Exploration,arousal and autism

Summary From Berlyne's theory of exploration three predictions were derived concerning exploratory behaviour of autistic children. These predictions related to (a) the latency and level of exploratory responsiveness, (b) the modulation of the internal state and (c) the temporal course of exploration.To test these predictions, subjects were exposed to a completely novel object in an otherwise familiar environment, and again on five subsequent occasions.The results showed a remarkably consistent trend in exploration over all subjects: although initially inhibited and depressed, exploration eventually increased to a level comparable with that of normal subjects of the same age. But this responsiveness also showed a relatively rapid decline. Thus exploration of novelty was a parabolic function of time. The original predictions received substantial but not entire support.The results were discussed in terms of the interaction between collative and organismal variables, as novelty and arousal.     

Is Adolescent Adjustment Following Parental Divorce a Function of Predivorce Adjustment?

This study examined whether adolescent adjustment problems which previously have been attributed to parental divorce exist prior to the divorce. Three groups (to-be-divorced, remain intact, and already divorced) were examined across four domains of adolescent functioning reported by multiple informants. The results indicated that adolescents from the to-be-divorced group functioned similarly to those who would remain in intact families but better than those in the already divorced group, suggesting that differences can be attributed to parental divorce and its accompanying disruption of family processes. Two of these processes, interparental conflict and parenting, were examined and failed to receive support.     

Development of children's mental representations: effects of age, sex, and school experience

In the present study mental representations in drawings by 158 young children, ages 2 1/2 to 6 yr. old were analysed. The aim was to investigate whether the accuracy of mental representations increased with age and how this development progressed. Also tested were whether the inferred mental representations differed for boys and girls and whether preschool experience affected the drawings. As expected, mental representation increased in complexity with age as measured by Goodenough's score, and girls' mental representations (drawings) were significantly more elaborate than boys. Moreover, attending school early seemed to affect mental representations of the 3-yr.-olds but not the 4-yr.-olds. Results are discussed in terms of internal and external factors in mental representation in drawing a man.     

Segmenting the body into parts: evidence from biases in tactile perception

How do we individuate body parts? Here, we investigated the effect of body segmentation between hand and arm in tactile and visual perception. In a first experiment, we showed that two tactile stimuli felt farther away when they were applied across the wrist than when they were applied within a single body part (palm or forearm), indicating a "category boundary effect". In the following experiments, we excluded two hypotheses, which attributed tactile segmentation to other, nontactile factors. In Experiment 2, we showed that the boundary effect does not arise from motor cues. The effect was reduced during a motor task involving flexion and extension movements of the wrist joint. Action brings body parts together into functional units, instead of pulling them apart. In Experiments 3 and 4, we showed that the effect does not arise from perceptual cues of visual discontinuities. We did not find any segmentation effect for the visual percept of the body in Experiment 3, nor for a neutral shape in Experiment 4. We suggest that the mental representation of the body is structured in categorical body parts delineated by joints, and that this categorical representation modulates tactile spatial perception.     

Gender Differences in Work-Family Guilt in Parents of Young Children

The transition to parenthood is a watershed moment for most parents, introducing the possibility of intra-individual and interpersonal growth or decline. Given the increasing number of dual-earner couples in the United States, new parents’ attitudes towards employment (as well as the ways in which they balance employment and personal demands) may have an impact on their overall well-being. Based on anecdotal accounts, guilt about the conflict between employment and family (termed work-family guilt) appears particularly pervasive among U.S. mothers of young children; specifically, mothers, but not fathers, express high levels of a subtype of work-family guilt, that pertains to the negative impact their work has on their families (termed work-interfering-with-family guilt). However, little research within psychology has explicitly examined this phenomenon, and to our knowledge, no quantitative study has investigated gender differences in work-family guilt among U.S. parents of young children. In a cross-sectional, correlational study involving 255 parents of toddlers from the greater Southern California area, we coded parents’ narrative responses to a series of open-ended questions regarding employment and family for the presence of work-family guilt and work-interfering-with-family guilt (in the form of guilt about the negative impact of employment on children). Mothers had significantly higher work-family guilt and work-interfering-with-family guilt relative to fathers. We discuss our findings in terms of theory on gender roles, as well as the questions they generate for future areas of investigation.     

Poorer divided attention in children born very preterm can be explained by difficulty with each component task,not the executive requirement to dual-task

Children born very preterm (VP, ≤ 32 weeks) exhibit poor performance on tasks of executive functioning. However, it is largely unknown whether this reflects the cumulative impact of non-executive deficits or a separable impairment in executive-level abilities. A dual-task paradigm was used in the current study to differentiate the executive processes involved in performing two simple attention tasks simultaneously. The executive-level contribution to performance was indexed by the within-subject cost incurred to single-task performance under dual-task conditions, termed dual-task cost. The participants included 77 VP children (mean age: 7.17 years) and 74 peer controls (mean age: 7.16 years) who completed Sky Search (selective attention), Score (sustained attention) and Sky Search DT (divided attention) from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children. The divided-attention task requires the simultaneous performance of the selective- and sustained-attention tasks. The VP group exhibited poorer performance on the selective- and divided-attention tasks, and showed a strong trend toward poorer performance on the sustained-attention task. However, there were no significant group differences in dual-task cost. These results suggest a cumulative impact of vulnerable lower-level cognitive processes on dual-tasking or divided attention in VP children, and fail to support the hypothesis that VP children show a separable impairment in executive-level abilities.     

Effect of low gravitational stimulation on the perception of target elevation: role of spatial expertise

To examine the interindividual differences in the judgment of the visually perceived eye level (VPEL-upright position) and of the visually perceived apparent zenith (VPAZ-supine position) when the subject is subjected to low gravitational-inertial force (GIF), we independently altered GIF in two different populations: control subjects and spatial experts. Subjects were instructed to set a luminous target to the eye level while they were in total darkness and motionless or undergoing low radial acceleration with respect to the threshold of the otolithic system (0.015-1.67 m/sec2 for the VPEL and 0.55-2.19 m/sec2 for the VPAZ, respectively). Results showed that (1) low GIFs, close to those met during daily life, induced an eye level lowering in the upright and supine positions for the control group, and (2) the spatial expertise modified the influence of low GIF. Whereas an oculogravic illusion was found for the control group, this phenomenon was absent (VPAZ) or weaker (VPEL) for the spatial experts. Thus, the relations that the subjects maintain with their spatial environment and the knowledge acquired through experience modify the processing of sensory information and the perceptive construction resulting from it. The interindividual differences in sensitivity to the oculogravic illusion are discussed in terms of sensory dominance and of a better efficiency in the use of the available sensory information.     

Involvement of Executive Functions in Children's Metamemory

This experiment examined how knowledge of memory strategies and of memory functioning improves during childhood and what variables are involved in this development. Three main aspects of metamemory were assessed based on the performance of a group of 100 children (aged 4, 6, 9 and 11 years) on a battery of executive tasks. At the same time, the influence of variables such as intelligence, vocabulary and parental education level was also investigated. Results of mediation analyses reveal that the relation between children's age and internal strategy knowledge was partially mediated by working memory skills but that executive functions did not mediate the impact of chronological age on children's knowledge of external strategies or of memory functioning. Additionally, verbal fluency predicted internal and external strategy knowledge. Implications for general learning theories in childhood are discussed.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.