Rhyme, rime, and the onset of reading

There is recent evidence that children naturally divide syllables into the opening consonant or consonant cluster (the onset) and the rest of the syllable (the rime). This suggests an explanation for the fact that preschool children are sensitive to rhyme, but often find tasks in which they have to isolate single phonemes extremely difficult. Words which rhyme share a common rime and thus can be categorized on that speech unit. Single phonemes on the other hand may only be part of one of these speech units. This analysis leads to some clear predictions. Young children, even children not yet able to read, should manage to categorize words on the basis of a single phoneme when the phoneme coincides with the word's onset ("cat," "cup") but not when it is only part of the rime ("cat," "pit"). They should find it easier to work out that two monosyllabic words have a common vowel which is not shared by another word when all three words end with the same consonant ("lip," "hop," "tip") but the odd word has a different rime than when the three words all start with the same consonant ("cap," "can," "cot") and thus all share the same onset. The hypothesis also suggests that children should be aware of single phonemes when these coincide with the onset before they learn to read. We tested these predictions in two studies of children aged 5, 6, and 7 years. The results clearly support these predictions.     

EVOLUTION OF THE PSYCHENCEPHALON

In evolving to its great size the human brain has retained the distinctive features and chemistry of three kinds of brains that reflect an ancestral relationship to reptiles, early mammals, and late mammals. It constitutes, so to speak, a psychencephalon comprised of three-brains-in-one, a triune brain. In the evolution from reptiles to mammals two key changes were the development of nursing and maternal care. Through the agency of “newer” parts of the brain a parental concern for family eventually generalizes not only to other members of the species but to the entire biosphere, a psychological development that amounts to the evolution of responsibility and what we call conscience. Given our freedom to decide “yes” or “no” on various issues, we need not look beyond the evolving family to find a reason for being, an ethic to live by.     

Extending the Balloon Analogue Risk Task to Assess Naturalistic Risk Taking via a Mobile Platform

The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) is a behavioral measure that is commonly used to assess risk taking propensity. The primary goal of the present study was to introduce a mobile version of the BART (mBART) that can be included within ambulatory assessment protocols to assess risk taking in daily life. Study 1 compared common BART indices (i.e., total money earned, adjusted average pumps, balloon explosions, and coefficient of variability [CV]) on a single administration of the laboratory BART on a computer and the mBART on a smartphone (n = 78). Results revealed generally consistent relationships between indices of risk taking propensity in both the laboratory BART and mBART. Study 2 administered the mBART as part of a 7-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol in a population of nondaily smokers (n = 51). Using multi-level models, results suggest that males have greater adjusted average pumps (p = .03), and that a participant’s average CV is negatively related to trait sensation seeking (p = .03) and positively associated with trait positive urgency (p = .04). There were within-person effects of study day (p = .05) and environment (p = .02) with respect to adjusted average pumps such that individuals took greater risks as the study progressed and were riskier when alone compared to with others. Inclusion of the mBART in EMA did not appear to significantly increase participant burden and demonstrated acceptable levels of compliance. These results offer initial evidence supporting the feasibility and utility of the mBART for ambulatory research designs.     

Neural synchrony in stochastic resonance, attention, and consciousness.

We describe briefly three of our lab's ongoing projects studying the role of neural synchrony in human perception and cognition. These projects arise from two main interests: the role of noise both in human perception and in neural synchrony, and neural synchrony as a basis for integration of functional modules in the brain. Our experimental work on these topics began with a study of the possibility that noise-influenced neural synchrony might be responsible for the fact that small amounts of noise added to weak signals can enhance their detectability (stochastic resonance). We are also studying the role of neural synchrony in attention and consciousness in several paradigms. On the basis of our own and related work by others, we conclude that (1) neural synchrony plays an important role in the integration of functional modules in the brain and (2) neural synchrony is profoundly affected and possibly regulated, in part, by the "noisiness" of the brain.     

Substance Use and Psychological Adjustment in Homeless Adolescents: A Test of Three Models

Three models of adolescent substance use, the deviance-prone, affect-regulation, and normative development models, were assessed regarding their ability to predict the substance use of a high-risk homeless adolescent sample with high rates of deviance, depression, and substance use. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses that included tests for curvilinear and gender interaction effects were performed. Results supported the deviance-prone model most strongly, with delinquency but not aggressive behavior predicting substance use. The affect-regulation model received support for females but not for males. With respect to the normative development model, results did not indicate that moderate substance users were better off than abstainers in terms of negative affect or interpersonal relationships.     

No evidence for contagious yawning in lemurs

Among some haplorhine primates, including humans, relaxed yawns spread contagiously. Such contagious yawning has been linked to social bonds and empathy in some species. However, no studies have investigated contagious yawning in strepsirhines. We conducted an experimental study of contagious yawning in strepsirhines, testing ring-tailed and ruffed lemurs (n = 24) in a paradigm similar to one that has induced contagious yawning in haplorhines. First, in a control experiment, we investigated whether lemurs responded to projected video content in general (experiment 1). We showed them two videos to which we expected differential responses: one featured a terrestrial predator and the other a caretaker holding food. Next, to test for yawn contagion, we showed individual lemurs life-size video projections of groupmates and conspecific strangers yawning, and control footage of the same individuals at rest (experiment 2). Then, to examine whether a group context might enhance or allow for contagion, we exposed subjects to the same videos in a group setting (experiment 3). Lemurs produced alarm vocalizations and moved upward while viewing the predator, but not the caretaker, demonstrating that they do perceive video content meaningfully. However, lemurs did not yawn in response to yawning stimuli when tested alone, or with their groupmates. This study provides preliminary evidence that lemurs do not respond to yawning stimuli similarly to haplorhines, and suggests that this behavior may have evolved or become more exaggerated in haplorhines after the two major primate lineages split.     

Breaking script: Deviations and postevent information in adult memory for a repeated event

Witnesses to industrial incidents may be asked to recall a single instance of a familiar event. This research systematically tested if deviations to what typically occurs and postevent information (PEI) enhanced reporting of an instance of a repeated event. Across 2 experiments, each participant experienced 5 food‐tasting instances; these instances comprised the repeated event. Half of the participants in both Experiments 1 (continuous deviation setting) and 2 (continuous deviation integrated) experienced a deviation to how the third instance occurred. Also, half of the participants in both experiments received PEI about the third instance. All participants demonstrated superior reporting for the first instance of the repeated event. The continuous deviation setting in Experiment 1 enhanced reporting for all 5 instances of the repeated event (general effect). In Experiment 2, participants who received a continuous deviation integrated and PEI demonstrated superior reporting for the first and third instances of the event (targeted effect).     

A conceptual and methodological framework for measuring and modulating the attentional blink

The attentional blink (AB) is a transient attention cost that is shown when report accuracy for a second target (T2) is reduced when T2 is presented within approximately 500?ms of a first target (T1). Thus, by definition an AB is only observed when T2 accuracy is reduced at short relative to long T1?CT2 separations, and the magnitude of the AB is reflected in the change in T2 performance across target separations. However, the designs, analyses, and interpretations of several studies of the AB have suggested a lack of clear definitions about what constitutes a demonstration of the AB, what constitutes a modulation of the AB across participant groups or manipulations, and how AB magnitude might best be represented accurately as a single value for a given individual. In this article, we discuss the important conceptual and methodological issues that should be considered when obtaining, analyzing, and interpreting AB data, and we discuss the pros and cons of various approaches while providing suggestions as to how best to validly represent the AB and its modulations.     

The Relationship Between Creativity and Attention in Adults

Creativity is a valuable attribute that involves the generation of original ideas; attention is a vital function that facilitates information selection. There is some evidence that creative people may have poorer attention and are generally more distracted than others, and this distractibility is thought to enable the production of novel ideas. Previous research has largely supported this relationship between creativity and attention, yet they are both multifaceted constructs that can be measured in numerous ways. Using multiple measures of each construct, the aim of this study was to examine which features of creativity and attention might be related in a group of 100 adults (18–80 years, M = 26.9, SD = 11.5). Figural divergent-thinking (DT) originality was positively related to self-reported concentration; yet no other relationships were found. Results suggest that there is no consistent relationship between creativity and attention, and past studies that linked creativity to attention, having used just one or two measures, may be premature in their conclusions.