Development of lower extremity kinetics for balance control in infants and young children

Developmental changes in the kinematics and kinetics underlying balance control were studied in 61 children, 9 months to 10 years of age. The children were classified according to developmental milestones as standers; new, intermediate, and advanced walkers; runners-jumpers; hoppers; gallopers; and skippers. The children experienced support-surface translations of varying size and speed. Children with greater locomotor experience withstood larger balance threats without collapsing or stepping. Analyses of scaled trials (perturbations normalized in size to foot length and center of gravity height) revealed that improvement in balance was not related to initial configuration parameters surrounding the task (degree of crouch or lean). Children with advanced locomotor skills had faster recovery times and relatively larger muscle torques than children with less experience. Relative torque-time histories of the more experienced children began to match the adult response to similar perturbations. With increased experience and changing muscle torque regulatory abilities, balance skills became more robust.     

Improving Decision Making by Means of Dissent1

Antidotes to problems associated with uniformity of viewpoints have generally involved dissent in one form or another (Katzenstein, 1996), one being “devil's advocate.” Research on authentic dissent has documented additional advantages in that it stimulates divergent and original thought (Nemeth, 1995). In this study, authentic disscnt was compared with devil's advocate and with no dissent. Findings indicate that authentic dissent was superior in (a) stimulating a greater proportion of original thoughts, (b) considering the opposite position, and (c) direct attitude change. Devil's advocate was found to stimulate cognitive boistcring of the initial position, thus raising concerns about the unintended consequences of techniques such as devil's advocate and the subtle task facing attempts to foster original thought and yet maintain cohesion.     

The Relationship Between Attitudinal Ambivalence and Desire to Quit Smoking Among College Smokers1

Growing evidence shows that attitudes can exist on a bivariate rather than a bipolar plane. This conceptualization provides a more dynamic approach to studying how attitudinal ambivalence (i. e., evaluating an attitude object as both positive and negative) affects smoking‐related behaviors. Based on a sample of 157 college smokers, we obtained preliminary validational support for a smoking‐specific felt attitudinal ambivalence scale. Felt attitudinal ambivalence correlated positively with potential for ambivalence, negative attitudes, and negative as well as positive outcome expectancies related to smoking. Smokers who felt more ambivalent reported a greater desire to quit and were more likely to be contemplators, as defined by the transtheoretical model of behavioral change. In multivariate analyses, felt ambivalence toward smoking predicted desire to quit after controlling for positive and negative attitudes and negative smoking consequences. These results provide promising support for the smoking‐specific felt‐ambivalence scale, and suggest that attitudinal ambivalence should be investigated further as a motivational mechanism to affect smoking cessation.     

“He Cursed, and I Got Angry:” Beliefs About Anger Among Adolescent Male Offenders in India

Cultural influences in the experience and expression of emotions have been widely recognized, although systematic studies of emotion-related beliefs in culturally diverse families have been scarce. The purpose of the present exploratory study was to examine beliefs about anger among a group of adolescent male offenders in India temporarily residing in a pre-sentencing institution. In particular, adolescent offenders (n = 14) were individually interviewed about their beliefs concerning causes and concomitants of, and behavioral responses to, one’s own and others’ anger, as well as family patterns of anger expression that are crucial in understanding socialization processes. Although some of the themes reflected in their narratives parallel the beliefs of educated, middle-class, non-offender youth in India (e.g., social inappropriateness of anger), as well as those of offenders in other parts of the world (e.g., aggressive behavior as a common response to anger), beliefs about various aspects of anger specific to this subculture of offender youth also emerged. In particular, perceived violations of family honor were cited as the most common elicitors of anger, and although anger was considered ‘bad’ it was expressed through aggression. The findings of this study highlight the need to develop a culturally informed theory of emotions, and relatedly, to develop culturally sensitive interventions for anger management that can be incorporated as a part of rehabilitation efforts for offender youth in India.     

Physico-mathematics and the search for causes in Descartes’ optics—1619–1637

One of the chief concerns of the young Descartes was with what he, and others, termed “physico-mathematics”. This signalled a questioning of the Scholastic Aristotelian view of the mixed mathematical sciences as subordinate to natural philosophy, non explanatory, and merely instrumental. Somehow, the mixed mathematical disciplines were now to become intimately related to natural philosophical issues of matter and cause. That is, they were to become more ’physicalised’, more closely intertwined with natural philosophising, regardless of which species of natural philosophy one advocated. A curious, short-lived yet portentous epistemological conceit lay at the core of Descartes’ physico-mathematics—the belief that solid geometrical results in the mixed mathematical sciences literally offered windows into the realm of natural philosophical causation—that in such cases one could literally “see the causes”. Optics took pride of place within Descartes’ physico-mathematics project, because he believed it offered unique possibilities for the successful vision of causes. This paper traces Descartes’ early physico-mathematical program in optics, its origins, pitfalls and its successes, which were crucial in providing Descartes resources for his later work in systematic natural philosophy. It explores how Descartes exploited his discovery of the law of refraction of light—an achievement well within the bounds of traditional mixed mathematical optics—in order to derive—in the manner of physico-mathematics—causal knowledge about light, and indeed insight about the principles of a “dynamics” that would provide the laws of corpuscular motion and tendency to motion in his natural philosophical system.     

Confining ‘Disenhanced’ Animals

Drawing upon evolutionary theory and the work of Daniel Dennett and Nicholas Agar, I offer an argument for broadening discussion of the ethics of disenhancement beyond animal welfare concerns to a consideration of animal “biopreferences”. Short of rendering animals completely unconscious or decerebrate, it is reasonable to suggest that disenhanced animals will continue to have some preferences. To the extent that these preferences can be understood as what Agar refers to as “plausible naturalizations” for familiar moral concepts like beliefs and desires, then they can make moral claims on us and provide support for intuitive opposition to disenhancement.     

In perfect harmony: synchronizing the self to activated social categories

The self-concept is one of the main organizing constructs in the behavioral sciences because it influences how people interpret their environment, the choices they make, whether and how they initiate action, and the pursuit of specific goals. Because belonging to social groups and feeling interconnected is critical to human survival, the authors propose that people spontaneously change their working self-concept so that they are more similar to salient social categories. Specifically, 4 studies investigated whether activating a variety of social categories (i.e., jocks, hippies, the overweight, Blacks, and Asians) increased associations between the self and the target category. Whereas Studies 1 and 2 focused on associations between stereotypic traits and the self, Studies 3 and 4 examined self-perceptions and self-categorizations, respectively. The results provide consistent evidence that following social category priming, people synchronized the self to the activated category. Furthermore, the findings indicate that factors that influence category activation, such as social goals, and factors that induce a focus on the interconnectedness of the self, such as an interdependent vs. independent self-construal, can impact this process. The implications of changes to the working self-concept for intergroup relations are discussed.     

Time Course of Treatment Effect of OROS(R) Methylphenidate in Children With ADHD

Objective: The authors evaluated the time course of the treatment effect of Osmotic-Release Oral System methylphenidate (OROS(?) MPH) HCl (Concerta(?), Raritan, NJ) CII in children with ADHD. Method: Data were combined from two double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over, analog classroom studies in children (9-12 years) with ADHD. Participants received an individualized dose of placebo or OROS(?) MPH on two laboratory school days. Permanent Product Math Test and Swanson, Kotkin, Agler, M-Flynn, and Pelham scores were evaluated 0.5 hr before dosing and 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, and 12.5 hr post dose. Analysis used a repeated-measures mixed model. Results: Treatment effects were present at all postdose assessment points (p < .0001 for all comparisons, n = 139). Adverse events were similar to previous reports for OROS(?) MPH. Conclusion: A robust treatment effect occurred with OROS(?) MPH; onset was at 1 hr and persisted for at least 12.5 hr after dosing.     

Mindfulness and its relationship to emotional regulation

Research on the effectiveness and mechanisms of mindfulness training applied in psychotherapy is still in its infancy (Erisman & Roemer, 2010). For instance, little is known about the extent and processes through which mindfulness practice improves emotion regulation. This experience sampling study assessed the relationship between mindfulness, emotion differentiation, emotion lability, and emotional difficulties. Young adult participants reported their current emotional experiences 6 times per day during 1 week on a PalmPilot device. Based on these reports of emotions, indices of emotional differentiation and emotion lability were composed for negative and positive emotions. Mindfulness was associated with greater emotion differentiation and less emotional difficulties (i.e., emotion lability and self-reported emotion dysregulation). Mediational models indicated that the relationship between mindfulness and emotion lability was mediated by emotion differentiation. Furthermore, emotion regulation mediated the relationship between mindfulness and both negative emotion lability and positive emotion differentiation. This experience sampling study indicates that self-reported levels of mindfulness are related to higher levels of differentiation of one's discrete emotional experiences in a manner reflective of effective emotion regulation.