Socioeconomic status and executive function: developmental trajectories and mediation

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) predicts executive function (EF), but fundamental aspects of this relation remain unknown: the developmental course of the SES disparity, its continued sensitivity to SES changes during that course, and the features of childhood experience responsible for the SES–EF relation. Regarding course, early disparities would be expected to grow during development if caused by accumulating stressors at a given constant level of SES. Alternatively, they would narrow if schooling partly compensates for the effects of earlier deprivation, allowing lower‐SES children to ‘catch up’. The potential for later childhood SES change to affect EF is also unknown. Regarding mediating factors, previous analyses produced mixed answers, possibly due to correlation amongst candidate mediators. We address these issues with measures of SES, working memory and planning, along with multiple candidate mediators, from the NICHD Study of Early Childcare (n = 1009). Early family income‐to‐needs and maternal education predicted planning by first grade, and income‐to‐needs predicted working memory performance at 54 months. Effects of early SES remained consistent through middle childhood, indicating that the relation between early indicators of SES and EF emerges in childhood and persists without narrowing or widening across early and middle childhood. Changes in family income‐to‐needs were associated with significant changes in planning and trend‐level changes in working memory. Mediation analyses supported the role of early childhood home characteristics in explaining the association between SES and EF, while early childhood maternal sensitivity was specifically implicated in the association between maternal education and planning. Early emerging and persistent SES‐related differences in EF, partially explained by characteristics of the home and family environment, are thus a potential source of socioeconomic disparities in achievement and health across development.     

An Examination of Potential Misclassification of Army Suicides: Results from the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers

Debate continues about the accuracy of military suicide reporting due to concerns that some suicides may be classified as accidents to minimize stigma and ensure survivor benefits. We systematically reviewed records for 998 active duty Army deaths (510 suicides; 488 accident, homicide, and undetermined deaths; 2005‐2009) and, using research criteria, reclassified 8.2% of the nonsuicide cases to definite suicide (1), suicide probable (4), or suicide possible (35). The reclassification rate to definite suicide was only 0.2% (1/488). This low rate suggests that flagrant misclassification of Army deaths is uncommon and surveillance reports likely reflect the “true” population of Army suicides.     

The ABCs of categorical perception

Studies of speech perception first revealed a surprising discontinuity in the way in which stimulus values on a physical continuum are perceived. Data which demonstrate the effect in nonspeech modes have challenged the contention that categorical perception is a hallmark of the speech mode, but the psychophysical models that have been proposed have not resolved the issues raised by empirical findings. This study provides data from judgments of four sensory continua, two visual and two tactual-kinesthetic, which show that the adaptation level for a set of stimuli serves as a category boundary whether stimuli on the continuum differ by linear or logarithmic increments. For all sensory continua studied, discrimination of stimuli belonging to different perceptual categories was more accurate than discrimination of stimuli belonging to the same perceptual category. Moreover, shifts in the adaptation level produced shifts in the location of the category boundary. The concept of Adaptation-level Based Categorization (ABC) provides a unified account of judgmental processes in categorical perception without recourse to post hoc constructs such as implicit anchors or external referents.     

Pathways to prejudice and outgroup hostility: Group alignment and intergroup conflict among football fans

How do different forms of group alignment influence our attitudes toward outgroups? To answer this, the current fieldwork study explored how identification and identity fusion differentially impact outgroup anxiety, prejudice, and hostility toward rival football fan supporter groups in Australia. The community participants (N = 100) were members of two active fan groups who had experienced a history of intergroup tensions. The findings from the full path model confirmed that the predictor group alignment variables of identification and fusion were correlated, and the two outcome variables of outgroup prejudice and hostility were correlated, as predicted. The findings also revealed that fusion with one's club predicted outgroup hostility, but not prejudice, whereas identification with one's club predicted outgroup prejudice, but not hostility. Additionally, outgroup anxiety was found to significantly mediate the relationship between ingroup identification and outgroup prejudice, whereas a similar relationship was not found for fusion. These findings highlight the differential impact of group alignment (i.e., identification and identity fusion) on social constructs of outgroup anxiety, prejudice, and hostility. Empirically, this is the first study to demonstrate the workings of these distinct group alignment pathways in an applied setting involving hard-core football fans. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for a fuller understanding of the drivers of intergroup tensions and conflict.     

The concept of risk and responsible conduct of research

Assessment of risk is one of the key issues in the field of responsible conduct of research which covers discourses of research ethics and research integrity. The principle of minimizing risks and balancing of risks and benefits is one of the main requirements of research ethics. In addition, the content of informed consent that is another fundamental principle of research ethics derives from the assessment of risks and benefits related to a particular research project. Risk assessment also plays a crucial role in methodological design of the research project. This is an important point where research ethics and research integrity discourses overlap. Firstly, because the choice of a control group (e.g., placebo control) is a key ethical issue related to the protection of the research subjects' interests. Secondly, because the quality of the research data, that is one of the key elements of research integrity, is closely connected to the choice of research methodology as well. The problem of biased interpretation or manipulation of risk related features of biomedical research should also be taken into account. Despite the importance of the concept of risk to the field of biomedical research, its relevance has not yet attracted a sufficient attention in the responsible conduct of research debate.