Nocturnal polysomnographic correlates of daytime sleepiness

The relations of nighttime polysomnographic sleep variables with daytime sleepiness scores on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale were assessed in a retrospective chart review of 38 patients referred to a sleep clinic. Of the variables assessed, only slow wave sleep was statistically significantly correlated with daytime sleepiness, regardless of whether the analysis was based on absolute minutes of slow wave sleep or percentage of total sleep time spent in slow wave sleep. Stepwise linear regression suggested that other polysomnographic variables did not provide additional predictive value beyond the two indices of slow wave sleep. Apparently, reduced quantity of slow wave sleep was weakly but significantly related to increased daytime sleepiness among these sleep-clinic patients.     

Intimacy, identity and status: Measuring dating goals in late adolescence and emerging adulthood

Individuals?? goals can direct their own social behavior and development. We extended and validated a social dating goals measure (SDGS-R) to assess identity, intimacy and status goals, and compared goals by age, gender, sexual orientation and romantic status. Participants were 121 adolescents and 249 emerging adults (age M?=?20.6). The expected 3-factor structure of the SDGS-R was found and confirmed (18 items). Identity, intimacy and status goals had small correlations with each other and analyses validated the meaning and uniqueness of each goal. Participants reported more identity and intimacy goals than status goals. Intimacy goals were more prominent among older compared to teenage participants and those with a partner rather than without one. Females reported more identity dating goals than males. There was no difference in the goals of same-sex and other-sex attracted youth. The availability of the SDGS-R will allow further study of romantic development and relationship functioning.     

We Are the World—and They Are Not: Prototypicality for the World Community,Legitimacy, and Responses to Global Inequality

The relation between developed and developing countries is characterized by inequalities that sometimes hinder actions against worldwide problems. The current research presents an intergroup approach, based on the ingroup projection model, towards an analysis of psychological processes that perpetuate global inequality on a social group level. Precisely, we argue that people from developed countries perceive their group as more prototypical for the world population than they perceive people from developing countries. These perceptions of ingroup prototypicality should in turn relate to legitimacy beliefs and predict unfavorable behavioral intentions towards developing countries. We present two studies that corroborate our hypotheses: In Study 1, participants from a developed country perceived their ingroup as more prototypical for the superordinate group (i.e., world population) than the outgroup (i.e., developing countries), which in turn was related to beliefs that global inequality is legitimate. This finding was replicated in Study 2, and the predicted effect of ingroup prototypicality on behavioral intentions was mediated by legitimacy beliefs. These findings demonstrate that intergroup processes can contribute to perpetuating global inequality.     

Enumeration of small and large numerosities: the effect of element visibility

Precise enumeration is associated with small numerosities within the subitizing range (<4 items), while approximate enumeration is associated with large numerosities (>4 items). To date, there is still debate on whether a single continuous process or dual mutually exclusive processes mediate enumeration of small and large numerosities. Here, we evaluated a compromise between these two notions: that the precise representation of number is limited to small numerosities, but that the approximate representation of numerosity spans across both small and large numerosities. We assessed the independence of precise and approximate enumeration by looking at how luminance contrast affected enumeration of elements that differ by ones (1-8) or by tens (10-80). We found that enumeration functions of ones and tens have different characteristics, which is consistent with the presence of two number systems. Subitizing was preserved for small numerosities. However, simply decreasing element visibility changed the variability signatures of small numerosities to match those of large numerosities. Together, our results suggest that small numerosities are mediated by both precise and approximate representations of numerosity.     

Dyadic Coping Among Couples with COPD: A Pilot Study

COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is associated with psychological distress for patients as well as their partners. Dyadic coping can be negatively impacted by stressors. This study's objective was to compare the dyadic coping of couples in which one partner suffered from COPD with healthy couples of the same age. A total of 43 complete couples with COPD and 138 healthy couples participated in this pilot study. The surveys were sent by mail. The response rate of the COPD sample was 24.3%. In order to analyze the effect of gender and role (patient vs. partner) on dyadic coping, linear mixed models were calculated. To analyze the effect of gender and group (COPD group vs. normative comparison group) on dyadic coping, two-way analyses of variance were calculated for independent samples. COPD patients and their partners indicated that the patients received more support and were less able to provide support to their partners. This difference was also evident in comparison with the normative comparison group. In addition, couples with COPD perceived higher levels of negative coping and provided a considerably lower assessment of their positive dyadic coping. The dyadic coping of couples with COPD is unbalanced and more negative when compared to that of healthy couples. Interventions aimed at supporting COPD couples should seek to improve couples' dyadic coping in addition to individual coping strategies.     

Recovering faces from memory: the distracting influence of external facial features

Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g., head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test. By contrast, inconsistencies in external features, especially hair, promote errors in unfamiliar face-matching tasks. For the construction of facial composites, as carried out by witnesses and victims of crime, the role of external features (hair, ears, and neck) is less clear, although research does suggest their involvement. Here, over three experiments, we investigate the impact of external features for recovering facial memories using a modern, recognition-based composite system, EvoFIT. Participant-constructors inspected an unfamiliar target face and, one day later, repeatedly selected items from arrays of whole faces, with "breeding," to "evolve" a composite with EvoFIT; further participants (evaluators) named the resulting composites. In Experiment 1, the important internal-features (eyes, brows, nose, and mouth) were constructed more identifiably when the visual presence of external features was decreased by Gaussian blur during construction: higher blur yielded more identifiable internal-features. In Experiment 2, increasing the visible extent of external features (to match the target's) in the presented face-arrays also improved internal-features quality, although less so than when external features were masked throughout construction. Experiment 3 demonstrated that masking external-features promoted substantially more identifiable images than using the previous method of blurring external-features. Overall, the research indicates that external features are a distractive rather than a beneficial cue for face construction; the results also provide a much better method to construct composites, one that should dramatically increase identification of offenders.     

The impact of onlooking and including bystander behaviour on judgments and emotions regarding peer exclusion

We investigated judgments and emotions in contexts of social exclusion that varied as a function of bystander behaviour (N = 173, 12‐ and 16‐year‐olds). Adolescents responded to film vignettes depicting a target excluded by a group with no bystanders, onlooking bystanders, or bystanders who included the target. Adolescents were asked to judge the behaviour and attribute emotions to the excluding group, the excluded target, and the bystanders. Younger adolescents judged the behaviour of the excluding group as more wrong than older adolescents when there were no bystanders present, indicating that the presence of bystanders was viewed as lessening the negative outcome of exclusion by the younger group. Yet, bystanders play a positive role only when they are includers, not when they are silent observers. This distinction was revealed by the findings that adolescents rated the behaviour of onlooking bystanders as more wrong compared with the behaviour of including bystanders. Moreover, all adolescents justified the inclusive behaviour more frequently with empathy than the onlooking behaviour. Adolescents also anticipated more empathy to including bystanders than to onlooking bystanders, as well as anticipated more guilt to onlooking bystanders than including bystanders. The findings are discussed in light of the role of group norms and group processes regarding bystanders' roles in social exclusion peer encounters.     

The relationship between phonological processing and arithmetic in children with learning disabilities

Phonological processing skills have not only been shown to be important for reading skills, but also for arithmetic skills. Specifically, previous research in typically developing children has suggested that phonological processing skills may be more closely related to arithmetic problems that are solved through fact retrieval (e.g., remembering the solution from memory) than procedural computation (e.g., counting). However, the relationship between phonological processing and arithmetic in children with learning disabilities (LDs) has not been investigated. Yet, understanding these relationships in children with LDs is especially important because it can help elucidate the cognitive underpinnings of math difficulties, explain why reading and math disabilities frequently co-occur, and provide information on which cognitive skills to target for interventions. In 63 children with LDs, we examined the relationship between different phonological processing skills (phonemic awareness, phonological memory, and rapid serial naming) and arithmetic. We distinguished between arithmetic problems that tend to be solved with fact retrieval versus procedural computation to determine whether phonological processing skills are differentially related to these two arithmetic processes. We found that phonemic awareness, but not phonological memory or rapid serial naming, was related to arithmetic fact retrieval. We also found no association between any phonological processing skills and procedural computation. These results converge with prior research in typically developing children and suggest that phonemic awareness is also related to arithmetic fact retrieval in children with LD. These results raise the possibility that phonemic awareness training might improve both reading and arithmetic fact retrieval skills.

Research Highlights

• Relationships between phonological processing and various arithmetic skills were investigated in children with learning disabilities (LDs) for the first time.
• We found phonemic awareness was related to arithmetic involving fact retrieval, but not to arithmetic involving procedural computation in LDs.
• The results suggest that phonemic awareness is not only important to skilled reading, but also to some aspects of arithmetic.
• These results raise the question of whether intervention in phonemic awareness might improve arithmetic fact retrieval skills.

     

Self‐Harm and Conventional Gender Roles in Women

A total of thirty‐two women admitted to a general hospital for medical treatment after self‐harming completed measures of conventional positive and negative masculinity and femininity. Comparisons were made with two control groups with no self‐harm history; 33 women receiving psychiatric outpatient treatment and a nonclinical sample of 206 women. Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that those with lower scores on Instrumentality and Unmitigated Agency (positive and negative masculinity) and higher scores on Insecurity (negative femininity) had greater odds of self‐harming. Relationships were weaker after accounting for generalized self‐efficacy. Results are discussed in relation to previous findings and suggestions for prevention are made.     

Expression recognition and behavioural problems in early adolescence

The processing of emotional expressions is fundamental for normal socialisation and social interaction. Fifty-five children (aged 11–14 years) in mainstream education participated in this study. They were presented with a standardised set of pictures of facial expressions and asked to name one of the six emotions illustrated (sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise). Following experimental testing, their behaviour was rated by two independent teachers on the Psychopathy Screening Device (PSD). The PSD assesses two dimensions of behavioral problems: affective-interpersonal disturbance and impulsive behaviour/conduct problems. The results showed that the ability to recognise sad and fearful expressions (but not happy, angry, disgusted, or surprised expressions) was inversely related to both level of affective-interpersonal disturbance and impulsive/conduct problems. These results are interpreted with reference to current models of empathy and its disorders.