What do rooks (Corvus frugilegus) understand about physical contact?

Rooks (Corvus frugilegus) do not use tools, but rapidly solve tests of physical cognition. The authors tested whether rooks understand the concept of physical contact using a task comprising a clear horizontal tube containing a stick with a disk attached to it and a piece of food. The rooks chose which side to pull the stick from to make the food accessible. Two configurations were used, with either the food or disk central along the tube. All 8 rooks solved the food-central configuration, but failed the disk-central configuration. Although they did not demonstrate an understanding of contact, further tests established that they could learn to solve these tasks provided there were salient stick cues. This result may arise because sticks are ecologically important for rooks.     

A genetically informed study of marital instability and its association with offspring psychopathology

Parental divorce is associated with a number of emotional and behavioral problems in young-adult offspring, but theoretical and empirical considerations suggest that the relation may be partially or fully accounted for by passive gene-environment correlation or environmental selection characteristics. The current study used the Children of Twins Design to explore whether shared environmental or genetic factors confound the relationship between parental marital instability and measures of psychopathology. Comparisons of the offspring of adult twins in Australia on 3 factors of abnormal behavior, including drug and alcohol, behavioral, and internalizing problems, suggest that environmental influences associated with divorce account for the higher rates of psychopathology. The results are consistent with a causal connection between marital instability and psychopathology in young-adult offspring.     

Keep calm and carry on: Maintaining self-control when intoxicated,upset, or depleted

This study tested within-person associations between intoxication, negative affect, and self-control demands and two forms of self-control failure, interpersonal conflict, and neglecting responsibilities. Effortful control was hypothesised to act as a buffer, reducing individual susceptibility to these within-person effects. In contrast, reactivity was hypothesised to potentiate the within-person associations. 274 young adults aged 18–27 (56% women, 93% white) completed experience sampling assessments for up to 49 days over the course of 1.3 years. Results indicated independent within-person effects of intoxication, negative affect, and self-control demands on the outcomes. Hypothesised moderating effects of reactivity were not supported. Effortful control did not moderate the effects of self-control demands as expected. However, effortful control exhibited a protective effect when individuals were intoxicated or upset to reduce the likelihood of maladaptive behavioural outcomes.     

Does recall of a past music event invoke a reminiscence bump in young adults?

Many studies of the reminiscence bump (RB) in music invoke memories from different autobiographical times by using stimulus specific prompts (SSPs). This study investigated the utility of a non-SSP paradigm to determine whether the RB would emerge when participants were asked to recall a single memorable musical event from “a time long ago”. The presence of a RB in response to music has not been obtained in such a manner for younger participants. Eighty-eight 20–22 year olds reported music episodes that peaked when their autobiographical age was 13–14 years. Self-selected stimuli included a range of musical styles, including classical and non-Western pop forms, such as J-pop and K-pop, as well as generational pop music, such as the Beatles. However, most participants reported pop/rock music that was contemporaneous with encoding age, providing support for the utility of published SSP paradigms using pop music. Implications for and limitations of SSP paradigms are discussed. Participants were also asked to relate the selected musical piece to current musical tastes. Most participants liked the music that they selected, with many continuing to like the music, but most also reported a general broadening of their taste, consistent with developmental literature on open-earedness.     

Dyadic Coping in Couple Therapy Process: An Exploratory Study

This study aimed at moving beyond previous research on couple therapy efficacy by examining moment‐by‐moment proximal couple and therapist interactions as well as final treatment outcomes and their reciprocal association. Seven hundred four episodes of dyadic coping within 56 early therapy sessions, taken from 28 married couples in treatment, were intensively analyzed and processed using a mixed‐methods software (T‐LAB). Results showed that negative dyadic coping was self‐perpetuating, and therapists tended to passively observe the negative couple interaction; on the contrary, positive dyadic coping appeared to require a therapist's intervention to be maintained, and successful interventions mainly included information gathering as well as interpreting. Couples who dropped out of treatment were not actively engaged from the outset of therapy, and they used more negative dyadic coping, whereas couples who successfully completed treatment showed more positive dyadic coping very early in therapy. Results highlight the role of therapist action and control as critical to establishing rapport and credibility in couple therapy and suggest that dyadic coping patterns early in therapy may contribute to variable treatment response.     

USE OF ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH (EEG) DATA TO EXAMINE A VISUAL‐VERBAL LITERACY MODEL

ABSTRACT

In this study a theoretical model, which attempts to explain the relation between visual ability and verbal written composition in terms of hemispheric activity, was tested. Twenty‐one freshmen and sophomores in a variety of programs at Rutgers University were subjected to the Visual Compositions teaching technique while being monitored by an EEG machine. For the collection and initial analysis of the data we adopted the Amplitude Integration method, developed by Goldstein at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

The results support the principal tenets of the model for right‐handed subjects but suggest that modifications are in order. Further research needs to be conducted before it can be adopted with confidence.