Predicting First Graders' Development of Calculation versus Word-Problem Performance: The Role of Dynamic Assessment

The purpose of this study was to assess the value of dynamic assessment (DA; degree of scaffolding required to learn unfamiliar mathematics content) for predicting 1(st)-grade calculations (CA) and word problems (WP) development, while controlling for the role of traditional assessments. Among 184 1(st) graders, predictors (DA, Quantity Discrimination, Test of Mathematics Ability, language, and reasoning) were assessed near the start of 1(st) grade. CA and WP were assessed near the end of 1(st) grade. Planned regression and commonality analyses indicated that for forecasting CA development, Quantity Discrimination, which accounted for 8.84% of explained variance, was the single most powerful predictor, followed by Test of Mathematics Ability and DA; language and reasoning were not uniquely predictive. By contrast, for predicting WP development, DA was the single most powerful predictor, which accounted for 12.01% of explained variance, with Test of Mathematics Ability, Quantity Discrimination, and language also uniquely predictive. Results suggest that different constellations of cognitive resources are required for CA versus WP development and that DA may be useful in predicting 1(st)-grade mathematics development, especially WP.     

Juvenile stress potentiates aversive 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations and freezing during auditory fear conditioning in adult male rats

Traumatic experiences that occur during adolescence can render individuals vulnerable to mood and anxiety disorders. A model in juvenile rats (age: 27-29 days) was developed previously to study the long-term effects of adolescent stress exposure on behaviour and physiology. This paradigm, termed juvenile stress, involves subjecting juvenile rats to different stressors on consecutive days over a 3-day period. Here, we investigated the effects of the juvenile stress paradigm on freezing behaviour and aversive 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during auditory fear conditioning in adult male rats (age: 68-90 days). We found that rats previously subjected to juvenile stress increased aversive 22-kHz USVs (total calls and time spent calling) compared with controls during fear-conditioning training. The acoustic USV parameters between control and juvenile stress rats were largely equivalent, including duration, peak frequency and amplitude. While rats did not differ in freezing behaviour during fear conditioning, juvenile stress rats exhibited greater cue-conditioned freezing upon testing 24 h later. Our results show that juvenile stress elicited different long-term changes in freezing and aversive USVs during fear conditioning. Furthermore, they highlight the importance of assessing USVs to detect experience-dependent differences between control and stress-exposed animals which are not detectable by measuring visible behaviour.     

Causal Models of Physical Exercise Participation: Testing the Predictive Power of the Construct "Pressure to Change"

This study examines 2 different causal models to predict physical exercise motivation and behavior under a longitudinal perspective. The first model includes 5 latent variables that were hypothesized to have an impact on exercise intention and behavior: behavior-specific social support, exercise self-efficacy, perceived health benefits, perceived barriers, and subjective vulnerability to cardiovascular disease. The second model was based on all variables of the first model, but additionally included the new variable "pressure to change." Pressure to change was defined as the extent to which a person feels the necessity that specific personal life circumstances (e.g., health status, social relations) may not remain as they are and ought to be changed. It was hypothesized that the inclusion of health-related pressure to change would result in a better prediction of exercise intention. The proposed causal models were tested separately at the stages of exercise adoption and maintenance. Covariance structure analyses (LISREL) confirmed that pressure to change may be an important factor in the motivational process that leads to the adoption of regular physical exercise. Adding this latent variable to the basic model improved the amount of explained variance in exercise intention by 6%. Furthermore, the results did not support the assumption that cognitive control is critical especially during the acquisition of exercise behaviors, but may be less influential once the behavioral routines have been established. Our data rather indicate that regular physical exercise, even if performed on a regular basis for years, always remains a behavior that requires a high level of cognitive guidance.     

Correlational cuing as a function of target complexity and target-flanker similarity

It is generally assumed that the correlational cuing effect (CE) between targets and correlated flankers is due to learning association between the flankers and their correlated responses. The present study challenges this view. Experiment 1 shows that the CE for targets composed of color is eliminated as soon as the correlation is removed. Experiment 2 shows that the CE during training is not due to association of the flankers with responses. Experiment 3 shows that at least some of the CE during training with the correlation is due to repetition priming of the display. Experiment 4 replicates the results of Experiment 1 for orientation targets. In Experiments 5-7, more typical tasks with letter targets are examined, and it is demonstrated that preexperimental similarity between targets and correlated flankers is crucial. The CE for correlated but dissimilar target-flanker pairs, similar to that for color and orientation targets, is confined to on-line processes that occur during training. The CE is transferred, however, for correlated and similar target-flanker pairs. We propose that, at least for the simple stimulus to response mapping used in our study, the CE is not due to learning at all. Instead it is due to (1) on-line processes, such as repetition priming, that occur during training with the correlation and (2) a regular flanker effect (see, e.g., B. A. Eriksen & C. W. Eriksen, 1974) that occurs for similar target-flanker pairs.     

Does any aspect of mind survive brain damage that typically leads to a persistent vegetative state? Ethical considerations

Recent neuroscientific evidence brings into question the conclusion that all aspects of consciousness are gone in patients who have descended into a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Here we summarize the evidence from human brain imaging as well as neurological damage in animals and humans suggesting that some form of consciousness can survive brain damage that commonly causes PVS. We also raise the issue that neuroscientific evidence indicates that raw emotional feelings (primary-process affects) can exist without any cognitive awareness of those feelings. Likewise, the basic brain mechanisms for thirst and hunger exist in brain regions typically not damaged by PVS. If affective feelings can exist without cognitive awareness of those feelings, then it is possible that the instinctual emotional actions and pain "reflexes" often exhibited by PVS patients may indicate some level of mentality remaining in PVS patients. Indeed, it is possible such raw affective feelings are intensified when PVS patients are removed from life-supports. They may still experience a variety of primary-process affective states that could constitute forms of suffering. If so, withdrawal of life-support may violate the principle of nonmaleficence and be tantamount to inflicting inadvertent "cruel and unusual punishment" on patients whose potential distress, during the process of dying, needs to be considered in ethical decision-making about how such individuals should be treated, especially when their lives are ended by termination of life-supports. Medical wisdom may dictate the use of more rapid pharmacological forms of euthanasia that minimize distress than the de facto euthanasia of life-support termination that may lead to excruciating feelings of pure thirst and other negative affective feelings in the absence of any reflective awareness.     

Influence of chronic corticosterone and glucocorticoid receptor antagonism in the amygdala on fear conditioning

Glucocorticoid receptor activation within the basolateral amygdala (BLA) during fear conditioning may mediate enhancement in rats chronically exposed to stress levels of corticosterone. Male Sprague-Dawley rats received corticosterone (400 microg/ml) in their drinking water (days 1-21), a manipulation that was previously shown to cause hippocampal CA3 dendritic retraction. Subsequently, rats were adapted to the fear conditioning chamber (day 22), then trained (day 23), and tested for conditioned fear to context and tone (day 25). Training consisted of two tone (20s) and footshock (500 ms, 0.25 mA) pairings. In Experiment 1, muscimol (4.4 nmol/0.5 microl/side), a GABAergic agonist, was microinfused to temporarily inactivate the BLA during training. Rats given chronic corticosterone showed enhanced freezing to context, but not tone, compared to vehicle-supplemented rats. Moreover, BLA inactivation impaired contextual and tone conditioning, regardless of corticosterone treatment. In Experiment 2, RU486 (0, 0.3, and 3.0 ng/0.2 microl/side) was infused on training day to antagonize glucocorticoid receptors in the BLA. Corticosterone treatment enhanced fear conditioning to context and tone when analyzed together, but not separately. Moreover, RU486 (3.0 ng/side) selectively exacerbated freezing to context in chronic corticosterone-exposed rats only, but failed to alter tone conditioning. Serum corticosterone levels were negatively correlated with contextual, not tone, conditioning. Altogether, these suggest that chronic corticosterone influences fear conditioning differently than chronic stress as shown previously. Moreover, chronic exposure to corticosteroids alters BLA functioning in a non-linear fashion and that contextual conditioning is influenced more than tone conditioning by chronic corticosterone and BLA glucocorticoid receptor stimulation.     

Social stress in tree shrews as an animal model of depression: an example of a behavioral model of a CNS disorder

Animal models are invaluable in preclinical research on human psychopathology. Valid animal models to study the pathophysiology of depression and specific biological and behavioral responses to antidepressant drug treatments are of prime interest. In order to improve our knowledge of the causal mechanisms of stress-related disorders such as depression, we need animal models that mirror the situation seen in patients. One promising model is the chronic psychosocial stress paradigm in male tree shrews. Coexistence of two males in visual and olfactory contact leads to a stable dominant/subordinate relationship, with the subordinates showing obvious changes in behavioral, neuroendocrine, and central nervous activity that are similar to the signs and symptoms observed during episodes of depression in patients. To discover whether this model, besides its "face validity" for depression, also has "predictive validity," we treated subordinate animals with the tricyclic antidepressant clomipramine and found a time-dependent recovery of both endocrine function and normal behavior. In contrast, the anxiolytic diazepam was ineffective. Chronic psychosocial stress in male tree shrews significantly decreased hippocampal volume and the proliferation rate of the granule precursor cells in the dentate gyrus. These stress-induced changes can be prevented by treating the animals with clomipramine, tianeptine, or the selective neurokinin receptor antagonist L-760,735. In addition to its apparent face and predictive validity, the tree shrew model also has a "molecular validity" due to the degradation routes of psychotropic compounds and gene sequences of receptors are very similar to those in humans. Although further research is required to validate this model fully, it provides an adequate and interesting non-rodent experimental paradigm for preclinical research on depression.     

The course in the history of psychology: present status and future concerns

The present study provides a turn-of-the-century status report on the teaching of the history of psychology in colleges and universities in the United States. The data indicate that the course is offered regularly in most departments of psychology and is frequently required of majors; these findings are consistent with earlier research. Most instructors teach the course largely out of personal interest and self-taught expertise with their primary teaching and research commitments to other areas of psychology. Few instructors engage in publication of research and scholarship in the history of psychology, although there are 2 journals in the field that provide an outlet for scholarship. The few positions that allow for primary commitment to teaching and research in the history of psychology is a possible cause of concern for the future of the course and for its place in the education of psychologists in the 21st century.     

Autonomy, Slavery, and Mill's Critique of Paternalism

Critics have charged that John Stuart Mill's discussion as of paternalism in On Liberty is internally inconsistent, noting, for example, the numerous instances in which Mill explicitly endorses examples of paternalistic coercion. Similarly, commentators have noted an apparent contradiction between Mill's political liberalism – according to which the state should be neutral among competing conceptions of the good – and Mill's condemnation of non-autonomous ways of life, such as that of a servile wife. More generally, critics have argued that while Mill professes an allegiance to utilitarianism, he actually abandons it in favor of a view that values personal autonomy as the greatest intrinsic good. This paper presents an interpretation of Mill that provides a viable and consistent treatment of paternalism, thereby refuting each of the aforementioned critiques. Mill's views, it argues, are consistently utilitarian. Moreover, the interpretation accounts for all of Mill's departures from his otherwise blanket prohibition of paternalistic legislation. In particular, it explains his most notorious example, the condemnation of voluntary contracts for slavery. The interpretation emphasizes Mill's conceptual linkage between autonomy and utility, noting his implicit use of at least three different senses of the notion of autonomy.