Decision-making in healthy children, adolescents and adults explained by the use of increasingly complex proportional reasoning rules

In the standard Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), participants have to choose repeatedly from four options. Each option is characterized by a constant gain, and by the frequency and amount of a probabilistic loss. Crone and van der Molen (2004) reported that school-aged children and even adolescents show marked deficits in IGT performance. In this study, we have re-analyzed the data with a multivariate normal mixture analysis to show that these developmental changes can be explained by a shift from unidimensional to multidimensional proportional reasoning (Siegler, 1981; Jansen & van der Maas, 2002). More specifically, the results show a gradual shift with increasing age from (a) guessing with a slight tendency to consider frequency of loss to (b) focusing on frequency of loss, to (c) considering both frequency and amount of probabilistic loss. In the latter case, participants only considered options with low-frequency loss and then chose the option with the lowest amount of loss. Performance improved in a reversed task, in which punishment was placed up front and gain was delivered unexpectedly. In this reversed task, young children are guessing with already a slight tendency to consider both the frequency and amount of gain; this strategy becomes more pronounced with age. We argue that these findings have important implications for the interpretation of IGT performance, as well as for methods to analyze this performance.     

Appraisal Underpinnings of Affective Chronometry: The Role of Appraisals in Emotion Habituation

ABSTRACT In light of the lack of studies examining the cognitive components of affective chronometry, this research examined the appraisals associated with emotion habituation, using anger as the emotion of focus. Anger and its appraisals were assessed repeatedly over a day in the participants' naturalistic contexts. The trajectory of decline in anger over time after its first appearance was found to be a function of chronic coping styles. More importantly, the trajectories of anger-related appraisals generally corresponded to that of anger and were also moderated by coping styles in ways consistent with the moderating effects of coping styles on anger. Implications of these results for affective chronometry research and for appraisal research are discussed.     

Developmental history of care and control,depression and anger: Correlates of maternal sensitivity in toddlerhood

This study examined maternal sensitivity in response to toddler distress in relation to mothers' childhood care and control experiences with parents, maternal depression, and maternal anger. Fifty‐two mothers and infants participated. Mothers reported childhood care and control experiences prenatally. At 2½ years, mothers reported depressive symptoms and anger on questionnaires, and reported maternal behavior in a daily diary for 1 week, yielding ratings of maternal sensitivity to fear and anger. Results were as follows: (a) Mothers' acceptance during childhood correlated negatively with both maternal depression and maternal anger, and positively with maternal sensitivity to fear at 2½ years; (b) maternal anger mediated the association between childhood care and maternal sensitivity to fear at 2½ years; and (c) the interaction of maternal and paternal control during childhood predicted maternal sensitivity to anger at 2½ years, controlling for maternal education. When maternal control was low, paternal control was positively associated with maternal sensitivity to anger whereas when maternal control was high, paternal control was negatively associated with maternal sensitivity to anger. Results are discussed in relation to prior studies, with particular emphasis on attachment theory. Implications for preventive intervention efforts are considered.     

A novel technology for investigating the dynamics of infant perseverative reaching

We designed and tested a novel technology that enables us to capture the entire stream of behavior in perseverative reaching tasks. Beyond fitting the criteria of the conventional A-not-B task, the novel technology gives us better access to the core features of perseverative reaching, such as timing, behavior history, and reinforcement. The technology allows us to quantitatively manipulate reinforcement characteristics, to accurately program onsets, delays, and stimulus durations as well as locations and salience of the targets, and to automatically record the number of reaches to each target and compute timing. We did a validation study on this new technology, investigating the influence of a number of novel factors on perseverative reaching. We replicated the A-not-B phenomenon and associated developmental changes. In addition, results demonstrated that the new technology offers insights into infants' behavior beyond the first reaching action. Moreover, data collection is fully automated, yielding precise, quantitative data. Future studies using this technology will capitalize on the salient advantages of this technology to more precisely measure goal-directed actions and understand the development of reaching skill.     

Rule transition on the balance scale task: a case study in belief change

For various domains in proportional reasoning cognitive development is characterized as a progression through a series of increasingly complex rules. A multiplicative relationship between two task features, such as weight and distance information of blocks placed at both sides of the fulcrum of a balance scale, appears difficult to discover. During development, children change their beliefs about the balance scale several times: from a focus on the weight dimension (Rule I) to occasionally considering the distance dimension (Rule II), guessing (Rule III), and applying multiplication (Rule IV; Siegler, 1981). Because of the detailed empirical findings the balance scale task has become a benchmark task for computational models of proportional reasoning. In this article, we present a large empirical study (N = 420) of which the findings provide a challenge for computational models. The effect of feedback and the effect of individually adapted training items on rule transition were tested for children using Rule I or Rule II. Presenting adapted training items initiates belief revision for Rule I but not for Rule II. The experience of making mistakes (by providing feedback) induces a change for both Rule I and Rule II. However, a delayed posttest shows that these changes are preserved after 2 weeks only for children using Rule I. We conclude that the transition from Rule I to Rule II differs from the transition from Rule II to a more complex rule. Concerning these empirical findings, we will review performance of computational models and the implications for a future belief revision model.

It is one Thing, to show a Man that he is in an Error, and another, to put him in possession of Truth. John Locke

     

The effect of linguistic abstraction on interpersonal distance

It is well known that people describe positive behaviors of others close to them (e.g., in‐group member, friend) in abstract terms, but with concrete terms in the case of people who they are not close to (e.g., out‐group member, enemy). In contrast, negative behaviors of people who we are close to are described in concrete terms, but in abstract terms for people who are distant. However, the communicative impact of such subtle differences in language use on a receiver who is also the actor of the behavior being described has never been addressed. We hypothesized and found that a positive abstract message compared to a positive concrete message leads to perceived proximity to the sender, while a negative abstract message compared to a negative concrete message leads to perceived distance. The implications of this study, which is the first to show the communicative impact of biased language use, are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Restoring identity through outgroup helping: beliefs about international aid in response to the December 2004 tsunami

In this paper, the December 2004 tsunami tragedy was used as a background to investigate beliefs about intergroup helping. The general aim of the research was to test the proposal that helping can be used to reaffirm a threatened social identity. Two experiments conducted with Dutch participants (N = 78 and N = 73) tested the hypothesis that a threatened Dutch national identity would result in stronger preferences for help to the victims of the tsunami, but only in a domain that is positively and distinctly related to that national identity (i.e. water management). Results from both studies confirmed this hypothesis. Study 2 also showed a reversal of this effect in a domain negatively related to that identity. Moreover, perceived identity threat in Study 2 reduced over time in the high threat condition but not in the low threat condition, and this reduction was positively associated with the endorsement of water management help. Also, as predicted, in both studies a threatened national identity resulted in stronger beliefs that Dutch relief organisations should stay in control over their aid. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Extensions of Rasch's multiplicative poisson model

Consideration will be given to a model developed by Rasch that assumes scores observed on some types of attainment tests can be regarded as realizations of a Poisson process. The parameter of the Poisson distribution is assumed to be a product of two other parameters, one pertaining to the ability of the subject and a second pertaining to the difficulty of the test. Rasch's model is expanded by assuming a prior distribution, with fixed but unknown parameters, for the subject parameters. The test parameters are considered fixed. Secondly, it will be shown how additional between- and within-subjects factors can be incorporated. Methods for testing the fit and estimating the parameters of the model will be discussed, and illustrated by empirical examples.