Socioeconomic status and insomnia

This investigation compared the likelihood of insomnia and insomnia-related health consequences among individuals of different socioeconomic status. A random-digit dialing procedure was used to recruit at least 50 men and 50 women in each age decade from 20 to 80+ years old. Participants completed 2 weeks of sleep diaries as well as questionnaires related to fatigue, sleepiness, and psychological distress. Socioeconomic status was measured by education status assessed at 3 different levels: individual, household, and community. Results indicated that individuals of lower individual and household education were significantly more likely to experience insomnia even after researchers accounted for ethnicity, gender, and age. Additionally, individuals with fewer years of education, particularly those who had dropped out of high school, experienced greater subjective impairment because of their insomnia.     

Generating complex three-dimensional stimuli (Greebles) for haptic expertise training

An apparatus is described that accurately measures response times and video records hand movements during haptic object recognition using complex three-dimensional (3-D) forms. The apparatus was used for training participants to become expert at perceptual judgments of 3-D objects (Greebles) using only their sense of touch. Inspiration came from previous visual experiments, and therefore training and testing protocols that were similar to the earlier visual procedures were used. Two sets of Greebles were created. One set (clay Greebles) was hand crafted from clay, and the other (plastic Greebles) was machine created using rapid prototyping technology. Differences between these object creation techniques and their impact on perceptual expertise training are discussed. The full set of these stimuli may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Measuring Impulsivity in School-Aged Boys and Examining Its Relationship with ADHD and ODD Ratings

Seven different laboratory measures of impulsivity were administered to a group of 165 school-aged boys. Parents' and teachers' ratings of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional/Defiant Disorder were also obtained. Factor analyses of impulsivity measures revealed the existence of a strong Inhibitory Control Factor including measures derived from Stop Task, the Continuous Performance Test, the Matching Familiar Figures Test, and the Circle Tracing Task. Other forms of impulsivity like resistance to interference, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and efficiency in the DRL Task loaded on a second independent factor. The Inhibitory Control factor was correlated with ADHD ratings, whereas the second factor was slightly related to the presence of ODD symptoms. Discussion is focused on the relevance of inhibitory control in impulsivity and ADHD research.     

Computational approaches to the development of perceptual expertise

Dog experts, ornithologists, radiologists and other specialists are noted for their remarkable abilities at categorizing, identifying and recognizing objects within their domain of expertise. A complete understanding of the development of perceptual expertise requires a combination of thorough empirical research and carefully articulated computational theories that formalize specific hypotheses about the acquisition of expertise. A comprehensive computational theory of the development of perceptual expertise remains elusive, but we can look to existing computational models from the object-recognition, perceptual-categorization, automaticity and related literatures for possible starting points. Arguably, hypotheses about the development of perceptual expertise should first be explored within the context of existing computational models of visual object understanding before considering the creation of highly modularized adaptations for particular domains of perceptual expertise.     

The US-preexposure effect in lithium-induced flavor-aversion conditioning is a consequence of blocking by injection cues

In 2 experiments, rats received flavor-aversion conditioning in which the unconditioned stimulus (US) was an orally consumed solution of lithium chloride (LiCl). The resulting aversion was not attenuated by giving preexposure to injections of LiCl, although such preexposure did attenuate aversions established using injected LiCl as the US (Experiment 1). This outcome suggests that blocking by injection-related cues is responsible for the US-preexposure effect observed in this situation. Experiment 2 confirmed this interpretation by showing that presenting such cues (by giving an injection of saline) at the time that the LiCl was drunk resulted in an attenuation of conditioning in animals preexposed to injections of LiCl. The US-preexposure effect obtained in these experiments can be explained solely in terms of blocking by injection cues, although other mechanisms may contribute to the effect seen in other flavor-aversion paradigms.     

Pigeons use item-specific and category-level information in the identification and categorization of human faces

Three experiments examined the pigeon's ability to adapt to the specific tasks of identification and categorization of complex visual stimuli by attending to information at different levels of abstraction. In Experiment 1, pigeons were successively trained to discriminate first between pairs of human faces from the same sex and then between male and female faces. A final test revealed that the associations formed in the first training phase did not survive categorization training, indicating that the pigeons used item-specific information to discriminate faces of the same sex, but shifted their attention to category-level information for discriminating between the male and female categories. Two further experiments disproved alternative explanations. The results support the feature-learning account of open-ended categorization in animals.     

Bouncing Back from Setbacks: On the Mediating Role of Team Resilience in the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Team Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of team resilience on different facets of effectiveness (team viability and quality of the group experience). Moreover, given the importance of team resilience for the organizational context, it was also our aim to contribute to the study of the conditions that promote team resilience, analyzing the role of transformational leadership. Finally, we examined whether the relationship between transformational leadership and team resilience stimulates positive team outcomes. Ninety teams (445 employees from 40 companies) were surveyed and path analysis was used in the test of the hypotheses. The results showed a positive direct effect of team resilience on both team viability and the quality of the group experience. Moreover, a positive relationship was also identified between transformational leadership and team resilience. Finally, support was found for the mediated effect of team resilience on the relationship between transformational leadership and the dimensions of team effectiveness considered. The findings of this study highlight the role of team resilience as an intervening process between transformational leadership and team effectiveness. Supervisors should promote team resilience, adopting transformational leadership behaviors, in order to contribute to increase team viability and the quality of the group experience.     

A novel working memory task for preschoolers: sensitivity to age differences from 3-5 years

Working memory (WM) plays an important role in children’s learning and is linked to later academic and occupational success. Understanding the early development of WM can provide critical clues regarding the underlying structure of executive functions and how they change over the life span. The main objectives of the present study were to (1) investigate age differences in the development of three components of WM (retrieval, substitution, transformation) on a novel preschool WM measure and (2) explore whether findings are consistent with the hierarchical model of WM development by examining perseverative and non-perseverative WM errors. Perseverative errors were hypothesized to be more strongly associated with problems substituting and transforming a representation held in mind, whereas non-perseverative errors were hypothesized to be associated with problems maintaining a representation in mind. Participants were 64 children ranging in age from 3.0 to 5.6 years. The results provide evidence for the sensitivity of the WM task to age differences from 3 to 5 years and support for the hierarchical model of WM development.