Processing speed in the 1st year of life: a longitudinal study of preterm and full-term infants

Processing speed was assessed at 5, 7, and 12 months in full-term and preterm infants (birth-weight < 1,750 g). Speed was gauged directly in a new task by presenting infants with a series of paired faces, one that remained the same across trials and one that changed; trials continued until infants showed a consistent novelty preference. At all ages, preterms required about 20% more trials and 30% more time than full-terms to reach criterion. Among preterms, slower processing was associated with greater medical risk (e.g., respiratory distress syndrome). Developmental trajectories for speed (and attention) were similar for both groups. Thus, the deficits in processing speed previously found for preterms in childhood are already present in the 1st year of life.     

Reflections on onset-rime and phoneme sensitivity as predictors of beginning word reading

Rival claims have been made concerning the importance of rime sensitivity as a predictor of early word reading skill. Hulme et al. (2002) suggested that phoneme sensitivity is more strongly predictive of word reading ability than is onset-rime sensitivity. An examination of two independent data sets suggests that, although onset-rime sensitivity typically predicts school entrants' later word reading skill, phoneme sensitivity does predict more variation. However, multiple regression analyses do not reveal the level of phonological sensitivity that children need in order to understand alphabetic reading instruction. This issue is crucial to the detection of children at risk for reading failure and for the design of intervention programs for these children. A different analytic strategy is described for addressing this issue.     

Smiling and relative status in news photographs

To test the hypothesis that lower social status is associated with more smiling, the authors used newspaper photographs and their associated news stories as the basis for scoring the smiling and relative social status of the 2 individuals in each photograph. Independent raters judged smiling and 5 dimensions of relative status for 496 individuals in 248 newspaper photographs. There was no relation between status and smiling, although status and smiling were both related to other variables such as gender, age, and story valence. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that there is no generalized relation between smiling and status.     

Exposure to violence and suicide risk in adolescents: a community study

The prevalence of violence exposure is relatively unexplored in adolescents in European communities, and reports on the association between exposure to community violence and suicidal behavior are rare. The aim of this study was to investigate (1) the prevalence of community violence in a European urban adolescent sample, (2) the relationship between exposure to community violence and suicidal ideation/deliberate self-harm, and (3) the influence of depressive symptoms and aggressive behavior on this relationship. Self-report surveys were administered to a representative school-based sample of 1509 adolescents in Antwerp (Belgium). The prevalence rate of violence exposure was still high but lower than that reported in U.S. communities. Suicidal ideation and deliberate self-harm were both related to violence exposure. The gender-specific influence of depressive symptomatology and aggressive behavior on the association between exposure to violence and suicidal behavior suggests the need for further research.     

A multisource exploration of the friendship patterns of children with and without learning disabilities

Friendship patterns of 117 children with learning disabilities (LD) and 115 children without LD in Grades 4–8 were examined. In comparison with children without LD, boys with LD had fewer mutual friends, children with LD had more friends with learning problems and more younger friends, and children with LD in Grades 4–6 had less stable relationships. With regard to friendship quality, children with LD reported higher levels of conflict, lower levels of validation, and more problems with relationship repair than did children without LD. The findings were discussed in terms of factors that have been found to enhance friendship such as proximity and similarity, and the social skills difficulties that have been associated with learning disabilities.     

Depth oriented brief therapy: an ideal technique as hospice lengths-of-stay continue to shorten

The authors note that as hospice patients' lengths-of-stay continue to shorten, psychosocial/spiritual counselors are being challenged to help patients and families process the myriad of issues terminal illness gives rise to. Given this reality, the authors suggest that the Depth Oriented Brief Therapy (DOBT) approach should prove especially useful. The DOBT premise is that if people can be helped to experience the emotional meanings of why they hold on to emotionally painful symptoms then they can abandon their symptoms for healthier ways of being.     

Timing precision in continuation and synchronization tapping

 Wing and Kristofferson (1973) have shown that temporal precision in self-paced tapping is limited by variability in a central timekeeper and by variability arising in the peripheral motor system. Here we test an extension of the Wing–Kristofferson model to synchronization with periodic external events that was proposed by Vorberg and Wing (1994). In addition to the timekeeper and motor components, a linear phase correction mechanism is assumed which is triggered by the last or the last two synchronization errors. The model is tested in an experiment that contrasts synchronized and self-paced trapping, with response periods ranging from 200–640 ms. The variances of timekeeper and motor delays and the error correction parameters were estimated from the auto-covariance functions of the inter-response intervals in continuation and the asynchronies in synchronization. Plausible estimates for all parameters were obtained when equal motor variance was assumed for synchronization and continuation. Timekeeper variance increased with metronome period, but more steeply during continuation than during synchronization, suggesting that internal timekeeping processes are stabilized by periodic external signals. First-order error correction became more important as the metronome period increased, whereas the contribution of second-order error correction decreased. It is concluded that the extended two-level model accounts well for both synchronization and continuation performance. Received: 16 November 1998 / Accepted: 21 April 1999     

Attributional Style, Self-Esteem, and Human Immunodeficiency Virus: A Test of the Hopelessness and Self-Esteem Theories of Depression

Research on the hopelessness and self-esteem theories of depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989; Metalsky, Joiner, Hardin, & Abramson, 1993) suggests that HIV-infected persons with depressotypic attributional style (AS) and low self-esteem (SE) may be at risk for onset of a syndrome referred to as hopelessness depression (HD). In a prospective study conducted to test these theories, measures of anxiety and depression, AS, and SE were administered to 85 HIV+ and 43 HIV– men; symptoms were reassessed 6 months later. Results indicated that: (1) The interaction of AS, SE, and HIV status predicted change in HD symptoms, but not overall depression or anxiety symptoms; (2) HIV+ men with depressotypic AS and high SE had increased HD symptom levels while other men with high SE had decreased HD symptom levels; (3) HD symptoms remained stable over the 6-month interval among men with low SE; and (4) High SE predicted decreases in anxiety symptoms among HIV– men, but not among HIV+ men. Contrary to the study hypothesis, these findings suggest that among individuals with life-threatening illnesses such as HIV infection, those with depressotypic AS and high SE may be at highest risk for onset of HD.     

Global processing speed as a mediator of developmental changes in children's auditory memory span

This study examined the role of global processing speed in mediating age increases in auditory memory span in 5- to 13-year-olds. Children were tested on measures of memory span, processing speed, single-word speech rate, phonological sensitivity, and vocabulary. Structural equation modeling supported a model in which age-associated increases in processing speed predicted the availability of long-term memory phonological representations for redintegration processes. The availability of long-term phonological representations, in turn, explained variance in memory span. Maximum speech rate did not predict independent variance in memory span.     

Nonverbal behavior and the vertical dimension of social relations: a meta-analysis

The vertical dimension of interpersonal relations (relating to dominance, power, and status) was examined in association with nonverbal behaviors that included facial behavior, gaze, interpersonal distance, body movement, touch, vocal behaviors, posed encoding skill, and others. Results were separately summarized for people's beliefs (perceptions) about the relation of verticality to nonverbal behavior and for actual relations between verticality and nonverbal behavior. Beliefs/perceptions were stronger and much more prevalent than were actual verticality effects. Perceived and actual relations were positively correlated across behaviors. Heterogeneity was great, suggesting that verticality is not a psychologically uniform construct in regard to nonverbal behavior. Finally, comparison of the verticality effects to those that have been documented for gender in relation to nonverbal behavior revealed only a limited degree of parallelism.