Interactions between color and word processing in a flanker task

To examine interactions between color and word attributes, participants responded, either manually or vocally, to a central target (color patch or word) flanked by a Stroop stimulus. Color and word attributes of the flanker affected both vocal and manual responding to color patches. Color and word flankers also affected manual responding to word targets, but only word flanker affected vocal responding to word targets. These results are not consistent with models (e.g., translational models) of Stroop tasks, which posit that interactions between colors and words occur only when vocal responding is required.     

Direct comparison of episodic encoding and retrieval of words: an event-related fMRI study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare directly episodic encoding and retrieval. During encoding, subjects studied visually presented words and reported via keypress whether each word represented a pleasant or unpleasant concept (intentional, deep encoding). During the retrieval phase, subjects indicated (via keypress) whether visually presented words had previously been studied. No reliable differences were found during the recognition phase for words that had been previously studied and those that had not been studied. Areas preferentially active during encoding (relative to retrieval) included left superior frontal cortex, medial frontal cortex, left superior temporal cortex, posterior cingulate, left parahippocampal gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus. Regions more active in retrieval than encoding included bilateral inferior parietal cortex, bilateral precuneus, right frontal polar cortex, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and right inferior frontal/insular cortex.     

The Role of Schools in Outcomes for Youth: Implications for Children's Mental Health Services Research

We explore the role of schools in children's mental health services research. Recent literature has suggested that schools play an important role in delivering services to children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems. Research in services research, though, has taken a fairly narrow view of which dimensions of school environments are relevant for inclusion in studies. We suggest that a broader view of school environments is appropriate and potentially beneficial to the field. Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological model as a guide, we conceptualize schools as microsystems. Such an approach suggests that all aspects of school environments (treatment as well as non-treatment) are likely to influence many of the outcomes that children's mental health services research frequently targets (e.g., behavioral problems, problematic peer relationships, academic achievement, school attendance). We review literature from a variety of disciplines to suggest relevant features of schools, with particular attention to the role of peer dynamics within schools. We conclude with implications of this expanded conceptualization of schools for children's mental health services research.     

Dispositional and situational goal orientations as discriminators among recreational and competitive league athletes.

The present study examined the relationship between individual goal orientation, motivational team climate, perceived sport competence, and league structure among 216 youth soccer players. It was predicted that competitive league teams would report higher ego-involvement and performance-oriented team climate and lower sport competence than recreational teams. Discriminant analyses indicated that only the mastery-oriented team climate variable differentiated competitive and recreational teams. Athletes who participated in recreational teams reported a greater degree of mastery-oriented climate than competitive league players. The results suggest that athletes' perceptions of situational rather than dispositional aspects of achievement goals are more highly affected by the playing structure present in youth sport teams. The possible psychological benefits derived from the development of a mastery-oriented team climate in sports are discussed.     

Colorless green ideas (can) prime furiously

That similar words can prime one another is not news. However, this phenomenon can be exploited to make inferences about the organization of conceptual representations. What types of similarity matter? Although there is evidence that similarity of function, shape, and even manner of manipulation is reflected in semantic memory, evidence for organization on the basis of color similarity is sparse. This lack of evidence is surprising: Intuition suggests that color is a prominent feature of many object concepts. The research reported here clarifies this puzzle and illustrates the dynamic nature of conceptual representations. Our research demonstrates color-based priming (e.g., "emerald" primes "cucumber") in participants who completed a Stroop color-naming task before a priming task. Notably, the size of the Stroop effect predicted the size of the priming effect. When the order of tasks was reversed, priming effects were eliminated. By demonstrating that both extrinsic and intrinsic factors can influence conceptual activation, our findings have implications for theories of semantic memory.     

Prior Trauma Exposure for Youth in Treatment Foster Care

Very little research has focused on rates of trauma exposure for youth in treatment foster care (TFC). Available research has utilized record review for assessing exposure, which presents limitations for the range of trauma types examined, as records are predominantly focused on abuse and neglect. The current study examines exposure rates and association with emotional and behavioral outcomes for 229 youth in 46 TFC agencies. The youth in this study had exceptionally high rates of trauma exposure by foster parent report, similar to youth in traditional foster care, with nearly half of the sample exposed to four or more types of traumatic events. A composite child abuse and neglect exposure variable was associated with child and adolescent emotional and behavioral outcomes. Implications for services provided as part of TFC are discussed.     

A right visual field advantage for visual processing of manipulable objects

Information about object-associated manipulations is lateralized to left parietal regions, while information about the visual form of tools is represented bilaterally in ventral occipito-temporal cortex. It is unknown how lateralization of motor-relevant information in left-hemisphere dorsal stream regions may affect the visual processing of manipulable objects. We used a lateralized masked priming paradigm to test for a right visual field (RVF) advantage in tool processing. Target stimuli were tools and animals, and briefly presented primes were identical to or scrambled versions of the targets. In Experiment 1, primes were presented either to the left or to the right of the centrally presented target, while in Experiment 2, primes were presented in one of eight locations arranged radially around the target. In both experiments, there was a RVF advantage in priming effects for tool but not for animal targets. Control experiments showed that participants were at chance for matching the identity of the lateralized primes in a picture?Cword matching experiment and also ruled out a general RVF speed-of-processing advantage for tool images. These results indicate that the overrepresentation of tool knowledge in the left hemisphere affects visual object recognition and suggests that interactions between the dorsal and ventral streams occurs during object categorization.