Semantic integration: Effects of imagery,enaction, and sentence repetition training on prereaders' recall for pictograph sentences

This study examines the effectiveness of an integrative imagery strategy in contrast to more concrete enaction and repetition strategies for improving kindergarten children's recall of pictograph sentences. The training groups were taught in two brief sessions to read the pictograph sequences as sentences and then to imagine the sentence's action (sentence imagery), act out the sentence using toys (sentence enaction), or repeat each sentence twice (sentence repetition). After training, the enaction group significantly outperformed the imagery and sentence repetition groups, which outperformed a repetition control group. Two weeks later, the imagery and enaction groups no longer differed significantly in recall and both groups significantly outperformed the repetition control group. The imagery group alone significantly outperformed the repetition control group on a no-toys generalization test. Implications of the results concerning strategy training of young children, the effectiveness of imagery strategies, and experimental design are discussed.     

Disability,Dialogue, and the Posthuman

This article is the result of a mutual interest in the radical philosophical dialogue discussed by Martin Buber. The radical dialogue is rooted in western European values of humanism, values that are challenged because they exclude women, people with disabilities, non-western, indigenous people and sexual minorities. With our basis in radical dialogue we are discussing flaws within the very concept of dialogue, how dialogue is challenged in encounters between people with severe disabilities and their helpers, and we are proposing a new interpretation of dialogue in a posthuman area. To illuminate what might be at stake in relations where power is clearly imbalanced we use Pierre Bourdieus theory of the gift when asking ourselves: “How can we understand dialogue when there apparently is one dominant giver and one receiver unable to return the gift?” Discussing this question, we draw on Rosi Braidotti and her Posthuman Critical Theory to see if we can find new grounds to build dialogue on.     

Disclosure on Campus: Students’ Decisions to Tell Others About Unwanted Sexual Experiences,Intimate Partner Violence,and Stalking

The scope of student victimization occurring on college campuses is problematic, drawing the attention of researchers and campus officials. While most researchers of the disclosure of these unwanted experiences tend to examine just 1 form of victimization, a direct comparison of the disclosure of different types of campus victimization within a singular study is missing in the literature. The current study aimed to address this issue by examining 4 types of victimization experiences (unwanted sexual contact, unwanted sexual intercourse, intimate partner violence, and stalking) in a college population. A common set of possible predictors of disclosure were examined, including both demographic (e.g., gender, race, age) and situational factors (e.g., alcohol use, level of fear, relationship with perpetrator). While patterns of similarity across all victimization experiences emerged, the impact of gender, race, age, and alcohol use on disclosure decisions varied substantially by victimization type. The findings of this study address the gap in the current literature by providing a comparison and contrast of the influence of predictors across different types of victimization. Furthermore, the findings provide needed information that could help colleges and universities develop ways to encourage support-seeking and reporting among students.     

Sex differences in the neural underpinnings of social and monetary incentive processing during adolescence

The brain’s reward system undergoes major changes during adolescence, and an increased reactivity to social and nonsocial incentives has been described as a typical feature during this transitional period. Little is known whether there are sex differences in the brain’s responsiveness to social or monetary incentives during adolescence. The aim of this event-related potential (ERP) study was to compare the neurophysiological underpinnings of monetary and social incentive processing in adolescent boys versus girls. During ERP recording, 38 adolescents (21 females, 17 males; 13–18 years) completed an incentive delay task comprising (a) a reward versus punishment condition and (b) social versus monetary incentives. The stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) was recorded during anticipation of reward and punishment, and the feedback P3 (fP3) along with the feedback-related negativity (FRN) after reward/punishment delivery. During anticipation of social punishment, adolescent boys compared with girls exhibited a reduced SPN. After delivery, male adolescents exhibited higher fP3 amplitudes to monetary compared with social incentives, whereas fP3 amplitudes in girls were comparable across incentive types. Moreover, whereas in boys fP3 responses were higher in rewards than in punishment trials, no such difference was evident in girls. The results indicate that adolescent boys show a reduced neural responsivity in the prospect of social punishment. Moreover, the findings imply that, once the incentive is obtained, adolescent boys attribute a relatively enhanced motivational significance to monetary incentives and show a relative hyposensitivity to punishment. The findings might contribute to our understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities to problem behaviors related to incentive processing during adolescence.     

Integrating multiple cues to depth order at object boundaries

We examined the interaction between motion and stereo cues to depth order along object boundaries. Relative depth was conveyed by a change in the speed of image motion across a boundary (motion parallax), the disappearance of features on a surface moving behind an occluding object (motion occlusion), or a difference in the stereo disparity of adjacent surfaces. We compared the perceived depth orders for different combinations of cues, incorporating conditions with conflicting depth orders and conditions with varying reliability of the individual cues. We observed large differences in performance between subjects, ranging from those whose depth order judgments were driven largely by the stereo disparity cues to those whose judgments were dominated by motion occlusion. The relative strength of these cues influenced individual subjects' behavior in conditions of cue conflict and reduced reliability.     

Perspective-taking: decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism

Using 3 experiments, the authors explored the role of perspective-taking in debiasing social thought. In the 1st 2 experiments, perspective-taking was contrasted with stereotype suppression as a possible strategy for achieving stereotype control. In Experiment 1, perspective-taking decreased stereotypic biases on both a conscious and a nonconscious task. In Experiment 2, perspective-taking led to both decreased stereotyping and increased overlap between representations of the self and representations of the elderly, suggesting activation and application of the self-concept in judgments of the elderly. In Experiment 3, perspective-taking reduced evidence of in-group bias in the minimal group paradigm by increasing evaluations of the out-group. The role of self-other overlap in producing prosocial outcomes and the separation of the conscious, explicit effects from the nonconscious, implicit effects of perspective-taking are discussed.     

Power and perspectives not taken

Four experiments and a correlational study explored the relationship between power and perspective taking. In Experiment 1, participants primed with high power were more likely than those primed with low power to draw an E on their forehead in a self-oriented direction, demonstrating less of an inclination to spontaneously adopt another person's visual perspective. In Experiments 2a and 2b, high-power participants were less likely than low-power participants to take into account that other people did not possess their privileged knowledge, a result suggesting that power leads individuals to anchor too heavily on their own vantage point, insufficiently adjusting to others' perspectives. In Experiment 3, high-power participants were less accurate than control participants in determining other people's emotion expressions; these results suggest a power-induced impediment to experiencing empathy. An additional study found a negative relationship between individual difference measures of power and perspective taking. Across these studies, power was associated with a reduced tendency to comprehend how other people see, think, and feel.     

Newborn Screening for Cystic Fibrosis: Parents’ Preferences Regarding Counseling At the Time of Infants’ Sweat Test

Newborn screening (NBS) protocols for cystic fibrosis (CF) are the first regional population-based programs to incorporate DNA analysis into their procedures. Research about these programs can inform policy and practice regarding how best to counsel families with abnormal NBS results. The grounded theory method guided interviews with 33 families whose infants had abnormal CF NBS results. A dimensional analysis of these interviews provided a theoretical framework describing parents’ preferences regarding counseling during their infant's sweat test appointment. This framework describes the contexts and characteristics of the two main dimensions of parents’ preferences: factual information and emotional support. Factual information included learning about the probability of a CF diagnosis, CF disease facts, sweat test procedure, and CF genetics. Social support consisted of offering parents a choice about the timing and amount of CF information, showing empathy for their distress, instilling hope, personalizing counseling, and providing hospitality. This framework also explains the consequences of counseling that matched versus mismatched parental preferences in these domains. Counseling that matched parents preferences reduced parents’ distress while mismatched counseling tended to increase parents’ worry about their infant.     

Adolescents' self-efficacy to communicate about sex: its role in condom attitudes, commitment, and use

This study examined whether and how self-efficacy to communicate with parents and peers about sex relate to sexually experienced adolescent males' and females' (N= 144, 112) condom attitudes, intentions, and use. Results showed that males who reported greater self-efficacy to communicate with parents used condoms more frequently; and both males and females who can communicate with peers used condoms more frequently. Self-efficacy to communicate with peers was related to more positive condom attitudes, which in turn were associated with greater condom commitment and use. Greater ability to communicate with parents was also related to greater condom commitment and use among males. These results suggest the importance of designing interventions that give adolescents the skills they need to feel efficacious in their ability to communicate about sex and contraception.     

Comparison of behavioral and cognitive-behavioral one-session exposure treatments for small animal phobias

This study evaluated the efficacy of behavioral and cognitive-behavioral one-session exposure treatment procedures with and without programmed generalization for participants with small animal phobias. Forty participants were randomly assigned to the treatment and generalization conditions. Both treatments produced significant improvements from pre-test to post-test and these results were maintained for 1 year. The treatment effect sizes ranged from large to very large across behavioral, self-report, and subjectively rated measures. Participants in the behavioral treatment condition reported that the treatment was significantly more intrusive than participants in the cognitive-behavioral treatment group. The programmed generalization condition did not produce additional measured benefit. The results are discussed in terms of the overall effectiveness of one-session exposure treatment components for small animal phobias.