Cortisol reactivity and regulation associated with shame responding in early childhood

The purpose of this study was to characterize cortisol response and regulation associated with shame responding in early childhood and to examine how general the relation between shame and cortisol is. It was predicted that children responding to task failure with shame would show a larger and more prolonged cortisol response than other children. Participants were 214 children (124 boys, 90 girls) ranging from 3.7 to 4.5 years of age (M = 4.14 years, SD = 0.24). Shame responding was assessed from children's emotion-expressive behavior in response to failing 6 performance tasks, 2 preceding (initial) and 4 following (subsequent) assessment of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation. Cortisol response and regulation associated with failure were assessed from saliva sampled before and 15, 20, 25, 30, and 40 min following the first of the 2 initial failures. For boys and for some girls, high initial shame was associated with greater cortisol reactivity and slower regulation of the cortisol response. For boys, high initial shame and relatively slow regulation of the associated cortisol response predicted subsequent shame responding occurring after recovery of the cortisol response. For girls, high initial shame, but not cortisol response, predicted subsequent shame responding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

An experimental comparison between rival theories of rapid automatized naming performance and its relationship to reading

Two studies investigated the degree to which the relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) performance and reading development is driven by shared phonological processes. Study 1 assessed RAN, phonological awareness, and reading performance in 1010 7- to 10-year-olds. Results showed that RAN deficits occurred in the absence of phonological awareness deficits. These were accompanied by modest reading delays. In structural equation modeling, solutions where RAN was subsumed within a phonological processing factor did not provide a good fit to the data, suggesting that processes outside phonology may drive RAN performance and its association with reading. Study 2 investigated Kail's proposal that speed of processing underlies this relationship. Children with single RAN deficits showed slower speed of processing than did closely matched controls performing normally on RAN. However, regression analysis revealed that RAN made a unique contribution to reading even after accounting for processing speed. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Disruptive effects of prior information on tachistoscopic recognition

Smith, Haviland, Reder, Brownell, and Adams (1976) found tachistoscopic letter recognition to be disrupted by advance information about possible letter alternatives. An association of “before-disruption” with a bias to respond “same” in same-different judgment led Smith et al. to conclude that incidental mask features corresponding to a precued letter were erroneously incorporated into the target letter decision. Experiments 1 and 2 in the present study failed to replicate the before-disruption effect under conditions similar to those of Smith et al., although precuing produced a strong bias to respond “same.” Similarity between “same” and “different” alternatives was manipulated in Experiment 3 by selecting letter pairs differing in one critical feature (P-R, O-Q, C-G, F-E) for one group of subjects, and re-pairing the same letters (P-G, O-E, C-R, F-Q) for another group. Contrary to Smith et el., precuing interacted significantly with pair similarity, such that before-disruption occurred only with similar alternatives. In contrast, precuing produced equivalent “same-bias” in both groups. The dependence of before-disruption on pair similarity was extended to two-alternative forced-choice recognition in Experiment 4. Together with inconsistencies in the Smith et al. data and more detailed analysis of present recognition errors, the results suggest (1) the before-disruption and same-bias effects of precuing are mediated by separate mechanisms, and (2) before-disruption reflects loss of target letter information rather than direct incorporation of extraneous mask features.     

Do Occupational Performance and Social Support Predict Health and Well-Being Among Mothers of Preterm Infants?

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Giving birth to a preterm infant has significant implications on the mother’s life. The purpose of this study was to compare occupational performance...     

Inferring Sublexical Correspondences from Sight Vocabulary: Evidence from 6- and 7-year-olds

We report an experiment designed to investigate 6-to-7-year-old children's ability to acquire knowledge of sublexical correspondences between print and sound from their reading experience. A computer database containing the printed word vocabulary of children taking part in the experiment was compiled and used to devise stimuli controlled for grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) frequency and rime neighbourhood consistency according to the children's reading experience. Knowledge of GPC rules and rime units was compared by asking children to read aloud three types of nonword varying in regularity of GPC and consistency of rime pronunciation. Results supported the view that children can acquire knowledge of both GPC rules and rime units from their reading experience. GPC rule strength affects the likelihood of a GPC response; rime consistency affects the likelihood of a rime response.