The Neighbourhood Youth Inventory: development and validation

This paper describes the development and validation of an inventory to uncover youths' experiences in their neighbourhoods. The Neighbourhood Youth Inventory (NYI) was developed from conversations with youths in Grades 7, 9 and 11. This paper reports the psychometric analyses of the NYI. Responses from 934 youths (511 urban, 423 rural) to the NYI resulted in a four‐factor solution. This solution was stable across responses from youths in Grades 7, 9 and 11, and for urban and rural youths. Cronbach alphas ranged from 0.64 to 0.94. Construct, convergent and discriminant validity of the NYI subscales are demonstrated. Using the NYI we will be able to assess youths' experiences within their neighbourhoods, which may contribute to a more ecological understanding of healthy developmental outcomes beyond family, peer and school environments. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel,short and easy-to-perform method to evaluate newborns’ social olfactory preferences

Animal Cognition - Humans’ early olfactory perception has been studied mainly within the framework of mother–offspring interactions and only a few studies have focused on...     

The counselling and psychotherapy profession in Canada: regulatory processes and current status

ABSTRACT

Like the Canadian landscape and culture, the status of professional regulation for counselling and psychotherapy is a mosaic reflecting the unique cultural, linguistic and contextual realities of Canada. Statutory regulation in Canada is constitutionally a provincial/territorial matter. In the past five years, a major movement towards professional regulation has emerged. The authors describe the variable status of regulation, focusing on three provinces: Quebec, Nova Scotia and Ontario. They explore the federal Agreement of Internal Trade, designed to facilitate inter-provincial/territorial mobility of regulated professionals. Finally, the authors summarise national research and development activities of the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association that enhance the pan-Canadian mobility of practitioners and support shared professional understandings. These activities range from bilingual, national validation of competencies, definitions, titles and scopes of practice to symposia and an entry-to-practice competency assessment.     

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder’: People who think they are drunk also think they are attractive

This research examines the role of alcohol consumption on self‐perceived attractiveness. Study 1, carried out in a barroom (N= 19), showed that the more alcoholic drinks customers consumed, the more attractive they thought they were. In Study 2, 94 non‐student participants in a bogus taste‐test study were given either an alcoholic beverage (target BAL [blood alcohol level]= 0.10 g/100 ml) or a non‐alcoholic beverage, with half of each group believing they had consumed alcohol and half believing they had not (balanced placebo design). After consuming beverages, they delivered a speech and rated how attractive, bright, original, and funny they thought they were. The speeches were videotaped and rated by 22 independent judges. Results showed that participants who thought they had consumed alcohol gave themselves more positive self‐evaluations. However, ratings from independent judges showed that this boost in self‐evaluation was unrelated to actual performance.     

A Perception-Action Coupling Type of Control in Long Jumping

The authors' goal was to identify the control mechanisms used by long jumpers (N = 6) to precisely position their foot at the board. In addition to the intertrial method usually used in previous research, an original method based on a trial-by-trial analysis was also implemented. If the approach to the board in long jumping encompasses two distinct sequences separated by a key step that marks the initiation of visual control, then a trial-by-trial analysis should reveal those sequences, regardless of the amount of adjustment: The step number at which regulation is initiated should be the same irrespective of the amount of adjustment. If, in contrast, a perception-action coupling mechanism operates, then the step number at which regulation is initiated should be a function of the amount of adjustment: A linear relation between those 2 variables should emerge. The results of the present study are compatible with continuous control mechanisms based on a perception-action coupling.     

Violent Video Games Stress People Out and Make Them More Aggressive

It is well known that violent video games increase aggression, and that stress increases aggression. Many violent video games can be stressful because enemies are trying to kill players. The present study investigates whether violent games increase aggression by inducing stress in players. Stress was measured using cardiac coherence, defined as the synchronization of the rhythm of breathing to the rhythm of the heart. We predicted that cardiac coherence would mediate the link between exposure to violent video games and subsequent aggression. Specifically, we predicted that playing a violent video game would decrease cardiac coherence, and that cardiac coherence, in turn, would correlate negatively with aggression. Participants (N = 77) played a violent or nonviolent video game for 20 min. Cardiac coherence was measured before and during game play. After game play, participants had the opportunity to blast a confederate with loud noise through headphones during a reaction time task. The intensity and duration of noise blasts given to the confederate was used to measure aggression. As expected, violent video game players had lower cardiac coherence levels and higher aggression levels than did nonviolent game players. Cardiac coherence, in turn, was negatively related to aggression. This research offers another possible reason why violent games can increase aggression—by inducing stress. Cardiac coherence can be a useful tool to measure stress induced by violent video games. Cardiac coherence has several desirable methodological features as well: it is noninvasive, stable against environmental disturbances, relatively inexpensive, not subject to demand characteristics, and easy to use. Aggr. Behav. 39:64‐70, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The more you play,the more aggressive you become: A long-term experimental study of cumulative violent video game effects on hostile expectations and aggressive behavior

It is well established that violent video games increase aggression. There is a stronger evidence of short-term violent video game effects than of long-term effects. The present experiment tests the cumulative long-term effects of violent video games on hostile expectations and aggressive behavior over three consecutive days. Participants (N = 70) played violent or nonviolent video games 20 min a day for three consecutive days. After gameplay, participants could blast a confederate with loud unpleasant noise through headphones (the aggression measure). As a potential causal mechanism, we measured hostile expectations. Participants read ambiguous story stems about potential interpersonal conflicts, and listed what they thought the main characters would do or say, think, and feel as the story continued. As expected, aggressive behavior and hostile expectations increased over days for violent game players, but not for nonviolent video game players, and the increase in aggressive behavior was partially due to hostile expectations.     

Lexical-semantic body knowledge in 5- to 11-year-old children: How spatial body representation influences body semantics

This study addresses the relation between lexico-semantic body knowledge (i.e., body semantics) and spatial body representation (i.e., structural body representation) by analyzing naming performances as a function of body structural topography. One hundred and forty-one children ranging from 5 years 2 months to 10 years 5 months old were asked to provide a lexical label for isolated body part pictures. We compared the children’s naming performances according to the location of the body parts (body parts vs. head features and also upper vs. lower limbs) or to their involvement in motor skills (distal segments, joints, and broader body parts). The results showed that the children’s naming performance was better for facial body parts than for other body parts. Furthermore, it was found that the naming of body parts was better for body parts related to action. These findings suggest that the development of a spatial body representation shapes the elaboration of semantic body representation processing. Moreover, this influence was not limited to younger children. In our discussion of these results, we focus on the important role of action in the development of body representations and semantic organization.     

Rapid instructed task learning: A new window into the human brain’s unique capacity for flexible cognitive control

The human ability to flexibly adapt to novel circumstances is extraordinary. Perhaps the most illustrative, yet underappreciated, form of this cognitive flexibility is rapid instructed task learning (RITL)—the ability to rapidly reconfigure our minds to perform new tasks from instructions. This ability is important for everyday life (e.g., learning to use new technologies) and is used to instruct participants in nearly every study of human cognition. We review the development of RITL as a circumscribed domain of cognitive neuroscience investigation, culminating in recent demonstrations that RITL is implemented via brain circuits centered on lateral prefrontal cortex. We then build on this and the recent discovery of compositional representations within lateral prefrontal cortex to develop an integrative theory of cognitive flexibility and cognitive control that identifies mechanisms that may enable RITL within the human brain. The insights gained from this new theoretical account have important implications for further developments and applications of RITL research.