An evaluation of progressively increasing intertrial intervals on the acquisition and generalization of three social skills

We evaluated the effects of different intertrial intervals (ITIs; time between programmed learning opportunities) on the acquisition and generalization of 2 preschoolers' social skills. Independent and generalized skills were observed only when the daily ITI was gradually increased from short to progressively longer intervals.     

Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: a meta-analytic review

The authors report a systematic meta-analytic review of the relationships among 3 of the most widely studied measures of children's phonological skills (phonemic awareness, rime awareness, and verbal short-term memory) and children's word reading skills. The review included both extreme group studies and correlational studies with unselected samples (235 studies were included, and 995 effect sizes were calculated). Results from extreme group comparisons indicated that children with dyslexia show a large deficit on phonemic awareness in relation to typically developing children of the same age (pooled effect size estimate: -1.37) and children matched on reading level (pooled effect size estimate: -0.57). There were significantly smaller group deficits on both rime awareness and verbal short-term memory (pooled effect size estimates: rime skills in relation to age-matched controls, -0.93, and reading-level controls, -0.37; verbal short-term memory skills in relation to age-matched controls, -0.71, and reading-level controls, -0.09). Analyses of studies of unselected samples showed that phonemic awareness was the strongest correlate of individual differences in word reading ability and that this effect remained reliable after controlling for variations in both verbal short-term memory and rime awareness. These findings support the pivotal role of phonemic awareness as a predictor of individual differences in reading development. We discuss whether such a relationship is a causal one and the implications of research in this area for current approaches to the teaching of reading and interventions for children with reading difficulties.     

The phonotactic influence on the perception of a consonant cluster /pt/ by native English and native Polish listeners: A behavioral and event related potential (ERP) study

The effect of exposure to the contextual features of the /pt/ cluster was investigated in native-English and native-Polish listeners using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) methodology. Both groups experience the /pt/ cluster in their languages, but only the Polish group experiences the cluster in the context of word onset examined in the current experiment. The /st/ cluster was used as an experimental control. ERPs were recorded while participants identified the number of syllables in the second word of nonsense word pairs. The results found that only Polish listeners accurately perceived the /pt/ cluster and perception was reflected within a late positive component of the ERP waveform. Furthermore, evidence of discrimination of /pt/ and /p?t/ onsets in the neural signal was found even for non-native listeners who could not perceive the difference. These findings suggest that exposure to phoneme sequences in highly specific contexts may be necessary for accurate perception.     

Examining attitudes about and influences on research participation among forensic psychiatric inpatients

Although a growing body of research has examined various types of coercive practices that may occur among psychiatric patients over the years, almost no attention has been given to coercive influences that may occur specifically in the context of recruitment into research projects. Particularly for those who are institutionalized (e.g., in-patient insanity acquittees), there are significant concerns that their autonomous decision-making to consent or not may be significantly impaired due to the highly restrictive and controlled environment in which they live. This exploratory study sought to examine patients' perceptions of coercive influences by presenting them with hypothetical research vignettes regarding possible recruitment into either a biomedical or social-behavioral research project. Among 148 multi-ethnic male and female participants across two facilities, participants reported relatively minimal perceptions that their autonomous decision-making would be impacted or that various potentially coercive factors (e.g., pressures from staff) would impair their free choice to participate (or not) in such research. To the extent that such perceptions of coercion did occur, they were moderately associated with patients' more general personality traits and attitudinal variables, such as alienation and external locus of control. Limitations of this study and their implications for future research are discussed.     

Visual size perception and haptic calibration during development

It is still unclear how the visual system perceives accurately the size of objects at different distances. One suggestion, dating back to Berkeley’s famous essay, is that vision is calibrated by touch. If so, we may expect different mechanisms involved for near, reachable distances and far, unreachable distances. To study how the haptic system calibrates vision we measured size constancy in children (from 6 to 16 years of age) and adults, at various distances. At all ages, accuracy of the visual size perception changes with distance, and is almost veridical inside the haptic workspace, in agreement with the idea that the haptic system acts to calibrate visual size perception. Outside this space, systematic errors occurred, which varied with age. Adults tended to overestimate visual size of distant objects (over‐compensation for distance), while children younger than 14 underestimated their size (under‐compensation). At 16 years of age there seemed to be a transition point, with veridical perception of distant objects. When young subjects were allowed to touch the object inside the haptic workspace, the visual biases disappeared, while older subjects showed multisensory integration. All results are consistent with the idea that the haptic system can be used to calibrate visual size perception during development, more effectively within than outside the haptic workspace, and that the calibration mechanisms are different in children than in adults.     

Areas of Marital Dissatisfaction Among Long‐Term Couples

To better understand relational dissatisfaction and duration of long‐term married couples, this study surveyed 30 couples married at least 40 years with the Marital Satisfaction Inventory. Findings suggest various areas of dissatisfaction (e.g., affective communication, conflict over child rearing) and relationship among and link to other areas of dissatisfaction (e.g., finances, sex).     

Social deviance activates the brain’s error-monitoring system

Social psychologists have long noted the tendency for human behavior to conform to social group norms. This study examined whether feedback indicating that participants had deviated from group norms would elicit a neural signal previously shown to be elicited by errors and monetary losses. While electroencephalograms were recorded, participants (N = 30) rated the attractiveness of 120 faces and received feedback giving the purported average rating made by a group of peers. The feedback was manipulated so that group ratings either were the same as a participant’s rating or deviated by 1, 2, or 3 points. Feedback indicating deviance from the group norm elicited a feedback-related negativity, a brainwave signal known to be elicited by objective performance errors and losses. The results imply that the brain treats deviance from social norms as an error.     

Task relevance modulates processing of distracting emotional stimuli

Relatively little is known about the integration of people's fear-related dispositions and their expectations about stressful events. This research used information integration theory to examine how participants’ anxiety sensitivity and event expectancy are integrated to determine their social anxiety. Three studies were conducted—two with university students and one with anxiety clinic patients—in which participants were presented with multiple scenarios of a socially embarrassing event, each representing a different degree of event probability, from which subjective expectancies were derived. Independent variables included anxiety sensitivity (low, moderate, high) and event expectancy (low, medium, high, no probability information). Participants were asked to indicate their anxiety (dependent measure) in each expectancy condition in this 3 × 4 mixed, quasi-experimental design. The results of all three studies strongly suggest that anxiety sensitivity and event expectancy are integrated additively to produce social anxiety. Additional results and their implications for the treatment of anxiety-related disorders are also discussed.     

The Promotional Role of School and Community Contexts for Military Students

This article examines how supportive public school environments can serve as a promotional context for the development of children and adolescents from military families. The authors integrate theory and research from multiple research strands (e.g., human development, studies of at-risk youth, educational reform, goodness of fit theory, and school climate) to outline how public schools can support the development of all children and adolescents. This article provides further support for the supposition that school climates and the social-ecological contexts surrounding a school (e.g., universities, communities, school districts) have the potential to protect at-risk children and adolescents from an array of negative social, emotional, and psychological outcomes. The authors draw linkages between these research domains and the development of military children and adolescents. Promotional civilian school environments embedded within supportive and inclusive contexts can create a social infrastructure that supports the development of military children and adolescents. The authors argue that this conceptual approach can create a foundation for interventions and research that focuses on schools as normative supportive developmental settings for military children and youth during challenging times of war (e.g., deployments and multiple school transitions). This article concludes with a discussion of future directions in research on the development of military children and adolescents. Based on a heuristic conceptual model that outlines areas needing further research, the authors call for a deeper theoretical and empirical integration of school climate and external contextual factors surrounding the school. Investigating the social and organizational dynamics within these contexts can result in a more comprehensive picture of the development of military children and adolescents.     

“Anxious” and “reckless” drivers

This paper presents personality profiles of two types of recidivist traffic offenders. One is the “anxious” traffic offender who imputes legitimacy to traffic norms, yet due to innate structural personality defects, he tends to enter into a state of anxiety, when confronted with risky traffic situations or a traffic jam. The other type is the “reckless” driver, who does not impute legitimacy to traffic norms nor to other legal norms. From this personality theory a number of hypotheses were derived and tested by means of multiple regression. Our ability to predict the number of traffic offenses suggests that similar tools may be used by the traffic authorities and traffic courts.