Temperament and Vulnerability to Psychopathology: Introduction to the Special Section

Several authors have highlighted associations with temperament as promising avenues for understanding vulnerability to psychopathology (e.g., Muris and Ollendick, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 8, 271–289, 2005; Nigg, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 47, 395–422, 2006). The successful integration of models of temperament and models of psychopathology will undoubtedly increase our understanding of both. The current special section intends to present important new ideas and evidence in this field and tries to formulate answers to a couple of emerging questions. To set the stage for the papers, we provide a brief state of the art of research on temperament—psychopathology associations. After that, we discuss emerging questions in the field, some of which are addressed in the papers of this special section. To conclude, we point out a couple of future research perspectives.     

Phantom Behavioral Assimilation Effects: Systematic Biases in Social Comparison Choice Studies

ABSTRACT Consistent with social comparison theory (SCT), Blanton, Buunk, Gibbons, and Kuyper (1999) and Huguet, Dumas, Monteil, and Genestoux (2001) found that students tended to choose comparison targets who slightly outperformed them (i.e., upward comparison choices), and this had a beneficial effect on subsequent performance—a behavioral assimilation effect (BAE). We show (Studies 1 and 2) that this apparent BAE is due, in part, to uncontrolled measurement error in pretest achievement. However, using simulated data (Study 3), these phantom BAEs were eliminated with latent‐variable models with multiple indicators. In Studies 4 and 5, latent‐variable models were applied to the Blanton et al. and Huguet et al. data, resulting in substantially smaller but still significantly positive BAEs. More generally in personality research based on correlational data, failure to control measurement error in pretest/background variables will positively bias the apparent effects of personality variables of interest, but widely applicable approaches demonstrated here can correct for these biases.     

Competencies for infant mental health therapists: A survey of expert opinion

We report on data provided by a nationwide panel of 23 infant mental health (IMH) experts who provided numerical ratings of the relative importance of 143 competencies desirable for licensed mental health therapists working with infants/children birth to 5 years of age and their families/caregivers. The competencies were developed based on prior state and national efforts and our own experience in training IMH therapists. The competencies were grouped conceptually into seven areas: (a) Normal infant and toddler development; (b) Atypical development (perturbations in development); (c) Emotional/behavioral disorders in infants and young children; (d) Assessment; (e) Intervention; (f) Community resources and referrals; and (g) Organization, communication, and collaboration. We calculated means, SDs, 95% confidence intervals to rank order each competency. We conducted reliability analyses and tested for mean differences in ratings for the seven areas. Interrater and intraclass correlations were modest, likely the result of restriction of range in the ratings. The seven areas showed high levels of internal consistency and, with few exceptions, did not significantly differ in the means of their ratings. The utility of the competencies are discussed as a framework for training and professional development for IMH clinicians.     

The control of visual attention and its influence on prioritized processing in a location negative priming paradigm

In a location-based negative priming paradigm, the possibility of a disengagement option of the underlying inhibitory mechanism was tested. Whereas in previous studies disengagement was observed when providing utility information about the probe trial structure, in the present study the allocation of visual attention to the stimuli was manipulated. In the first step an automatic deployment of visual attention was implemented by presenting all stimuli as abrupt onsets (Experiment 1), which demonstrated commonly observed negative priming effects. In further conditions of non-automatic allocation of visual attention in which target and distractor were presented as no-onset stimuli, negative priming effects were eliminated (Experiments 2 and 3). The preferred interpretation is that in conditions of automatic control of attention, target and distractor compete for control of action. A non-automatic control of visual attention, on the other hand, leads to a top-down modulated selection, which results in prioritized target encoding and a loss of distractor impact on the selection process. Alternative accounts and the role of no-onset distractor processing were investigated in Experiment 4.     

The processing of free and bound gender-marked morphemes in speech production: evidence from Dutch

In many languages, the production of noun phrases requires the selection of gender-marked elements like determiners or inflectional suffixes. There is a recent debate as to whether the selection of freestanding gender-marked elements, such as determiners, follows the same processing mechanisms as the selection of bound gender-marked morphemes, such as adjective suffixes. Most of the evidence on which this debate is based relates to the gender-congruency effect in picture-word interference experiments. In the present article, the authors address this issue with a pure picture-naming task, extending previous work in German (H. Schriefers, J. D. Jescheniak, & A. Hantsch, 2005). The results of the present study on noun phrase production in Dutch show that both types of gender-marked morphemes are selected via the same basic processing mechanisms.     

Age-related changes in deferred imitation between 6 and 9 months of age

Six- and 9-month-old human infants were tested in a deferred imitation paradigm in which an experimenter performed a single action with a novel object. Although infants of both ages imitated the action when tested immediately, only the 9-month-olds exhibited imitation after a 24-h delay.     

Total sleep deprivation increases the costs of shifting between simple cognitive tasks

In two experiments we studied the effects of one night of total sleep deprivation on task-shift costs. In different conditions shifts were between types of judgment (extradimensional shifts) and between stimulus-response mappings (intradimensional shifts). In addition, with an alternating-runs procedure we used short and long response-to-stimulus intervals and also external precues to vary the opportunities for advance configuration of task sets. Under all conditions sleep deprivation increased shift costs derived from the 20% slowest reaction times, which were insensitive to the opportunities for advance configuration. Shift costs derived from the 20% fastest reaction times were increased only for extradimensional shifts. As indicated by congruency effects, the increase of shift costs after a night without sleep cannot be attributed to increased interference between competing task sets. The findings suggest that total sleep deprivation increases task-set instability and thus lapsing, in particular in conditions with long stimulus-to-response intervals and in shift trials. In addition total sleep deprivation seems to increase the duration of an exogenously controlled process involved in extradimensional shifts.     

Mood states during a successful world record underwater diving attempt

The mood states of a diver were recorded over a period of almost 10 days of submersion. Scores on the Profile of Mood States obtained on the components of Depression, Anger, and Confusion suggested that there were no signs of psychological disintegration over this period. As expected, scores on Fatigue increased whereas perceived Vigor diminished over time. High Esteem remained consistent. It is proposed that profiling of mood states can be a useful monitoring tool of an acclimatization process.     

Semantic competition between hierarchically related words during speech planning

There is overwhelming evidence that during speech planning semantically related words become lexically activated and compete for selection with the to-be-produced target word. The vast majority of this evidence stems from studies using the picture-word task, in which a distractor word (e.g., bird) drawn from the same semantic category as the target (e.g., fish) was shown to inhibit the picture-naming response more strongly than did an unrelated distractor word. By contrast, corresponding evidence from distractor words (e.g., carp) bearing a hierarchical relation to the target (e.g., fish) is sparse and inconclusive. In the present study, we investigated effects of subordinate-level distractors during basic-level naming and effects of basic-level distractors during subordinate-level naming. Hierarchically related distractors were found to inhibit the naming response in both situations. This pattern of results did not depend on whether the pictures were preferably named at the basic level or at the subordinate level. The results suggest that hierarchically related name alternatives compete for selection.