Children's emotional reactivity to interadult nonverbal conflict expressions

The authors investigated children's responses to nonverbal expressions of conflict. Reactions of 3 groups of children (ranging in age from 6 to 16 years) to multiple forms of nonverbal conflict behaviors expressed in videotaped simulations of interadult disputes were examined. Results indicated that children make few discriminations between different forms of nonverbal conflict behaviors and that their reactions to nonverbal conflict are similar to their reactions to verbal conflict. Adults' expressions of fear elicited the most negative emotional responses from children, suggesting that children react to the meaning of conflict expressions and that expressions of fear may represent the greatest emotional security risks to children. Implications of these results for a theoretical model of the effects of forms of marital conflict on children are discussed (P. T. Davies & E. M. Cummings, 1994).     

Molecular analyses of the principal components of response strength

Killeen and Hall (2001) showed that a common factor called strength underlies the key dependent variables of response probability, latency, and rate, and that overall response rate is a good predictor of strength. In a search for the mechanisms that underlie those correlations, this article shows that (a) the probability of responding on a trial is a two-state Markov process; (b) latency and rate of responding can be described in terms of the probability and period of stochastic machines called clocked Bernoulli modules, and (c) one such machine, the refractory Poisson process, provides a functional relation between the probability of observing a response during any epoch and the rate of responding. This relation is one of proportionality at low rates and curvilinearity at higher rates.     

Revisiting bias effects in word-initial phonological priming

The phonological priming paradigm, in which participants respond to the second of 2 consecutively presented spoken words, has the potential to be a useful tool with which to study lexical processing. Concerns about response biases distorting the results have persisted since its introduction. This study explored the manifestation of biases by modifying the standard priming experiment such that the magnitude of priming effects using the same items could be compared at different points during the testing session. Four experiments investigated whether a recent dissociation of response biases and priming effects is evidence of lexical inhibition when the prime and target overlap by the first 3 word-initial phonemes (M. Hamburger & L. M. Slowiaczek, 1996). Biases were found in conditions previously thought to prevent their influence.     

Constraints have different concurrent effects and aftereffects on variability

Three experiments showed that constraints imposed early in learning have different effects on variability when they are in effect and after they are removed. Task constraints, which determine how something can be done, limited the number of possible responses in a computer game. Variability constraints, which specify how differently something must be done, required that each response differ from some number of prior responses. Less restrictive constraints (Experiments 1 and 2) produced higher variability during the constraints. More restrictive constraints (Experiments 2 and 3) led to higher variability after the constraints were relaxed. The authors discuss how these differences reflect strategies acquired during the constraints (default rules) and modified in closely related ways (exception rules) afterward.     

Object-based selection within and beyond the focus of spatial attention

In a series of experiments, we examined the effect of perceptual objects on visual attentional processing in the presence of spatially cued attentional selection. Subjects made speeded judgments about two visual elements that were either both on the same object or on two different objects. Judgments were faster when the elements were on the same object than when they were on different objects, revealing an object advantage. Importantly, the object advantage remained even when either exogenous or endogenous spatial cues were used to direct the subjects' attention to a part of the display, contrary to earlier findings of other researchers. The object advantage, however, did disappear when the stimulus duration was shortened substantially. The results show that object-based selection is pervasive and is not diminished by the act of selective attention. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the mechanisms that underlie attentional selection.     

The effects of praise on children's intrinsic motivation: a review and synthesis

The authors argue against a purely behavioral definition of praise as verbal reinforcement in favor of the view that praise may serve to undermine, enhance, or have no effect on children's intrinsic motivation, depending on a set of conceptual variables. Provided that praise is perceived as sincere, it is particularly beneficial to motivation when it encourages performance attributions to controllable causes, promotes autonomy, enhances competence without an overreliance on social comparisons, and conveys attainable standards and expectations. The motivational consequences of praise also can be moderated by characteristics of the recipient, such as age, gender, and culture. Methodological considerations, such as including appropriate control groups and measuring postfailure outcomes, are stressed, and directions for future research are highlighted.     

Recent exposure affects artifact naming

Deciding how to label an object depends both on beliefs about the culturally appropriate name and on memory. A label should be consistent with a language community's norms, but those norms can be used only if they can be retrieved. Two experiments are reported in which we tested the hypothesis that immediate prior exposure to familiar objects and their names affects how an ambiguous target object is named. Exposure to a typical instance of one name category was pitted against exposure to one or two instances from a contrasting category. When the contrast set consisted of a neighbor of the target, naming was usually consistent with the contrast category. This effect was reduced when a typical instance of the contrast category was also exposed. In Experiment 2, the exposure set was varied to include conditions in which either the neighbor or a prototypical instance was paired with an instance dissimilar to the target. The results suggest that all recently exposed objects affect name choice in proportion to their similarity to the target.     

The relationship between acculturation and problem behavior proneness in a Hispanic youth sample: a longitudinal mediation model

This study, using secondary data analysis, examined prospectively a mediation model of the relationship between acculturation and problem behavior proneness among 330 Hispanic children and adolescents from an urban school district in the southwest region of the United States. Acculturation was predicted to have an indirect, but positive, relationship to problem behavior proneness through parental involvement and self-esteem. The results partially supported the model and indicated that parental involvement, but not self-esteem, played a significant mediational role in children's problem behavior proneness. The individual indicators of problem behavior proneness among Hispanic youth were significantly interrelated, which is consistent with problem behavior theory as conceptualized by R. Jessor (1984) and R. Jessor and S. L. Jessor (1977). Findings from this study provide implications for future research and intervention designs.     

Stem homographs and lemma level representations

Previous studies have found that priming a target like cerr-o ("hill") with an unmasked stem-homograph (e.g., cerr-ar, "to close") or with an unmasked allomorph of a stem-homograph (e.g., cierr-a, "he/she/it closes") has an inhibitory effect on target recognition. We report evidence from stem-homograph priming studies that implicate both morphological parsing and lexical selection processes at the lemma level. We argue that stem-homograph inhibition is the product of lexical selection mechanisms that are engaged just when a fully ambiguous stimulus (here, an inflectional stem) must be assigned one of its viable interpretations in order to afford conscious perception of lexical identity.