Explanatory limitations of cognitive-developmental approaches to morality

In response to Gibbs' defense of neo-Kohlbergian models of morality, the authors question whether revisions in Kohlberg's model constitute a coherent refinement of the cognitive-developmental approach. The authors argue that neo-Kohlbergian measures of moral development assess an aspect of morality (the most sophisticated forms of moral reasoning available to people) that plays a relatively minor role in determining the moral judgments and behavioral decisions people make in their everyday lives. Attempts to conceptualize stages as schema and to redefine moral decision-making in terms of automaticity will not solve these problems. Flexibility is an important aspect of moral maturity. Observed relations between stages of moral development and various forms of social conduct do not establish that the structures of moral reasoning that define stages of moral development exert a significant causal impact on moral behavior. Although cognitive-developmental approaches are equipped to account for some aspects of morality, a more general framework that organizes the insights from other theoretical approaches is needed.     

Persistence of stereotypic behavior: examining the effects of external reinforcers

Basic research has shown that behavioral persistence is often positively related to rate of reinforcement. This relation, expressed in the metaphor of behavioral momentum, has potentially important implications for clinical application. The current study examined one prediction of the momentum metaphor for automatically reinforced behavior. Participants were 3 children who had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and who engaged in stereotypic behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement. Results suggested that stereotypic behavior was more resistant to disruption following periods of access to preferred stimuli delivered on a variable-time schedule than following periods without access to preferred stimuli. The implications of these findings for the treatment of automatically reinforced behavior are discussed.     

Superior haptic perceptual selectivity in late-blind and very-low-vision subjects

Blindfolded sighted, congenitally blind, late-blind, and very-low-vision subjects were tested on a tangible version of the embedded-figures test. The results of ANOVAs on accuracy measures yielded superior performance by the very-low-vision and late-blind subjects compared with the blindfolded sighted and congenitally blind participants. Accuracy of the congenitally blind subjects was similar to that of the blindfolded sighted participants. However, all groups of blind subjects were significantly faster than the blindfolded sighted subjects. It is suggested that experience with pictures combined with haptic skill aid perceptual selectivity in touch.     

Imagination and memory: Does imagining implausible events lead to false autobiographical memories?

Previous studies have reported that imagination can induce false autobiographical memories. This finding has been used to suggest that psychotherapists who have clients imagine suspected repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse may, in fact, be inducing false memories for the imagined events. In this study, at Time 1 and then, 2 weeks later, at Time 2, 145 subjects rated each of 20 events on the Life Events Inventory as to whether each had occurred to them in childhood. One week after Time 1, the subjects were told that 2 target events were plausible and 2 were implausible. They were then asked to imagine 1 plausible and 1 implausible target event. Plausibility and imagining interacted to affect occurrence ratings; whereas imagining plausible events increased the change in occurrence ratings, imagining implausible events had no effect on occurrence ratings.     

The warpy thoughts scale: a new 20-item instrument to measure dysfunctional attitudes

Cognitive theories of psychopathology propose that specific negative cognitive schema held by individuals can increase their likelihood of experiencing depressive episodes. While it has been argued that such dysfunctional attitudes are state measures that occur primarily during periods of depression, a range of research has supported the view that holding dysfunctional attitudes is ongoing, persisting prior to and following depressive episodes. To date, the need for a parsimonious measure of dysfunctional attitudes has not been well addressed. Using data provided by 4545 participants in a free on-line cognitive behavioural therapy program, MoodGYM, we have developed the Warpy Thoughts Scale (WTS), a 20-item instrument measuring dysfunctional attitudes. This scale provides 3 first order factors (Relationships, Achievements and Entitlements) and a higher order factor, Warpy Thoughts, from which a Warpy Thoughts score can be obtained. Confirmatory factor analyses on this model indicated that it provides robust results for men and women and for individuals in a wide range of ages. WTS scores were moderately correlated with levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms (0.39 and 0.40, respectively) and explained up to one-fifth of the variance of these mental health measures. Further validation of the WTS against other measures of dysfunctional thoughts is required.     

Infants' symbolic comprehension of actions modeled with toy replicas

While very young children's understanding of objects as symbols for other entities has been the focus of much investigation, very little is known concerning the emergence of comprehension for symbolic relations among actions modeled with toy replicas and their real counterparts. We used videotaped depictions of real actions in a preferential looking task to assess toddlers' ability to comprehend such connections for action categories aligned with familiar object concepts. Across two experiments, 16- and 18-month-olds provided no evidence of understanding such relations, even when action categories were highlighted with verbal prompts. Among 24- and 26-month-olds, comprehension of relations between certain actions modeled with toys and videos of their real-world counterparts began to emerge, independent of expressive vocabulary size. Implications of our results for theoretical conclusions drawn from use of the generalized imitation procedure to study early conceptual development are discussed.     

On the role of preference in response competition

A duration-based preference assessment identified items that matched and did not match the sensory consequences hypothesized to maintain stereotypy. When evaluated in treatment, these items effectively competed with the occurrence of stereotypy, regardless of their sensory properties. It is suggested that relative preference, as measured in duration-based assessment, can be as significant as type of stimulation produced in interventions that reduce automatically reinforced problem behavior.     

The role of perception, language, and preference in the developmental acquisition of basic color terms

When learning basic color vocabulary, young children show a selective delay in the acquisition of brown and gray relative to other basic color terms. In this study, we first establish the robustness of this finding and then investigate the extent to which perception, language, and color preference may influence color conceptualization. Experimental tasks were designed to measure different aspects of perceptual color processing (discrimination and saliency), color preference and objective counts of color term frequency in preschool-directed language (books and mothers' speech) were used to compare the acquisition of three groups of colors: primary colors, secondary colors (orange, pink, and purple) that appear at the same time as the primary colors, and secondary colors (brown and gray) that appear late. Although our results suggest that perception does not directly shape young children's color term acquisition, we found that children prefer brown and gray significantly less than basic colors and that these color terms appear significantly less often in child-directed speech, suggesting that color preference, linguistic input, and developing color cognition may be linked.