The flexible use of inductive and geometric spatial categories

The present study examined the flexibility with which people can adopt different category schemes in the spatial domain. In a location memory task, participants viewed and estimated the locations of four kinds of objects that were spatially grouped by object identity. This identity-based arrangement was either congruent or incongruent with the perceptually based, geometric categories that have been reported in previous research. Four experiments examined the conditions under which these different category schemes are used to inform estimates of locations. The results showed that use of identity information depended on the number of objects to be remembered during a trial: When one or two objects were remembered at a time, only geometric categories affected estimates, but when four objects were to be remembered, both geometric categories and identity groupings affected estimates. As memory load increases, participants rely on additional sources to inform their estimates of location.     

The Delinquency Outcomes of Boys with ADHD with and Without Comorbidity

This study examined the association between childhood ADHD and juvenile delinquency by examining data from the Pittsburgh ADHD Longitudinal Study (PALS), a follow-up study of individuals diagnosed with ADHD in childhood (ages 5–12) and recontacted in adolescence and young adulthood for yearly follow-up (age at first follow-up interview M = 17.26, SD = 3.17). Participants were 288 males with childhood ADHD and 209 demographically similar males without ADHD who were recruited into the follow-up study. Delinquency information gathered yearly during the second through eighth follow-up provided a comprehensive history of juvenile delinquency for all participants. Four childhood diagnostic groups [ADHD-only (N = 47), ADHD + ODD (N = 135), ADHD + CD (N = 106), and comparison (N = 209)] were used to examine group differences on delinquency outcomes. Analyses were conducted across three dimensions of delinquency (i.e., severity, age of initiation, and variety). Individuals with childhood ADHD + CD displayed significantly worse delinquency outcomes than the other three groups, across almost all indices of offending. When compared to comparison participants, boys with ADHD-only and ADHD + ODD in childhood displayed earlier ages of delinquency initiation, a greater variety of offending, and higher prevalence of severe delinquency. These findings suggest that although childhood ADHD + CD creates the greatest risk for delinquency, boys with ADHD-only and ADHD + ODD also appear at a higher risk for later offending. The patterns of offending that emerged from the PALS are discussed in the context of the relationship between ADHD, comorbidity, and delinquency.     

Better (or worse) for some than others: Individual differences in the positivity offset and negativity bias

People tend to respond with more positive than negative affect to mildly emotional stimuli (i.e., positivity offset) and respond more strongly to very negative than to matched positive stimuli (i.e., negativity bias). In the current study, the authors examine individual differences in the positivity offset and negativity bias and demonstrate that both are stable over time and generalize across different kinds of stimuli (e.g., pictures, sounds, words, games of chance). Furthermore, the positivity offset and negativity bias are not redundant with traditional personality measures and exhibit differential predictive validity, such that both types of measures predict behavior in meaningful ways. Implications for a comprehensive understanding of affect and emotion and their relationship to physical and mental health are discussed.     

Implicit theories moderate the relation of positive future fantasies to academic outcomes

We hypothesized and observed that the degree to which students endorsed entity theories - the view that intelligence is fixed rather than malleable - attenuated the affective benefits and exacerbated the achievement drawbacks of positive fantasies in the academic domain. Positive fantasies only predicted low anger and anxiety for schoolchildren who did not strongly endorse entity theories (Study 1), and positive fantasies only predicted poor final school grades for vocational students who did strongly endorse entity theories (Study 2). An experiment indicated that for university students with stronger entity theories, positive fantasies demanded relatively little attention (Study 3), suggesting that positive fantasies obscure the opportunity for the preemptive self-regulation which promotes successful performance.     

Effects of Child Psychopathology on Maternal Depression: The Mediating Role of Child-Related Acute and Chronic Stressors

In light of recent research highlighting the potential effects of children’s behavior on mothers’ mental health, the current study examined 679 mothers and their adolescent children from a community-based sample to determine the effects of youth psychopathology on maternal depression and levels of child-related stress in mothers’ lives. It was hypothesized that the number of past clinical diagnoses in 15-year-old adolescents would predict the presence of maternal depression at youth age 15 and 5 years later, as well as more episodes of maternal depression during the follow-up period. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that increased levels of child-related stress in mothers’ lives would mediate these relationships. Regression analyses indicated that past youth diagnoses do confer risk for the presence of current and future maternal depression, as well as more episodes of maternal depression, and mediation analyses revealed that child-related acute and chronic stress were mediators of the relationship between youth diagnoses and the presence of maternal depression at follow-up. Findings suggest that increased levels of child-related objective stress in mothers’ lives are one mechanism by which children’s psychopathology affects mothers’ future risk for depression.     

Multiple systems for cognitive control: evidence from a hybrid prime-Simon task

Cognitive control resolves conflicts between appropriate and inappropriate response tendencies. Is this achieved by a unitary all-purpose conflict control system, or do independent subsystems deal with different aspects of conflicting information? In a fully factorial hybrid prime-Simon task, participants responded to the identity of targets displayed at different nominally irrelevant screen locations, preceded by nominally irrelevant, consciously or nonconsciously perceived primes. The response required by the target's identity could match or mismatch (a) the target's location, and (b) the prime's identity, resulting in potential conflict (a) across and (b) within stimulus domains. Conflict effects were investigated within and across trials. Results suggest that (i) nonconsciously perceived information elicits within-trial control, but--unlike consciously perceived information--no across-trial behavioral modulation; (ii) separate subsystems deal with conflicts arising from different stimulus domains; and (iii) occasional apparent interactions between domains reflect a particular difficulty in reactivating a just-discarded response (reactivation aversion effect, RAE).     

Individual and relational contributions to parallel and joint attention in infancy

Objective

This study examined the contributions of maternal bids for joint attention, relationship quality, and infant characteristics, to individual differences in infants’ parallel and joint attention.

Method

Fifty-two 10-month-olds and their mothers were assessed in order to investigate concurrent predictors of infant parallel attention, responding to joint attention, and initiating joint attention.

Results

Parallel attention was predicted by infants’ higher mental development, low expression of negative emotionality, and maternal entertaining behaviors. Responding to joint attention was marginally predicted by total maternal bids for joint attention. Initiating joint attention was predicted by the infants’ low expression of negative emotionality, as well as marginally predicted by fewer maternal teaching behaviors.

Conclusion

These results further the understanding of the factors influencing infant parallel as well as joint attention.     

Cost-Benefit Analysis Mediation of the Relationship Between Sensation Seeking and Risk Behavior

Risk behavior during adolescence results in substantial morbidity and mortality. Sensation seeking consistently relates to engagement in risk behavior, but the psychological mediators of this relationship remain unclear. The current study demonstrates that adolescents’ judgments of the costs versus benefits of risk behavior were a significant mediator of this relationship. Participants were 406 racially and ethnically diverse adolescents ages 12-17 (M = 14.5, SD = 1.7; 48.3% female) who participated in a larger multi-site investigation of personality and neurocognitive predictors of risk behavior. Data were collected via self-report in a single laboratory session. Mediation of the relationship of sensation seeking to risk behavior was tested using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that higher levels of sensation seeking predicted weighing the benefits of risk behavior higher than its costs, which in turn predicted higher levels of risk behavior. Implications of these findings for understanding mechanisms underlying adolescents’ risk behavior and directions for future research are discussed.