Napping promotes inter-session habituation to emotional stimuli

The effects of a daytime nap on inter-session habituation to aversive visual stimuli were investigated. Healthy young adult volunteers viewed repeated presentations of highly negative and emotionally neutral (but equally arousing) International Affective Picture System (IAPS) photographs during two afternoon sessions separated by 2.5h. Half of the photographs were shown at both sessions (Repeated Sets) and half differed between sessions (Novel Sets). For each stimulus presentation, evoked skin conductance response (SCR), heart-rate deceleration (HRD) and corrugator supercilii EMG response (EMG), were computed and range corrected using respective maximum session-1 responses. Following each presentation, subjects rated each photograph on dimensions of pleasantness and arousability. During the inter-session interval, Nap subjects had a 120-min polysomnographically monitored sleep opportunity, whereas Wake subjects watched a non-stimulating video. Nap and Wake subjects did not differ in their subjective ratings of photographs. However, for Repeated-Set photographs, Nap subjects demonstrated greater inter-session habituation in SCR and EMG but a trend toward lesser inter-session habituation in HRD. These group differences were absent for Novel-Set photographs. Group differences across all measures were greater for negative stimuli. Occurrence of SWS during the nap was associated with greater inter-session habituation of EMG whereas occurrence of REM was associated with lesser inter-session habituation of SCR to negative stimuli. Sleep may therefore promote emotional adjustment at the level of somatic responses. Physiological but not subjective inter-session habituation to aversive images was enhanced by a daytime nap.     

Understanding what students bring to the classroom: moderators of the effects of diversity courses on student attitudes

We investigated the impact of required diversity courses on students' understanding of racial inequality and their social development with regard to racial outgroups, with a specific focus on the effects of student race and empathy as moderators of diversity course effectiveness. First-semester students (N = 173), enrolled in either diversity courses or introduction to psychology, completed surveys at the beginning and end of the semester. Diversity courses increased understanding of White privilege, acknowledgment of blatant racism, and intersectional consciousness overall, but had a greater impact on intersectional consciousness for White students compared with students of color. White students taking diversity courses experienced a reduction in Protestant work ethic ideology that was absent for White students in psychology courses and for all students of color. Notably, empathy moderated the effect of diversity courses on both outgroup comfort and willingness to act to promote diversity.     

Kindergarten children's sensitivity to geometry in maps

Geometrical concepts are critical to a host of human cognitive achievements, from maps to measurement to mathematics, and both the development of these concepts, and their variation by gender, have long been studied. Most studies of geometrical reasoning, however, present children with materials containing both geometric and non-geometric information, and with tasks that are open to multiple solution strategies. Here we present kindergarten children with a task requiring a focus on geometry: navigation in a small-scale space by a purely geometric map. Children spontaneously extracted and used relationships of both distance and angle in the maps, without prior demonstration, instruction, or feedback, but they failed to use the sense information that distinguishes an array from its mirror image. Children of both genders showed a common profile of performance, with boys showing no advantage on this task. These findings provide evidence that some map-reading abilities arise prior to formal instruction, are common to both genders, and are used spontaneously to guide children's spatial behavior.     

Toddlers' context-varying emotions, maternal responses to emotions, and internalizing behaviors

Relations of toddlers' observed negative affect in high- and low-threat contexts to maternal perceptions of their toddlers' internalizing problems and to mothers' responses to emotions (RTE) for fear and sadness were examined. Child-driven, parent-driven, and reciprocal transactional models across 1 year were directly compared. Two-year-old toddlers (N = 106) participated in lab-based activities to elicit distress, and their negative affect was coded. Mothers completed measures of their child's internalizing behaviors and their responses to their toddler's fear and sadness at ages 2 and 3. At age 2, only negative affect in low-threat contexts was associated with greater internalizing problems. Mothers' punishing and minimizing RTE at age 2 predicted an increase in internalizing problems across 1 year. Age 2 internalizing problems predicted an increase in mother's use of supportive RTE over time. Results highlight the importance of considering the context of toddlers' negative affective displays and supported a reciprocal conceptualization of toddlers' internalizing behaviors and mothers' RTE.     

Superior performance of blind compared with sighted individuals on bimanual estimations of object size

Five preliminary experiments on sighted individuals revealed marked overestimation on an object size-estimation task using a bimanual response. These experiments ruled out the possibility that overestimation was due to the mode of visual presentation (whether two-dimensional or three-dimensional), the input modality (visual or kinesthetic), or the influence of other visual cues. The main experiment then investigated whether these distortions are due to visual experience by using a variant of the same task to test 24 blind and 24 sighted control participants. Remarkably, the sighted control participants overestimated object size, on average, but the blind participants did not. A follow-up experiment demonstrated that visual memory was the primary influence causing the size over-estimations. We conclude that blind individuals are more accurate than sighted individuals in representing the size of familiar objects because they rely on manual representations, which are less influenced by visual experience than are visual memory representations.     

Religious orientation and coping with cancer

In this study we investigated the role of religious orientation in coping with stresses associated with cancer. A measure of daily coping and the Religious Orientation scale were administered to forty hematology-oncology patients in order to examine frequency of eight coping responses across religious orientations. It was found that proreligious and intrinsic participants used religion significantly more often than nonreligious and extrinsic types to cope with stresses associated with their cancer. We concluded that religious orientation and commitment influence the coping process, and suggest that religious commitment be included in studies of coping with cancer.     

Lexical and semantic influences on item and order memory in immediate serial recognition: evidence from a novel task

Previous studies have reported that, in contrast to the effect on immediate serial recall, lexical/semantic factors have little effect on immediate serial recognition. This has been taken as evidence that linguistic knowledge contributes to verbal short-term memory in a redintegrative process at recall. Contrary to this view, we found that lexicality, frequency, and imageability all influenced matching span. The standard matching span task, requiring changes in item order to be detected, was less susceptible to lexical/semantic factors than was a novel task involving the detection of phoneme order and hence item identity changes. Therefore, in both immediate recognition and immediate serial recall, lexical/semantic knowledge makes a greater contribution to item identity than to item order memory. Task sensitivity, and not the absence of overt recall, may have underpinned previous failures to show effects of these variables in immediate recognition. We also compared matching span for pure and unpredictable mixed lists of words and nonwords. Lexicality had a larger impact on immediate recognition for pure than for mixed lists, in line with findings for immediate serial recall. List composition affected the detection of phoneme but not item order changes in matching span; similarly, in recall, mixed lists produce more frequent word phoneme migrations but not migrations of entire items. These results point to strong similarities between immediate serial recall and recognition. Lexical/semantic knowledge may contribute to phonological stability in both tasks.     

The Relationship of Religiosity and Spirituality to Quality of Life Among Cancer Patients

Most quality of life (QOL) assessments measure patients’ emotional well-being, functional well-being, interpersonal/social well-being, and satisfaction with treatment. Little attention has been given to patients’ spirituality or religiosity. Further, studies that have examined the impact of spirituality or religiosity on QOL have not differentiated between the constructs. The purpose of this study was to examine religiosity and spirituality as separate variables, and to define their relationship to QOL for 61 persons with cancer. Regression analyses indicated that, while spirituality and religiosity are moderately intercorrelated, spirituality has a stronger relationship with QOL than religiosity. When attempting to understand a person's spiritual life and its impact on QOL, there is a need for clear distinction between and separate assessment of spirituality and religiosity.