Kids See Human Too: Adapting an Individual Differences Measure of Anthropomorphism for a Child Sample

The study of anthropomorphism in adults has received considerable interest with the development of the Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism Questionnaire (IDAQ; Waytz, Cacioppo, & Epley, 2010). Anthropomorphism in children—its development, correlates, and consequences—is also of significant interest, yet a comparable measure does not exist. To fill this gap, we developed the IDAQ-Child Form (IDAQ-CF) and report on 2 studies. In Study 1A, adults (N = 304) were administered the IDAQ and IDAQ-CF to directly assess comparability between the measures. In Study 1B, an additional 350 adults were administered the IDAQ-CF to confirm that the new measure had the same underlying structure as the original IDAQ when the measures were not administered together. In Study 2, children (N = 90) in 3 age groups—5, 7, and 9 years old—were administered the IDAQ-CF and an Attribution Interview, which probed their conceptions of a robot and puppet. Results indicated the IDAQ-CF a) is comparable to the original IDAQ in adult (Studies 1A and 1B) and child (Study 2) samples, and b) predicts children’s tendency to attribute animate characteristics to inanimate entities (Study 2). This research provides strong evidence that the IDAQ-CF is an effective adaptation of the original IDAQ for use with children.     

No imagination effect on boundary extension

Boundary extension (BE) occurs when people falsely remember perceiving beyond the edges of a presented scene. Theorists argue that BE occurs because people mistakenly attribute information they have generated to the study stimulus—that is, they make a source memory error. Inspired by this idea, in six experiments we tested whether scene details resulting from explicit imagination would be misremembered as actual visual perceptions, resulting in increased BE as compared with standard instructions. In four experiments, undergraduates completed a BE task with separate study and test blocks; in two further experiments, undergraduates completed a trial-by-trial BE task (N = 290). Half of the participants elaborated on the study pictures (imagined smells and sounds, or what was to the left and right of the scene, or what a photographer would see by zooming in or out). Robust BE was found in all experiments, but none of the elaborations modified the size of BE; therefore, BE is not to be affected by explicit elaboration and may be related to spatial rather than visual imagery ability.     

Relations between infants’ emerging reach‐grasp competence and event‐related desynchronization in EEG

Recent reports of similar patterns of brain electrical activity (electroencephalogram: EEG) during action execution and observation, recorded from scalp locations over motor‐related regions in infants and adults, have raised the possibility that two foundational abilities – controlling one's own intentional actions and perceiving others’ actions – may be integrally related during ontogeny. However, to our knowledge, there are no published reports of the relations between developments in motor skill (i.e. recording actual motor skill performance) and EEG during both action execution and action observation. In the present study we collected EEG from 21 9‐month‐olds who were given opportunities to reach for toys and who also observed an experimenter reach for toys. Event‐related desynchronization (ERD) was computed from the EEG during the reaching events. We assessed infants’ reaching‐grasping competence, including reach latency, errors, preshaping of the hand, and bimanual reaches, and found that desynchronization recorded in scalp electrodes over motor‐related regions during action observation was associated with action competence during execution. Infants who were more competent reachers, compared to less competent reachers, exhibited greater ERD while observing reaching‐grasping. These results provide initial evidence for an early emerging neural system integrating one's own actions with the perception of others’ actions.     

Measuring How Systems-Centered® Members Connect with Group Dynamics: FSQ-2 Construct Validity

Understanding and intervening at the connection between group dynamics and member behavior has been a long-standing challenge. Functional subgrouping (FS) is the core Systems-centered training and therapy (SCT) method and is hypothesized to solve vexing member/group dynamic problems such as scapegoating. The self-report Functional Subgrouping Questionnaire-2 (FSQ-2) was developed to measure the amount of functional subgrouping in a group. The current FSQ-2 construct validity study aims to determine whether: 1) FSQ-2 scores change across sessions; 2) level of SCT experience is related to scores; and 3) SCT experience moderates change in FSQ-2 scores over SCT training. Results from groups at various SCT training events showed higher FSQ-2 responses for those with greater SCT experience, and increased scores over time. However, change over time on most FSQ-2 items did not depend on SCT experience level. Findings provide further support for the construct validity of the FSQ-2, and thus also for the SCT model. Suggestions for future SCT/FSQ-2 research are made.     

The Church as an Agent of Help in the Battle Against Late Life Depression

Late life depression has become recognized as a serious mental health problem. Almost 1 in 6 elderly suffer (often in silence) with late life depression. New care delivery agents need to be uncovered and mobilized. Because older Americans' religious habits positively impact their sense of well-being and physical health, the church becomes an ideal medium to offer educational programming focused onprevention and early intervention. This article presents a proposal for how the church could become an agent of help to depressed elderly and their families.     

Gender,Emotional Support,and Well-Being Among the Rural Elderly

The current study sought to clarify the effects of social support on the psychological well-being of rural elders. Data were provided by 180 older men and women (mean age = 73.6 years) living in Northern Appalachia. Similar to the demographic profile of this region, most (97.2%) of the participants were Caucasian. Although mean differences in perceptions of emotional support did not emerge, the relative importance of various sources of support differed for men and women. For men, higher satisfaction with family support was associated with lower negative affect and higher positive affect. For women, although satisfaction with emotional support from family and more years of education were associated with lower levels of negative affect, emotional support from friends enhanced positive affect. The results suggest that new programs may be needed in order to help older rural men and women to maintain well-being in late life.     

Analogical reasoning in working memory: Resources shared among relational integration,interference resolution,and maintenance

We report a series of experiments using a pictorial analogy task designed to manipulate relational integration, interference resolution, and active maintenance simultaneously. The difficulty of the problems was varied in terms of the number of relations to be integrated, the need for interference resolution, and the duration of maintenance required to correctly solve the analogy. The participants showed decreases in performance when integrating multiple relations, as compared with a single relation, and when interference resolution was required in solving the analogy. When the participants were required to integrate multiple relations while simultaneously engaged in interference resolution, performance was worse, as compared with problems that incorporated either of these features alone. Maintenance of information across delays in the range of 1-4.5 sec led to greater decrements in visual memory, as compared with analogical reasoning. Misleading information caused interference when it had been necessarily attended to and maintained in working memory and, hence, had to be actively suppressed. However, sources of conflict within information that had not been attended to or encoded into working memory did not interfere with the ongoing controlled information processing required for relational integration. The findings provide evidence that relational integration and interference resolution depend on shared cognitive resources in working memory during analogical reasoning.     

Looking and touching: what extant approaches reveal about the structure of early word knowledge

The goal of the current study is to assess the temporal dynamics of vision and action to evaluate the underlying word representations that guide infants' responses. Sixteen‐month‐old infants participated in a two‐alternative forced‐choice word–picture matching task. We conducted a moment‐by‐moment analysis of looking and reaching behaviors as they occurred in tandem to assess the speed with which a prompted word was processed (visual reaction time) as a function of the type of haptic response: Target, Distractor, or No Touch. Visual reaction times (visual RTs) were significantly slower during No Touches compared to Distractor and Target Touches, which were statistically indistinguishable. The finding that visual RTs were significantly faster during Distractor Touches compared to No Touches suggests that incorrect and absent haptic responses appear to index distinct knowledge states: incorrect responses are associated with partial knowledge whereas absent responses appear to reflect a true failure to map lexical items to their target referents. Further, we found that those children who were faster at processing words were also those children who exhibited better haptic performance. This research provides a methodological clarification on knowledge measured by the visual and haptic modalities and new evidence for a continuum of word knowledge in the second year of life.     

Processing Speed and Neurodevelopment in Adolescent-Onset Psychosis: Cognitive Slowing Predicts Social Function

Onset of psychosis may be associated with abnormal adolescent neurodevelopment. Here we examined the neurocognitive profile of first-episode, adolescent onset psychosis (AOP) as compared to typically developing adolescents, and asked whether neurocognitive performance varied differentially as a function of age in the cases compared with controls. A comprehensive neuropsychological battery was administered to 35 patients experiencing a first-episode of a DSM-IV psychotic disorder and to 31 matched controls. Clinicians also rated subjects’ social and role functioning, both at the time of neuropsychological assessment and 1 year later. Although patients displayed a wide range of impairments relative to controls, their most pronounced deficits included verbal memory, sensorimotor dexterity and cognitive processing speed. Among these, only processing speed showed a significant group-by-age interaction, consistent with an aberrant developmental course among AOP patients. Processing speed also accounted for substantial variance in other areas of deficit, and predicted social functioning 1 year later. AOP patients fail to show normal age-related increases in processing speed, which in turn predicts poorer functional outcomes. This pattern is consistent with the view that adolescent brain developmental processes, such as myelination, may be disrupted in these patients.     

Young and older adults' beliefs about effective ways to mitigate age-related memory decline

This study investigated whether young and older adults vary in their beliefs about the impact of various mitigating factors on age-related memory decline. Eighty young (ages 18-23) and 80 older (ages 60-82) participants reported their beliefs about their own memory abilities and the strategies that they use in their everyday lives to attempt to control their memory. Participants also reported their beliefs about memory change with age for hypothetical target individuals who were described as using (or not using) various means to mitigate memory decline. There were no age differences in personal beliefs about control over current or future memory ability. However, the two age groups differed in the types of strategies they used in their everyday life to control their memory. Young adults were more likely to use internal memory strategies, whereas older adults were more likely to focus on cognitive exercise and maintaining physical health as ways to optimize their memory ability. There were no age differences in rated memory change across the life span in hypothetical individuals. Both young and older adults perceived strategies related to improving physical and cognitive health as effective means of mitigating memory loss with age, whereas internal memory strategies were perceived as less effective means for controlling age-related memory decline.