Hooking Up and Identity Development of Female College Students

Hooking up generally involves casual sex with noncommittal partners. Hooking up is prevalent on college campuses today and can negatively affect the identity development of female students. The authors examined this phenomenon with a feminist developmental perspective, evaluating hooking up in the context of sexual risk taking with physical and psychosocial consequences.     

Re-locating colors in the OSA space

A monolexemic color-naming experiment in the Italian language was performed on a sample of 1,014 colors obtained extending the OSA-UCS color system (E-OSA). Colors were rendered on a Mitsubishi Diamond pro 2070 monitor as patches subtending 10° of visual angle in a completely dark room. The 11 universal categories proposed by Berlin and Kay (Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution, 1969) were considered. Consensus, consistency and focal colors were determined for each category. Comparisons were performed among the results obtained using Boynton & Olson (B&O), the extended OSA (E-OSA), a subset of it covering almost all the B&O sample (R-OSA) and the Sturges & Whitfield (S&W) sample sets. A good overlap could be observed among the locations of the consensus colors in the {L, j, g} color model between B&O and R-OSA, as well as a close proximity among the centroids of homologue regions for the majority of the classes. The analysis of the location of focal colors versus the centroids suggests that an additional basic term could be missing for the Italian language in the blue category.     

一种对动物学习记忆能力突变筛查的新途

本文详细描述了一种全自动化的行为检测方案。在自然饲养环境/检测环境(24/7)中, 我们测量了小鼠针对两个给食器中获得食物的比例与它们在相应给食器停留时长的比例进行匹配的精确性与准确性。该方案是对传统条件性习得 (trials-to-acquisition) 行为测验设备的改进, 可以检测动物时间间隔能力的精确性与准确性, 对定时目标选择的相关概率的效果, 以及记忆一天中从不同给食器中获得食物次数的精确性与准确性。该压缩系统避免了在整个实验过程中对小鼠的持握操作, 可忽略实验者/技术员的实验操作时间, 而且可以递送小鼠置入实验环境后, 7~9个实验日中全部3组实验流程产生的大量结果。其中, 第一个实验流程为单个24小时周期内完成的时间匹配能力的筛查, 它对动物的时间、空间估计能力的记忆机制进行精确检测。因此, 该系统允许在有限的实验空间、较短的实验周期内, 对大量的实验小鼠进行有可能存在的学习记忆能力缺陷进行大规模筛查。此外, 该系统运行所依赖的软件可以在公共开放平台获得。     

Neuroticism and extraversion share genetic and environmental effects with negative and positive mood spillover in a nationally representative sample

Work-family spillover research focuses on how negative and positive moods in one life domain carry over to another. Domain-specific etiologies (e.g., family conflict) are often emphasized to explain spillover. Yet, strong correlations exist between spillover variables of the same emotional valence but originating from different domains, suggesting individual differences in the tendencies to prolong mood-states. The current study (N = 1143 individuals) examined whether these general tendencies are associated with neuroticism and extraversion and how genetic and environmental effects contribute to these associations. Findings revealed that neuroticism and extraversion are related to these tendencies through both genetic and environmental pathways.     

Inferences about the location of food in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in two sensory modalities

The authors tested the ability of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to make inferences about hidden food. In Experiment 1, we showed the content of 2 boxes, 1 of which was baited (visual condition, VC) or we shook both boxes producing noise from the baited box (auditory condition, AC). Seven subjects (out of 8) were above chance in the VC, whereas only 1 was above chance in AC. During treatment, by manipulating empty and filled objects subjects experienced the relation between noise and content. When tested again, 7 capuchins were above chance in the VC and 3 in AC. In Experiment 2, we gave visual or auditory information only about the empty box and, consequently, successful choice implied inferential reasoning. All subjects (out of 4) were above chance in the VC, and 2 in the AC. Control tests ruled out the possibility that success resulted from simply avoiding the shaken noiseless box, or from the use of arbitrary auditory information. Similar to apes (Call, 2004), capuchins were capable of inferential reasoning.     

Adolescents on the net: Internet use and well-being

With the growing popularity of Internet communication applications among adolescents, the Internet has become an important social context for their development. This paper examined the relationship between adolescent online activity and well-being. Participants included 156 adolescents between 15 to 18.4 years of age who were surveyed about their access to and use of the Internet. Participants also completed measures of loneliness and perceived social support. An ANOVA suggested that loneliness was not related to the total time spent online, nor to the time spent on e-mail, but was related to participants' gender. Regression analyses suggested that gender and participants' perceptions regarding their online relationships were the only variables that predicted loneliness. Adolescents who felt that their relationship with online partners was one that they could turn to in times of need were more lonely. However, perceived support from significant others was not related to time spent online, time on e-mail, participants' relationships with online partners, and to their perceptions about these relationships. The implications of our results for researchers, parents, and other lay persons are discussed.     

Temperamental dimension and anxiety problems in a clinical sample of three- to six-year old children: a study of variables

In the last few years, many researchers have studied the presence of common dimensions of temperament in subjects with symptoms of anxiety. The aim of this study is to examine the association between temperamental dimensions (high negative affect and activity level) and anxiety problems in clinical preschool children. A total of 38 children, ages 3 to 6 years, from the Infant and Adolescent Mental Health Center of Girona and the Center of Diagnosis and Early Attention of Sabadell and Olot were evaluated by parents and psychologists. Their parents completed several screening scales and, subsequently, clinical child psychopathology professionals carried out diagnostic interviews with children from the sample who presented signs of anxiety. Findings showed that children with high levels of negative affect and low activity level have pronounced symptoms of anxiety. However, children with anxiety disorders do not present different temperament styles from their peers without these pathologies.     

USE OF CHAINING TO INCREASE COMPLEXITY OF ECHOICS IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Echoics are a critical target of language intervention for children with autism, because a well‐established echoic repertoire on the part of the child allows the clinician to use vocal modeling as a flexible, low‐effort prompting procedure during teaching. In this study, we implemented a chaining procedure to increase the complexity of echoics in 2 children with autism and 1 child with developmental delay. The procedure was effective for all 3 participants, and gains were maintained after treatment was withdrawn in most cases.     

Morphological Analogies in Hebrew-Speaking University Students with Dyslexia Compared with Typically Developing Gradeschoolers

Little attention has been devoted to date to the study of morphological knowledge in individuals with developmental dyslexia. The current study compares the ability of Hebrew-speaking adult dyslexic students and gradeschool children to analyze written words into their morphological components, using a linguistic analogy task. Two sets of monolingual Hebrew-speaking participants—152 typically developing gradeschool children and 38 undergraduate students diagnosed with reading disabilities—were administered the Morphological Analogies Task. Results indicate an early ability of normally developing children to perform morphological analogies, while the adult dyslexic group performed on par with 3rd and 4th grade. Error analysis revealed that the overwhelming majority of the erroneous responses in all grades involved morphological strategies rather than the associative semantic strategy. However, the adult dyslexic students had many more associative responses than the graderschoolers. This testifies to the reduced written morphological abilities of adult dyslexic students.