Socialization of prosocial behavior: Gender differences in the mediating role of child brain volume

Evidence has been accumulating for the impact of normal variation in caregiving quality on brain morphology in children, but the question remains whether differences in brain volume related to early caregiving translate to behavioral implications. In this longitudinal population-based study (N = 162), moderated mediation was tested for the relation between parental sensitivity and child prosocial behavior via brain volume, in boys and girls. Both maternal and paternal sensitivity were repeatedly observed between 1 and 4 years of age. Brain volume was assessed using magnetic resonance imaging measurements at age 8, and self-reported prosocial behavior of children was assessed at 9 years of age. Parental sensitivity was positively related to child brain volume, and to child prosocial behavior at trend level. Child brain volume was negatively related to child prosocial behavior. A significant gender-by-brain interaction was found, illustrating that daughters of sensitive parents were more prosocial and that less prosocial behavior was reported for girls with a larger total brain volume. Child gender significantly moderated the indirect effect of parental sensitivity on prosocial behavior via total brain volume. A significant indirect pathway was found only in girls. The results warrant replication but indicate the importance of considering gender when studying the behavioral implications of differences in brain volume related to early caregiving experiences.     

RE‐ENVISIONING HOPE: ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE,LEARNED IGNORANCE,AND RELIGIOUS NATURALISM

In this essay, I introduce religious naturalism as one contemporary religious response to anthropogenic climate change; in so doing, I offer a concept of hope associated with the beauty of ignorance, of not knowing ourselves in the usual manner. Reframing humans as natural processes in relationship with other forms of nature, religious naturalism encourages humans’ processes of transformative engagement with each other and with the more‐than‐human worlds that constitute our existence. Hope in this context is anticipating what possibilities may occur when human organisms enact our evolutionary capacities as relational organisms who can love, engaging in multilayered processes of changing behaviors, values, and relationships that promote the betterment of myriad nature.     

Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech

Previous evidence suggests that children's mastery of prosodic modulations to signal the informational status of discourse referents emerges quite late in development. In the present study, we investigate the children's use of head gestures as it compares to prosodic cues to signal a referent as being contrastive relative to a set of possible alternatives. A group of French-speaking pre-schoolers were audio-visually recorded while playing in a semi-spontaneous but controlled production task, to elicit target words in the context of broad focus, contrastive focus, or corrective focus utterances. We analysed the acoustic features of the target words (syllable duration and word-level pitch range), as well as the head gesture features accompanying these target words (head gesture type, alignment patterns with speech). We found that children's production of head gestures, but not their use of either syllable duration or word-level pitch range, was affected by focus condition. Children mostly aligned head gestures with relevant speech units, especially when the target word was in phrase-final position. Moreover, the presence of a head gesture was linked to greater syllable duration patterns in all focus conditions. Our results show that (a) 4- and 5-year-old French-speaking children use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to mark the informational status of discourse referents, (b) the use of head gestures may gradually entrain the production of adult-like prosodic features, and that (c) head gestures with no referential relation with speech may serve a linguistic structuring function in communication, at least during language development.     

Testing the validity of conflict drift-diffusion models for use in estimating cognitive processes: A parameter-recovery study

Researchers and clinicians are interested in estimating individual differences in the ability to process conflicting information. Conflict processing is typically assessed by comparing behavioral measures like RTs or error rates from conflict tasks. However, these measures are hard to interpret because they can be influenced by additional processes like response caution or bias. This limitation can be circumvented by employing cognitive models to decompose behavioral data into components of underlying decision processes, providing better specificity for investigating individual differences. A new class of drift-diffusion models has been developed for conflict tasks, presenting a potential tool to improve analysis of individual differences in conflict processing. However, measures from these models have not been validated for use in experiments with limited data collection. The present study assessed the validity of these models with a parameter-recovery study to determine whether and under what circumstances the models provide valid measures of cognitive processing. Three models were tested: the dual-stage two-phase model (Hübner, Steinhauser, & Lehle, Psychological Review, 117(3), 759–784, 2010), the shrinking spotlight model (White, Ratcliff, & Starns, Cognitive Psychology, 63(4), 210–238, 2011), and the diffusion model for conflict tasks (Ulrich, Schröter, Leuthold, & Birngruber, Cogntive Psychology, 78, 148–174, 2015). The validity of the model parameters was assessed using different methods of fitting the data and different numbers of trials. The results show that each model has limitations in recovering valid parameters, but they can be mitigated by adding constraints to the model. Practical recommendations are provided for when and how each model can be used to analyze data and provide measures of processing in conflict tasks.     

Crash Algorithms for Autonomous Cars: How the Trolley Problem Can Move Us Beyond Harm Minimisation

The prospective introduction of autonomous cars into public traffic raises the question of how such systems should behave when an accident is inevitable. Due to concerns with self-interest and liberal legitimacy that have become paramount in the emerging debate, a contractarian framework seems to provide a particularly attractive means of approaching this problem. We examine one such attempt, which derives a harm minimisation rule from the assumptions of rational self-interest and ignorance of one’s position in a future accident. We contend, however, that both contractarian approaches and harm minimisation standards are flawed, due to a failure to account for the fundamental difference between those ‘involved’ and ‘uninvolved’ in an impending crash. Drawing from classical works on the trolley problem, we show how this notion can be substantiated by reference to either the distinction between negative and positive rights, or to differences in people’s claims. By supplementing harm minimisation with corresponding constraints, we can develop crash algorithms for autonomous cars which are both ethically adequate and promise to overcome certain significant practical barriers to implementation.     

A standardized list of affect-related life events

In experimental contexts, affect-related word lists have been widely applied when examining how cognitive processes interact with emotional processes. These lists, however, present limitations when studying the relation between emotion and cognitive processes such as time and number processing because affective words do not inherently contain time or quantity information. Live events, in contrast, are experienced by an observer and therefore inherently carry affect information. Unfortunately, existing life-event lists and inventories have been largely applied within clinical contexts as diagnostic tools, and therefore are not suitable for many experimental contexts because they do not contain a balanced number of reliably positive, negative, and neutral life events. In Experiment 1, we create a standardized affect-related life-events list with 171 positive, negative, and neutral affect-related life events. In Experiment 2, we show that strength of affect and significance of the event are integral dimensions, suggesting that these two features are difficult to separate perceptually. The implications of these findings and some potential future applications of the created life-events list are discussed.     

Selection or Training? A Two-Fold Test of the Validity of Job-Analytic Ratings of Trainability

Decisions to use selection devices or training are typically based on subject matter expert (SME) judgments concerning the trainability of job components, including tasks and knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs). The studies reported here examined the validity of SME trainability judgments from two perspectives. We found that (1) different SME groups' judgments related differently to actual learning changes in KSAOs covered in a training program and (2) sources of variability thought to be unrelated to the job influenced trainability ratings. Implications for the selection of SMEs in job analysis applications intended to determine the trainability of various job components are outlined.