Correlates of attachment at age 3: construct validity of the preschool attachment classification system

This study examined correlates of attachment at age 3 to further validate preschool separation-reunion measures. Three-year-olds (N = 150) and their mothers participated in a separation-reunion protocol, the Preschool Attachment Classification System (PACS: J. Cassidy & R. S. Marvin with the MacArthur Working Group on Attachment, 1992), and a mother-child interaction session during a laboratory visit. Mothers also completed psychosocial measures and, along with teachers, evaluated child behavior problems. The secure and disorganized groups received, respectively, the highest and lowest interaction scores. Disorganized children showed a higher level of teacher-reported externalizing and internalizing problems than did secure children. Mothers of insecure children reported higher child externalizing (all insecure groups) and internalizing (avoidant group) scores, more personal distress related to emotional bonding (disorganized group), childrearing control (ambivalent group), and child hyperactivity (avoidant group). Results strongly support the validity of the PACS as a measure of attachment in 3-year-olds.     

Consequential conditionals: invited and suppressed inferences from valued outcomes

Consequential conditionals are defined as "if P then Q" statements, where P is an action, and Q a predicted outcome of this action, which is either desirable or undesirable to the agent. Experiment 1 shows that desirable (viz. undesirable) outcomes invite an inference to the truth (viz. falsity) of their antecedent. Experiment 2 shows that the more extreme the outcome is, the stronger the invited inference is. Experiment 3 shows that modus ponens from premises "If A then C, A" can be suppressed with the introduction of a consequential conditional, "If C then Q," where Q is an undesirable outcome. Experiment 4 shows that the more undesirable Q is, the larger the suppression is. The authors discuss how these results can enrich current approaches of conditional inference on the basis of mental models, complementary necessary conditions, and conditional probabilities.     

Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms that Predict Cognitive Decline or Impairment in Cognitively Normal Middle-Aged or Older Adults: a Meta-Analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Epidemiological studies have revealed that behavioral and psychological (or non-cognitive) symptoms are risk factors for cognitive decline in older adults. This study aimed...     

Evidence for several components of word familiarity

Familiarity with a word can be divided into two main components: familiarity with the form of the word (due to both its lexicality and its specific form) and familiarity with its meaning. In this study, ratings of familiarity were compared for words whose meaning was unknown to participants (UM words), for words of known meaning (KM words), and for unknown words (U words). Linguistic and experiential frequencies were equivalent. Rated familiarity was lower for UM than KM words and even lower for U words. Next, we built pseudowords from these stimuli by changing one letter and submitted them to two familiarity rating tasks that differed in the nature of the additional stimuli: either only nonwords or nonwords plus words. It was assumed that familiarity ratings would be lower for pseudowords built from UM words than for pseudowords built from KM words. The data were consistent with this assumption, and ratings depended on the initial categories of stimuli. These results support the view that usual word familiarity has two components, familiarity with form and familiarity with meaning, and a double source, processing of word form and processing of word meaning. The full set of these materials and norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Metaplastic effect of apamin on LTP and paired-pulse facilitation

In area CA1 of hippocampal slices, a single 1-sec train of 100-Hz stimulation generally triggers a short-lasting long-term potentiation (S-LTP) of 1–2 h. Here, we found that when such a train was applied 45 min after application of the small conductance Ca²⁺-activated K⁺ (SK) channel blocker apamin, it induced a long-lasting LTP (L-LTP) of several hours, instead of an S-LTP. Apamin-induced SK channel blockage is known to resist washing. Nevertheless, the aforementioned effect is not a mere delayed effect; it is metaplastic. Indeed, when a single train was delivered to the Schaffer’s collaterals during apamin application, it induced an S-LTP, like in the control situation. At the moment of this LTP induction (15th min of apamin application), the SK channel blockage was nevertheless complete. Indeed, at that time, under the influence of apamin, the amplitude of the series of field excitatory postsynaptic potentials (fEPSPs) triggered by a stimulation train was increased. We found that the metaplastic effect of apamin on LTP was crucially dependent on the NO-synthase pathway, whereas the efficacy of the NMDA receptors was not modified at the time of its occurrence. We also found that apamin produced an increase in paired-pulse facilitation not during, but after, the application of the drug. Finally, we found that the induction of each of these two metaplastic phenomena was mediated by NMDA receptors. A speculative unitary hypothesis to explain these phenomena is proposed.     

An examination of the role of perceived support and employee commitment in employee-customer encounters

The authors examined the relationships between perceived organizational support, organizational commitment, commitment to customers, and service quality in a fast-food firm. The research design matched customer responses with individual employees' attitudes, making this study a true test of the service provider-customer encounter. On the basis of a sample of matched employee-customer data (N = 133), hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that perceived organizational support had both a unit-level and an employee-level effect on 1 dimension of service quality: helping behavior. Contrary to affective organizational commitment, affective commitment to customers enhanced service quality. The 2 sub-dimensions of continuance commitment to the organization--perceived high sacrifice and perceived lack of alternatives--exerted effects opposite in sign: The former fostered service quality, whereas the latter reduced it. The implications of these findings are discussed within the context of research on employee-customer encounters.     

Mortality salience and morality: thinking about death makes people less utilitarian

According to the dual-process model of moral judgment, utilitarian responses to moral conflict draw on limited cognitive resources. Terror Management Theory, in parallel, postulates that mortality salience mobilizes these resources to suppress thoughts of death out of focal attention. Consequently, we predicted that individuals under mortality salience would be less likely to give utilitarian responses to moral conflicts. Two experiments corroborated this hypothesis. Experiment 1 showed that utilitarian responses to non-lethal harm conflicts were less frequent when participants were reminded of their mortality. Experiment 2 showed that the detrimental effect of mortality salience on utilitarian conflict judgments was comparable to that of an extreme concurrent cognitive load. These findings raise the question of whether private judgment and public debate about controversial moral issues might be shaped by mortality salience effects, since these issues (e.g., assisted suicide) often involve matters of life and death.     

Readers’ use of source information in text comprehension

In two experiments, we examined the role of discrepancy on readers’ text processing of and memory for the sources of brief news reports. Each story included two assertions that were attributed to different sources. We manipulated whether the second assertion was either discrepant or consistent with the first assertion. On the basis of the discrepancy-induced source comprehension (D-ISC) assumption, we predicted that discrepant stories would promote deeper processing and better memory for the sources conveying the messages, as compared to consistent stories. As predicted, readers mentioned more sources in summaries of discrepant stories, recalled more sources, made more fixations, and displayed longer gaze times in source areas when reading discrepant than when reading consistent stories. In Experiment 2, we found enhanced memory for source–content links for discrepant stories even when intersentential connectors were absent, and regardless of the reading goals. Discussion was focused on discrepancies as one mechanism by which readers are prompted to encode source–content links more deeply, as a method of integrating disparate pieces of information into a coherent mental representation of a text.