Prereading skills of very-low-birth-weight prematurely born Finnish children

Our objective was to study the prereading skills of very-low-birth-weight (VLBW; ≤ 1500 g) prematurely born children at the age of five years. A regional cohort of 89 VLBW children and 152 full-term (FT) born children was assessed for letter knowledge, phonological processing, and speeded naming. Full-scale IQ (FSIQ) was assessed using a short version of WPPSI-R. The associations of parental and neonatal factors, and FSIQ with prereading skills were assessed. VLBW group had poorer prereading skills, and there were more VLBW children at-risk (performing < ?1 SD) compared to FT children in phonological processing (23% vs. 9%, p = .002), letter knowledge (27% vs. 14%, p = .017), and the accuracy of speeded naming (26% vs. 13%, p = .020). VLBW children had lower average FSIQ and Performance IQ (both comparisons p < .001) than FT controls, but Verbal IQ did not differ. When FSIQ was used as a covariate, VLBW children did not differ from the FT group in prereading skills indicating that they are at risk for more global developmental problems. Lower parental level of education as well as parent's reading problems were negatively associated with VLBW children's prereading skills. Positively, about 75% of VLBW children performed within the normal range in each individual prereading skill.     

Assessing Adult Attachment Across Different Contexts: Validation of the Portuguese Version of the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures Questionnaire

The Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures questionnaire (ECR–RS) is one of the most recent measures of adult attachment. This instrument provides a contextual assessment of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance by measuring these dimensions in various close relationships (mother, father, partner, friend). To further explore its psychometric properties and cross-cultural adequacy, this study presents the validation of the ECR–RS in a sample of Portuguese community individuals (N = 236). The Portuguese version showed adequate reliability and construct validity. The original 2-factor structure was confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis. The ECR–RS is a psychometrically robust measure of attachment, representing an important advance in the measurement of adult attachment.     

The Cross‐cultural Transportability of Situational Judgment Tests: How does a US‐based integrity situational judgment test fare in Spain?

Despite the globalization of HRM, there is a dearth of research on the potential use of contextualized selection instruments such as situational judgment tests (SJTs) in other countries than those where the selection instruments were originally developed. Therefore, two studies are conducted to examine the transportability of an integrity SJT that was originally developed in the United States to a Spanish context. Study 1 showed that most SJT scenarios (16 out of 19) that were developed in the United States were also considered realistic in a Spanish context. In Study 2, the item option endorsement patterns converged to the original scoring scheme, with the exception of two items. In addition, there were high correlations between the original US empirical scoring scheme and two empirical scoring schemes that were tailored to the Spanish context (i.e., mode consensus scoring and proportional consensus scoring). Finally, correlations between the SJT integrity scores and ratings on a self‐report integrity measure did not differ significantly from each other according to the type of scoring key (original US scoring vs. Spanish scoring keys). Overall, these results shed light on potential issues and solutions related to the cross‐cultural use of contextualized selection instruments such as SJTs.     

Depressive Symptoms Are Associated with the Phenomenal Characteristics of Imagined Positive and Negative Future Events

Depressive symptoms are often found to be associated with the number of imagined positive and negative future episodes. Whereas most previous studies investigated the number of imagined events within a limited time period, our study focused on the phenomenal nature of future episodes and their relationships to depressive symptoms, as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Nonclinical participants (n = 183) rated the phenomenal qualities (vividness, contextual/sensory details, felt, importance, accessibility, and certainty) of future episodes generated in response to negative and positive cue words. We found that lower ratings on the phenomenal characteristics of the positive events were associated with higher BDI scores, while an opposite pattern was observed for the negative events. However, there was no relationship between the proportion of imagined episodes that were specific and the BDI scores. Altogether, these results suggest that depressive symptom severity is associated with a wide range of phenomenal characteristics of imagined future episodes.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Here's looking at you,kid: attention to infant emotional faces in mothers and non‐mothers

Infant facial cues play a critical role in eliciting care and nurturance from an adult caregiver. Using an attentional capture paradigm we investigated attentional processing of adult and infant emotional facial expressions in a sample of mothers (n = 29) and non‐mothers (n = 37) to determine whether infant faces were associated with greater task interference. Responses to infant target stimuli were slower than adult target stimuli in both groups. This effect was modulated by parental status, such that mothers compared to non‐mothers showed longer response times to infant compared to adult faces. Both groups also responded more slowly to emotional faces, an effect that was more marked for infant emotional faces. Finally, it was found that greater levels of mothers' self‐reported parental distress was associated with less task interference when processing infant faces. These findings indicate that for adult women, infant faces in general and emotional infant faces in particular, preferentially engage attention compared to adult faces. However, for mothers, infant faces appear to be more salient in general. Therefore, infant faces may constitute a special class of social stimuli. We suggest that alterations in attentional processing in motherhood may constitute an adaptive behavioural change associated with becoming a parent.     

Independent priming of location and color in identification of briefly presented letters

Attention shifts are facilitated if the items to be attended remain the same across trials. Some researchers argue that this priming effect is perceptual, whereas others propose that priming is postperceptual, involving facilitated response selection. The experimental findings have not been consistent regarding the roles of variables such as task difficulty, response repetition, expectancies, and decision-making. Position priming, when repetition of a target position facilitates responses on a subsequent trial, is another source of disagreement among researchers. Experimental results have likewise been inconsistent as to whether position priming is dependent on the repetition of target features or has an independent effect on attention shifts. We attempted to isolate the perceptual components of priming by presenting brief (10–180 ms) search arrays to eight healthy observers. The task was to identify a color-singleton letter among distractors. All stimulus presentation contingencies were randomized, and responses were unspeeded, to avoid effects of observer expectation and postperceptual effects. Repeating target color and/or position strongly improved performance. The effects of color and position repetition were independent of one another and were stable across participants. The results argue for a strong perceptual component in priming, which biases selection toward recent target features and positions, showing that perceptual mechanisms are sufficient to produce priming in visual search and that such effects can be elicited with limited sensory evidence. The results are the first to demonstrate independent priming of color and position in the identification of briefly presented, postmasked stimuli.     

Dreams: an empirical way to settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science.     

Better safe than sorry: simplistic fear-relevant stimuli capture attention

It has been consistently demonstrated that fear-relevant images capture attention preferentially over fear-irrelevant images. Current theory suggests that this faster processing could be mediated by an evolved module that allows certain stimulus features to attract attention automatically, prior to the detailed processing of the image. The present research investigated whether simplified images of fear-relevant stimuli would produce interference with target detection in a visual search task. In Experiment 1, silhouettes and degraded silhouettes of fear-relevant animals produced more interference than did the fear-irrelevant images. Experiment 2, compared the effects of fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant distracters and confirmed that the interference produced by fear-relevant distracters was not an effect of novelty. Experiment 3 suggested that fear-relevant stimuli produced interference regardless of whether participants were instructed as to the content of the images. The three experiments indicate that even very simplistic images of fear-relevant animals can divert attention.     

Accuracy of diagnosis of depression in patients with Type 1 diabetes mellitus

This study assesses the clinical accuracy of physicians (Specialists in Endocrinology and Nutrition: SEN) to make the diagnosis of depression in patients with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1). This study involved 11 SEN physicians, and 153 patients with DM1. The diagnosis of depression was performed using the SCID-1 structured interview and clinical assessment. From the initial sample, 50 patients were randomly selected (imposing the condition that it was included 25 patients with depression and 25 without depression). The results show that clinicians performed a higher percentage of negative diagnoses (patients without depression) than positive ones (patients with depression). A significant percentage of patients with depression were not diagnosed (25%). It therefore seems necessary to provide adequate clinical protocols to evaluate the presence of this disorder in DM1, as well as continuing research into the diagnostic process for clinical decision making.