Child social skills training in developmental crime prevention: effects on antisocial behavior and social competence

Social skills training for children is becoming increasingly popular as a measure for developmental crime prevention. Although previous reviews of such programs have shown positive effects, they have also revealed problems of research design, outcome measures, and long-term follow up. Accordingly, this article reports on a recent meta-analysis of randomized evaluations of the effect of social skills training in preventing antisocial behavior and promoting social competence. Of 841 retrievable references, 84 research reports with a total of 136 treatment-control comparisons fulfilled the eligibility criteria. Results showed a small but significant overall positive effect of d = .39 at post-intervention and d = .28 at follow-up (3 months and later). Effect sizes were somewhat greater for outcome measures of social competence than for measures of antisocial behavior, particularly when delinquency was assessed. Cognitive-behavioral programs revealed the best results in terms of generalization over time and on outcome criteria. In addition, prevention measures indicated for children and adolescents who already manifested some behavioral problems had higher effect sizes than universal approaches. Because most studies dealt with small sample sizes, non-official outcome data, and measurements after less than one year, the results should be interpreted with caution. Further high-quality studies with long-term empirical outcome criteria are needed, particularly outside the United States.     

Shared representations in body perception

The ability to understand events that happen to other people is a characteristic feature of the human mind. Here, we investigate whether the links between mental representation of one's own body and the bodies of other people could form the basis of human social representations. We studied interpersonal body representation (IBR) in a series of behavioural cueing experiments. Subjects responded to tactile events on their own body after a visual event was presented in either the corresponding anatomical location on a model's body, or in a non-corresponding location. We found that reactions were faster when the visual cue was in register with the tactile stimulation. This effect was absent when identical visual events were presented on a non-body control stimulus, suggesting a body specific mechanism for interpersonal registration of purely sensory events. Similar interpersonal systems have been demonstrated previously for the coding of action and emotion, but we believe that our results provide the first behavioural evidence for interpersonal body representation at the purely sensory level. We show that a sensory processing mechanism specific for bodies is automatically activated when viewing another person. Interpersonal body representation may be an important precursor to empathy and theory of mind. In our social world, we understand the percepts of others by registering them against the representations used to perceive our own body, and this mechanism involves an interpersonal somatotopic map.     

Immobility and supination in garter snakes (Thamnophis elegans) following handling by human predators

A common response of animals to physical restraint is tonic immobility. The authors observed the behavior of garter snakes, Thamnophis elegans, in the field to determine the frequency of immobility as a response to handling. Most snakes fled after release, but the remainder remained immobile, sometimes on their backs (supination), for up to 10 min. Immobility was seen most often in pregnant snakes, which also were more likely than other snakes not to have moved before capture. Failure to move, either before or after capture, might be a consequence of the limited locomotory ability of gravid snakes. However, the lack of observations of interactions between snakes and their natural predators impedes researchers' understanding of the antipredator value, if any, of tonic immobility.     

Biases in the perceived timing of perisaccadic perceptual and motor events

Subjects typically experience the temporal interval immediately following a saccade as longer than a comparable control interval. One explanation of this effect is that the brain antedates the perceptual onset of a saccade target to around the time of saccade initiation. This could explain the apparent continuity of visual perception across eye movements. This antedating account was tested in three experiments in which subjects made saccades of differing extents and then judged either the duration or the temporal order of key events. Postsaccadic stimuli underwent subjective temporal lengthening and had early perceived onsets. A temporally advanced awareness of saccade completion was also found, independently of antedating effects. These results provide convergent evidence supporting antedating and differentiating it from other temporal biases.     

The control of saccade trajectories: direction of curvature depends on prior knowledge of target location and saccade latency

Recent reports have shown that saccades can deviate either toward or away from distractors. However, the specific conditions responsible for the change in initial saccade direction are not known. One possibility, examined here, is that the direction of curvature (toward or away from distractors) reflects preparatory tuning of the oculomotor system when the location of the target and distractor are known in advance. This was investigated by examining saccade trajectories under predictable and unpredictable target conditions. In Experiment 1, the targets and the distractors appeared unpredictably, whereas in Experiment 2 an arrow cue presented at fixation indicated the location of the forthcoming target prior to stimulus onset. Saccades were made to targets on the horizontal, vertical, and principal oblique axis, and distractors appeared simultaneously at an adjacent location (a separation of +/- 45 degrees of visual angle). On average, saccade trajectories curved toward distractors when target locations were unpredictable and curved away from distractors when target locations were known in advance. There was no overall difference in mean saccade latencies between the two experiments. The magnitude of the distractor modulation of saccade trajectory (either toward or away from) was comparable across the different saccade directions (horizontal, vertical, and oblique). These results are interpreted in terms of the time course of competitive interactions operating in the neural structures involved in the suppression of distractors and the selection of a saccade target. A relatively slow mechanism that inhibits movements to distractors produces curvature away from the distractor. This mechanism has more time to operate when target location is predictable, increasing the likelihood that the saccade trajectory will deviate away from the distractor.     

Determinants of lexical access in speech production: Role of word frequency and age of acquisition

The main determinants of lexical access in speech are considered to be a word's age of acquisition (AoA) and its frequency of occurrence in a speaker's experience. It is unclear whether and how these variables interact, although they are commonly observed to be correlated, for the few studies that address the issue have reported inconsistent findings. An influential view of AoA in lexical processing (Ellis and Lambon Ralph, 2000) predicts stronger frequency effects for items acquired later in life than for those acquired at an early age. Five experiments were designed to investigate the possible interaction of AoA and frequency effects in speech. We found that the interaction between word frequency and AoA was not robust and that, contrary to expectation, the effect of word frequency was greater for words acquired earlier in life than for those acquired later. The implications of our findings are discussed.     

Personality prototypes in eating disorders based on the Big Five model

A three factor model of personality pathology was investigated in a clinical sample of 335 female eating disordered patients. Cluster analysis of the Big Five NEO-FFI scales (Costa & McCrae, 1992) yielded three distinct personality profiles, which were consistent with previous studies: (1) a resilient/high functioning cluster with no clinical elevations on the NEO-FFI scales; (2) an undercontrolled/emotionally dysregulated cluster with elevated scores on the Neuroticism scale and low scores on Conscientiousness and Agreeableness; (3) an overcontrolled/constricted cluster showing high scores on Neuroticism and Conscientiousness and low scores on Openness to Experience. Comparing the three personality prototypes with respect to Axis I and Axis II disorders,resilients reported systematically less clinical and personality problems than both undercontrollers and overcontrollers. Compared to the latter, undercontrollers showed more impulsive personality features and behaviors. Finally, cluster membership was not clearly associated with eating disorder subtypes, suggesting that there is considerable variance in personality features and/or pathology within the various eating disorder categories.     

The timing of brain events: authors' response to Libet's 'reply'

A commentary in response to B. Libet: 'The timing of brain events: Reply to the "Special Section" in this journal of September 2004, edited by Susan Pockett' ().     

Retrieval of names in face and object naming in an interference study

Two experiments using the interference paradigm are reported. In the first experiment, the participants spoke aloud the names of celebrities and the names of objects when presented with pictures while hearing distractors. In the case of proper names, we replicated the data obtained by Izaute and Bonin (2001) using the interference paradigm with a proper name written naming task. In the case of common names, the results replicated those obtained by Shriefers, Meyer, and Levelt (1990). In the second experiment, the participants produced the names of celebrities when presented with their faces while hearing distractors that were either proper names associated with the celebrities (associate condition), that belonged to a different professional category (different condition), or that corresponded to the proper names of the celebrities (identical condition). For negative SOAs, "associate" distractors were found to increase latencies compared to the "different category" condition. The implications of the findings for proper name retrieval are briefly discussed.