On the relation between maternal state of mind and sensitivity in the prediction of infant attachment security

Attachment theorists assume that maternal mental representations influence responsivity, which influences infant attachment security. However, primary studies do not support this mediation model. The authors tested mediation using 2 mother-infant samples and found no evidence of mediation. Therefore, the authors explored sensitivity as a moderator, studying the (a) interaction of mental representation and sensitivity as it predicts infant attachment security and (b) level of sensitivity in mothers whose infants' attachment security is either concordant or discordant with their own. The interactional analyses were not significant. But the match-mismatch data showed that when mother-infant attachment strategies were discordant, maternal sensitivity was more consistent with infant than maternal attachment strategy. These findings are congruent with an interpretation of sensitivity as a moderator that can block transmission of attachment strategy.     

Conscience in childhood: old questions, new answers

Although conscience has been the focus of reflection for centuries, fundamental questions regarding its organization have not been fully answered. To address those questions, the authors applied structural equation modeling techniques to longitudinal data comprising multiple behavioral measures of children's conscience, obtained in parallel fashion at 33 and 45 months. The measures encompassed moral emotion (guilt and empathic distress) and rule-compatible conduct (internalization of maternal prohibitions and requests and of another adult's rules). Confirmatory factor analyses supported a differentiated view of conscience with 2 latent factors at both ages: Moral Emotion and Rule-Compatible Conduct. The structure of conscience was remarkably stable over time. The coherence between Moral Emotion and Rule-Compatible Conduct factors increased as children grew older.     

A multilevel examination of the relationships among training outcomes, mediating regulatory processes, and adaptive performance

This study examined whether cognitive, affective-motivational, and behavioral training outcomes relate to posttraining regulatory processes and adaptive performance similarly at the individual and team levels of analysis. Longitudinal data were collected from 156 individuals composing 78 teams who were trained on and then performed a simulated flight task. Results showed that posttraining regulation processes related similarly to adaptive performance across levels. Also, regulation processes fully mediated the influences of self- and collective efficacy beliefs on individual and team adaptive performance. Finally, knowledge and skill more strongly and directly related to adaptive performance at the individual than the team level of analysis. Implications to theory and practice, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Postural stability and hand preference as constraints on one-handed catching performance in children

Effects of postural state and hand preference as constraints on 1-handed catching performance were investigated in different ability groups of children aged 9-10 years. On the basis of pretest data, the authors classified 48 participants into groups of good, intermediate, and poor catchers (n = 16 in each) and asked them to perform 1-handed catches with their preferred and nonpreferred hands while standing and sitting. The good catchers' performance was not affected by the imposed postural constraints but did improve when they used the preferred hand. A similar effect of hand preference was evident in the intermediate and poor catchers, but there was also an effect of postural constraint. Independent of hand preference, intermediate catchers' performance while seated improved significantly compared with that during standing. For poor catchers, there was an interaction between hand preference and posture; significant improvement was evident only when they used the preferred hand in the sitting condition. The finding that manipulation of posture and hand preference affected performance outcomes indicates that perceptual skill is not the only influence on catching performance in children. Manipulation of those key constraints may facilitate the acquisition of catching skill, but more research is needed to determine the permanence of those effects.     

Theodor Lipps and the shift from "sympathy" to "empathy"

In the course of extensive philosophical debates on aesthetics in nineteenth-century Germany, Robert Vischer introduced the concept of Einfühlung in relation to art. Theodor Lipps subsequently extended it from art to visual illusions and interpersonal understanding. While Lipps had regarded Einfühlung as basically similar to the old notion of sympathy, Edward Titchener in America believed it had a different meaning. Hence, he coined the term empathy as its translation. This term came to be increasingly widely adopted, first in psychology and then more generally. But the lack of agreement about the supposed difference between these concepts suggests that Lipps had probably been right.     

Neural correlates of a default response in a delayed go/no-go task

Working memory, the ability to temporarily retain task-relevant information across a delay, is frequently investigated using delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) or delayed Go/No-Go tasks (DGNG). In DMTS tasks, sample cues instruct the animal which type of response has to be executed at the end of a delay. Typically, performance decreases with increasing delay duration, indicating that working memory fades across a delay. However, no such performance decrease has been found when the sample cues exist of present vs. absent stimuli, suggesting that pigeons do not rely on working memory, but seem to respond by default in those trials. We trained 3 pigeons in a DGNG task and found a similar default response pattern: The diverging slopes of the retention functions on correct Go and No-Go trials suggested that pigeons by default omitted their response following No-Go stimuli, but actively retained task-relevant information across the delay for successful responses on Go trials. We conducted single-cell recordings in the avian nidopallium caudolaterale, a structure comparable to the mammalian prefrontal cortex. On Go trials, many neurons displayed sustained elevated activity during the delay preceding the response, replicating previous findings and suggesting that task-relevant information was neurally represented and maintained across the delay. However, the same units did not show enhanced delay activity preceding correct response suppressions in No-Go trials. This activation-inactivation pattern presumably constitutes a neural correlate of the default response strategy observed in the DGNG task.     

Behavioral perspectives on the neuroscience of drug addiction

Neuroscientific approaches to drug addiction traditionally have been based on the premise that addiction is a process that results from brain changes that in turn result from chronic administration of drugs of abuse. An alternative approach views drug addiction as a behavioral disorder in which drugs function as preeminent reinforcers. Although there is a fundamental discrepancy between these two approaches, the emerging neuroscience of reinforcement and choice behavior eventually may shed light on the brain mechanisms involved in excessive drug use. Behavioral scientists could assist in this understanding by devoting more attention to the assessment of differences in the reinforcing strength of drugs and by attempting to develop and validate behavioral models of addiction.     

The dynamics of self-esteem in adults over a 6-month period: an exploratory study

In this exploratory study, the authors examined the dynamics of self-esteem in 8 adults over a 6-month period. Each participant (M age = 29.4 years, SD = 7.9, SEM = 2.8) completed a single item from the Physical Self Inventory (G. Ninot, M. Fortes, & D. Delignières, 2001) using a 10-cm visual analog scale (horizontal line), twice a day between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. and between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. Time series analyses, including autocorrelation and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) procedures, showed that global self-esteem dynamics were neither stable, stationary, nor random. The ARIMA procedures indicated that this perceived dimension functioned as a moving average (0, 1, 1) without a significant constant, thus suggesting a short-term dynamic adjustment. This pattern is a typical signature of a complex system submitted to several constraints and not an indication of personality trait or state.     

The frequency effect for pseudowords in the lexical decision task

Four experiments were designed to investigate whether the frequency of words used to create pseudowords plays an important role in lexical decision. Computational models of the lexical decision task (e.g., the dual route cascaded model and the multiple read-out model) predict that latencies to low-frequency pseudowords should be faster than latencies to high-frequency pseudowords. Consistent with this prediction, results showed that when the pseudowords were created by replacing one internal letter of the base word (Experiments 1 and 3), high-frequency pseudowords yielded slower latencies than low-frequency pseudowords. However, this effect occurred only in the leading edge of the response time (RT) distributions. When the pseudowords were created by transposing two adjacent internal letters (Experiment 2), high-frequency pseudowords produced slower latencies in the leading edge and in the bulk of the RT distributions. These results suggest that transposed-letter pseudowords may be more similar to their base words than replacement-letter pseudowords. Finally, when participants performed a go/no-go lexical decision task with one-letter different pseudowords (Experiment 4), high-frequency pseudowords yielded substantially faster latencies than low-frequency pseudowords, which suggests that the lexical entries of high-frequency words can be verified earlier than the lexical entries of low-frequency words. The implications of these results for models of word recognition and lexical decision are discussed.