The emergence of tool use during the second year of life

Despite a growing interest in the question of tool-use development in infants, no study so far has systematically investigated how learning to use a tool to retrieve an out-of-reach object progresses with age. This was the first aim of this study, in which 60 infants, aged 14, 16, 18, 20, and 22months, were presented with an attractive toy and a rake-like tool. There were five conditions of spatial relationships between the toy and the tool, going from the toy and tool being connected to there being a large spatial gap between them. A second aim of the study was to evaluate at what age infants who spontaneously fail the task can learn this complex skill by being given a demonstration from an adult. Results show that even some of the youngest infants could spontaneously retrieve the toy when it was presented inside and touching the top part of the tool. In contrast, in conditions with a spatial gap, the first spontaneous successes were observed at 18months, suggesting that a true understanding of the use of the tool has not been fully acquired before that age. Interestingly, it is also at 18months that infants began to benefit from the demonstration in the conditions with a spatial gap. The developmental steps for tool use observed here are discussed in terms of changes in infants' ability to attend to more than one item in the environment. The work provides insight into the progressive understanding of tool use during infancy and into how observational learning improves with age.     

Experimenter Effects on Cardiovascular Reactivity and Task Performance During Mental Stress Testing

The Psychological Record - Experimenter effects have long been hypothesized to influence participants’ responses to mental stress testing. To explore the influence of experimenter warmth on...     

Gender role conflict scale: validation for a sample of gay men and lesbian women

This study tested the oblique four-factor model of the Gender Role Conflict Scale for a sample of gay men and lesbian women residing in the United States. 400 gay men and 292 lesbian women recruited from university and college gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender LISTSERVs participated. The internal consistency reliability of the Gender Role Conflict Scale scores was high, but low means on the expressive dimension of gender role conflict were noted. The results of two separate sets of confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the four-factor model's fit to the data could be enhanced for both groups by applying item parceling to lower the number of indicators per factor, suggesting that the actual structural validity of the Gender Role Conflict Scale may be better than suggested by the reported fit indices.     

Using emotional cues in a discrimination learning task: Effects of trait emotional intelligence and affective state

Individuals may differ in their ability to learn the significance of emotional cues within a specific context. If so, trait emotional intelligence (EI) may be associated with faster cue learning. This study (N = 180) tested whether trait EI predicts faster learning of a critical cue for discriminating “terrorists” from “non-terrorists”, using virtual-reality heads as stimuli. The critical cue was either facial emotion (positive or negative), or a neutral feature (hat size). Cognitive ability and subjective state were also assessed. Participants were faster to learn with an emotive cue. Surprisingly, high trait EI was correlated with poorer performance, especially early in learning. Subjective distress was also associated with impaired learning to emotive cues.     

Memory conformity and the perceived accuracy of self versus other

Here, we demonstrate that the decision to conform to another person’s memory involves a strategic trade-off that balances the accuracy of one’s own memory against that of another person. We showed participants three household scenes, one for 30 s, one for 60 s, and one for 120 s. Half were told that they would encode each scene for half as long as their virtual partner, and half were told that they would encode each scene for twice as long as their virtual partner. On a subsequent two-alternative-forced choice (2AFC) memory test, the simulated answer of the partner (accurate, errant, or no response) was shown before participants responded. Conformity to the partner’s responses was significantly enhanced for the 30-s versus the 60- and 120-s scenes. This pattern, however, was present only in the group who believed that they had encoded each scene for half as long as their partner, even though the short-duration scene had the lowest baseline 2AFC accuracy in both groups and was also subjectively rated as the least memorable by both groups. Our reliance on other people’s memory is therefore dynamically and strategically adjusted according to knowledge of the conditions under which we and other people have acquired different memories.     

A geo-logical solution to the lottery paradox, with applications to conditional logic

We defend a set of acceptance rules that avoids the lottery paradox, that is closed under classical entailment, and that accepts uncertain propositions without ad hoc restrictions. We show that the rules we recommend provide a semantics that validates exactly Adams?? conditional logic and are exactly the rules that preserve a natural, logical structure over probabilistic credal states that we call probalogic. To motivate probalogic, we first expand classical logic to geo-logic, which fills the entire unit cube, and then we project the upper surfaces of the geo-logical cube onto the plane of probabilistic credal states by means of standard, linear perspective, which may be interpreted as an extension of the classical principle of indifference. Finally, we apply the geometrical/logical methods developed in the paper to prove a series of trivialization theorems against question-invariance as a constraint on acceptance rules and against rational monotonicity as an axiom of conditional logic in situations of uncertainty.     

The influence of just-world beliefs on driving anger and aggressive driving intentions

Decades of research demonstrate that the extent to which one believes the world is just can have important interpersonal consequences. Unfortunately, most of the commonly studied consequences are negative in nature. Guided by previous research demonstrating the buffering effect of just‐world beliefs and anger, the present research explores how belief in a just world (BJW) may mitigate anger in the domain of driving anger and examines the limiting conditions of this effect. Study 1 demonstrated the expected negative relation between common measures of BJW and anger expression in a driving context. Study 2 found that the buffering effects of just‐world beliefs and driver aggression were greater when BJW was violated (vs. not). Study 3 replicated the effects on aggression and anger and established a mediational role of anger on the buffering effects of just‐world beliefs on thoughts and driver aggression. Aggr. Behav. 38:389‐402, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Backbiting and bloodshed in books: short-term effects of reading physical and relational aggression in literature

The current research consisted of two studies examining the effects of reading physical and relational aggression in literature. In both studies, participants read one of two stories (containing physical or relational aggression), and then participated in one of two tasks to measure aggression. In Study 1, participants who read the physical aggression story were subsequently more physically aggressive than those who read the relational aggression story. Conversely, in Study 2, participants who read the relational aggression story were subsequently more relationally aggressive than those who read the physical aggression story. Combined, these results show evidence for specific effects of reading aggressive content in literature.     

The Prescribing Clinical Health Psychologist: A Hybrid Skill Set in the New Era of Integrated Healthcare

The prescribing clinical health psychologist brings together in one individual a combination of skills to create a hybrid profession that can add value to any healthcare organization. This article addresses the high demand for mental health services and the inequitable distribution of mental health practitioners across the nation. The close link between physical and mental health and evidence that individuals in psychological distress often enter the mental health system via primary care medical clinics is offered as background to a discussion of the author??s work as a commissioned officer of the U.S. Public Health Service assigned to the Chaparral Medical Center of La Clinica de Familia, Inc. near the U.S.?CMexico border. The prescribing clinical health psychologist in primary care medical settings is described as a valuable asset to the future of professional psychology.