Scaling Estimates of Amplitude for Movements Without Visual Guidance

Three groups of subjects were involved in estimating movement amplitudes. Two of these groups used the method of estimation, labeling the amplitudes of simple linear movements in inches. One group made active movements, the other experienced passive movement of the arm. The third group, using the method of production, attempted to move the distance required by the experimenter’s label. Performance was described in terms of absolute, algebraic, and intrasubject variable error. No striking differences were noted between the three task groups, but males and females differed systematically. Females tended to over-estimate and males to underestimate the distances moved. Lack of evidence for any range effect suggests that subjects were operating from relatively stable perceptual traces, accessed by the verbal labels, rather than from memory traces of previous estimates of the same amplitudes.     

Essay review

C. W. A. Whitaker, Aristotle’s De Interpretatione. Contradiction and Dialectic. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1996. x + 235 pp., £30. ISBN 0 19 823619 0

Ulrich Nortmann, Modale Syllogismen, mögliche Welten, Essentialismus. Eine Analyse der aristotelischen Modallogik (Perspektiven der Analytischen Philo-sophie/Perspectives in Analytical Philosophy, 9). Berlin and New York:Walter de Gruyter, 1996. x + 427 pp. DM 260.00 (for members of the Society for Analytical Philosophy DM 98.00). ISBN 3-11-014660-6     

The impact of group leaders' behaviour on parents acquisition of key parenting skills during parent training

BackgroundParent training (PT) is identified as the most effective intervention for the treatment of conduct disorder (CD). Intervention observational outcomes are often reported as summarised composite scores, providing an overview of overall construct change.Methods and aimsParents of children aged 3–5 years identified ‘at risk’ of developing CD were randomly allocated to either PT intervention or waiting list control group. Parent and child behaviours were assessed before and after the intervention period. The current paper aims to establish which individual observed parenting categories change as a result of PT, and which specific observed leader categories predict these changes.ResultsControlling for baseline scores, ANCOVA demonstrated changes in parent praise and reflective behaviours as significant post-intervention. One-way ANOVAs demonstrated higher levels of leader praise and reflective behaviours resulted in greater change in parental praise and reflective behaviours respectively. Regression analyses indicated these leader behaviours predict positive change in parental praise and reflective behaviours for intervention families.ConclusionsComposite observational scores provide an account of behaviour constructs, whereas individual behaviour categories provide an insight into the core components of these constructs. The results suggest praise and reflection as key leader behaviours that influence the mechanisms of change in parenting behaviours as a result of PT.     

Peer Experiences of Anxious and Socially Withdrawn Youth: An Integrative Review of the Developmental and Clinical Literature

Prior research indicates that both anxious youth and socially withdrawn youth tend to experience challenges and difficulties in various aspects of their peer relationships and social functioning. While clinical psychology researchers have examined how anxiety relates to peer experiences using normative and clinically anxious samples, developmental psychologists have focused primarily on the peer experiences of shy and withdrawn children. Research from these two fields has progressed on related yet separate paths, producing similar results despite using different terminology and assessment techniques. The purpose of this review is to bring together the developmental and clinical bodies of literature on the peer experiences of anxious and socially withdrawn youth by identifying common themes and unique contributions of each discipline. Studies reviewed focus specifically on the peer constructs of acceptance, friendship, peer victimization, social skills, and social-cognitive processes. Limitations including methodological inconsistencies and insufficient examination of age-, gender-, and ethnicity-related issues are identified. Recommendations for future collaborations between developmental and clinical researchers as well as implications for interventions targeting the peer relations of anxious and withdrawn youth are discussed.     

Altruism between romantic partners: Biological offspring as a genetic bridge between altruist and recipient

When the cost of altruism is low, individuals are more likely to help non-kin (i.e., friends and romantic partners) than kin. This trend is thought to reflect the fact that people tend to be emotionally closer with friends and romantic partners than kin. However, as the cost of altruism increases, altruistic preference shifts to kin. The present study highlights this phenomenon by examining altruism between siblings, romantic partners, romantic partners who have biological children together, and romantic partners who have adopted children together. Participants (n = 203) completed a questionnaire about altruism in low-, medium-, and high-cost situations. Participants gave more low-cost help to their romantic partners (regardless of whether they had a child together) than their siblings. More medium-cost help was given to romantic partners who had a child (biological and adopted) than siblings and romantic partners without children. In the high-cost condition, the estimated altruistic tendencies were stronger toward siblings and romantic partners who have a biological child than toward romantic partners with no children and partners with adopted children. Participants also believed they were more altruistic than their siblings and romantic partners.     

Early Communications in the War Against Terrorism: An Integrative Complexity Analysis

Integrative complexity reflects the degree to which the source of a communication perceives several dimensions and points of view relevant to the topic (differentiation) and the degree to which such characteristics are seen as related to each other (integration). During international crises, bilateral decreases in the integrative complexity of communications frequently precede the outbreak of war; a unilateral decrease reliably precedes surprise strategic attacks. In the current study, complexity was scored in the messages of selected leaders from before to approximately a month after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Even this limited database replicated some of the complexity patterns found previously, as well as showing some novel characteristics. This was the first application of the method to hostilities other than inter–nation or civil wars.     

Directed forgetting in direct and indirect tests of memory: Seeking evidence of retrieval inhibition using electrophysiological measures

We investigated whether directed forgetting as elicited by the item-cueing method results solely from differential rehearsal of to-be-remembered vs. to-be-forgotten words or, additionally, from inhibitory processes that actively impair retrieval of to-be-forgotten words. During study, participants (N = 24) were instructed to remember half of a series of presented words (TBR) and to forget the other half (TBF), as indicated by an instruction cue shown shortly after each word. During test, accuracy and reaction time measures from lexical decisions (indirect memory test) followed by recognition-memory judgements (direct memory test) were supplemented with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Results from the behavioural measures revealed directed forgetting in the recognition-memory test but not the lexical-decision test. ERPs obtained during recognition indicated that TBR words elicited a larger parietal old/new effect than TBF words overall, suggesting that remember/forget instructions impaired conscious recollection processes more severely than familiarity processes. Moreover, TBF words that were successfully forgotten elicited less parietal activity than correctly rejected new words (the reversed old/new effect; Nowicka, A., Jednorórog, K., Wypych, M., & Marchewka, A. (2009). Reversed old/new effect for intentionally forgotten words: An ERP study of directed forgetting. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 71, 97–102). This was taken to implicate that inhibitory processes likely affected these items. Enhanced negativities for successfully forgotten TBF words relative to new words were observed in the lexical-decision task at early (150–250 ms) and late (800–1000 ms) time windows, suggesting that inhibitory influences disrupt more than just conscious recollection when memory retrieval is tested indirectly.     

Effects of right and left hemisphere cerebrovascular lesions on discrimination of prosodic and semantic aspects of affect in sentences.

Ten nonaphasic left cerebrovascular accident (CVA) patients, 12 right CVA patients, and 16 normals were matched for age, education, lesion sizes, and postonset intervals; all were right handed. One task consisted of 36 sentences connoting one of six primary emotions (joy, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, anger) presented binaurally with a neutral emotional tone. Subjects were required to point to the appropriate emotion name on a vertically arranged list. A second task consisted of the same 36 sentences voiced emotionally by humming with a closed mouth, presented binaurally, and requiring the same response as for the preceding task. A third task consisted of 18 of the sentences spoken with concordant emotional tone and the remaining 18 sentences spoken with discordant emotional tone, presented binaurally and requiring pointing to the word "SAME" or "DIFFERENT" arrayed vertically. The right hemisphere (RH) patients were significantly impaired, relative to the left hemisphere (LH) patients and normals, on the pure prosody task (2) and on the emotional concordance task (3), the latter effect being significant only for mismatch categorization. The LH patients performed (nonsignificantly) less well than the RH patients and normals on the verbal contextual task (1). Performances on the three tasks were not significantly correlated in the patient groups. It was concluded that the RH probably dominates for phonetic discrimination of vowel trains (fundamental frequency and/or single vowel or multivowel contour) and that the RH probably dominates for certain forms of selective attention in the verbal domain perhaps involving simultaneous mismatch treatment of ongoing sentence-level, distracting, complementary, verbal processes. Comparison of similar right and left, cortical (frontoparietal), and subcortical (capsule and basal ganglia) lesions suggested, but did not prove, that the RH pure prosody impairment is cortical whereas the RH tonal-semantic mismatch categorization impairment involves subcortical as well as cortical contributions.