Moderators of the Relation Between Popularity and Depressive Symptoms in Children: Processing Strength and Friendship Value

Children with low (n = 25) and high (n = 38) peer-rated popularity completed an emotional Stroop task, using negative social words, a self-report measure of friendship value relative to other domains of competence, and the Child Depression Inventory (CDI). Six months later, they completed the CDI again. In regression analyses, after controlling for prior CDI scores, social status interacted significantly with both Stroop and value measures (separate regressions). For unpopular children, both greater friendship valuing and greater negative social word Stroop interference predicted increases in depressive symptoms. In contrast, neither predictor was significant for popular children. In a third regression that included friendship value and Stroop interference as joint predictors of depression change, their effects remained significant and independent. We discuss these findings' implications for 3 models of depression; Champion and Power's social-cognitive theory of depression (L. A. Champion and M. J. Power, 1995), Pyszczynski and Greenberg's self-regulatory perseveration theory of depression (T. Pyszczynski & J. Greenberg, 1992), and Harter's model of global self-worth (S. Harter, 1985).     

Effects of Paired and Unpaired Eye-Blink Conditioning on Purkinje Cell Morphology

This experiment addressed (1) the importance of conjunctive stimulus presentation for morphological plasticity of cerebellar Purkinje cells and inhibitory interneurons and (2) whether plasticity is restricted to the spiny branches of Purkinje cells, which receive parallel fiber input. These issues were investigated in naive rabbits and in rabbits that received paired or unpaired presentations of the conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US). To direct CS input to the cerebellar cortex, pontine stimulation served as the CS. Air puffs to the cornea served as the US. Paired condition rabbits received pontine stimulation for 350 msec paired with a coterminating 100-msec air puff. Unpaired condition rabbits received the same stimuli in a pseudorandom order at 1- to 32-sec intervals. Rabbits were trained for a mean of 12 days. Naive rabbits received no treatment. In Golgi-stained Purkinje neurons in lobule HVI, total dendritic length, main branch length, total spiny branch length, and number of spiny branch arbors were all greater in the naive group than in the paired and unpaired groups, which did not differ. No differences were found between the hemispheres ipsilateral and contralateral to the trained eye. The dendritic length and number of branches for inhibitory interneurons did not differ across groups. The Purkinje cell morphological changes detected with these methods do not appear to be uniquely related to the conjunctive activation of the CS and US in the paired condition.     

When it helps to be misled: Facilitative effects of increasing the frequency of conflicting stimuli in a Stroop-like task

Three experiments are reported that involve responding to the meaning or position of a word (Above or Below) presented above or below a fixation point. Position and word meaning conflicted (Above/below or Below/above) or were compatible (Above/above or Below/below), and the relative frequency of conflicting trials was varied. Experiment 1 required responses to the word and its position. Compatibility and frequency had no effect in the spatial task, but interacted strongly in the word task: Compatible stimuli were processed faster when conflicting trials were rare (20% conflicting), but conflicting stimuli were processed faster when they were frequent (80% conflicting). Experiments 2 and 3 used the word task only and extended these findings to intermediate (20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% conflicting) and more extreme (10%, 20%, 80%, and 90% conflicting) frequencies, respectively. The advantage for conflicting stimuli when they were frequent was taken as evidence for a strategy involving dividing attention between reported and unreported dimensions.     

Desired control and felt control as mediators of stress in a dental setting

Control-related variables have clearly affected stress responses in previous research (Thompson, 1981). Prior work, however, has primarily emphasized the amount of control that subjects perceive they have. In the three studies reported here, we examined the added predictive utility of assessing subjects' desire for control. Data from all three studies indicate that subjects who have a high desire for control coupled with a low feeling of control are characterized by particularly high degrees of dental distress. These results were found both in settings where patients anticipated immediate dental treatment and where treatment was not imminent. In addition, the results indicate that this "at risk" group reported greater distress before and immediately after actual dental treatment. Furthermore, they remembered their dental treatment as being more aversive 1 week after treatment. The practical implications and theoretical significance of these data are considered.     

Newman and Quasi-Fideism: A Reply to Duncan Pritchard

Abstract: In recent years, Duncan Pritchard has developed a position in religious epistemology called quasi-fideism that he claims traces back to John Henry Newman's treatment of the rationality of religious belief. In this paper, we give three reasons to think that Pritchard's reading of Newman as a quasi-fideist is mistaken. First, Newman's parity argument does not claim that religious and non-religious beliefs are on a par because both are groundless; instead, for Newman, they are on a par because both often stem from implicit rather than explicit reasoning. Second, pace Pritchard, Newman's distinction between simple and complex assent does not map onto the Wittgensteinian distinction between groundless hinge commitments and beliefs that flow from these hinges. For Newman, simple and complex assent differ in terms of the believer's level of awareness of their grounds. Third, and finally, Newman does not reject Locke's evidentialism in toto. Instead, he argues that certitude is not restricted to beliefs stemming from intuition and demonstration but often rightly includes probabilistically supported (or fallibly evidenced) beliefs.     

Priming or executive control? Associative priming of cue encoding increases “switch costs” in the explicit task-cuing procedure

The explicit task-cuing procedure involves presenting a cue that indicates which task to perform on a target. Responses are typically faster when tasks repeat than when they alternate, and this difference is often interpreted as a measure of the time required for executive control processes to change task set. This article suggests that the difference reflects priming of cue encoding when successive cues are identical or associatively related. Subjects responded to task repetitions more quickly when the cue on the current trial was associatively related to the cue on the previous trial (e.g., day --> night) than when the cues were unrelated (e.g., verb --> night). Models applied to the time course function--generated by manipulating the interval between the onsets of the cue and the target--showed that the facilitation was due to cue encoding, a process that does not require online executive control.     

Parallel memory retrieval in dual-task situations: II. Episodic memory

Three experiments asked whether subjects could retrieve information from a 2nd stimulus while they retrieved information from a 1st stimulus. Subjects performed recognition judgments on each of 2 words that followed each other by 0, 250, and 1,000 ms (Experiment 1) or 0 and 300 ms (Experiments 2 and 3). In each experiment, reaction time to both stimuli was faster when the 2 stimuli were both targets (on the study list) or both lures (not on the study list) than when 1 was a target and the other was a lure. Each experiment found priming from the 2nd stimulus to the 1st when both stimuli were targets. Reaction time to the 1st stimulus was faster when the 2 targets came from the same memory structure at study (columns in Experiment 1; pairs in Experiment 2; sentences in Experiment 3) than when they came from different structures. This priming is inconsistent with discrete serial retrieval and consistent with parallel retrieval.     

Restraint and Cancellation: Multiple Inhibition Deficits in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

We used variations of the stop signal task to study two components of motor response inhibition—the ability to withhold a strong response tendency (restraint) and the ability to cancel an ongoing action (cancellation)—in children with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and in non-ADHD controls of similar age (ages 7–14 years). The goal was to determine if restraint and cancellation were related and if both were deficient in ADHD. The stop signal task involved a choice reaction time task (go task) which required a rapid response. The demand for inhibitory control was invoked through the presentation of a stop signal on a subset of go trials which required that the ongoing response be suspended. The stop signal was presented either concurrently with the go signal (restraint version) or after a variable delay (cancellation version). In Study 1, we compared ADHD and control children on the cancellation version of the stop task; in Study 2, we compared ADHD and controls on the restraint version. In Study 3, a subset of ADHD and control participants completed both tasks so that we could examine convergence of these dimensions of inhibition. Compared to control participants, ADHD participants showed a deficit both in the ability to cancel and to restrain a speeded motor response. Performance on the restraint version was significantly correlated with performance on the cancellation version in controls, but not in ADHD participants. We conclude that ADHD is associated with deficits in both restraint and cancellation subcomponents of inhibition.     

Inhibitory control in mind and brain: an interactive race model of countermanding saccades

The stop-signal task has been used to study normal cognitive control and clinical dysfunction. Its utility is derived from a race model that accounts for performance and provides an estimate of the time it takes to stop a movement. This model posits a race between go and stop processes with stochastically independent finish times. However, neurophysiological studies demonstrate that the neural correlates of the go and stop processes produce movements through a network of interacting neurons. The juxtaposition of the computational model with the neural data exposes a paradox-how can a network of interacting units produce behavior that appears to be the outcome of an independent race? The authors report how a simple, competitive network can solve this paradox and provide an account of what is measured by stop-signal reaction time.