. This test involved identical spatiotemporal changes for reaction and pause event, but the reversed reaction additionally involved a change in the causal roles. Infants dishabituated to reversal of the reaction but not the pause event, a result which suggests sensitivity to causation-at-a-distance. This ability could support development of social cognition and theory of mind.     

Time course of word identification and semantic integration in spoken language

The minimum duration signal necessary to identify a set of spoken words was established by the gating technique; most words could be identified before their acoustic offset. Gated words were used as congruous and incongruous sentence completions, and isolation points established in the gating experiment were compared with the time course of semantic integration evident in event-related brain potentials. Differential N400 responses to contextually appropriate and inappropriate words were observed about 200 ms before the isolation point. Semantic processing was evident before the acoustic signal was sufficient to identify the words uniquely. Results indicate that semantic integration can begin to operate with only partial, incomplete information about word identity. Influences of semantic constraint, word frequency, and rate of presentation are described.     

Amount of reward has opposite effects on the discounting of delayed and probabilistic outcomes

Previous research has shown that the value of large future rewards is discounted less steeply than is the value of small future rewards. These experiments extended this line of research to probabilistic rewards. Two experiments replicated the standard findings for delayed rewards but demonstrated that amount has an opposite effect on the discounting of probabilistic rewards. That is, large probabilistic amounts were discounted at the same or higher rates than small amounts. Although amount had opposite effects on the discounting of delayed and probabilistic rewards, nevertheless, the same form of mathematical function accurately described discounting of both types of reward. The findings suggest that fundamentally similar, but not identical, processes are involved in decision making regarding delayed and probabilistic rewards. The implications of these findings for impulsivity and self-control are discussed.     

Evaluation of antecedent stimulus parameters for the treatment of escape-maintained aberrant behavior

We evaluated a methodology for identifying the range of stimulus features of antecedent stimuli associated with aberrant behavior in demand contexts in natural settings. For each participant, an experimental analysis of antecedents (Phase 1) was conducted to confirm the hypothesis that task instructions occasioned increases in aberrant behavior. During Phase 2, specific stimulus features associated with the presentation of task instructions were assessed by evaluating the child's behavior across two distinct settings, therapists, and types of tasks in a sequential fashion. Aberrant behavior occurred immediately across settings and therapists, presumably because the presence of a discriminative stimulus for escape-maintained behavior (the delivery of a task instruction) occasioned aberrant behavior. However, aberrant behavior decreased initially across tasks, suggesting that familiarity with the task might be a variable. During Phase 3, an experimental (functional) analysis of consequences was conducted with 2 participants to verify that aberrant behavior was maintained by negative reinforcement. During Phase 4, a treatment package that interspersed play with task instructions was conducted to disrupt the ongoing occurrence of aberrant behavior. Immediate and durable treatment effects occurred for 2 of the 3 participants.     

Intersensory conflict between vision and touch: the response modality dominates when precise, attention-riveting judgments are required

In four experiments, reducing lenses were used to minify vision and generate intersensory size conflicts between vision and touch. Subjects made size judgments, using either visual matching or haptic matching. In visual matching, the subjects chose from a set of visible squares that progressively increased in size. In haptic matching, the subjects selected matches from an array of tangible wooden squares. In Experiment 1, it was found that neither sense dominated when subjects exposed to an intersensory discrepancy made their size estimates by using either visual matching or haptic matching. Size judgments were nearly indentical for conflict subjects making visual or haptic matches. Thus, matching modality did not matter in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, it was found that subjects were influenced by the sight of their hands, which led to increases in the magnitude of their size judgments. Sight of the hands produced more accurate judgments, with subjects being better able to compensate for the illusory effects of the reducing lens. In two additional experiments, it was found that when more precise judgments were required and subjects had to generate their own size estimates, the response modality dominated. Thus, vision dominated in Experiment 3, where size judgments derived from viewing a metric ruler, whereas touch dominated in Experiment 4, where subjects made size estimates with a pincers posture of their hands. It is suggested that matching procedures are inadequate for assessing intersensory dominance relations. These results qualify the position (Hershberger & Misceo, 1996) that the modality of size estimates influences the resolution of intersensory conflicts. Only when required to self-generate more precise judgments did subjects rely on one sense, either vision or touch. Thus, task and attentional requirements influence dominance relations, and vision does not invariably prevail over touch.     

Contextual interference effects on the acquisition and retention of fundamental motor skills

This study was designed to examine the effect of three practice models (repetitions, random, and combined) on the acquisition and retention of fundamental motor skills. 54 girls in Grade 4 were randomly assigned to the three different practice groups who practiced three skills of ball rolling, racket striking, and ball kicking. All subjects received pretests posttests, and a 3-wk, retention test. Performance was significantly improved during practice in the three groups for the three skills. The repetitions group performed better than the other two groups at the end of practice. The contextual interference effect in retention was only shown for the racket-striking skill, in which the random group was significantly better than the repetitions and the combined groups. An attempt was made to attribute that specific result to the special characteristics of the striking skill in this study as an open skill with which subjects had a previous experience.     

Ecological relevance of stereopsis in one-handed ball-catching

The aim of this study was to compare one-handed catching performance between catchers with high (n = 10) and low (n = 10) binocular depth vision or stereopsis. In two sessions of 90 trials, tennis balls were projected at three different velocities towards the subject's shoulder region. Participants with good stereopsis were more successful, although the difference in number of correct catches fell short of significance. More specifically, catchers with low stereopsis made more temporal errors, but no differences in spatial errors. As the velocity of the ball increased, the initiation of the catch was delayed and catching performance decreased. The finding that stereopsis affected timing of the catch challenges the 'monocular tau hypothesis' in the control of interceptive timing, while the velocity effect shows that the act of catching a ball is not initiated at a constant time-to-contact.     

The Iowa Personality Disorder Screen: development and preliminary validation of a brief screening interview

The length and expense of comprehensive personality disorder interviews makes them unwieldy for routine use. A brief but sensitive screen could eliminate administration of longer instruments in many instances. We describe the development of the Iowa Personality Disorder Screen (IPDS)--a mini-structured interview which can be completed in less than 5 minutes. Retrospective analyses using 1,203 SIDP-R interviews suggested that the IPDS items should provide good sensitivity and specificity. We present results from a prospective validation study, using a mixed group of 52 nonpsychotic inpatients and outpatients who were diagnosed using the SIDP-IV. Blind administration of the IPDS yielded excellent sensitivity (92%) and good specificity (79%), using a subset of five screening items. Addition of two more items leads to an estimated sensitivity of 79% and specificity of 86%. The IPDS shows promise as a quick personality disorder screen for use in research settings or standard clinical interviews.