A comparison of between- and within-subjects imitation designs

Two experimental methods, which have dominated the study of declarative memory in preverbal children with imitation tasks, namely the deferred imitation and elicited imitation paradigm, differ in the amount of physical contact with test stimuli afforded infants prior to a test for long-term recall. The current study assessed effects of pre- and post-demonstration contact with test stimuli on deferred imitation of novel, single-step unrelated actions with multiple objects by 8½- and 10½-month-old infants (N = 50). The rate of target action completion after a delay remained consistent at both ages across different conditions of prior contact with test stimuli. This study shows that a within-subjects baseline appraisal is valid within certain experimental parameters and offers a more economical alternative. The results show furthermore that different experimental designs utilized to assess deferred imitation are highly comparable for the first year despite differences in determining baseline.     

Didactic adjustments in fathers' and mothers' speech to their 3-month-old infants

Vocal dialogues of 3-month-old infants with their mothers and fathers were recorded during dyadic interactions in the laboratory. Six-minute speech samples were analyzed for syntacticlexical and temporal-melodic features. Both parents adopted strikingly similar speech registers. Segmentation, reduction in syntactic complexity, repetitiveness, and slow tempo were more marked than reported for parental speech to children above 1 year. However, rather than providing proper linguistic models, parents utilized simplified patterns of expressive melodic contours as the most salient units of speech. This tendency is interpretable as age-specific adjustment to infants' integrative capacities. Structural similarities between maternal and paternal baby talk by far outweighed a few quantitative differences. The intuitive nature of recourse to basic nonverbal properties of vocal communication, together with universality across sex, favors the assumption that baby talk is a part of species-specific didactic support to infant communicative development.     

CHRONIC NOISE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS

Abstract— This article illustrates the value of incorporating psychological principles into the environmental sciences Psycho physiological, cognitive, motivational, and affective indices of chronically exposed to aircraft noise We demonstrate for the first time that chronic noise exposure is associated with elevated neuroendocnne and cardiovascular measures, muted cardiovascular reactivity to a task presented under acute noise, deficits in a standardized reading test administered under quiet conditions, poorer long-term memory, and diminished quality of life on a standardized index Children in high-noise areas also showed evidence of poor persistence on challenging tasks and ambulation to auditory distraction on a signal-to-noise task They reported considerable annoyance with community noise levels, as measured utilizing a calibration procedure that adjusts for individual differences in rating criteria for annoyance judgments     

Is vision metric? Comment on Lappin and Love (1992)

In a recent paper, Lappin and Love (1992) showed that depth judgments, based on planar motion of a stimulus, are remarkably precise. This led them to the conclusion that perception of planar motion allows acquiring metric information about visual space. We show, however, that Lappin and Love’s stimuli contained 2-D cues in the frontal plane that could subserve the subjecfs judgments.     

Response bias in self-report measures of general health

This study set out to examine the susceptability of two widely used, self-report, psychiatric inventories to response set bias. Subjects were requested to either fake well (physically and psychologically fit), fake psychologically ill, fake physically ill or respond honestly on the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the Langner Scale of Distress (L-22). Predictably subjects who faked well had significantly lower scores than either of the other two experimental groups, however there was no difference between the Fake Well and Control group on the GHQ total or the Somatic and Depression scales. Subjects who faked psychologically ill showed 4 out of 11 significant differences between those who faked physically ill. All of the comparisons between the two Fake Ill groups, and the Well and Control groups, were statistically significant the former reporting higher incidences of distress than the latter. The results are discussed in terms of questionnaire design, subject motivation and alternative methods of assessing mental health.     

幼儿对条件许诺的理解

通过给4、5、6岁儿童呈现一系列图片,分别代表孩子、妈妈以及双方违反约定的不同情况,考察了幼儿对条件许诺形式的社会约定的理解。结果表明：幼儿对条件许诺的认知表现出明显的发展趋势,绝大多数幼儿都能指出孩子违反,随年龄增大能指出妈妈违反、双违反的人次百分比逐渐增多,其中4岁组没有人能指出妈妈违反,5岁组没有人能指出双违反;幼儿对条件许诺中不同角色违背的检测存在“角色效应”和“同侪违背优先检测效应”;多数幼儿还没有将条件许诺理解为双条件规则。     

Social anxiety and anger regulation

Based on the assumption that social anxiety is associated with less assertive behaviour and that effective anger regulation is influenced by social anxiety, two studies were conducted to examine the relationship between social anxiety and anger regulation. In Study 1, questionnaires measuring social anxiety, assertiveness, and six habitual anger‐related responses were administered to 115 adults. Social anxiety had an independent effect on rumination and submission, whereas assertiveness was independently related to the use of humour and feedback. In Study 2 (N = 136 adults) self‐ and observer ratings of anger‐related behaviour were obtained after anger was experimentally induced. Social anxiety was related to self‐ratings of submission and rumination. However, independent observer ratings based on videotapes revealed no significant influence of social anxiety on anger‐related behaviour. Taken together, the results provide evidence that social anxiety is associated with the self‐perception of less assertive behaviour and the tendency to evaluate one's behaviour more negatively. These results are consistent with prior studies showing that socially anxious persons tend to underestimate their social performance relative to the ratings of independent observers. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Verhaltenstherapie bei dissoziativen Störungen

Zusammenfassung Epidemiologische Daten bezüglich dissoziativer Auffälligkeiten werden vorgestellt. Diagnostizierbare dissoziative Störungen werden im Bereich des pathologischen Pols eines Kontinuums dissoziativer Phänomene eingeordnet. Ausgehend von der allen dissoziativen Störungen gemeinsamen Kernsymptomatik der strukturierten Separation mentaler Prozesse aus der ganzheitlichen Wahrnehmung wird ein universelles Ätiologiemodell dieser Erkrankungen dargestellt. Es basiert im Wesentlichen auf neueren Erkenntnissen der Neurobiologie und Gedächtnisforschung und bezieht sich auf die Traumatisierung als zentralem pathologenetischem Agens. Hiervon ausgehend, wird ein 2-phasiges Therapiemodell vorgestellt. Als Ziel wird ein Aussetzen bzw. eine Reduktion der dissoziativen Symptome über eine Integration der traumatischen Erfahrungen angestrebt. Die beschriebenen therapeutischen Vorgehensweisen sind grundsätzlich bei allen traumatisch bedingten dissoziativen Störungen anwendbar. Auf Konversionssymptome sowie die dissoziative Identitätsstörung wird als Sonderfälle separat eingegangen.Der Text basiert auf dem gleichnamigen Vortrag, den die Autorin am 24.10.2003 auf dem 5. Wissenschaftlichen Kongress der Deutschen Ärztlichen Gesellschaft für Verhaltenstherapie in Bad Pyrmont gehalten hat.