Childhood poverty and young adults' allostatic load: the mediating role of childhood cumulative risk exposure

Childhood poverty is linked to a host of physical and psychological disorders during childhood and later in life. In the study reported here, we showed that the proportion of childhood spent in poverty from birth to age 9 was linked to elevated allostatic load, a marker of chronic physiological stress, in 17-year-olds. Furthermore, this prospective longitudinal relationship was mediated by cumulative risk exposure at age 13. The greater the duration of early life spent in poverty, the greater the exposure to cumulative risk. This, in turn, leads to elevated allostatic load. Multiple psychological, biological, and neurological pathways likely account for the social patterning of psychological and physical disease.     

Civilian Response Corps Force Review: The Application of Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis to Prioritize Skills Required for Future Diplomatic Missions

Created by the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, the Civilian Response Corps (CRC) contains a diverse pool of qualified and ready‐to‐deploy civilian professionals that support conflict prevention and response efforts in countries or regions that are at risk of, are currently in, or are transitioning from conflict or civil strife. As such, it is vital to optimize the CRC's skill groupings to maximize adaptability and responsiveness to highly uncertain and trying political conditions and crises across the globe. The nature of the CRC value proposition is such that determining which skill set compositions deliver the greatest benefit requires a multi‐faceted perspective that looks at a number of attributes and factors, both tangible and intangible. To meet these needs, an organizational decision‐making approach utilizing multi‐criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was applied to ensure that skill‐grouping allocations were determined in a logical and robust manner. The MCDA analysis allowed for a wide range of worldviews and perspectives, drawn from select members of academia and partner agencies of the CRC who provided their expert opinions on the expected demand for skill groupings commonly identified as most necessary in a civilian ‘surge’ capacity. These skills were assessed with reference to a values hierarchy of representative country scenarios, missions and sub‐missions identified by the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. Of particular interest was the use of the MCDA method to prioritize CRC skill groupings and to help inform the Department of State's understanding of the ‘ideal’ proportion and types of civilian skills for inclusion in the CRC. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Choosing and using geospatial displays: effects of design on performance and metacognition

Interactive display systems give users flexibility to tailor their visual displays to different tasks and situations. However, in order for such flexibility to be beneficial, users need to understand how to tailor displays to different tasks (to possess "metarepresentational competence"). Recent research suggests that people may desire more complex and realistic displays than are most effective (Smallman & St. John, 2005). In Experiment 1, undergraduate students were tested on a comprehension task with geospatial displays (weather maps) that varied in the number of extraneous variables displayed. Their metacognitive judgments about the relative effectiveness of the displays were also solicited. Extraneous variables slowed response time and increased errors, but participants favored complex maps that looked more realistic about one third of the time. In Experiment 2, the eye fixations of undergraduate students were monitored as they performed the comprehension task. Complex maps that looked more realistic led to more eye fixations on both task-relevant and task-irrelevant regions of the displays. Experiment 3 compared performance of experienced meteorologists and undergraduate students on the comprehension and metacognitive tasks. Meteorologists were as likely as undergraduate students to prefer geographically complex (realistic) displays and more likely than undergraduates to opt for displays that added extraneous weather variables. However, meteorologists were also slower and less accurate with complex than with simple displays. This work highlights the importance of empirically testing principles of visual display design and suggests some limits to metarepresentational competence.     

Negative triangles: simple geometric shapes convey emotional valence

It has been suggested that downward pointing triangles convey negative valence, perhaps because they mimic an underlying primitive feature present in negative facial expressions (Larson, Aronoff, and Stearns, 2007). Here, we test this proposition using a flanker interference paradigm in which participants indicated the valence of a central face target, presented between two adjacent distracters. Experiment 1 showed that, compared with face flankers, downward pointing triangles had little influence on responses to face targets. However, in Experiment 2, when attentional competition was increased between target and flankers, downward pointing triangles slowed responses to positively valenced face targets, and speeded them to negatively valenced targets, consistent with valence-based flanker compatibility effects. These findings provide converging evidence that simple geometric shapes may convey emotional valence.     

Automated assembly of optimally spaced and balanced paired comparisons: Controlling order effects

To control order effects in questionnaires containing paired comparisons, Ross (1934) described an optimal ordering of the pairings. The pairs can also be balanced so that every stimulus appears equal numbers of times as the first and the second member of a pair. First, we describe and illustrate the optimally spaced, balanced ordering of pairings. Then we show how the optimally spaced, balanced order can be used to implement a matrix-sampling design or a fully incomplete design when the number of stimuli n is so large that respondents cannot reasonably be expected to judge all n(n - 1)/2 pairs. The algorithm for balancing and optimally spacing the list of pairs is described.     

A test of the bidirectional association between sleep and mood in bipolar disorder and insomnia

The present study investigates sleep, mood, and the proposed bidirectional relationship between the two in psychiatric disorders. Participants with interepisode bipolar disorder (n = 49), insomnia (n = 34), and no psychiatric history (n = 52) completed seven consecutive days of sleep diaries and mood measures. The interepisode bipolar and insomnia participants exhibited greater sleep disturbance than the healthy control individuals. Negative mood was equally heightened in both interepisode bipolar disorder and insomnia, and there were no differences between the three groups in positive mood. Total wake time was associated with next morning negative mood in bipolar disorder, whereas evening negative mood was associated with subsequent total wake time in both bipolar disorder and insomnia. Additionally, positive mood was associated with subsequent total wake time for the insomnia group. Results support the theory that disruptions in nighttime sleep and daytime mood may be mutually maintaining and suggest the potential importance of transdiagnostic or universal processes.     

Young children can tell strategic lies after committing a transgression

This study investigated whether young children make strategic decisions about whether to lie to conceal a transgression based on the lie recipient's knowledge. In Experiment 1, 168 3- to 5-year-olds were asked not to peek at the toy in the experimenter's absence, and the majority of children peeked. Children were questioned about their transgression in either the presence or absence of an eyewitness of their transgression. Whereas 4- and 5-year-olds were able to adjust their decisions of whether to lie based on the presence or absence of the eyewitness, 3-year-olds did not. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated whether the lie recipient appeared to have learned information about children's peeking from an eyewitness or was merely bluffing. Results revealed that when the lie recipient appeared to be genuinely knowledgeable about their transgression, even 3-year-olds were significantly less likely to lie compared with when the lie recipient appeared to be bluffing. Thus, preschool children are able to make strategic decisions about whether to lie or tell the truth based on whether the lie recipient is genuinely knowledgeable about the true state of affairs.     

Nonword repetition and phoneme elision in adults who do and do not stutter

The purpose of the present study was to explore the phonological working memory of adults who stutter through the use of a non-word repetition and a phoneme elision task. Participants were 14 adults who stutter (M=28 years) and 14 age/gender matched adults who do not stutter (M=28 years). For the non-word repetition task, the participants had to repeat a set of 12 non-words across four syllable lengths (2-, 3-, 4-, and 7-syllables) (N=48 total non-words). For the phoneme elision task, the participants repeated the same set of non-words at each syllable length, but with a designated target phoneme eliminated. Adults who stutter were significantly less accurate than adults who do not stutter in their initial attempts to produce the longest non-words (i.e., 7-syllable). Adults who stutter also required a significantly higher mean number of attempts to accurately produce 7-syllable non-words than adults who do not stutter. For the phoneme elision task, both groups demonstrated a significant reduction in accuracy as the non-words increased in length; however, there was no significant interaction between group and syllable length. Thus, although there appear to be advancements in the phonological working memory for adults who stutter relative to children who stutter, preliminary data from the present study suggest that the advancements may not be comparable to those demonstrated by adults who do not stutter. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: At the end of this activity the reader will be able to (a) summarize the nonword repetition data that have been published thus far with children and adults who stutter; (b) describe the subvocal rehearsal system, an aspect of the phonological working memory that is critical to nonword repetition accuracy; (c) employ an alternative means to explore the phonological working memory in adults who stutter, the phoneme elision task; and (d) discuss both phonological and motoric implications of deficits in the phonological working memory.     

The preference for symmetry in flower-naïve and not-so-naïve bumblebees

Truly flower-naïve bumblebees, with no prior rewarded experience for visits on any visual patterns outside the colony, were tested for their choice of bilaterally symmetric over asymmetric patterns in a radial-arm maze. No preference for symmetry was found. Prior training with rewarded black and white disks did, however, lead to a significant preference for symmetry. The preference was not specific to symmetry along the vertical axis: a preference for horizontal symmetry was found as well. The results challenge the notion that a preference for bilateral symmetry is unlearned. The preference for symmetry was the product of non-differential conditioning.