Basic processes in reading: Is visual word recognition obligatory?

Visual word recognition is commonly argued to be automatic in the sense that it is obligatory and ballistic. The present experiments combined Stroop and visual search paradigms to provide a novel test of this claim. An array of three, five, or seven words including one colored target (a word in Experiments 1 and 2, a bar in Experiment 3) was presented to participants. An irrelevant color word also appeared in the display and was either integrated with or separated from the colored target. The participants classified the color of the single colored item in Experiments 1 and 3 and determined whether a target color was present or absent in Experiment 2. A Stroop effect was observed in Experiment 1 when the color word and the color target were integral, but not when the color word and the color target were separated. No Stroop effect was observed in Experiment 2. Visual word recognition is contingent on both the distribution of spatial attention and task demands.     

Assessment of executive function in preschool-aged children

Assessment of the overarching self-regulatory mechanisms, or executive functions, in any age group is challenging, in part due to the complexity of this domain, in part due to their dynamic essence, and in part due to the inextricable links between these central processes and the associated domain-specific processes, such as language, motor function, and attention, over which they preside. While much progress has been made in clinical assessment approaches for measuring executive functions in adults and to some extent in adolescents and school-aged children, the toolkit for the preschool evaluator remains sparse. The past decade, however, has seen a substantial increase in attention to executive functions in very young children from a developmental neuropsychological perspective. With this has come a necessity for better, more specific, and more internally valid performance measures, many of which are now described in the experimental literature. Few such tasks, however, have adequately demonstrated psychometric properties for clinical application. We present two performance tasks designed to tap selective aspects of executive function in preschoolers that are emerging from the experimental laboratory and hold promise of appropriate reliability and validity for the clinical laboratory. Performance tests alone, however, are insufficient to develop a comprehensive picture of a child's executive functioning. Thus, we present a rating scale of preschoolers' executive function in the everyday context, and advocate a model of executive function assessment that incorporates both controlled performance tasks that target specific aspects of executive function and parent/teacher ratings that target more global aspects of self-regulation in the everyday context.     

Internet accessibility and usage among urban adolescents in Southern California: implications for web-based health research.

The World Wide Web (WWW) poses a distinct capability to offer interventions tailored to the individual's characteristics. To fine tune the tailoring process, studies are needed to explore how Internet accessibility and usage are related to demographic, psychosocial, behavioral, and other health related characteristics. This study was based on a cross-sectional survey conducted on 2373 7th grade students of various ethnic groups in Southern California. Measures of Internet use included Internet use at school or at home, Email use, chat-room use, and Internet favoring. Logistic regressions were conducted to assess the associations between Internet uses with selected demographic, psychosocial, behavioral variables and self-reported health statuses. The proportion of students who could access the Internet at school or home was 90% and 40%, separately. Nearly all (99%) of the respondents could access the Internet either at school or at home. Higher SES and Asian ethnicity were associated with higher internet use. Among those who could access the Internet and after adjusting for the selected demographic and psychosocial variables, depression was positively related with chat-room use and using the Internet longer than 1 hour per day at home, and hostility was positively related with Internet favoring (All ORs = 1.2 for +1 STD, p < 0.05). Less parental monitoring and more unsupervised time were positively related to email use, chat-room use, and at home Internet use (ORs for +1 STD ranged from 1.2 to 2.0, all p < 0.05), but not related to at school Internet use. Substance use was positively related to email use, chat-room use, and at home Internet use (OR for "used" vs. "not used" ranged from 1.2 to 4.0, p < 0.05). Self-reported health problems were associated with higher levels of Internet use at home but lower levels of Internet use at school. More physical activity was related to more email use (OR = 1.3 for +1 STD), chat room use (OR = 1.2 for +1 STD), and at school ever Internet use (OR = 1.2 for +1 STD, all p < 0.05). Body mass index was not related to any of the Internet use-related measures. In this ethnically diverse sample of Southern California 7(th) grade students, 99% could access the Internet at school and/or at home. This suggests that the Internet is already a potential venue for large scale health communication studies. Adolescents with more psychosocial risk factors or detrimental health behaviors were more likely to use the Internet. Therefore, if used properly, Internet interventions could effectively address the high risk populations. Additional research is needed to gain a more complete understanding of the positive and negative consequences of Internet use among adolescents.     

Different effects of dual task demands on the speech of young and older adults

Young and older adults provided language samples in response to elicitation questions while concurrently performing 3 different tasks. The language samples were scored on three dimensions: fluency, grammatical complexity, and content. Previous research had suggested the hypothesis that the restricted speech register of older adults is buffered from the costs of dual task demands. This hypothesis was tested by comparing language samples collected during a baseline condition with those produced while the participants were performing the concurrent tasks. The results indicate that young and older adults adopt different strategies when confronted with dual task demands. Young adults shift to a restricted speech register when confronted with dual task demands. Older adults, who were already using a restricted speech register, became less fluent although the grammatical complexity and informational content of their speech was preserved. Hence, some but not all aspects of older adults' speech are buffered from dual task demands.     

Expectations about numerical events in four lemur species (Eulemur fulvus, Eulemur mongoz, Lemur catta and Varecia rubra)

Although much is known about how some primates—in particular, monkeys and apes—represent and enumerate different numbers of objects, very little is known about the numerical abilities of prosimian primates. Here, we explore how four lemur species (Eulemur fulvus, E. mongoz, Lemur catta, and Varecia rubra) represent small numbers of objects. Specifically, we presented lemurs with three expectancy violation looking time experiments aimed at exploring their expectations about a simple 1+1 addition event. In these experiments, we presented subjects with displays in which two lemons were sequentially added behind an occluder and then measured subjects duration of looking to expected and unexpected outcomes. In experiment 1, subjects looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of only one object than at an expected outcome of two objects. Similarly, subjects in experiment 2 looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of three objects than at an expected outcome of two objects. In experiment 3, subjects looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of one object twice the size of the original than at an expected outcome of two objects of the original size. These results suggest that some prosimian primates understand the outcome of simple arithmetic operations. These results are discussed in light of similar findings in human infants and other adult primates.This revised version was published online in March 2005 with corrections to Fig. 6.     

Relation of academic support from parents, teachers, and peers to Hong Kong adolescents' academic achievement: the mediating role of academic engagement

The author tested a model hypothesizing that students' self-perceived academic support (from parents, teachers, and peers) is related to their achievement directly and indirectly through their own perceived academic engagement. The participants were 270 adolescents (M age = 15.41 years, range = 14-20 years) from 3 grade levels (Forms 3-5, equivalent to Grades 9-11 in the United States) in a Hong Kong secondary school. The school principal and teachers helped to collect data based on these adolescents' responses to a self-report questionnaire, consisting of a demographic profile and 4 scales assessing their self-perceptions of the extent of parental, teacher, and peer support, and their own academic engagement. Academic achievement was measured by self-reported grades in math, English, and Chinese. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that adolescents' perceived parental, teacher, and peer support were all indirectly related to their academic achievement mediated by their own perceived academic engagement. The strength of the relationships, however, varied by support system, with perceived teacher support to achievement being the strongest, followed closely by perceived parental support, and then perceived peer support. In addition, both perceived parental support and perceived teacher support were directly related to academic achievement. However, perceived teacher support made the most total (direct and indirect) contribution to student achievement. Perceived peer support had the smallest, nonetheless significant, indirect relationship to academic achievement. However, the negative, direct influence of perceived peer support canceled out its positive, indirect influence on academic achievement.     

Measurement of Cruelty in Children: The Cruelty to Animals Inventory

Cruelty to animals may be a particularly pernicious aspect of problematic child development. Progress in understanding the development of the problem is limited due to the complex nature of cruelty as a construct, and limitations with current assessment measures. The Children and Animals Inventory (CAI) was developed as a brief self- and parent-report measure of F. R. Ascione's (1993) 9 parameters of cruelty. The CAI emerged as a reliable, stable, and readily utilized measure of cruelty using parent and child reports. Children (especially the older children) reported higher rates of cruelty than their parents and boys reported more cruelty than girls. Self- and parent-reports showed good convergence with independent observations of cruelty versus nurturance during free interactions with domestic animals. The results indicate that cruelty to animals can be reliably measured using brief child and parent report measures.     

An investigation of differences between self-injurious behavior and suicide attempts in a sample of adolescents

Data from 390 high school students were collected to examine potential differences between adolescents who had attempted suicide and those who engaged in self-injurious behavior on measures of depression, suicidal ideation, and attitudes toward life and death. Significant differences were found between controls and the self-harm groups on all dependent variables. A significant difference on attitudes toward life was found between the self-injury and suicide attempt groups. Post-hoc regression analyses showed that measures of depression, suicide ideation, and attitudes towards life predicted participants' self-harm categorization. These findings provide preliminary evidence that self-injurious behavior is different from attempted suicide among a community sample of adolescents.