Is a Pink Cow Still a Cow? Individual Differences in Toddlers' Vocabulary Knowledge and Lexical Representations

When a toddler knows a word, what does she actually know? Many categories have multiple relevant properties; for example, shape and color are relevant to membership in the category banana . How do toddlers prioritize these properties when recognizing familiar words, and are there systematic differences among children? In this study, toddlers viewed pairs of objects associated with prototypical colors. On some trials, objects were typically colored (e.g., Holstein cow and pink pig); on other trials, colors were switched (e.g., pink cow and Holstein‐patterned pig). On each trial, toddlers were directed to find a target object. Overall, recognition was disrupted when colors were switched, as measured by eye movements. Moreover, individual differences in vocabularies predicted recognition differences: Toddlers who say fewer shape‐based words were more disrupted by color switches. “Knowing” a word may not mean the same thing for all toddlers; different toddlers prioritize different facets of familiar objects in their lexical representations.     

Predictive Genetic Testing of Children for Adult-Onset Conditions: Negotiating Requests with Parents

Healthcare professionals (HCPs) regularly face requests from parents for predictive genetic testing of children for adult-onset conditions. Little is known about how HCPs handle these test requests, given that guidelines recommend such testing is deferred to adulthood unless there is medical benefit to testing before that time. Our study explored the process of decision-making between HCPs and parents. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 HCPs in 8 regional genetic services across the UK, and data were thematically analysed. We found that instead of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to such requests, many HCPs framed the consultation as an opportunity to negotiate the optimal time of testing. This, they argued, facilitates parents’ considered decision-making, since parents’ eventual decisions after requesting a test was often to defer testing their child. In cases where parents’ requests remained a sustained wish, most HCPs said they would agree to test, concluding that not testing would not serve the child’s wider best interest. As a strategy for determining the child’s best interest and for facilitating shared decision-making, we recommend that HCPs re-frame requests for testing from parents as a discussion about the optimal time of testing for adult-onset disease.     

Caffeine, Cognition, and Persuasion: Evidence for Caffeine Increasing the Systematic Processing of Persuasive Messages

Caffeine is known to increase arousal, attention, and information processing–all factors implicated in facilitating persuasion. In a standard attitude-change paradigm, participants consumed an orange-juice drink that either contained caffeine (3.5 mg/kg body weight) or did not (placebo) prior to reading a counterattitudinal communication (anti-voluntary euthanasia). Participants then completed a thought-listing task and a number of attitude scales. The first experiment showed that those who consumed caffeine showed greater agreement with the communication (direct attitude: voluntary euthanasia) and on an issue related to, but not contained in, the communication (indirect attitude: abortion). The order in which direct and indirect attitudes were measured did not affect the results. A second experiment manipulated the quality of the arguments in the message (strong vs. weak) to determine whether systematic processing had occurred. There was evidence that systematic processing occurred in both drink conditions, but was greater for those who had consumed caffeine. In both experiments, the amount of message-congruent thinking mediated persuasion. These results show that caffeine can increase the extent to which people systematically process and arc influenced by a persuasive communication.     

Body Dissatisfaction, Dating, and Importance of Thinness to Attractiveness in Adolescent Girls

The primary aim of this study was to test a multivariate model of predictors of body dissatisfaction in adolescent girls in which psychological variables, beliefs about the importance of popularity with boys, and beliefs about the importance of thinness to attractiveness and dating were included. We also aimed to explore boys' perceptions of the importance of thinness for attractiveness. Grade 10 girls (n = 573) and boys (n = 145) completed questionnaires. Path analysis provided partial support for the model proposed. Dating did not predict body dissatisfaction, but a relationship between importance of popularity with boys and body dissatisfaction was fully mediated by the belief that boys see thinness as important in rating girls' attractiveness. Although girls underestimated the body size that is attractive to boys, over 85% of boys reported a girl's slimness influenced her attractiveness. Dating was not correlated with body mass index.     

Women's own-gender bias in face recognition memory

Women remember more female than male faces, whereas men do not seem to display an own-gender bias in face recognition memory. Why women remember female faces to a greater extent than male faces is unclear; one proposition is that women attend more to and thereby process female faces more effortfully than male faces during encoding. A manipulation that distracts attention and reduces effortful processing may therefore decrease women's own-gender bias by reducing memory for female faces relative to male faces. In three separate experiments, women and men encoded female and male faces for later recognition in full attention and divided attention conditions. Results consistently showed that women, in contrast to men, displayed a reliable own-gender bias. Importantly, the magnitude of women's own-gender bias was not reduced in divided attention conditions, indicating that it is not a result of effortful processing of female faces. We suggest these results reflect that women have greater perceptual expertise for female faces, facilitating recognition memory.     

Understanding Interdisciplinary Collaborations as Social Networks

The dynamics of interdisciplinary collaboration invite further investigation if we are to make this endeavour more rewarding and productive. We are using social network analysis to track the development of a new interdisciplinary collaboration on complex interventions to improve population health. It involves nineteen scholars across four countries. We report the Baseline network of formal relationships among the scholars, along with the impact of the collaboration on these relationships in the first 18 months. We observed statistically significant increases in the density of six types of relationship networks: citing publications by other members of the collaboration, email contact, meeting with each other (outside of the formal annual meeting), visiting one another's institution, submitting research grants together and working on research projects together. The initial strategic role in the network of key 'gate keepers' has not altered substantially (betweenness centralization of the networks), but reciprocity has increased, that is, people are more likely to cite those who have cited them and work together. Increased collaboration is also reflected in the rise in number of subgroups over time and the increase in the average number of subgroup memberships. Use of social network analysis to understand the dynamics of interdisciplinary collaborations is a relatively new field. It invites reflection about what the optimal network structures for interdisciplinary collaborations would look like.     

Linking sounds to meanings: Infant statistical learning in a natural language

The processes of infant word segmentation and infant word learning have largely been studied separately. However, the ease with which potential word forms are segmented from fluent speech seems likely to influence subsequent mappings between words and their referents. To explore this process, we tested the link between the statistical coherence of sequences presented in fluent speech and infants’ subsequent use of those sequences as labels for novel objects. Notably, the materials were drawn from a natural language unfamiliar to the infants (Italian). The results of three experiments suggest that there is a close relationship between the statistics of the speech stream and subsequent mapping of labels to referents. Mapping was facilitated when the labels contained high transitional probabilities in the forward and/or backward direction (Experiment 1). When no transitional probability information was available (Experiment 2), or when the internal transitional probabilities of the labels were low in both directions (Experiment 3), infants failed to link the labels to their referents. Word learning appears to be strongly influenced by infants’ prior experience with the distribution of sounds that make up words in natural languages.     

Mechanisms of change: exploring not only when and what,but also how declarative memory develops

Age‐related changes in representational flexibility are a characteristic feature of declarative memory development. The authors suggest that a qualitative shift in the nature of infants' memory representations accounts for increasing memory flexibility with age. We will argue that a comprehensive theory of declarative memory development must (1) account for the effect of experience on flexibility, (2) be empirically separable from more parsimonious explanations, and (3) propose a mechanism by which the transition takes place. We will argue that a converging‐methods approach is necessary to understand not only when and what develops in declarative memory, but also how developmental change occurs. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motivations for emotional expression and emotion regulation strategies in Chinese school-aged children

Motivation and Emotion - This mixed-methods study investigated cognitive appraisal, emotional experience, motivations for showing and hiding emotions, and strategies for emotional regulation in...     

Happy Like a Fish in Water? The Role of Personality–Situation Fit for Momentary Happiness in Social Interactions across the Adult Lifespan

Growing research on personality–relationship dynamics demonstrates that people's personality and their (enjoyment of) social relationships are closely intertwined. Using experience sampling data from 136 adults (aged 18–89 years) who reported on more than 50 000 social interactions, we zoom into everyday real‐world social interactions to examine how Big Five personality traits and social context characteristics shape people's happiness in social encounters across the adult lifespan. Results revealed that interactions that were social (vs. task‐oriented) and with close (vs. less close) others were associated with higher momentary happiness as were higher levels of the target person's extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and lower neuroticism. Of the 10 personality × situation interactions tested, only one reached significance (with p = .041): Individuals with higher levels of neuroticism benefitted more from interactions with friends than did individuals low in neuroticism. The role of social context characteristics for momentary happiness changed with age, but the role of personality or personality × social context did not, suggesting that personality effects on happiness in social context manifest in similar ways across the adult lifespan. We discuss implications for personality–situation research and the understanding of affective dynamics in everyday social interactions. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology