Thai Norms for Name,Image, and Category Agreement,Object Familiarity,Visual Complexity,Manipulability, and Age of Acquisition for 480 Color Photographic Objects

Normative databases containing psycholinguistic variables are commonly used to aid stimulus selection for investigations into language and other cognitive processes. Norms exist for many languages, but not for Thai. The aim of the present research, therefore, was to obtain Thai normative data for the BOSS, a set of 480 high resolution color photographic images of real objects (Brodeur et al. in PLoS ONE 5(5), 2010.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010773). Norms were provided by 584 Thai university students on eight dimensions: name agreement, object familiarity, visual complexity, category agreement, image agreement, two types of manipulability (graspability and mimeability), and age of acquisition. The results revealed comparatively similar levels of name agreement to Brodeur et al. especially when unfamiliar items were factored out. The pattern of intercorrelations among the Thai psycholinguistic norms was comparable to previous studies and our cross-linguistic correlations were robust for the same set of pictures in English and French. Conjointly, the findings extend the relevancy of the BOSS to Thailand, supporting this photographic resource for investigations of language and other cognitive processes in monolingual, multilingual, and brain-impaired populations.     

Defending and reducing belief in memories: An experimental laboratory analogue

When receiving disconfirmatory social feedback about recollected events, people sometimes defend and sometimes reduce their belief that the event genuinely occurred. To improve estimates of the rates of memory defense and reduction, and of the magnitude of the change in belief in occurrence that results, in the present studies we examined the effect of disconfirmatory social challenges made to correctly recalled memories for actions performed in the lab. Adult participants performed, imagined, or heard action statements and imagined some of the initial actions multiple times. One week later, they completed a source-monitoring test and rated the actions on belief in their occurrence, recollection, visual detail, vividness, and reexperiencing. Four of the correctly recalled performed actions were challenged either prior to making the ratings during the test (Study 1, N = 44) or after making initial ratings after completing the test, following which the ratings were taken again (Study 2, N = 85). Across both studies, challenges were associated with lower belief-in-occurrence and recollection ratings on average than for control items, and belief in occurrence was affected to a greater extent than recollective features. Challenges that occurred during the test produced more instances of defense, whereas challenges that occurred after the test produced more instances of reduction. A closer analysis showed that some participants always defended, some always reduced, and some both defended and reduced belief. Responses to the first challenge positively predicted the responses to subsequent challenges. In addition, the procedure in Study 2 produced a variety of types of nonbelieved memories.     

Distilling Heterogeneity among Children with Disruptive Behavior: Associations between Symptom Patterns and Social Functioning

Children with disruptive behavior (DB) are a heterogeneous group who exhibit several characteristics that may contribute to poor social functioning. The present study identified profiles of reactive aggression, proactive aggression, callous-unemotional (CU) traits, and prosocial behavior in a sample of children with DB. Associations with social functioning (social interaction, social status) were then examined, along with sex differences in profile membership. Parent ratings of 304 clinic-referred children ages 6–12 years with DB were analyzed using latent profile analysis. Five profiles were identified: 1) Moderate prosocial behavior, reactive aggression, and CU, and low proactive aggression (labelled Moderate); 2) Relatively high prosocial behavior and low reactive and proactive aggression and CU traits (Prosocial); 3) High prosocial behavior and reactive aggression, moderate proactive aggression, and low-moderate CU (Reactive-Prosocial); 4) Low prosocial behavior, high CU, high-moderate reactive aggression, and low-moderate proactive aggression (Reactive-CU); and 5) Low prosocial behavior and high reactive and proactive aggression and CU (Aggressive-CU). Profiles characterized by CU traits, reactive aggression, and low prosocial behavior were associated with the most problematic parent-rated social interaction and social status. The results highlight the need to differentiate profiles of psychopathology in children with DB to better address factors most associated with social functioning.     

Towards a better understanding of the relationship between executive control and theory of mind: an intra‐cultural comparison of three diverse samples

Previous research has consistently indicated that theory of mind (ToM) is associated with executive control in the preschool years. However, interpretation of this literature is limited by the fact that most studies have focused exclusively on urbanized Western cultural samples. Consequently, it is not clear whether the association between ToM and executive control reflects the specific features of this particular cohort or instead reflects a universal pattern. The present study provides the first empirical assessment of these two constructs in three diverse groups of Iranian children. Participants were 142 preschoolers (4–5 years old) from high–socioeconomic status (SES) urban (n = 33), low–SES urban (n = 37) and rural villages (n = 77). The results show that there is a robust association between ToM and executive control in all three groups, and that executive control contributes significant unique variance to ToM understanding, even after controlling for a range of variables that have been proposed as potential confounders of this relationship. However, although the three groups were equated in ToM, significant differences in executive control were evident. Moreover, cluster analysis identified three distinct clusters that were relatively homogeneous with respect to executive control and SES. One of these clusters was characterized by both low SES and low executive functioning, and showed little evidence of ToM understanding. Taken together, these findings provide possibly the clearest evidence to date that the association between ToM and executive control is not dependent on children's previous experiences on the tasks, or their family and cultural background. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxh_-3gCB8o