Dimensions of Early Childhood Behavior Problems: Stability and Predictors of Change from 18 to 30 Months

The prevalence, structure, stability, and predictors of change in early behavior problems were examined in a population-based sample of Norwegian children at 18 and 30 months of age (N = 750). A clear factor structure involving four dimensions emerged at both assessment times: Two factors were characterized by externalizing behaviors and were labeled Social Adjustment and Overactive-Inattentive; one factor tapped internalizing problems and was labeled Emotional Adjustment; and the fourth, related to general immaturity, was labeled Regulation. Specific patterns of child and family risk factors were associated with stability and change over the two time points for each factor. Children with stable problems had the most problematic characteristics on all significant predictors, followed by children with problems at one, but not both, time points. The data suggest that it is possible to identify risk factors for stable problems at 18 months, allowing some prediction of those children whose problems will persist over early childhood. Since specific risk factors emerged for specific types of behavior problems, the results may provide some much-needed guidance to early intervention efforts.     

The New Learning Environment and Adult Developmental Needs

The link between an adult's learning capabilities and an organization's learning and adaptation is highlighted in this study of workers in a new training program. Studies have found that worker productivity differences are rooted in psychological factors. The most successful firms have supportive workplace psychologies that foster perspective transformation, yield high productivity, high involvement, high job satisfaction, low cost, and high profits. This study suggests the importance of workers having a whole-organization perspective. The findings of this study are generalizable to other organizations making the transition from training to learning in which individuals learn to continuously grow, develop, and problem solve to the benefit of all.     

Children’s use of phonological encoding when reading for meaning

The role of phonological recoding in children’s reading was investigated by means of a task requiring comprehension of sentence meaning: The child’s task was to decide whether a sequence of printed letter strings was a meaningful sentence or not. Meaningless sentences that are meaningful when phonologically recoded (e.g., “He ran threw the street”) produced more incorrect responses than did meaningless sentences that remain meaningless when phonologically recoded (e.g., “He ran sew the street”). The difference in error rates between the two sentence types diminished as a function of age. Control experiments showed that these results were not due to visual similarity effects, nor to imperfect ability to spell homophones. It was concluded that very young readers rely extensively on phonological recoding when reading for meaning; as they grow older, reliance on visual encoding becomes progressively more important.     

Affective state mediates causal attributions for success and failure

The influence of affect on causal attributions for success and failure was examined in this experiment. A positive, neurtral, or negative mood was induced in subjects who then learned they had either succeeded or failed an aptitude test taken previously. Relative to neutral mood control conditions, subjects in both positive and negative mood conditions showed a pronounced self-serving bias, particularly following success. The finding is interpreted as self-regulation of affective state. Specifically, causal attribution of success to internal factors can sustain or enhance positive affect; attribution of failure to external factors can diminish negative affect. Ancillary analyses corroborated this interpretation.     

Adaptation in distance perception with head-movement parallax serving as the veridical cue

When head-movement parallax functioned as the sole veridical distance cue during exposure to spectacles that altered the eyes’ oculomotor adjustments, sizable adaptation was obtained. This result showed that a discrimination of the distances of 60 and 30 cm can be based on head-movement parallax. Using adaptation in demonstrating that head-movement parallax can serve as a distance cue circumvents the problem that the presence of accommodation normally presents when such a demonstration is attempted. The usual contamination of head-movement parallax with accommodation is avoided, because accommodation is altered by the spectacles and does pot function as a veridical cue along with head-movement parallax.     

Cognitive styles in the development of medical careers

Recent research has shown that academic choice and achievement may be partly a function of the student's standing on the field-dependence-independence cognitive-style dimension. The results of two longitudinal studies suggest that information about field dependence-independence may be of value for student guidance in the medical setting. The first, a study of college undergraduates who early expressed an interest in medicine, showed that these cognitive styles play a discernible role in determining who will eventually enter medical school. The second, a study of medical students, showed that field-dependent and field-independent students subsequently tend to choose different medical specialties. These results are consistent with cognitive-style theory, which proposes that field-independent people will choose vocations that require cognitive restructuring skills, whereas field-dependent people will choose vocations that require greater social-interpersonal involvement.     

Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/and /l/: Long-term retention of learning in perception and production

Previous work from our laboratories has shown that monolingual Japanese adults who were given intensive high-variability perceptual training improved in both perception and production of English /r/-/l/ minimal pairs. In this study, we extended those findings by investigating the long-term retention of learning in both perception and production of this difficult non-native contrast. Results showed that 3 months after completion of the perceptual training procedure, the Japanese trainees maintained their improved levels of performance on the perceptual identification task. Furthermore, perceptual evaluations by native American English listeners of the Japanese trainees’ pretest, posttest, and 3-month follow-up speech productions showed that the trainees retained their long-term improvements in the general quality, identifiability, and overall intelligibility of their English /r/-/l/ word productions. Taken together, the results provide further support for the efficacy of high-variability laboratory speech sound training procedures, and suggest an optimistic outlook for the application of such procedures for a wide range of “special populations.” nt]mis|This work was supported by NIDCD Training Grant DC-00012 and by NIDCD Research Grant DC-00111 to Indiana University.     

Fluency disruption in speech and in wind instrument playing

A case of an adult who stutters and complains of a similar fluency problem when playing the trombone is reported. This is the fourth such report, with previous cases involving trumpet, flute, and horn playing.     

Measurement of activity in small animals using a microcomputer-controlled system

A computer-controlled system that detects spontaneous activity (locomotion and rearing) and diurnal activity rhythms in small animals is described. Automatic recording of subtotals during test periods provides data about habituation (nonassociative learning). The system is relatively inexpensive to construct. Fabricated from highly reliable circuit components, it provides replicable measures that enable comparisons between different experimental treatments to be made using parametric statistics.