Overgeneralization from limited data: A commentary on Cooper et al., 2010

This article comments on a recent paper by Cooper et al. in BRAT. Its main purpose is to comment on the provocative conclusion in the paper that behavioral research on weight loss maintenance should be abandoned. We disagree, arguing that the authors over generalize from their research, under crediting past behavioral weight loss research for its accomplishments, which are considerable. We briefly outline areas we believe remain exciting new research directions in this field.     

Anxiety and Depression in Children with HFASDs: Symptom Levels and Source Differences

The purpose of this study was to: (1) examine symptom levels of anxiety and depression in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs) compared with matched control children using child self-reports and parent ratings; and (2) examine source differences within the two condition groups. An overall multivariate effect indicated significantly elevated depression and anxiety symptoms for children with HFASDs based on parent reports; however no significant between-group differences based on child self-reports. Within-condition source comparisons (parent vs. child) revealed a significant multivariate effect indicating a significant difference in symptoms of depression and anxiety for the HFASD group but none for the control. Correlations between parent and child reports for the HFASD group suggested some positive association between child-reports and parent-reports for depressive symptoms only; however, the difference in average scores reflected a substantial discrepancy in the magnitude of symptoms by rater. Implications for clinical assessment and future research are provided.     

A cognitive cascade in infancy: Pathways from prematurity to later mental development

Using data from a longitudinal study of preterms and full-terms, the present study examined the structure of infant cognition at 12 months, the extent to which five 12-month abilities (attention, processing speed, recognition, recall, and representational competence) mediated the relation from prematurity to mental development at 2–3 years, and how continuity and change in infant information processing from 7 to 12 months affected later outcome. The results indicated that 12-month measures of infant information processing completely mediated the effect of prematurity on outcome and the infant measures form a ‘cognitive cascade’, similar to that seen at 7 months, in which the two more elementary abilities (attention and speed) influenced the more complex ones, which in turn influenced later cognition. Additionally, despite cross-age stability, 7-month assessments contribute to outcome independently of their 12-month counterparts, suggesting that infant abilities undergo important developmental transformations in the second half of the first year of life.     

The inversion effect in infancy: the role of internal and external features

The present work examined the changing role of inner and outer facial features in the recognition of upright and inverted faces in 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds. Study 1 established that the “inversion effect” (impaired recognition of an inverted face) was present in infants as young as 5 months. In Study 2, internal and external features were inverted separately. Disrupting the internal configuration by inversion impaired recognition at all ages; disrupting the external configuration impaired recognition only at 5-months. In Study 3, an upright familiar face was paired with one having either novel internal or novel external features. The results confirmed that the 5-month-olds used only the external features to recognize faces, whereas older infants were as adept at using internal features as external ones. These findings suggest a shift, after 5 months, away from dependence on external features for face recognition and toward greater reliance on internal ones.     

Weighing Weight: Trends in Body Weight Evaluation Among Young Adults, 1990 and 2005

Given the rising prevalence of overweight and sociocultural portrayal of increasingly thin female body ideals and muscular/lean male body ideals, we examined trends in body weight evaluation using two cross-sectional surveys of US undergraduates in 1990 (n?=?794) and 2005 (n?=?794). Trends in body weight evaluation variables were examined and compared to respondents’ current body mass index. Results suggest men are increasingly evaluating their weight in a manner reflective of heavier, more muscular societal body ideals. Women are becoming increasingly accurate in evaluating their weight and perception of being overweight is declining. However, the high, stable prevalence of potentially inappropriate weight management behavior among both genders suggests the influence of societal body ideals on behavior remains strong.     

Fitting the child's mind to the world: adaptive norm-based coding of facial identity in 8-year-olds

In adults, facial identity is coded by opponent processes relative to an average face or norm, as evidenced by the face identity aftereffect: adapting to a face biases perception towards the opposite identity, so that a previously neutral face (e.g. the average) resembles the identity of the computationally opposite face. We investigated whether children as young as 8 use adaptive norm-based coding to represent faces, a question of interest because 8-year-olds are less accurate than adults at recognizing faces and do not show the adult neural markers of face expertise. We found comparable face identity aftereffects in 8-year-olds and adults: perception of identity in both groups shifted in the direction predicted by norm-based coding. This finding suggests that, by 8 years of age, the adaptive computational mechanisms used to code facial identity are like those of adults and hence that children's immaturities in face processing arise from another source.