Promoting balance and jumping skills in children with Down syndrome

The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in balance and qualitative and quantitative jumping performances by 20 children with Down syndrome (3 to 6 years) on jumping lessons. 30 typical children ages 3 to 6 years were recruited as a comparison group. Before the jumping lesson, a pretest was given subjects for balance and jumping skill measures based on the Motor Proficiency and Motor Skill Inventory, respectively. Subjects with Down syndrome received 3 sessions on jumping per week for 6 weeks but not the typical children. Then, a posttest was administered to all subjects. Analysis of covariance showed the pre- and posttest differences on scores for floor walk, beam walk, and horizontal and vertical jumping by subjects with Down syndrome were significantly greater than those for the typical children.     

Gender and conjugal differences in happiness

The author examined conjugal congruence on 4 role experiences--spousal, parental, filial, worker--and on subjective well-being (SWB). According to purposive sampling strategy, 222 community adults (111 married couples) in Taiwan completed a research questionnaire. Conjugal congruence on role experiences was linked to conjugal congruence on SWB as well as personal well-being. Analyses showed that conjugal congruence on role experiences (except the worker role) and SWB was generally high. However, some conjugal discrepancies persisted: The husbands were more committed to the worker role, whereas the wives were more committed to the parental role. Furthermore, conjugal discrepancies in role experiences were related to conjugal discrepancies in SWB as well as to husbands' happiness.     

Managerial Stress, Locus of Control, and Job Strain in Taiwan and UK: A Comparative Study

This study investigated managerial stress in Taiwan and UK using the Occupational Stress Indicator-2 (OSI-2) and the Work Locus of Control (WLCS) scale. Results showed that the reliability and validity of the measures used were acceptable and comparable in the two samples. There were similarities as well as differences in managerial stress in the two countries. Recognition and Managerial role were important predictors of strain for the Chinese managers, whereas Relationships, Organizational climate, and Personal responsibility were important predictors of strain for UK managers. There were consistent moderating (vulnerability) effects of internal control for the Taiwanese managers. Results corroborated some previous studies conducted in the West. However, caution was also suggested for generalizing Western-originated concepts and theories across cultural boundaries.     

Updating egocentric representations in human navigation

Seven experiments tested whether human navigation depends on enduring representations, or on momentary egocentric representations that are updated as one moves. Human subjects pointed to unseen targets, either while remaining oriented or after they had been disoriented by self-rotation. Disorientation reduced not only the absolute accuracy of pointing to all objects ('heading error') but also the relative accuracy of pointing to different objects ('configuration error'). A single light providing a directional cue reduced both heading and configuration errors if it was present throughout the experiment. If the light was present during learning and test but absent during the disorientation procedure, however, subjects showed low heading errors (indicating that they reoriented by the light) but high configuration errors (indicating that they failed to retrieve an accurate cognitive map of their surroundings). These findings provide evidence that object locations are represented egocentrically. Nevertheless, disorientation had little effect on the coherence of pointing to different room corners, suggesting both (a) that the disorientation effect on representations of object locations is not due to the experimental paradigm and (b) that room geometry is captured by an enduring representation. These findings cast doubt on the view that accurate navigation depends primarily on an enduring, observer-free cognitive map, for humans construct such a representation of extended surfaces but not of objects. Like insects, humans represent the egocentric distances and directions of objects and continuously update these representations as they move. The principal evolutionary advance in animal navigation may concern the number of unseen targets whose egocentric directions and distances can be represented and updated simultaneously, rather than a qualitative shift in navigation toward reliance on an allocentric map.     

Perception of dynamic acoustic patterns by an individual with unilateral verbal auditory agnosia

Previous studies have found that subjects diagnosed with verbal auditory agnosia (VAA) from bilateral brain lesions may experience difficulties at the prephonemic level of acoustic processing. In this case study, we administered a series of speech and nonspeech discrimination tests to an individual with unilateral VAA as a result of left-temporal-lobe damage. The results indicated that the subject's ability to perceive steady-state acoustic stimuli was relatively intact but his ability to perceive dynamic stimuli was drastically reduced. We conclude that this particular aspect of acoustic processing may be a major contributing factor that disables speech perception in subjects with unilateral VAA.     

In the eye of the storm: race and genomics in research and practice

The difficulties of operationalizing race in research and practice for social, behavioral, and genetic researchers and practitioners are neither new nor related to recent genetic knowledge. For geneticists, the bases for understanding groups are clines, observed traits that gradually change in frequency between geographic regions without distinct identifiable population boundaries and population histories that carry information about the distribution of genetic variants. For psychologists, race may not exist or be a social and cultural construct associated with fluid social inferences. Because definitions of populations and race can be socially and biologically incongruent, the authors suggest that geneticists and social and behavioral scientists and clinicians attend to external validity issues by operationalizing population and racial categories and avoiding race proxies for other biological, social, and cultural constructs in research designs, data analyses, and clinical practice.     

Mothers' affect in the homework context: the importance of staying positive

This research investigated mothers' affect in the context of children's homework. Mothers (N = 109) of children 8 to 12 years old were interviewed daily about their affect while interacting with children, their assistance with children's homework, and children's behavior while completing homework. At this time and 6 months later, children's motivational and emotional functioning was assessed. Although mothers' negative affect was lower than their positive affect, it was elevated on days their assistance with homework was high. This was accounted for by mothers' perceptions of children as helpless on days they provided heightened assistance. Mothers' positive affect in the homework context buffered children's motivational and emotional functioning against mothers' negative affect as well as children's helplessness.     

Is the curve relating temperature to aggression linear or curvilinear? A response to Bell (2005) and to Cohn and Rotton (2005)

P. Bell recommended examining the relationship between temperature and assaults during the hottest times of day and during the hottest months of the year. The authors' analyses of these data show a linear rather than inverted U-shaped relationship between temperature and assault during the hottest times of day and in the hottest months of the year. E. Cohn and J. Rotton recommended analyzing the 6 hr with the highest assaults versus the 6 hr with the lowest assaults. During high assault periods, there is a strong positive linear relationship between temperature and assault. During low assault periods, there is no relationship between temperature and assaults. Assaults and other violent crimes might decrease when temperatures are very hot, but the Minneapolis data set does not allow for testing of this hypothesis because Minneapolis is too cold.