An Introduction to Everyday Aesthetics in Education

Studies in Philosophy and Education - The purpose of this paper is to introduce everyday aesthetics in education. First, it presents everyday aesthetics as a subdiscipline within philosophical...     

Self-projection in middle childhood: a study on the relationship between theory of mind and episodic future thinking

Cognitive Processing - Growing evidence suggests that theory of mind (ToM) and episodic future thinking (EFT) are closely related at both brain and functional level. This study explored the...     

Social skills in women with Turner Syndrome

The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of a group of women with Turner Syndrome (TS) in interpersonal situations where several social skills were required, and to compare the results with unaffected sisters. Fifty-two TS females aged 15-35 years and 33 sisters aged 16-43 were evaluated using Del-Prette Social Skills Inventory (SSI) and individual interviews. Thirty mothers to subjects and sisters answered questionnaires. It was found that TS girls' performance in SSI was as good as their sisters' and even better in meeting new people and facing unknown situations (p = 0.020). Older TS women scored better than younger ones, differently from their sisters. There were no significant correlations between total score of TS women and their age at diagnosis, time of follow-up and height z-score. Mothers reported having more problems with TS girls than with sisters. Although TS girls demonstrated having social difficulties, just a few of them spontaneously complained about interpersonal problems in the interview. Results suggest that social difficulties may not cause TS girls major problems nor make them unhappy with their social lives, and/or TS girls may not be able to perceive their own difficulties. Good performance in SSI also suggests that TS girls can identify adequate skills in presented situations and answer in a way to obtain good scores, but they may not necessarily use their skills due to other factors like anxiety and shyness. They may also have a tendency to answer SSI in a way they consider socially desirable, masking their real difficulties.     

Birth order differences in normal personality traits: Perspectives from within and outside the family

The hypotheses of Sulloway (1996) regarding birth order differences in five-factor model personality traits were tested in a sample of 231 college students with the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992). Data were collected from three sources (self, peer, and parent) to systematically evaluate previous observations that birth order differences are more commonly found when ratings are obtained from family members than from observers outside the family (Ernst & Angst, 1983). Using a between-family design, students were selected only from families with two or three full biological siblings and no half-siblings, step-siblings, or adopted siblings. Firstborn (n = 103) and laterborn (n = 128) students were compared using NEO-FFI ratings by the self, by a same-sex college peer, and by a biological parent. No birth order differences were found for any of the five NEO-FFI scores using any of the three rating sources. Effect sizes (Cohen’s d) were less than .20 for all comparisons. Suggestions for new approaches to the study of birth order differences are considered, including the use of within-family designs and more contextualized personality variables.     

Gender Differences in Psychopathic Traits,Types, and Correlates of Aggression Among Adjudicated Youth

The current study investigated gender differences in types and correlates of aggression among 150 adjudicated youth (M age = 15.2, SD = 1.4). In cluster analysis, consistent with past studies, one aggressive group characterized by moderate levels of reactive aggression and one characterized by high levels of proactive and reactive aggression emerged and these patterns were consistent across gender. For both boys and girls, the combined proactive/reactive aggression cluster showed the greatest levels of aggression, impulsivity, and callous-unemotional traits, supporting a severity over a typology model of proactive and reactive aggression. Girls displayed significantly higher rates of physical and relational aggression than boys. Girls were highly aggressive toward both girls and boys, whereas boys were highly aggressive only toward other boys. Girls also showed multiple indications of severity and emotionality, indexed by higher rates of negative affect, anxiety, distress about social provocations, and empathy.     

The manifestation of transference during early psychotherapy sessions: Exploring an alternate data source for therapist narratives in transference research

Introduction: Previous transference studies have compared in‐session client narratives about significant others to in‐session client narratives about the therapist, limiting data to the information that clients are willing to share with the therapist. Method: The first three sessions of 30 therapies with high‐functioning individuals were examined using the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method. Client narratives about others were drawn from the psychotherapy sessions and client narratives about the therapist were drawn from a Participant Critical Event (PCE) interview conducted after the third session of therapy. Results: Factor analyses of the CCRT components indicated several relational patterns: a complementary pattern of relating characterised by a devaluation of the therapist and idealisation of others; a concordant relational transfer where clients feel bad with both the therapist and others; and as clients experience control issues with significant others, they wish to adopt a submissive stance toward the therapist. The results suggest that the source of therapist narratives may influence the results of transference research.     

An analysis of public posting in reducing speeding behavior on an urban highway

The effects of public posting on speeding behavior on an urban highway were assessed using a reversal design. During baseline the percentage of drivers speeding was measured with a concealed radar unit. During the daily posting condition a highway sign was installed which provided feedback on the percentage of drivers not speeding yesterday and the best record to date. This sign was then covered and reintroduced. Results indicated that the sign was effective in reducing speeding behavior. Furthermore, the effects were most pronounced in reducing the speeds of the faster drivers. Next, daily and weekly postings were compared with the sign alone without numerical feedback: results revealed that the weekly posting condition was as effective as the daily posting condition, but that the sign had no influence when numbers were not posted. Finally, the weekly posting procedure remained effective during a 6-month follow-up condition.     

Task-irrelevant distractors in the delay period interfere selectively with visual short-term memory for spatial locations

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) enables the representation of information in a readily accessible state. VSTM is typically conceptualized as a form of “active” storage that is resistant to interference or disruption, yet several recent studies have shown that under some circumstances task-irrelevant distractors may indeed disrupt performance. Here, we investigated how task-irrelevant visual distractors affected VSTM by asking whether distractors induce a general loss of remembered information or selectively interfere with memory representations. In a VSTM task, participants recalled the spatial location of a target visual stimulus after a delay in which distractors were presented on 75% of trials. Notably, the distractor’s eccentricity always matched the eccentricity of the target, while in the critical conditions the distractor’s angular position was shifted either clockwise or counterclockwise relative to the target. We then computed estimates of recall error for both eccentricity and polar angle. A general interference model would predict an effect of distractors on both polar angle and eccentricity errors, while a selective interference model would predict effects of distractors on angle but not on eccentricity errors. Results showed that for stimulus angle there was an increase in the magnitude and variability of recall errors. However, distractors had no effect on estimates of stimulus eccentricity. Our results suggest that distractors selectively interfere with VSTM for spatial locations.     

Age-related Differences in the Production of Textual Descriptions

Narratives produced by 69 healthy Italian adults were analyzed for age-related changes of microlinguistic, macrolinguistic and informative aspects. The participants were divided into five age groups (20-24, 25-39, 40-59, 60-74, 75-84). One single-picture stimulus and two cartoon sequences were used to elicit three stories per subject. Age-related differences were found with respect to semantic paraphasias, paragrammatisms, syntactic complexity, degree of both local and global coherence, local coherence errors (like ambiguous referencing), and in the level of informativeness conveyed by the stories. The results showed some null effects of age, some effects with a sharp drop in performance in the oldest group, and several effects suggesting a gradual decrease in performance across age groups. No age differences were found with respect to phonological selection and noun-verb ratio. In the proportion of details vs. main themes, the results indicated a possibly better story construction ability in the middle aged (40-59) and young elderly (60-74) groups compared to the younger or the oldest group. Story-type (single picture vs. picture sequence) had a significant influence on some macrolinguistic and informativeness measures.     

Reward prospect interacts with trial-by-trial preparation for potential distraction

When attending for impending visual stimuli, cognitive systems prepare to identify relevant information while ignoring irrelevant, potentially distracting input. Recent work showed that a supramodal distracter-filtering mechanism is invoked in blocked designs involving expectation of possible distracter stimuli, although this entails a cost (distraction-filtering cost) on speeded performance when distracters are expected but not presented. Here we used an arrow-flanker task to study whether an analogous cost, potentially reflecting the recruitment of a specific distraction-filtering mechanism, occurs dynamically when potential distraction is cued trial-to-trial (cued distracter-expectation cost). In order to promote the maximal utilization of cue information by participants, in some experimental conditions the cue also signalled the possibility of earning a monetary reward for fast and accurate performance. This design also allowed us to investigate the interplay between anticipation for distracters and anticipation of reward, which is known to engender attentional preparation. Only in reward contexts did participants show a cued distracter-expectation cost, which was larger with higher reward prospect and when anticipation for both distracters and reward were manipulated trial-to-trial. Thus, these results indicate that reward prospect interacts with the distracter expectation during trial-by-trial preparatory processes for potential distraction. These findings highlight how reward guides cue-driven attentional preparation.