Multipotentiality,Giftedness, and Career Choice: A Review

The giftedness and career-choice literatures have traditionally spoken in different terms about the same phenomenon, multipotentiality. Multipotentialed individuals have numerous and diverse abilities and interests. Appropriate interventions are necessary to help them cope successfully with the abundance of career choices available to them. This review links the giftedness and career-choice literatures through a discussion of the concept of multipotentiality and explores ensuing practical implications and challenges to the overall idea.     

Comparing visual perception on conventional cabinet tachistoscopes and computer monitor tachistoscopes

Computer monitor-based tachistoscopes (using a cathode ray tube, CRT) and conventional tachistoscopes differ in experimental control over stimulus continuity, duration, and timing accuracy. This study evaluated the perception of visual stimuli presented with the two different types of devices. An experiment was conducted to compare recognition of visuospatial stimuli (random shapes) presented laterally and centrally in the visual fields for short exposure durations (14, 29, and 43 msec), first with one device and then with another. Results indicated that the subjects’ error rates and laterality patterns were similar on both types of tachistoscopes. It was concluded that perception of visual stimuli presented as continuous images on a conventional tachistoscope may be equivalent to perception of visual stimuli presented as pulsating images on a CRT. Further studies are needed using other types of visual materials to determine the range of visual stimuli for which both types of tachistoscopes measure equivalent perceptual processes.     

PATERNAL SEPARATION ANXIETY:

Employed mothers of young children worry about the effects of daily separation on their children Do fathers have similar anxieties? Because fathers are expected to leave the home and go to work, psychologists have not studied fathers' concerns about daily separation from their babies and pre-school children In this study, we investigated fathers' and mothers' separation anxiety and the relationships between separation anxiety and family and child-care characteristics The sample included 589 married couples from a larger study of families and center-based child care Data were collected through in-home and center visits Fathers and mothers had similar levels of Separation Anxiety However, fathers reported slightly higher Concern for the Child, and mothers reported higher Employment Concerns Fathers' perceptions of their wives' anxieties were higher by half a standard deviation compared with mothers' reports Fathers' and mothers self reported separation anxieties were modestly correlated Paternal separation anxiety was most strongly associated with fathers' perceptions of their wives' separation concerns, not with mothers' reported anxieties, which suggested ego defensiveness and projection     

Dichhaptic hand-order effects with verbal and nonverbal tactile stimulation

The palms of normal right-handed subjects were stimulated dichhaptically, i.e., with competing, bimanually presented tactile stimuli consisting of pairs of letters, pairs of digits, or pairs of line orientations. The subjects were required to identify both stimuli in a particular order, and order of report was compared between hands and across stimulus materials. Results indicated right-hand superiority for letters and left-hand superiority for lines; no hand differences occurred for digits. However, observed differences between hands appeared with second reports only, suggesting that measures of tactile storage are more sensitive to laterality differences than measures closer in time to actual stimulation.     

‘Something in the way you move’: Infants are sensitive to emotions conveyed in action kinematics

Body movements, as well as faces, communicate emotions. Research in adults has shown that the perception of action kinematics has a crucial role in understanding others’ emotional experiences. Still, little is known about infants’ sensitivity to body emotional expressions, since most of the research in infancy focused on faces. While there is some first evidence that infants can recognize emotions conveyed in whole‐body postures, it is still an open question whether they can extract emotional information from action kinematics. We measured electromyographic (EMG) activity over the muscles involved in happy (zygomaticus major, ZM), angry (corrugator supercilii, CS) and fearful (frontalis, F) facial expressions, while 11‐month‐old infants observed the same action performed with either happy or angry kinematics. Results demonstrate that infants responded to angry and happy kinematics with matching facial reactions. In particular, ZM activity increased while CS activity decreased in response to happy kinematics and vice versa for angry kinematics. Our results show for the first time that infants can rely on kinematic information to pick up on the emotional content of an action. Thus, from very early in life, action kinematics represent a fundamental and powerful source of information in revealing others’ emotional state.     

Motion tracking of parents’ infant‐ versus adult‐directed actions reveals general and action‐specific modulations

Parents tend to modulate their movements when demonstrating actions to their infants. Thus far, these modulations have primarily been quantified by human raters and for entire interactions, thereby possibly overlooking the intricacy of such demonstrations. Using optical motion tracking, the precise modulations of parents’ infant‐directed actions were quantified and compared to adult‐directed actions and between action types. Parents demonstrated four novel objects to their 14‐month‐old infants and adult confederates. Each object required a specific action to produce a unique effect (e.g. rattling). Parents were asked to demonstrate an object at least once before passing it to their demonstration partner, and they were subsequently free to exchange the object as often as desired. Infants’ success at producing the objects’ action‐effects was coded during the demonstration session and their memory of the action‐effects was tested after a several‐minute delay. Indicating general modulations across actions, parents repeated demonstrations more often, performed the actions in closer proximity and demonstrated action‐effects for longer when interacting with their infant compared to the adults. Meanwhile, modulations of movement size and velocity were specific to certain action‐effect pairs. Furthermore, a ‘just right’ modulation of proximity was detected, since infants’ learning, memory, and parents’ prior evaluations of their infants’ motor abilities, were related to demonstrations that were performed neither too far from nor too close to the infants. Together, these findings indicate that infant‐directed action modulations are not solely overall exaggerations but are dependent upon the characteristics of the to‐be learned actions, their effects, and the infant learners.     

Probability cuing of target location facilitates visual search implicitly in normal participants and patients with hemispatial neglect

We explored how variability in the probability of target locations affects visual search in normal individuals and in patients with hemispatial neglect, a deficit in attending to the contralesional side of space. Young and elderly normal participants responded faster when targets appeared in the more probable region than when targets appeared in the less probable region. Similarly, patients were sensitive to the distribution of targets, even in the neglected field. Although the attentional gradient that characterizes neglect was not eliminated, the response facilitation due to the probability distribution was proportionate to that of control participants and equal in magnitude across the neglected field. All participants exploited the uneven distribution of targets to enhance task performance without explicit instructions to do so or awareness of biases in their behavior. These results suggest that attentional orientation and sensitivity to external probabilities are possibly dissociable. An early sensory and a late motor mechanism are postulated as possibly being involved in the observed probability–matching behavior of participants.     

Congenital prosopagnosia: face-blind from birth

Congenital prosopagnosia refers to the deficit in face processing that is apparent from early childhood in the absence of any underlying neurological basis and in the presence of intact sensory and intellectual function. Several such cases have been described recently and elucidating the mechanisms giving rise to this impairment should aid our understanding of the psychological and neural mechanisms mediating face processing. Fundamental questions include: What is the nature and extent of the face-processing deficit in congenital prosopagnosia? Is the deficit related to a more general perceptual deficit such as the failure to process configural information? Are any neural alterations detectable using fMRI, ERP or structural analyses of the anatomy of the ventral visual cortex? We discuss these issues in relation to the existing literature and suggest directions for future research.     

Stimulus fading in the treatment of adipsia

Stimulus fading procedures have repeatedly been demonstrated as effective in shaping a wide variety of new behaviors. Borrowing from this body of research, the behavioral treatment of feeding disorders presents a new area of application for stimulus fading. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the efficacy of stimulus fading in the treatment of adipsia. Two children who ate solids, but refused all liquids, were participants in the study. Results showed that a five step fading procedure starting with a spoon and thickened liquids, and ending with a cut‐out‐cup, was successful in establishing cup drinking skills for both children. Results of the study suggest that stimulus fading can facilitate feeding skill acquisition. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.