Descending control to the nonparetic limb degrades the cyclic activity of paretic leg muscles

During anti-phased locomotor tasks such as cycling or walking, hemiparetic phasing of muscle activity is characterized by inappropriate early onset of activity for some paretic muscles and prolonged activity in others. Pedaling with the paretic limb alone reduces inappropriate prolonged activity, suggesting a combined influence of contralesional voluntary commands and movement-related sensory feedback. Five different non-target leg movement state conditions were performed by 15 subjects post-stroke and 15 nonimpaired controls while they pedaled with the target leg and EMG was recorded bilaterally. Voluntary engagement of the non-lesioned motor system increased prolonged paretic vastus medialis (VM) activity and increased phase-advanced rectus femoris (RF) activity. We suggest bilateral descending commands are primarily responsible for the inappropriate activity in the paretic VM during anti-phase pedaling, and contribute to the dysfunctional motor output in the paretic RF. Findings from controls suggest that even an undamaged motor system can contribute to this phenomenon.     

Parental involvement, child temperament, and parents' work hours: Differential relations for mothers and fathers

This study examined how child temperament was related to parents' time spent accessible to and interacting with their 2-year-olds. Bivariate analyses indicated that both fathers and mothers spent more time with temperamentally challenging children than easier children on workdays, but fathers spent less time with challenging children than easier children on non-workdays. After accounting for work hours, some associations between temperament and fathers' workday involvement dropped to non-significance. For fathers, work hours also moderated the relation between irregular temperament and workday play. For mothers, work hours moderated the relation between both difficult and irregular temperament and workday interaction. Mothers also spent more time with girls (but not boys) who were temperamentally irregular. Results speak to the influence of child temperament on parenting behavior, and the differential construction of parenting roles as a function of child characteristics and patterns of work.     

American elementary school children's attitudes about immigrants, immigration, and being an American

The current study examined 5 to 11-year-old European American children's (N = 90) attitudes regarding immigrants, immigration policy, and what it means to be an American. The majority of children in the sample (from a predominantly European American community) held strong American identities and had distinct ideas about what it means to be an American (namely, one must love America, live by its rules, and be White). Children were in favor of legal immigration as a policy, and although they believed in allowing illegal immigrants to stay if employed, many younger children believed they should go to jail. Many children in the sample were aware of Americans' anti-immigration sentiments, largely attributing it to ethnic/cultural discrimination. Finally, children held negative attitudes about immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants. These negative attitudes were most evident among children who held a strong, prototypical national in-group identity. In contrast, children did not hold differential attitudes about White and Black Americans.     

Seeing with sound? exploring different characteristics of a visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device

Sensory substitution devices convert live visual images into auditory signals, for example with a web camera (to record the images), a computer (to perform the conversion) and headphones (to listen to the sounds). In a series of three experiments, the performance of one such device ('The vOICe') was assessed under various conditions on blindfolded sighted participants. The main task that we used involved identifying and locating objects placed on a table by holding a webcam (like a flashlight) or wearing it on the head (like a miner's light). Identifying objects on a table was easier with a hand-held device, but locating the objects was easier with a head-mounted device. Brightness converted into loudness was less effective than the reverse contrast (dark being loud), suggesting that performance under these conditions (natural indoor lighting, novice users) is related more to the properties of the auditory signal (ie the amount of noise in it) than the cross-modal association between loudness and brightness. Individual differences in musical memory (detecting pitch changes in two sequences of notes) was related to the time taken to identify or recognise objects, but individual differences in self-reported vividness of visual imagery did not reliably predict performance across the experiments. In general, the results suggest that the auditory characteristics of the device may be more important for initial learning than visual associations.     

Participation bias among suicidal adults in a randomized controlled trial

Although individuals who attempt suicide have poor compliance rates with treatment recommendations, the nature and degree of participation bias in clinical treatment research among these individuals is virtually unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine participation bias by comparing the demographic and diagnostic characteristics of adult suicide attempters who participated in a randomized controlled trial to a sample of nonparticipants. Results indicated that males and individuals with a diagnosis of substance abuse or dependence were more likely to be participants in the randomized controlled trial. The implications of these findings for suicide intervention research are discussed.     

Location in negotiation: Is there a home field advantage?

Although location is considered to play an important role in negotiation potentially favoring one side over the other, little research has examined whether negotiating on one’s home field indeed confers an advantage to the resident party. We tested this possibility by experimentally manipulating participants’ occupancy status (resident versus neutral versus visitor). Across three studies, we find that residents of an office space outperform the visiting party in a distributive negotiation. In addition, our results suggest that this performance discrepancy between residents and visitors may be due to both a resident advantage (residents outperforming a neutral party) and a visitor disadvantage (visitors performing worse than a neutral party). Finally, our findings reveal that confidence partially mediates the effects of occupancy status on negotiation performance and demonstrate that an intervention designed to boost visitor confidence can help overcome the home field advantage. Implications of these results for theory and practice are discussed.     

Memory for actions in autism spectrum disorder

This study explored how memory for actions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing children might benefit from self-performance and experimenter demonstration, and whether these groups possess metamemory knowledge of their performance levels in this task. Children with autism were less accurate on the action memory task when they carried out each action themselves during encoding, or when no actions were implemented during this phase, but this difference was abolished when the experimenter demonstrated each action during encoding. Despite clear difficulties in the self-performed condition relative to typical children, the group with ASD also showed a beneficial effect of performing the actions themselves during instruction. Finally, children with autism were as accurate as typical children in judging the accuracy of their own memory performance, indicating an absence of metamemory difficulties for this task.     

In Sync and in Control: A Meta‐Analysis of Parent–Child Positive Behavioral Synchrony and Youth Self‐Regulation

A growing body of research has highlighted the connection between parent–child positive behavioral synchrony and youth self‐regulation; however, this association has yet to be the focus of a meta‐analytic review. Therefore, the present meta‐analysis aimed to estimate the magnitude of the relation between parent–child positive behavioral synchrony and youth self‐regulation and to identify moderator variables that can explain the variability in the degree of this association across the extant literature. A thorough literature search of two major databases, in addition to scanning the reference sections of relevant articles, yielded a total of 10 peer‐reviewed articles (24 effect sizes, 658 children) that were eligible for inclusion in the current meta‐analysis. Results from the overall mean effect size calculation using a random‐effects model indicated that parent–child positive behavioral synchrony was significantly, positively correlated with youth self‐regulation and the effect size was medium. Children's ages at the time of synchrony and self‐regulation measurements, as well as parent gender, served as significant moderator variables. Findings from the present meta‐analysis can help to refine existing theoretical models on the role of the parent–child relationship in youth adjustment. Prevention and intervention efforts may benefit from an increased emphasis on building parent–child positive behavioral synchrony to promote youth self‐regulation and thus children's overall well‐being.