Diurnal cortisol rhythm and cognitive functioning in toddlers: The Generation R Study

Little is known about the relationship between diurnal cortisol secretion patterns and cognitive function early in life. This population-based study examined whether diurnal cortisol rhythms and cognitive functioning in toddlers are related. Within the Generation R Study, parents of 364 infants (median age: 14.2 months) collected saliva samples at five moments during one day. We assessed the diurnal cortisol rhythm by calculating the area under the curve (AUC), the cortisol awakening response (CAR), and the diurnal slope. Verbal cognitive functioning and fine motor development was determined at age 18 months. Nonverbal cognitive functioning was assessed at age 30 months. A more positive CAR was associated with a lower risk of delay in language comprehension (OR per 1-SD CAR: 0.62, 95%CI: 0.40–0.98, p = .04), a lower risk of nonoptimal fine motor development (OR per 1-SD slope: 0.74, 95%CI: 0.57–0.96, p = .03), and a lower risk of delay in nonverbal cognitive development (OR per 1-SD CAR: 0.58, 95%CI: 0.38–0.90, p = .02). Also, children with flatter slopes had a lower risk of delay in nonverbal cognitive development (OR per 1-SD slope: 0.51, 95%CI: 0.34–0.76, p = .001). Higher AUC levels were associated with a higher risk of delay in language production. These results show that variations in diurnal cortisol rhythms are already associated with variations in cognitive functioning at a young age. Infants with a diurnal cortisol pattern indicative of less stress and more cortisol reactivity, that is, lower AUC levels and a more positive CAR, show a lower risk of delay in cognitive functioning as toddlers.     

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF): Support for a distinction between Emotional and Behavioral Regulation

Previous research has supported a three-factor division of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) when dividing the parent form in 9 instead of 8 subscales. The present study investigated different factor models in the 8- and 9-scale division in both the parent and teacher form of the Norwegian BRIEF version. Confirmatory Factor Analyzes showed best fit for the three-factor model in a mixed healthy and clinical sample, indicating a distinction between Emotional and Behavioral Regulation. This division is in accordance with present knowledge of brain function and may increase the specificity of executive dysfunction in clinical groups.     

Social learning in juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris

Social learning is taxonomically widespread and can provide distinct behavioural advantages, such as in finding food or avoiding predators more efficiently. Although extensively studied in bony fishes, no such empirical evidence exists for cartilaginous fishes. Our aim in this study was to experimentally investigate the social learning capabilities of juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris. We designed a novel food task, where sharks were required to enter a start zone and subsequently make physical contact with a target in order to receive a food reward. Naive sharks were then able to interact with and observe (a) pre-trained sharks, that is, ‘demonstrators’, or (b) sharks with no previous experience, that is, ‘sham demonstrators’. On completion, observer sharks were then isolated and tested individually in a similar task. During the exposure phase observers paired with ‘demonstrator’ sharks performed a greater number of task-related behaviours and made significantly more transitions from the start zone to the target, than observers paired with ‘sham demonstrators’. When tested in isolation, observers previously paired with ‘demonstrator’ sharks completed a greater number of trials and made contact with the target significantly more often than observers previously paired with ‘sham demonstrators’. Such experience also tended to result in faster overall task performance. These results indicate that juvenile lemon sharks, like numerous other animals, are capable of using socially derived information to learn about novel features in their environment. The results likely have important implications for behavioural processes, ecotourism and fisheries.     

Introduction: Politics of faith in Asia: Local and global perspectives of Christianity in Asia

This collection of papers is the result of research presented at the 2010 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Atlanta, Georgia, sponsored by the Comparative Studies of Religion section. The set of papers resulting from the panel, Politics of Faith in Asia: Local and Global Perspectives of Christianity in Asia, presents findings from a diverse array of cultural areas and historical contexts across the Asian continent. All of these are connected by a focus on the intersection of Christianity and the political organisation in Asian societies. Although each paper focuses primarily on the continued encounter of Protestant, Evangelical Christianity and local religions, the definition and scope of the political milieu differ considerably. Moving from local communities in a small Indian town, through the growing global connections of religious groups in the Philippines, to the global and national politics of South Korea, the set addresses a multitude of political levels, be they governmental or the processes of everyday interactions.     

Preference for Violent Electronic Games and Aggressive Behavior among Children: The Beginning of the Downward Spiral?

A one-year longitudinal study with 324 German third and fourth graders was conducted in order to find out whether a preference for violent electronic games socializes children to become more aggressive or whether aggressive individuals tend to select this type of game. Cross-lagged panel analyses suggest that children who were rated as openly aggressive at Time 1 intensified their preference for violent electronic games over time. We determined that it could be ruled out that this selection effect was due to a number of underlying variables ranging from ecological variables (neighborhood) to family variables (migration status, older brother) and child variables (gender, self-esteem, level of achievement). Discussion focuses on the emerging preference for violent electronic games among children.     

"It's not my fault--but only I can change it": counterfactual and prefactual thoughts of managers

In testing for the self-serving bias in performance evaluation, the authors propose that comparing managers' counterfactual and prefactual thoughts about subordinates' performance is more conclusive than the attributional approach and also offers practical advantages. In a study with 120 managers, a 4-way interaction of subordinate performance, temporal perspective, direction, and reference confirmed the predicted pattern. Managers' thoughts about how a weak performance could have been enhanced had external references, but thoughts about how such a performance could be enhanced in the future focused on the leader. This asymmetry was only observed for weak performance. Results are discussed with regard to biases in leaders' performance evaluations and to how counter- and prefactual thoughts could be used for leadership research and practice.     

Stereotype threat and performance: how self-stereotypes influence processing by inducing regulatory foci

The authors hypothesized that activated self-stereotypes can influence the strategies of task solution by inducing regulatory foci. More specifically, positive self-stereotypes should induce a promotion focus state of eagerness, whereas negative stereotypes should induce a prevention focus state of vigilance. Study 1 showed that a negative ascribed stereotype with regard to task performance leads to better recall for avoidance-related statements whereas a positive stereotype leads to better recall for approach-related statements. In Studies 2 and 3, both an experimental manipulation of group performance expectation and the preexisting stereotype of better verbal skills in women than in men led to faster and less accurate performance in the positive as compared with the negative stereotype group. Studies 4 and 5 showed that positive in-group stereotypes led to more creative performance whereas negative stereotypes led to better analytical performance. These results point to a possible mechanism for stereotype-threat effects.     

Grammatical gender in spoken word recognition in German

The role of grammatical gender for auditory word recognition in German was investigated in three experiments and two sets of corpus analyses. In the corpus analyses, gender information reduced the lexical search space as well as the amount of input needed to uniquely identify a word. To test whether this holds for on-line processing, two auditory lexical decision experiments (Experiments 1 and 3) were conducted using valid, invalid, or noise-masked articles as primes. Clear gender-priming effects were obtained in both experiments. Experiment 2 used phoneme monitoring with words and with pseudowords deviating from base words in one or more phonological features. Contrary to the lexical decision latencies, phoneme-monitoring latencies showed no influence of gender but did show similarity mismatch effects. We argue that gender information is not utilized early during word recognition. Rather, the presence of a valid article increases the initial familiarity of a word, facilitating subsequent responses.     

The Influence of Approach and Avoidance Motor Actions on Creative Cognition

This study tested whether internal nonaffective processing cues independently influence two major varieties of creative cognition: insight problem solving and creative generation. In Experiments 1 and 2, bodily cues associated with positive or negative hedonic states were manipulated by means of arm flexor or extensor contraction, respectively, and the effects of these internal cues on creative insight and generation were observed. In line with our cognitive tuning approach, it was predicted that the “riskier,” more explorative processing style elicited by arm flexion, relative to the more risk-averse, perseverant processing style elicited by arm extension, would facilitate performance on both tasks. These predictions were strongly supported. In addition, Experiments 3 and 4 provided the first direct evidence that the effects of these internal processing cues on creativity are mediated by a memory search-based mechanism. Reported effects were independent of mood, task enjoyment, and the effortfulness of the motor actions.