Effects of Stimulant Medication Treatment on Mothers' and Children's Attributions for the Behavior of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Participants were 55 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who were receiving ongoing treatment with stimulant medications and their mothers, and 31 children with ADHD who were beginning stimulant medication and their mothers. Mothers and children offered attributions for child behaviors that occurred when the child was medicated and not medicated. Mothers rated child compliance and prosocial behavior as more global and stable when the child was medicated and rated noncompliance, ADHD symptoms, and oppositional behavior as more externally caused, less global and stable, but more controllable by the child when the child was medicated. Children rated both their compliance and noncompliance as more controllable in the medicated condition. On a forced-choice measure, both mothers and children selected ability, effort, and task attributions for compliance more in the not-medicated condition, and pill-taking attributions more in the medicated condition. This was reversed for noncompliance, which was attributed more to effort, task, or ability in the medicated condition and more to not taking a pill in the not-medicated condition. The potential risks and benefits for parent–child interactions and children's self-perceptions of these medication-related differences in attributions are discussed.     

Conceptualizing control in social cognition: how executive functioning modulates the expression of automatic stereotyping

Two studies investigated the role of executive control in moderating the relationship between automatic stereotype activation and behavioral responses. Race bias in weapon identification was used to measure stereotyping, and a process dissociation procedure was used to measure automatic and controlled components of performance. In Experiment 1, the controlled component was shown to correlate with general attention control and race-specific motivations to control prejudice. Across multiple measures, automatic race bias was more likely to be expressed as behavioral discrimination among individuals with poor executive control. Experiment 2 found the same relationship between automatic and controlled components of behavior when predicting impressions of a Black individual. Executive control is discussed in the context of other control strategies in influential dual-process models of stereotyping.     

Reaction time and accuracy in individuals with aphasia during auditory vigilance tasks

Research indicates that attentional deficits exist in aphasic individuals. However, relatively little is known about auditory vigilance performance in individuals with aphasia. The current study explores reaction time (RT) and accuracy in 10 aphasic participants and 10 nonbrain-damaged controls during linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory vigilance tasks. Findings indicate that the aphasic group was less accurate during both tasks than the control group, but was not slower in their accurate responses. Further examination of the data revealed variability in the aphasic participants' RT contributing to the lower accuracy scores.     

Sleep, dreams, and memory consolidation: the role of the stress hormone cortisol

We discuss the relationship between sleep, dreams, and memory, proposing that the content of dreams reflects aspects of memory consolidation taking place during the different stages of sleep. Although we acknowledge the likely involvement of various neuromodulators in these phenomena, we focus on the hormone cortisol, which is known to exert influence on many of the brain systems involved in memory. The concentration of cortisol escalates over the course of the night's sleep, in ways that we propose can help explain the changing nature of dreams across the sleep cycle.     

Something from nothing: exploring dimensions of children's knowing through the repeated reading of favourite books

Witte‐Townsend and DiGiulio explore some of the dimensions of knowing that children, teachers and parents may engage together during story‐time. They reflect on some of their own long‐term relationships with children and children's books, especially Phoebe Gilman's Gilman P 1992 Something from nothing (New York, NY, Scholastic Inc)  [Google Scholar] Something from nothing (published in 1992) and Simms Taback's Taback S 1999 Joseph had a little overcoat (New York, NY, Viking‐Penguin)  [Google Scholar] Joseph had a little overcoat, published in 1999. The authors probe issues such as why children ask to hear a favourite story over and over and why they suddenly abandon all interest and move on to a new book. They explore the meaning of the silences that sometimes arise during story‐time, pooling around the young listeners as the last words of the book are read. Witte‐Townsend and DiGiulio remind us of the value of literature in the lives of children and they affirm that the reading and re‐reading of favourite stories enables the understanding of complex human issues and contributes significantly to social, emotional and spiritual growth.     

The generality of working memory capacity: a latent-variable approach to verbal and visuospatial memory span and reasoning

A latent-variable study examined whether verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) capacity measures reflect a primarily domain-general construct by testing 236 participants in 3 span tests each of verbal WM. visuospatial WM, verbal short-term memory (STM), and visuospatial STM. as well as in tests of verbal and spatial reasoning and general fluid intelligence (Gf). Confirmatory' factor analyses and structural equation models indicated that the WM tasks largely reflected a domain-general factor, whereas STM tasks, based on the same stimuli as the WM tasks, were much more domain specific. The WM construct was a strong predictor of Gf and a weaker predictor of domain-specific reasoning, and the reverse was true for the STM construct. The findings support a domain-general view of WM capacity, in which executive-attention processes drive the broad predictive utility of WM span measures, and domain-specific storage and rehearsal processes relate more strongly to domain-specific aspects of complex cognition.     

Perceptual judgements of others' tasting experiences: are they enjoying their food?

Motivated by previous work suggesting that infants make stereotypic facial reactions to different tastes, we assessed communicative signals that might enable an adult to interpret the strength, taste, and hedonic value of a liquid flavour another adult is consuming. Four subjects (tasters) were overtly videoed consuming drinks that varied in strength (low, medium, and high concentrations), taste (sweet, sour, bitter, and salty), and hedonic value (taster-rated enjoyment). 26 observers assessed the strength, taste, and taster's enjoyment of the drink from video clips of the tasters. Observers perceived the hedonic value of the drinks to the taster and the drinks' strength based on the tasters' reactions but were generally poor at assessing the specific taste of the drink. For all tastes except the bitter ones, observers might have based their judgements of taste on how much the taster appeared to enjoy the drink. These findings are discussed in terms of communication of food's value.     

Civic religion in England: Traditions and transformations

As the religious diversity of English towns and cities has grown over the past thirty years due to the establishment in some places of sizeable communities of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, as well as other faiths, there have been important changes to local public religion. Traditional civic ceremonies, such as Remembrance Sunday, as well as new forms of civic celebration and commemoration, are now increasingly taking account of the diversity of faiths represented in Britain. This paper examines the consequences of religious diversity for English civic religion by looking at some of the traditions of civic ceremonies in England and at the way in which they have been transformed by the changing religious landscape of towns and cities. The paper also explores some of the dilemmas and questions that have emerged both for the Church of England as well as for the other faith communities when it comes to the design and delivery of civic ceremonies.