Spatio-temporal constraints on upright children's coordination when hitting a moving target

To determine if the spatial and/or temporal context affected the coordination patterns of children under five in upright interceptive tasks, 3-year-olds hit a ball dropped from a ramp from five heights (1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, and 3.5 m) to control drop time. We studied the initiation time of hitting a ball with a cinematic analysis of the different joint movements (foot, knee, hip, shoulder, and hand). Two patterns of joint coordination were observed according to the rolling height of the ball: a de-synchronized pattern for heights of 2 m or above where the foot was the first to move and the hand the last, and a “synchronized” pattern, for the lowest height (1.5 m) where all joints started moving at the same time due to a strong temporal pressure. These two coordination patterns highlight a functional adaptation of body joints according to the spatio-temporal constraints among children from the age of three.     

On the origins of the conceptual system

Contrary to the conventional view of infancy as a sensorimotor period without conceptual thought, research over the past 20 years has shown that preverbal infants are capable of at least 3 conceptual functions: forming concepts with which to interpret the world, recall of the past, and engaging in conceptual generalization. Research is described indicating that the 1st concepts tend to be global in scope, such as animal or container, and that the course of conceptual development in the first 2 years is largely one of differentiating global concepts into more detailed concepts, such as dog or cup. A theory of how the 1st global concepts are formed from spatial information is briefly presented, including (a) a mechanism that redescribes spatial information into simpler but accessible form and (b) the primitives it uses for this purpose. Finally, the way concepts become more complex by means of language and analogical extension to nonspatial information is discussed.     

Students’ Perceptions of School Climate During the Middle School Years: Associations with Trajectories of Psychological and Behavioral Adjustment

A cross-domain latent growth curve model was used to examine the trajectories of change in student perceptions of four critical dimensions of school climate (i.e., teacher support, peer support, student autonomy in the classroom, and clarity and consistency in school rules and regulations) among 1,451 early adolescents from the beginning of sixth through the end of eighth grade; and the effects of such trajectories on the rate of change in psychological and behavioral adjustment. Findings indicated that all of the dimensions of perceived school climate declined over the 3 years of middle school. Furthermore, declines in each of the dimensions of perceived school climate were associated with declines over time in psychological and behavioral adjustment. Moreover, the direction of effects between each dimension of perceived school climate and psychological or behavioral adjustment were often unidirectional rather than bi-directional, underscoring the role of perceived school climate in the psychological and behavioral health of early adolescents. Gender and socioeconomic class differences in these patterns are noted.     

Five personality factors and sex: preliminary findings

This study assessed the relationships between the Big Five personality domains, attitudes to sex, and three specific sexual behaviours. Respondents were 123 undergraduate students (51 males; 72 females). Men were found to score significantly higher than women on measures of sexual curiosity and sexual excitement, while women were higher on sexual satisfaction. Neuroticism (N) and Extraversion (E) appeared to be the most important predictors of attitudes to sex, although Conscientiousness (C) and Openness to experience (O) were also implicated. N, C, and Agreeableness (A) were implicated in sexual behaviours. Some suggestions for future research are made.     

Grief Therapy: An Experiential Workshop

The authors conducted a workshop at a family therapy conference in South Africa in 1997 to explore the use of healing rituals in grief work. There were two levels involved: First, an experiential workshop, and, second, a metalevel in exploring the use of rituals as a rite of passage to facilitate transitions. A draft of the authors' paper was sent to all participants for their comments, which are included in the text.     

Sounds change four-dot masking

The temporal occurrence of a flash can be shifted towards a slightly offset sound (temporal ventriloquism). Here we examined whether four-dot masking is affected by this phenomenon. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that there is release from four-dot masking if two sounds - one before the target and one after the mask - are presented at ∼100 ms intervals rather than at ∼0 ms intervals or a silent condition. In Experiment 2, we show that the release from masking originates from an alerting effect of the first sound, and a temporal ventriloquist effect from the first and second sounds that lengthened the perceived interval between target and mask, thereby leaving more time for the target to consolidate. Results thus show that sounds penetrate the visual system at more than one level.     

Visual objects can potentiate a grasping neural simulation which interferes with manual response execution

Previous studies on visuomotor priming have provided insufficient information to determine whether the reach-to-grasp potentiation of a non-target object produces a specific effect during response execution. In order to answer this question, subjects were instructed to reach and grasp a response device with either a power or a precision grip, depending on whether the stimulus they saw was empty or full. Stimuli consisted of containers (graspable with either a power or a precision grip), with non-graspable stimuli added as a control condition (geometrical shapes). The image of the non-target object was removed during the execution phase. Results demonstrate slower execution responses related to motor incompatibility, though conversely, no faster responses with motor compatibility. Moreover, any visuomotor priming effect required that the container be displayed during response execution. These data suggest that during response execution, motor incompatibility produces a disruptive effect likely due to competition between two cerebral events: motor control of the actual response execution and visual object reach-to-grasp neural simulation.     

Coping, competence, and aggression prevention: Part 1. Developmental model

According to coping-competence theory, current challenge encounters determine future life outcomes and competence. This theory provides a testable causal model of the development of persistent aggression. The model suggests that protective circumstances enable resilient youth to cope prosocially (helping self without harming others) even with uncontrollable challenges. Unprepared for language-based prosocial coping, high-risk youths' antisocial coping yields adverse life outcomes (e.g., school expulsion, teen pregnancy, police arrest). Each adverse outcome increases future antisocial coping, threatens future competence (i.e., self-definition, social reputation, dominant coping strategy), and aggravates status on risk-protection variables (i.e., parent warmth and skill, child temperament and intelligence). The same structural model may apply across the lifespan with changes in indicators and weighting of constructs during key developmental transitions. Part 2 presents the model's prevention implications.     

Maternal odor shapes rapid face categorization in the infant brain

To successfully interact with a rich and ambiguous visual environment, the human brain learns to differentiate visual stimuli and to produce the same response to subsets of these stimuli despite their physical difference. Although this visual categorization function is traditionally investigated from a unisensory perspective, its early development is inherently constrained by multisensory inputs. In particular, an early‐maturing sensory system such as olfaction is ideally suited to support the immature visual system in infancy by providing stability and familiarity to a rapidly changing visual environment. Here, we test the hypothesis that rapid visual categorization of salient visual signals for the young infant brain, human faces, is shaped by another highly relevant human‐related input from the olfactory system, the mother's body odor. We observe that a right‐hemispheric neural signature of single‐glance face categorization from natural images is significantly enhanced in the maternal versus a control odor context in individual 4‐month‐old infant brains. A lack of difference between odor conditions for the common brain response elicited by both face and non‐face images rules out a mere enhancement of arousal or visual attention in the maternal odor context. These observations show that face‐selective neural activity in infancy is mediated by the presence of a (maternal) body odor, providing strong support for multisensory inputs driving category acquisition in the developing human brain and having important implications for our understanding of human perceptual development.