Prospective associations from family-of-origin interactions to adult marital interactions and relationship adjustment.

To test the social learning-based hypothesis that marital conflict resolution patterns are learned in the family of origin, longitudinal, observational data were used to assess prospective associations between family conflict interaction patterns during adolescence and offspring's later marital conflict interaction patterns. At age 14 years, 47 participants completed an observed family conflict resolution task with their parents. In a subsequent assessment 17 years later, the participants completed measures of marital adjustment and an observed marital conflict interaction task with their spouse. As predicted, levels of hostility and positive engagement expressed by parents and adolescents during family interactions were prospectively linked with levels of hostility and positive engagement expressed by offspring and their spouses during marital interactions. Family-of-origin hostility was a particularly robust predictor of marital interaction behaviors; it predicted later marital hostility and negatively predicted positive engagement, controlling for psychopathology and family-of-origin positive engagement. For men, family-of-origin hostility also predicted poorer marital adjustment, an effect that was mediated through hostility in marital interactions. These findings suggest a long-lasting influence of family communication patterns, particularly hostility, on offspring's intimate communication and relationship functioning.     

Neuroscientific Evidence About the Distinction Between Short- and Long-Term Memory

ABSTRACT— What have neuroscientific techniques contributed to the development of psychological theory about short- and long-term memory? We argue that the contributions have been varied: In some cases, data about brain mechanisms have been vital to the advancement of psychological theory; in other cases, neuroscientific data and behavioral data from normal participants have made equal contributions; and in yet other cases, the data from neuroscientific approaches have actually led psychological theory astray. We illustrate these various contributions by focusing on the relationship of short- to long-term memory.     

Foraging and associative learning of visual signals in a parasitic wasp

To cope with environmental variability, animals should gather and use information to reduce uncertainty. In insect parasitoids, associative learning has been widely documented in the context of host foraging. However, despite its potential adaptive value, the insect food searching strategy and cues used to search are poorly understood. In this study, we examined the ability of hymenopteran Venturia canescens females to associate food to a visual cue. To broaden the scope of our results, experiments were performed with both arrhenotokous (sexual) and thelytokous (asexual) individuals. The wasps showed innate attraction for yellow and orange stimuli when presented versus blue stimuli. When trained to associate a food reward with one of the attractive colours (orange), they significantly moved from a distance towards the colour previously associated with food. The choice of the innately preferred colour (yellow) was not modified by associative learning. In the context of food foraging, this study is the first to show associative learning using visual stimuli in a parasitoid and active choice of this colour. This ability gives new insights concerning potential food sources for V. canescens in the field, since flowers are sugar sources, which emit colour signals.     

Semantic access in number word translation: the role of crosslingual lexical similarity

The revised hierarchical model of bilingualism (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994) assumes that second language (L2) words primarily access semantics through their first language (L1) translation equivalents. Consequently, backward translation from L2 to L1 should not imply semantic access but occurs through lexical wordform associations. However, recent research with Dutch-French bilinguals showed that both backward and forward translation of number words yields a semantic number magnitude effect (Duyck & Brysbaert, 2004), providing evidence for strong form-to-meaning mappings of L2 number words. In two number-word translation experiments with Dutch-English-German trilinguals, the present study investigated whether semantic access in L1-L2 and L1-L3 number-word translation depends on lexical similarity of the languages involved. We found that backward translation from these more similar language pairs to L1 still yields a semantic magnitude effect, whereas forward translation does not, in contrast with the Dutch-French results of Duyck and Brysbaert (2004). We argue against a dual route model of word translation and suggest that the degree of semantic activation in translation depends on lexical form overlap between translation equivalents.     

Processing abstract language modulates motor system activity

Embodiment theory proposes that neural systems for perception and action are also engaged during language comprehension. Previous neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have only been able to demonstrate modulation of action systems during comprehension of concrete language. We provide neurophysiological evidence for modulation of motor system activity during the comprehension of both concrete and abstract language. In Experiment 1, when the described direction of object transfer or information transfer (e.g., away from the reader to another) matched the literal direction of a hand movement used to make a response, speed of responding was faster than when the two directions mismatched (an action-sentence compatibility effect). In Experiment 2, we used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to study changes in the corticospinal motor pathways to hand muscles while reading the same sentences. Relative to sentences that do not describe transfer, there is greater modulation of activity in the hand muscles when reading sentences describing transfer of both concrete objects and abstract information. These findings are discussed in relation to the human mirror neuron system.     

Emotional Intelligence: Implications for Personal,Social, Academic,and Workplace Success

This article presents an overview of the ability model of emotional intelligence and includes a discussion about how and why the concept became useful in both educational and workplace settings. We review the four underlying emotional abilities comprising emotional intelligence and the assessment tools that that have been developed to measure the construct. A primary goal is to provide a review of the research describing the correlates of emotional intelligence. We describe what is known about how emotionally intelligent people function both intra‐ and interpersonally and in both academic and workplace settings.     

Affective and behavioral responses to health-related social control.

Social control has the potential to encourage engagement in a healthy lifestyle, but its effectiveness may depend on the nature of the influence attempt. Participants (N = 282) described a situation in which someone attempted to influence their health-related behavior. Experiencing positive social control was associated with a greater tendency to change the behavior and less ignoring/doing nothing, whereas negative social control was associated with a lesser tendency to change the behavior and more hiding of unhealthy behavior. These associations could be accounted for by affective responses to the social control attempts. Results emphasize the need to better understand the regulatory influence of relationships on health behavior and the conditions under which social control is most likely to have health-promoting effects.