Two-year test-retest reliability of the colored progressive matrices

The Raven Colored Progressive Matrices was administered to a sample of 259 children in Lithuania and re-administered 2 years later. The test-retest reliability was .499.     

Ethical and practical considerations in managing incidental findings in functional magnetic resonance imaging

Functional magnetic resonance imaging has emerged as a powerful tool for mapping the neurologic underpinnings of sensory, motor and cognitive function. Much of this evolution carries assumptions about the subject population under study and, in particular, the neurologic status of subjects entered into studies either as healthy controls or as belonging to a specific disease group. Recent reports of incidental MRI abnormalities in normal volunteers for fMRI studies have brought to attention a variety of practical challenges and ethical dilemmas for researchers, many of whom are not physicians and most of whom have no formal radiological training. We propose a minimum standard for consenting subjects in fMRI protocols, and consider strategies over the longer term that call for expert physician participation, archiving of incidental findings including false positives, and the adoption of guidelines for handling variation in neural activations or performance that appear outside expected norms.     

Mothers' affect in the homework context: the importance of staying positive

This research investigated mothers' affect in the context of children's homework. Mothers (N = 109) of children 8 to 12 years old were interviewed daily about their affect while interacting with children, their assistance with children's homework, and children's behavior while completing homework. At this time and 6 months later, children's motivational and emotional functioning was assessed. Although mothers' negative affect was lower than their positive affect, it was elevated on days their assistance with homework was high. This was accounted for by mothers' perceptions of children as helpless on days they provided heightened assistance. Mothers' positive affect in the homework context buffered children's motivational and emotional functioning against mothers' negative affect as well as children's helplessness.     

Characteristics of auditory agnosia in a child with severe traumatic brain injury: a case report

We present a case that is unusual in many respects from other documented incidences of auditory agnosia, including the mechanism of injury, age of the individual, and location of neurological insult. The clinical presentation is one of disturbance in the perception of spoken language, music, pitch, emotional prosody, and temporal auditory processing in the absence of significant deficits in the comprehension of written language, expressive language production, or peripheral auditory function. Furthermore, the patient demonstrates relatively preserved function in other aspects of audition such as sound localization, voice recognition, and perception of animal noises and environmental sounds. This case study demonstrates that auditory agnosia is possible following traumatic brain injury in a child, and illustrates the necessity of assessment with a wide variety of auditory stimuli to fully characterize auditory agnosia in a single individual.     

Paralinguistic processing in children with callosal agenesis: emergence of neurolinguistic deficits

Recent research revealed impaired processing of both nonliteral meaning and affective prosody in adults with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) and normal intelligence. Since normal children have incomplete myelination of the corpus callosum, it was hypothesized that paralanguage deficits in children with ACC would be less apparent relative to their peers. The Familiar and Novel Language Comprehension Test (FANL-C) and Prosody Test were given to 18 children with ACC and normal intelligence and 17 controls matched for age (7-13 years), education, and IQ (83-122). When controlling for age, children with ACC were significantly poorer in comprehension of the precise meaning of both literal and nonliteral items on the FANL-C. Adults with ACC had previously been shown to have difficulty only on nonliteral items. The effect size for nonliteral comprehension in children with ACC was smaller than that seen in adults. There was only a trend for the child ACC group to perform worse on the recognition of affective prosody. Thus, while deficits in paralinguistic processing were apparent, children with ACC were not as clearly different from age peers as adults, and were equally deficient at comprehending literal and nonliteral expressions. The differences in results between adults and children with ACC are thought to reflect incomplete callosal development in normal children, and the importance of the corpus callosum in the early stages of the development of the ability to process literal language.     

The Asian American values scale--multidimensional: development, reliability, and validity

The development of the 42-item Asian American Values Scale-Multidimensional (AAVS-M) is presented. In Study 1, data from 163 Asian American respondents were subjected to a principal components analysis, which reduced the initial set of 180 items to 42 items divided into 5 components: collectivism, conformity to norms, emotional self-control, family recognition through achievement, and humility. The data also revealed initial evidence of the AAVS-M total and subscale scores' reliability and validity. In Study 2, data from 189 Asian American respondents were subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis, which supported a hierarchical factor structure underlying the AAVS-M. Additional reliability and validity evidence of AAVS-M total and subscale scores were found. In Study 3, data from 38 Asian American respondents yielded evidence of AAVS-M total and subscale scores' test-retest reliability.     

Sleep, dreams, and memory consolidation: the role of the stress hormone cortisol

We discuss the relationship between sleep, dreams, and memory, proposing that the content of dreams reflects aspects of memory consolidation taking place during the different stages of sleep. Although we acknowledge the likely involvement of various neuromodulators in these phenomena, we focus on the hormone cortisol, which is known to exert influence on many of the brain systems involved in memory. The concentration of cortisol escalates over the course of the night's sleep, in ways that we propose can help explain the changing nature of dreams across the sleep cycle.     

Praxis and Agency in Foucault’s Historiography

This paper examines the consequences for agency that Foucaults historiographical approach constructs. The analysis begins by explaining the difference between legislative history and exemplary history, drawing parallels to similar theoretical distinctions offered in the works of Max Weber, J.L. Austin, and Zygmunt Bauman. The analysis continues by reading Habermass critique of Foucault through the tropological lenses suggested by White [Metahistory. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973]; it argues that Habermass critique misrecognizes the tropes of Foucaultian genealogy. The paper draws implications for education by articulating possibilities for praxis and agency in terms of pedagogy specifically related to the distinction between didactics and modeling. The paper concludes by suggesting that genealogy does not play by Hegels rules, but rather exemplifies agency in ways that are not recognizable from a modernist perspective.     

Framing social information and generalized social phobia

Patients with generalized social phobia (GSP, N=33) and matched community controls (N=31) engaged in a social interaction that was constructed to go well, and then received feedback that framed social cues reflecting either the absence of negative outcomes or the presence of positive outcomes. Following feedback that framed positive social cues, the GSP group predicted they would experience more anxiety in a subsequent interaction than did non-phobic controls. In contrast, following feedback framing the absence of negative outcomes, the GSP group did not differ from controls in their anxiety predictions. The results demonstrated that framing paradigms and methods can be usefully applied to the study of cognitive processes in social phobia and indicated that research to examine how GSP patients process specific types of social information is needed.     

The paradox of promoting creativity in the Asian classroom: an empirical investigation

To shed light on the paradox of promoting creativity in the Asian classroom, the authors conducted 3 studies. The 1st study found that novice teachers classified student behaviors as desirable but uncreative (DBU) versus creative but undesirable (CBU). The 2nd study found that conservative-autocratic teachers were more likely to encourage DBU behaviors in class, whereas liberal-democratic teachers were more likely to encourage CBU behaviors in class. The 3rd study found that cultural individualism-collectivism had a positive impact on liberal-democratic teaching attitude but a negative impact on conservative-autocratic teaching attitude. In turn, liberal-democratic teaching attitude had a positive impact on the tendency to promote CBU behaviors, whereas conservative-autocratic teaching attitude had a positive impact on the tendency to promote DBU behaviors.