Effectiveness of instructor behaviours and their relationship to leadership

This study analysed qualitatively the nature of instructor behaviours and their relationship to leadership. The Critical Incident Technique was used to collect effective and ineffective incidents of instructor behaviour in military training from both instructors' and trainees' perspectives (total incidents = 1150, effective = 696, ineffective = 494), across the three UK Armed Services. Nine dimensions of instructor behaviour were developed with high inter‐ and intra‐coder reliability. No differences were found between instructor and trainee generated incidents or among the three Armed Services. About 82% of the incidents could be recoded with high inter‐coder reliability into categories of both transformational and transactional leadership. Strong relationships emerged between the following dimensions of both instructor behaviour and leadership respectively: Showing and Demonstrating, and Appropriate Role Model; Using Instructional Strategies and Intellectual Stimulation; Feedback, Practice and Adapting, and Individual Consideration; Forms of Punishment and Control, and Contingent and Non‐contingent Punishment. These results inform not only the relationships between instructor behaviours and leadership but also the future training of military instructors, particularly the balance between a traditional authoritarian approach and an individualised supportive one.     

Mother-infant interaction and children's socio-emotional development with high- and low-risk mothers

Charting the dynamic character of mother-infant interaction requires using observational systems of sequential coding in real time. A longitudinal study was designed to approach maternal sensitivity in a more complex way using sequential analysis. The study was conducted with 20 high- and 20 low-risk mothers and their infants (aged: 3, 12 and 15 months) to examine the relation among mothers' risk status for physical abuse and their maternal interactive profiles, using micro-social sequential analyses, and the subsequent quality of attachment developed by their children at 15 months of age. Results showed significantly different timings in maternal responses in high- and low-risk groups, that the high-risk mothers were less sensitive: more intrusive and less discriminate regarding their infant's behavior. Significant differences between groups were also found after infant difficult behavior. High-risk mothers' infants were significantly more likely to develop insecure attachment. Sensitivity is proposed as a constellation of timings in early mother-infant interaction.     

Muscarinic cholinergic receptor blockade in the rat prelimbic cortex impairs the social transmission of food preference

Previous findings demonstrate the involvement of the cholinergic NBM in the acquisition of the social transmission of food preference (STFP), a relational associative odor-guided learning task. There is also evidence that muscarinic receptors in the medial prefrontal cortex, an important NBM target area, may modulate olfactory associative memory. The present experiment determined the consequences of blocking muscarinic cholinergic receptors in a component of the medial prefrontal region (the prelimbic cortex) on the STFP task. Adult male Wistar rats were bilaterally infused with scopolamine (20 microg/site) prior to training and showed a severe impairment in the expression of the task measured in two retention sessions, both immediately and 24h after training. Local scopolamine injections in the prelimbic cortex did not affect other behavioral measures such as olfactory perception, social interaction, motivation to eat, neophobia, or exploration. Results suggest that muscarinic transmission in the prelimbic cortex is essential for the STFP, supporting the hypothesis that ACh in a specific prefrontal area is important for this naturalistic form of olfactory relational memory. Current data are discussed in the context of disruption of learning as a result of interferences in PLC functions such as behavioral flexibility, attention, and strategic planning.     

Effects of parafascicular excitotoxic lesions on two-way active avoidance and odor-discrimination

To investigate whether the parafascicular (PF) nucleus of the thalamus is involved in different learning and memory tasks, two experiments were carried out in adult male Wistar rats that were submitted to pre-training bilateral N-methyl-d-aspartate PF infusions (0.15M, pH 7.4; 1.2 microl/side, 0.2 microl/min). In Experiment 1, we evaluated the effects of PF lesions in two identical 30-trial training sessions, separated by a 24-h interval, of a two-way active avoidance conditioning. PF-lesioned rats exhibited impaired performance in both sessions, measured by number of avoidance responses. In Experiment 2, the effects of PF lesions were assessed in a training session (5 trials) and a 24-h retention test (2 retention trials and 2 relearning trials) of an odor-discrimination task. PF lesions did not significantly disrupt the acquisition or the first retention trial, which was not rewarded. However, lesioned animals' performance was clearly affected in subsequent trials, following the introduction of the single non-rewarded trial. Current data are discussed considering evidence that lesions of the PF nucleus affect learning and memory functions mediated by anatomically related areas of the frontal cortex and striatum.     

When mirrors lie: “Visual capture” of arm position impairs reaching performance

If we stand at a mirror’s edge, we can see one half of our body reflected in the mirror, as if it were the other half of our body, seen “through” the mirror. We used this mirror illusion to examine the effect of conflicts between visually and proprioceptively specified arm positions on subsequent reaching movements made with the unseen right arm. When participants viewed their static left arm in the mirror (i.e., as if it were their right arm), subsequent right-arm reaching movements were affected significantly more when there was conflict between the apparent visual and the proprioceptively specified right-arm positions than when there was no conflict. This result demonstrates that visual capture of arm position can occur when individual body parts are viewed in the mirror and that this capture has a measurable effect on subsequent reaching movements made with an unseen arm. The result has implications for how the brain represents the body across different sensory modalities.     

Early mother-infant interaction and factors negatively affecting parenting

The social information-processing model contributes to identifying the psychological processes underlying the construct "sensitivity" in early mother-child interaction. Negative emotional states associated with inadequate self-regulation in coping with stressors affect the mother's attention skills and the processing of the baby's signals. This leads to less synchronous parental practices, particularly unsatisfactory when the baby is unhappy, or crying because the required self-regulation is not provided. This micro-social research studies the sequential profile of maternal reactions to the baby's positive/neutral vs. difficult behaviours and compares them in two groups of dyads, one with mothers who reported high levels of distress and other negative factors for parenting and another group with low levels. The unfavourable circumstances of the high stress group and their negative effects on interaction were observed in some indiscriminate maternal responses and particularly as they reacted to their baby's difficult behaviour, when the mother's regulatory role is more necessary.     

Christian Affiliation,Christian Practice,and Attitudes to Religious Diversity: A Quantitative Analysis among 13- to 15-year-old Female Students in the UK

Within the context of the “Young People’s Attitudes to Religious Diversity” project at the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, this study examines the association between self-assigned Christian affiliation, self-reported Christian practice, and attitudes towards religious diversity among a sample of 5,748 13- to 15-year-old female students attending schools in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The two hypotheses being tested are that, among female students, nominal Christians do not differ in their attitudes towards religious diversity from unaffiliated students and that church attendance leads to less tolerance of other religious groups. The data partly support the first hypothesis but not the second. Churchgoing Christian female students are more interested in and more tolerant of other religious groups. The data also draw attention to the perceived importance of religious education in schools for shaping views on religion and on religious diversity among unaffiliated students, nominal Christians, and practising Christians. Both the Christian churches and religious education in school seem to have an important part to play in nurturing a tolerant and inclusive religiously diverse society in the UK.     

Curry’s Paradox,Generalized Modus Ponens Axiom and Depth Relevance

“Weak relevant model structures” (wr-ms) are defined on “weak relevant matrices” by generalizing Brady’s model structure ${\mathcal{M}_{\rm CL}}$ built upon Meyer’s Crystal matrix CL. It is shown how to falsify in any wr-ms the Generalized Modus Ponens axiom and similar schemes used to derive Curry’s Paradox. In the last section of the paper we discuss how to extend this method of falsification to more general schemes that could also be used in deriving Curry’s Paradox.