Spatial working memory for clustered and linear configurations of sites in a virtual reality foraging task

Two experiments using an immersive virtual reality foraging environment determined the spatial strategies spontaneously deployed by people in a foraging task and the effects on immediate serial recall of trajectories though the foraging space, which could conform or violate specific organisational constraints. People benefitted from the use of organised search patterns when attempting to monitor their travel though either a clustered "patchy" space or a matrix of locations. The results are discussed within a comparative framework.     

Do Historical Changes in Parent–Child Relationships Explain Increases in Youth Conduct Problems?

The coincidence of historical trends in youth antisocial behavior and change in family demographics has led to speculation of a causal link, possibly mediated by declining quality of parenting and parent–child relationships. No study to date has directly assessed whether and how parenting and parent–child relationships have changed. Two national samples of English adolescents aged 16–17 years in 1986 (N = 4,524 adolescents, 7,120 parents) and 2006 (N = 716 adolescents, 734 parents) were compared using identical questionnaire assessments. Youth-reported parental monitoring, expectations, and parent–child quality time increased between 1986 and 2006. Ratings of parental interest did not change. Parenting differences between affluent and disadvantaged families narrowed over time. There was thus little evidence of a decline in quality of parenting for the population as a whole or for disadvantaged subgroups. Parent-reported youth conduct problems showed a modest increase between 1986 and 2006. Findings suggested that the increase in youth conduct problems was largely unrelated to observed change in parent–child relationships.     

Can survival processing enhance story memory? Testing the generalizability of the adaptive memory framework

Research from the adaptive memory framework shows that thinking about words in terms of their survival value in an incidental learning task enhances their free recall relative to other semantic encoding strategies and intentional learning (Nairne, Pandeirada, & Thompson, 2008). We found similar results. When participants used incidental survival encoding for a list of words (e.g., "Will this object enhance my survival if I were stranded in the grasslands of a foreign land?"), they produced better free recall on a surprise test than did participants who intentionally tried to remember those words (Experiment 1). We also found this survival processing advantage when the words were presented within the context of a survival or neutral story (Experiment 2). However, this advantage did not extent to memory for a story's factual content, regardless of whether the participants were tested by cued recall (Experiment 3) or free recall (Experiments 4-5). Listening to a story for understanding under intentional or incidental learning conditions was just as good as survival processing for remembering story content. The functionalist approach to thinking about memory as an evolutionary adaptation designed to solve reproductive fitness problems provides a different theoretical framework for research, but it is not yet clear if survival processing has general applicability or is effective only for processing discrete stimuli in terms of fitness-relevant scenarios from our past.     

The Stammering Information Programme: a Delphi study

Purpose

To find out what information children, parents and education staff feel would be important to know to support a child who stutters in the educational environment, in order to develop appropriate resources.

Method

A Delphi study was carried out to seek the opinions of experts about the information to include. A structured six stage process was completed in order to gain consensus within four expert panels: children who stutter (CWS) aged 7-11 (n = 25); young people who stutter aged 12-18 (n = 27); parents of children and young people who stutter aged 2-18 (n = 67); and members of the education workforce (n = 35).

Results

In response to the questions, 538 statements were generated across the four expert panels, categorised and reduced to 276. Of the 154 rating questionnaires sent out, 99 were returned (64.2% response rate). The top 32 statements, which were those most highly rated and with the greatest consensus, were retained to inform the resources.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates the value of including service users when devising materials aimed for the benefit of CWS. The methodology employed ensured that ideas, perceptions and needs were representative of a range of people who experience stuttering from different perspectives. The results indicated that each expert panel had different priorities of what should be included. The resulting resources may therefore be considered to have high content validity and would be predicted to meet the needs of those who require them.Educational Objectives: The reader will be able to (1) define the Delphi Approach (2) discuss the development of a user led resource for raising awareness about stuttering.     

Testosterone and Proactive-Reactive Aggression in Youth: the Moderating Role of Harsh Discipline

This study tests a biosocial model of the link between testosterone and proactive-reactive aggression in youth at varying levels of harsh discipline. Given that proactive aggression is used to gain power and status and the importance of social learning in its formation, we hypothesized that testosterone would be associated with proactive aggression at higher levels of harsh discipline, and that this relationship would be more pronounced in boys than girls. Participants (n?=?445; 50% male; M age?=?11.92 years; 80% African-American) and their caregivers completed questionnaires including demographics, conflict tactics, and proactive-reactive aggression. Youth also provided a saliva sample for testosterone. Analyses revealed an interaction between testosterone and harsh discipline on proactive aggression in both boys and girls, and an interaction between testosterone and harsh discipline on reactive aggression in boys only. For those experiencing high levels of harsh discipline, testosterone was positively associated with proactive aggression, with the magnitude of the association increasing as harsh discipline increased. For below average levels of harsh discipline, there were protective effects of high testosterone for boy’s reactive aggression and for girl’s proactive aggression. The findings support basic tenets of the biosocial model which suggest that links between testosterone and aggressive behavior are dependent on contextual forces, highlighting the complex relationship between hormones, social context, and aggression. Novel findings include protective effects of high testosterone for those exposed to low levels of harsh discipline. Findings are discussed in light of the context-contingency effect and also within the differential susceptibility framework.     

Religion and Health: Anxiety,Religiosity, Meaning of Life and Mental Health

We examined the association among anxiety, religiosity, meaning of life and mental health in a nonclinical sample from a Chinese society. Four hundred fifty-one Taiwanese adults (150 males and 300 females) ranging in age from 17 to 73 years (M = 28.9, SD = 11.53) completed measures of Beck Anxiety Inventory, Medical Outcomes Study Health Survey, Perceived Stress Scale, Social Support Scale, and Personal Religiosity Scale (measuring religiosity and meaning of life). Meaning of life has a significant negative correlation with anxiety and a significant positive correlation with mental health and religiosity; however, religiosity does not correlate significantly anxiety and mental health after controlling for demographic measures, social support and physical health. Anxiety explains unique variance in mental health above meaning of life. Meaning of life was found to partially mediate the relationship between anxiety and mental health. These findings suggest that benefits of meaning of life for mental health can be at least partially accounted for by the effects of underlying anxiety.     

Hemodynamic responses to active and passive coping tasks and the prediction of future blood pressure in Thai participants: A preliminary prospective cohort study

Cardiovascular responses to mental stress tests have been related to future blood pressure (BP) levels. However, most studies have been completed in North America and Europe; only one study has been conducted in Asia. Therefore, the study explored whether cardiovascular responses to mental stress predict future resting BP in Thailand. Hemodynamic measures were obtained from 101 healthy adults before, during and after mental arithmetic, a speech task, and a cold pressor task. A follow‐up assessment of resting BP was undertaken 1 year later. Results showed that Thais responded to standardized mental stress tasks with large and significant cardiovascular reactivity. Regression analyses indicated that, after adjustment for baseline BP and traditional risk factors, heightened systolic blood pressure (SBP) responses to mental arithmetic were associated with increased future SBP (ΔR² = .045). These findings suggest that BP reactivity predicts future BP and may play a role in the development of hypertension. In addition, Thais displayed large cardiovascular responses to standardized mental stress tasks, of a similar magnitude to previous studies of North Americans and Europeans.     

Spatial updating relies on an egocentric representation of space: Effects of the number of objects

Models of spatial updating attempt to explain how representations of spatial relationships between the actor and objects in the environment change as the actor moves. In allocentric models, object locations are encoded in an external reference frame, and only the actor’s position and orientation in that reference frame need to be updated. Thus, spatial updating should be independent of the number of objects in the environment (set size). In egocentric updating models, object locations are encoded relative to the actor, so the location of each object relative to the actor must be updated as the actor moves. Thus, spatial updating efficiency should depend on set size. We examined which model better accounts for human spatial updating by having people reconstruct the locations of varying numbers of virtual objects either from the original study position or from a changed viewing position. In consistency with the egocentric updating model, object localization following a viewpoint change was affected by the number of objects in the environment.