A Pilot Study of a Co-parenting Intervention for Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The aims of this pilot study are to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a peer-delivered co-parenting program, Autism Parent...     

No effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on visual evoked potential and peak gamma frequency

Cognitive Processing - Evidence suggests that the visual evoked potential (VEP) and gamma oscillations elicited by visual stimuli reflect the balance of excitatory and inhibitory (E-I) cortical...     

The interaction between duration, velocity and repetitive auditory stimulation

Repetitive auditory stimulation (with click trains) and visual velocity signals both have intriguing effects on the subjective passage of time. Previous studies have established that prior presentation of auditory clicks increases the subjective duration of subsequent sensory input, and that faster moving stimuli are also judged to have been presented for longer (the time dilation effect). However, the effect of clicks on velocity estimation is unknown, and the nature of the time dilation effect remains ambiguous. Here were present a series of five experiments to explore these phenomena in more detail. Participants viewed a rightward moving grating which traveled at velocities ranging from 5 to 15°/s and which lasted for durations of 500 to 1500 ms. Gratings were preceded by clicks, silence or white noise. It was found that both clicks and higher velocities increased subjective duration. It was also found that the time dilation effect was a constant proportion of stimulus duration. This implies that faster velocity increases the rate of the pacemaker component of the internal clock. Conversely, clicks increased subjective velocity, but the magnitude of this effect was not proportional to actual velocity. Through considerations of these results, we conclude that clicks independently affect velocity and duration representations.     

Knowing what we do not know about sexual orientation change efforts

Comments on the original article, "Guidelines for psychological practice with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients," by the American Psychological Association (see record 2011-19419-001). The present authors notes that the APA has provided a very helpful document for those who do clinical work with individuals experiencing same-sex attractions. Psychologists no doubt need to be familiar with the literature described in these guidelines as a part of ethical practice. However, the present authors register concern regarding how the guidelines address sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE). They focus their critique on how the guidelines portray two issues pertaining to SOCE-effectiveness and harm-and conclude with a proposal to move the discussion forward via science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Substitution and sameness: two components of a relational conception of the equals sign

A sophisticated and flexible understanding of the equals sign (=) is important for arithmetic competence and for learning further mathematics, particularly algebra. Research has identified two common conceptions held by children: the equals sign as an operator and the equals sign as signaling the same value on both sides of the equation. We argue here that, in addition to these two conceptions, the notion of substitution is also an important part of a sophisticated understanding of mathematical equivalence. We provide evidence from a cross-cultural study in which English and Chinese children were asked to rate the "cleverness" of operational, sameness, and substitutive definitions of the equals sign. A principal components analysis revealed that the substitutive items were distinct from the sameness items. Furthermore, Chinese children rated the substitutive items as 'sort of clever' or 'very clever', whereas English children rated them as not so clever, suggesting that the notion of substitution develops differently across the two countries. Implications for developmental models of children's understanding of equivalence are discussed.     

Visual perceptual abilities of Chinese-speaking and English-speaking children

This paper reports an investigation of Chinese-speaking and English-speaking children's general visual perceptual abilities. The Developmental Test of Visual Perception was administered to 41 native Chinese-speaking children of mean age 5 yr. 4 mo. in Hong Kong and 35 English-speaking children of mean age 5 yr. 2 mo. in Melbourne. Of interest were the two interrelated components of visual perceptual abilities, namely, motor-reduced visual perceptual and visual-motor integration perceptual abilities, which require either verbal or motoric responses in completing visual tasks. Chinese-speaking children significantly outperformed the English-speaking children on general visual perceptual abilities. When comparing the results of each of the two different components, the Chinese-speaking students' performance on visual-motor integration was far better than that of their counterparts (ES = 2.70), while the two groups of students performed similarly on motor-reduced visual perceptual abilities. Cultural factors such as written language format may be contributing to the enhanced performance of Chinese-speaking children's visual-motor integration abilities, but there may be validity questions in the Chinese version.     

Global statistical learning in a visual search task

Locating a target in a visual search task is facilitated when the target location is repeated on successive trials. Global statistical properties also influence visual search, but have often been confounded with local regularities (i.e., target location repetition). In two experiments, target locations were not repeated for four successive trials, but with a target location bias (i.e., the target appeared on one half of the display twice as often as the other). Participants quickly learned to make more first saccades to the side more likely to contain the target. With item-by-item search first saccades to the target were at chance. With a distributed search strategy first saccades to a target located on the biased side increased above chance. The results confirm that visual search behavior is sensitive to simple global statistics in the absence of trial-to-trial target location repetitions.     

Emotional participation in musical and non-musical behaviors

Existence of similarities of overall brain activation, specifically during emotional and other common psychological operations (discussed by Lindquist et al.), supports a proposal that emotion participates continuously in dynamic adjustment of behavior. The proposed participation can clarify the relationship of emotion to musical experience. Music, in turn, can help explore such participation.     

The role of episodic memories in current and future well-being

The purpose of the present research was to examine the automatic role of psychological need satisfaction in episodic memories and in their associated networked memories on people's sense of well-being. In each of four studies, participants were asked to describe a main episodic memory and networked memories, that is, other memories related to their main episodic memory. Results of Studies 1 and 2 revealed that levels of need satisfaction in a main episodic memory and in its networked memories both uniquely contributed to the prediction of well-being (based on either participants' or peers' ratings). Study 3 examined the automatic effect of priming an episodic memory network on people's well-being in the here and now. Study 4 revealed that need satisfaction in episodic memory networks predicted changes in well-being over time. In addition, this relationship held after controlling for broad dispositional traits, mental health, and general need satisfaction ratings.