The implications of childhood bacterial meningitis for language development.

Bacterial meningitis is a life threatening infection of the central nervous system. This illness is most prevalent early in life when the healthy child is rapidly acquiring language. This study investigated whether children with a history of bacterial meningitis were at risk for language difficulties post illness. Thirty post-meningitic children, aged between 9 years 0 months and 11 years 0 months, participated in this study. Each subject was administered a measure of non-verbal cognitive ability and a range of language tasks. These children performed poorly on applied language tasks, which tap skills used in effective discourse. These deficits occurred despite age appropriate performances on measures of linguistic/grammatical knowledge. These findings clearly illustrate that bacterial meningitis has implications for ongoing language development, which emphasises the importance of long term follow up. In developmental terms, this discrepancy between verbal knowledge and problem solving represents a dissociation between language skills which develop early in life and those which emerge later. This pattern of results suggests that bacterial meningitis may result in a delay in language development. A young age at illness was identified as an additional risk factor for adverse outcome. This study highlights the need to inform parents/guardians that post-meningitic children are at risk for experiencing language difficulties throughout childhood.     

Effects of violent movies and trait hostility on hostile feelings and aggressive thoughts

The General Affective Aggression Model [Anderson CA, Deuser WE, DeNeve KM (1995): Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21:434–448; Anderson CA, Anderson KB, Deuser WE (1996): Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 22:366–376] suggests that violent movies may increase aggression by increasing hostile feelings and the accessibility of aggressive thoughts. It also suggests that trait hostility may similarly influence affect and cognition. Experiment 1 explored the effects of viewing violent movie clips on affect and cognition. Participants who viewed a violent movie clip later reported higher levels of state hostility than did those who viewed a nonviolent clip. Experiment 2 added trait hostility to the design as a potentially important individual difference variable. The state hostility results of Experiment 1 were replicated. In addition, the relative accessibility of aggressive thoughts was increased by the violent clip, but only for low irritable participants. Discussion focused on the relevance to aggressive behavior. Aggr. Behav. 23:161–178, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Homosexuality as Haram: Relations among Gender,Contact, Religiosity,and Sexual Prejudice in Muslim Individuals

Sex Roles - Most research on sexual prejudice has focused on Western and Christian samples. Using the framework of social identity theory, we investigated the relations among gender, contact,...     

Cognitive,behavioral and psychological functioning in children with metopic synostosis: a meta-analysis examining the impact of surgical status

Neurodevelopmental delays are known to occur in children with metopic synostosis, but it is presently unclear whether the cognitive, behavioral and psychological outcomes of children with metopic synostosis differ to those of their healthy peers. This meta-analysis consolidated data from 17 studies (published prior to August 2017) that examined the cognitive, behavioral and psychological outcomes of children (n = 666; aged ≤19 yrs) with metopic synostosis. Hedges’g (g_w) effect sizes compared the outcomes of samples with metopic synostosis (unoperated, operated) to healthy controls or normative data and, where available, the prevalence of problems/disorders was calculated. Children with unoperated metopic synostosis performed significantly worse than their healthy peers on measures of: general cognition (g_w = ?.38), motor functioning, (g_w = ?.81), and verbal (g_w = ?.82) and visuospatial (g_w = ?.92) abilities. Children with operated metopic synostosis performed significantly worse on measures of motor functioning (g_w = ?.45), visuospatial skills (g_w = ?.32), attention (g_w = ?.50), executive functioning (g_w = ?.36), arithmetic ability (g_w = ?.37), and behavior (g_w = ?.34). Cognitive, behavioral, and psychological problems were prevalent, but variable. Overall, the cognitive, behavioral, and psychological outcomes of children with metopic synostosis are generally worse than their healthy peers, regardless of surgical status. However, research is sparse, samples small, controls are rarely recruited, and the severity of metopic synostosis often not stated. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that children with metopic synostosis are likely to experience a variety of negative outcomes and should therefore receive ongoing monitoring and support.     

Differentiating emotional processing and attention in psychopathy with functional neuroimaging

Individuals with psychopathy are often characterized by emotional processing deficits, and recent research has examined the specific contexts and cognitive mechanisms that underlie these abnormalities. Some evidence suggests that abnormal features of attention are fundamental to emotional deficits in persons with psychopathy, but few studies have demonstrated the neural underpinnings responsible for such effects. Here, we use functional neuroimaging to examine attention–emotion interactions among incarcerated individuals (n = 120) evaluated for psychopathic traits using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R). Using a task designed to manipulate attention to emotional features of visual stimuli, we demonstrate effects representing implicit emotional processing, explicit emotional processing, attention-facilitated emotional processing, and vigilance for emotional content. Results confirm the importance of considering mechanisms of attention when evaluating emotional processing differences related to psychopathic traits. The affective-interpersonal features of psychopathy (PCL-R Factor 1) were associated with relatively lower emotion-dependent augmentation of activity in visual processing areas during implicit emotional processing, while antisocial-lifestyle features (PCL-R Factor 2) were associated with elevated activity in the amygdala and related salience network regions. During explicit emotional processing, psychopathic traits were associated with upregulation in the medial prefrontal cortex, insula, and superior frontal regions. Isolating the impact of explicit attention to emotional content, only Factor 1 was related to upregulation of activity in the visual processing stream, which was accompanied by increased activity in the angular gyrus. These effects highlight some important mechanisms underlying abnormal features of attention and emotional processing that accompany psychopathic traits.     

Mapping Among Number Words,Numerals, and Nonsymbolic Quantities in Preschoolers

In mathematically literate societies, numerical information is represented in 3 distinct codes: a verbal code (i.e., number words); a digital, symbolic code (e.g., Arabic numerals); and an analogical code (i.e., quantities; Dehaene, 1992). To communicate effectively using these numerical codes, our understanding of number must involve an understanding of each representation as well as how they map to other representations. In the current study, we looked at 3- and 4-year-old children’s understanding of Arabic numerals in relation to both quantities and number words. The results suggest that the mapping between quantities and numerals is more difficult than the mapping between numerals and number words and between number words and quantities. Thus, we compared 2 competing models designed to investigate how children represent the meanings of Arabic numbers—whether numerals are mapped directly to the quantities they represent or instead if numerals are mapped to quantities indirectly via a direct mapping to number words. We found support for the latter suggesting that children may first map numerals to number words (another symbolic representation) and only through this mapping are numerals subsequently tied to the quantities they represent. In addition, unlike both mappings involving quantity, the mapping between the 2 symbolic representations of number (numerals and number words) was not set-size-dependent, therefore providing further evidence that children may map symbols to other symbols in the absence of a quantity referent. Together, the results provide new insight into the important processes involved in how children acquire an understanding of symbolic representations of number.     

Addressing the “Replication Crisis”: Using Original Studies to Design Replication Studies with Appropriate Statistical Power

Psychology is undergoing a replication crisis. The discussion surrounding this crisis has centered on mistrust of previous findings. Researchers planning replication studies often use the original study sample effect size as the basis for sample size planning. However, this strategy ignores uncertainty and publication bias in estimated effect sizes, resulting in overly optimistic calculations. A psychologist who intends to obtain power of .80 in the replication study, and performs calculations accordingly, may have an actual power lower than .80. We performed simulations to reveal the magnitude of the difference between actual and intended power based on common sample size planning strategies and assessed the performance of methods that aim to correct for effect size uncertainty and/or bias. Our results imply that even if original studies reflect actual phenomena and were conducted in the absence of questionable research practices, popular approaches to designing replication studies may result in a low success rate, especially if the original study is underpowered. Methods correcting for bias and/or uncertainty generally had higher actual power, but were not a panacea for an underpowered original study. Thus, it becomes imperative that 1) original studies are adequately powered and 2) replication studies are designed with methods that are more likely to yield the intended level of power.     

Choices or Rights? Charter Schools and the Politics of Choice-Based Education Policy Reform

Simply put, charter schools have not lived up to their advocates’ promise of equity. Using examples of tangible civil rights gains of the twentieth century (e.g. Brown v. Board, Lau v. Nichols) and extending feminist theories of invisible labor to include the labor of democracy, the authors argue that the charter movement renders invisible the labor that secured civil protections for historically marginalized groups. The charter movement hangs a quality public education—previously recognized as a universal guarantee—on the education consumer’s ability to navigate a marketplace. The authors conclude that the neoliberal agenda of positioning choice as the best mechanism for securing an education rolls back the rights that were already secured through the labor of democracy.