Impulsivity in the eye of the beholder: an analysis of teachers' concepts of impulsive and reflective behaviour

The aim of this research was to investigate teachers' perception of the concept of impulsivity and its relation to the concept of reflectivity. Teacher rating scales for both concepts were constructed by means of the prototype method (Study 1). It appeared that impulsivity refers to social behaviour, whereas reflectivity is more cognitive in character. A Principal Components Analysis (Study 2) showed that the item pools for impulsive and reflective behaviour account for separate components. It is concluded that impulsivity and reflectivity as perceived by teachers are not two extremes of one dimension, but refer to different behavioural domains: social and cognitive.     

Neighborhood, family, and subjective socioeconomic status: How do they relate to adolescent health?

This study investigated the role of neighborhood, family, and individual subjective socioeconomic status (SES) in predicting adolescent physical health and psychological characteristics. Three hundred fifteen adolescents completed assessments of blood pressure, cortisol, and body mass index (BMI). Results revealed that lower neighborhood SES was associated with higher BMI and lower basal cortisol levels and that these effects persisted after controlling for family SES. Both family SES and neighborhood SES predicted negative psychological characteristics and experiences such as hostility and discrimination. In contrast, only subjective SES predicted positive psychological characteristics. These findings suggest the importance of understanding influences at the individual, family, and neighborhood levels for optimally targeting interventions to reduce health disparities earlier in life.     

English-speaking children's comprehension of relative clauses: evidence for general-cognitive and language-specific constraints on development

Children must possess some ability to process input in a meaningful manner to acquire language. The present study reports on data from an experiment investigating 3- to 5-year-old English-speaking children's understanding of restrictive relative clauses manipulated for embeddedness and focus. The results of the study showed that English-speaking children acquire right-branching before center-embedded structures. Comparisons made with data from Portuguese-speaking children suggest general-cognitive and language-specific constraints on development, and with respect to English, a clause expansion approach to processing in development.     

Jurors' Use of Instructions on Negligence1

At the end of a trial, the judge gives jurors a set of instructions that explain the laws that are applicable to the case and that direct jurors to reach a verdict in accordance with those laws. Little is known about how well jurors understand instructions in civil cases. We assess the extent to which jurors understand judicial instructions in negligence cases. We address 3 issues: (a) To what extent do they understand these instructions? (b) To what extent is their comprehension enhanced by access to a written copy of the instructions? and (c) What effect does deliberation have on jurors' comprehension levels? Overall comprehension was approximately 64% and access to written instructions did not enhance comprehension, but the opportunity to deliberate did.     

HPV High Risk and Protective Behaviors: The Effects of Religious Affiliation

The majority of Americans identify themselves as belonging to some religious group. There is a mixed body of literature on whether or not religious affiliation has an influence on engaging in risky behaviors among young adults attending college. This study examined associations between religious affiliation, risky sexual practices, substance use, and family structure among a sample of predominantly white college females attending a southeastern university. Given the high risk of acquiring genital human papillomavirus infection as a result of high risk sexual practices, gaining a better understanding of how religious affiliation can be used to promote healthy sexual behaviors is warranted.     

Effects of neuroimaging evidence on mock juror decision making

During the penalty phase of capital trials, defendants may introduce mitigating evidence that argues for a punishment "less than death." In the past few years, a novel form of mitigating evidence-brain scans made possible by technological advances in neuroscience-has been proffered by defendants to support claims that brain abnormalities reduce their culpability. This exploratory study assessed the impact of neuroscience evidence on mock jurors' sentencing recommendations and impressions of a capital defendant. Using actual case facts, we manipulated diagnostic evidence presented by the defense (psychosis diagnosis; diagnosis and neuropsychological test results; or diagnosis, test results, and neuroimages) and future dangerousness evidence presented by the prosecution (low or high risk). Recommendations for death sentences were affected by the neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence: defendants deemed at high risk for future dangerousness were less likely to be sentenced to death when jurors had this evidence than when they did not. Neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence also had mitigating effects on impressions of the defendant. We describe study limitations and pose questions for further research.     

Aversive learning overcomes appetitive innate responding in honeybees

Despite their miniature brain, honeybees have emerged as a powerful model for the study of learning and memory. Yet, they also exhibit innate responses to biologically relevant social signals such as pheromones. Here, we asked whether the bees’ developed learning capabilities allow them to overcome hardwired appetitive responses. Can they learn that attractant pheromones, that are not normally associated with a noxious stimulation in nature, predict the punishment of an electric shock? Immobilized honeybees were trained to discriminate two odorants, one that was paired with a shock and another that had no consequences. We measured whether they learned to produce aversive sting extension responses to the punished but not the non-punished odorant. One odorant was a neutral odor without innate value while the other was either an attractive pheromone (geraniol or citral) or an attractive floral odorant (phenylacetaldehyde). In all cases, bees developed a conditioned aversive response to the punished odorant, be it pheromone or not, and efficiently retrieved this information 1 h later. No learning asymmetries between odors were found. Thus, associative aversive learning in bees is strong enough to override preprogrammed responding, thus reflecting an impressive behavioral flexibility.     

The role of athletes' pain-related anxiety in pain-related attentional processes

Numerous researchers have highlighted the social determinants of athletes' attitude toward pain, yet little is known about the role of cognitive processes and emotions that are related to pain in sport endeavors. There is evidence, in a dot probe paradigm, that individuals with chronic pain selectively orient their attention toward pain-related stimuli, but no studies have differentiated between the two attentional processes of hypervigilance that are evident in athletes: facilitated detection of threat and difficulty in disengaging attention from threatening stimuli. In the present study using a dot probe paradigm, we examined whether professional rugby players (N=58) with high pain-related anxiety (HPA) would show an attentional bias for pain-related threat, and whether this hypervigilance would reflect difficulty disengaging from threat or facilitated detection of threat. Rugby players with HPA oriented their attention toward pain-related threat with a concomitant difficulty disengaging from threat. Difficulty disengaging from painful stimuli may increase anxiety, and thus be maladaptive in sport. This is the first study to identify pain-related anxiety as a vulnerability marker in athletes' attentional biases.