Coping with Crisis Across the Lifespan: The Role of a Telephone Hotline

We describe over 300,000 crisis calls made to a large national hotline over a 5-year period. Callers consisted of males and females between the ages of 10 and 89. Overall, a slight majority of callers were first time callers (52%) and most (73%) sought assistance with issues related to parenting, youth concerns, and mental health. Across the lifespan, issues dealing with loneliness increased with age whereas depression-related calls decreased. Additionally, females were more likely than their male counterparts to call the hotline by over a 2- to 1-margin. Findings lend preliminary support to the efficacy of crisis call centers to utilize a flexible, yet well-defined problem-solving approach to assist those of all ages calling with the wide range of problems.     

Time flies like an arrow: Space-time compatibility effects suggest the use of a mental timeline

The concept of time is elusive to direct observation, yet it pervades almost every aspect of our daily lives. How is time represented, given that it cannot be perceived directly? Metaphoric mapping theory assumes that abstract concepts such as time are represented in terms of concrete, readily available dimensions. Consistent with this, many languages employ spatial metaphors to describe temporal relations. Here we investigate whether the timeis-space metaphor also affects visuospatial attention. In a first experiment, subjects categorized the names of actors in a manner compatible or incompatible with the orientation of a timeline. In two further experiments, subjects categorized or detected left- or right-side targets following prospective or retrospective time words. All three experiments show compatibility effects between the dimensions of space (left-right) and time (earlier-later) and indicate that the concept of time does indeed evoke spatial associations that facilitate responses to targets at spatially compatible locations.     

The Nature (and Nurture?) of Plasticity in Early Human Development

ABSTRACT— The effect of early experience is a long-standing concern in developmental psychology. Gaining further insight into the nature of human plasticity is central to efforts to prevent problems in development from arising and promote positive functioning. Evolutionary reasoning suggests that children should vary in their susceptibility to environmental influences, including parenting. Evidence indicates that rather than some children, such as those with negatively emotional temperaments or certain genotypes, being simply more vulnerable to the adverse effects of negative experiences, as commonly assumed, they may actually be more susceptible to both positive and negative experiences. In addition to raising questions about the nature of plasticity in human development, this article highlights unknowns regarding the role of nature and nurture in shaping individual differences in plasticity, including whether recent research linking maternal stress during pregnancy with child behavior problems illuminates a process whereby fetal programming shapes the child's susceptibility to postnatal environmental influences. Throughout this article, we raise concern about the potentially distorting influence that psychology's disproportionate focus on the adverse effect of negative experiences on developmental problems has on our understanding of human plasticity, and we propose that researchers should pay more attention to the positive side of the plasticity equation.     

For Better and For Worse: Differential Susceptibility to Environmental Influences

ABSTRACT— Evidence that adverse rearing environments exert negative effects particularly on children presumed "vulnerable" for temperamental or genetic reasons may actually reflect something else: heightened susceptibility to the negative effects of risky environments and to the beneficial effects of supportive environments. Building on Belsky's (1997, 2005) evolutionary-inspired proposition that some children are more affected—both for better and for worse—by their rearing experiences than are others, we consider recent work on child vulnerability, including that involving measured genes, along with evidence showing that putatively vulnerable children are especially susceptible to both positive and negative rearing effects. We also consider methodological issues and unanswered questions in the differential-susceptibility equation.     

早期经验对繁衍策略形成与发展的影响

很多发展心理学家探讨了早期经验与心理行为发展的关系,但这些发展心理学家较少以进化理论为指导来探讨不同发展阶段的心理行为特点。比如,配偶选择、性交往与父母教养等成果颇丰的研究领域均缺少以进化理论为基础的理论解释。与主流的发展心理学研究不同,Draper和Harpending (1982),Ellis (2004),Chisholm (1996) 和Belsky等(1991)以进化理论为基础探讨了早期经验与繁衍策略对儿童心理行为发展的影响。进化观点认为儿童在家庭中获得的早期经验会影响身体发育与未来的繁衍策略。Ellis（2004）已经证实女性青春期确实与早期家庭经验有关     

Child-care history, classroom composition, and children's functioning in kindergarten

Previous research indicates that exposure to nonparental child care at an earlier age and for more hours predicts, at the individual level, more aggressive and disobedient behavior and greater school preparedness. The present study extended child-care research by investigating classroom-composition effects, that is, effects of the combined child-care histories of all the children in the classroom. Analyses showed that effects at the individual level aggregate at the classroom level: Kindergarten children with limited or no child-care history exhibited more externalizing behavior (e.g., fighting and arguing) and higher academic achievement when schooled in classrooms with more peers who had extensive child-care histories.     

Analytic Expressions for the BCDMEM Model of Recognition Memory

We introduce a Fourier transformation technique that enables one to derive closed-form expressions of performance measures (e.g., hit and false alarm rates) of simulation-based models of recognition memory. Application of the technique is demonstrated using the bind cue decide model of episodic memory (BCDMEM; [Dennis, S., & Humphreys, M.S. (2001). A context noise model of episodic word recognition. Psychological Review, 108(2), 452-478]). In addition to reducing the time required to test the model, which for models like BCDMEM can be excessive, asymptotic expressions of the measures reveal heretofore unknown properties of the model, such as model predictions being dependent on vector length.     

Memory decreases for prose,but not for poetry

Memory for details of text generally declines relatively rapidly, whereas memory for propositional and context-based meanings is generally more resilient over time. In the present study, we investigated short-term memory for two kinds of verbal material: prose and poetry. Participants heard or read prose stories or poems in which aphrase near the start of the passage served as a target. The text continued, and after various delays, memory was tested with a repetition of the target (old verbatim; O), a paraphrased lure (P), or a lure in which the meaning was changed. For prose, memory for surface details (as measured by O/P discrimination) declined over time (Experiments 2-4), as was expected. For poetry, memory for surface details (O/P discrimination) did not decline with increasing delay (Experiments 1, 3, and 4). This lack of decline in memory for the surface details of poetry is discussed in relation to similar results previously observed for musical excerpts (Dowling, Tillmann, & Ayers, 2001), suggesting that a particular role is played by the temporal organization and rhythmic structure of poetry andmusic.