Infant care from infants' viewpoint: the views of some professionals

Debate about infant care tends to focus on still unresolved questions about whether or not day care is harmful, while research studies often confine care options to an unrealistic axis of choice between group care and mother care. Research that delineates constituents of day care quality in relation to measurable outcomes for different groups of children is urgently needed and should be based on a broader view of infant care options. A postal opinion survey sought the confidential views of members of an international organization of infant mental health professionals as to the kinds of care they considered likely to be best for infants from birth to 36 months, assuming that all types of care were of equally high quality and availability. Surprisingly lengthy periods of care by mothers were consistently endorsed; fathers were almost entirely disregarded as principal or joint caregivers; all forms of family care were endorsed over all forms of purchased care, but all forms of individual care were preferred to full-day group care for all age groups and to half-day group care up to the age of 2. The patterns of care judged by these respondents as likely to be best for infants are very different from those which most infants experience now, and from those which policy- and opinion-makers, practitioners and parents aspire, publicly at least, to provide for infants in the future. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Environmental enrichment influences spatial learning ability in captive-reared intertidal gobies (Bathygobius cocosensis)

Animal Cognition - Behavioural plasticity is an advantageous trait for animals living in dynamic environments, and can be induced through learning. While some behavioural traits are innate, others...     

How context-independent is the outgroup homogeneity effect? A response to Bartsch and Judd

Bartsch and Judd (1993) argue that outgroup homogeneity effects occur independently of any tendency for members of minority groups to see their ingroup as more homogeneous than the majority outgroup. This argument is based on evidence of an underlying outgroup homogeneity effect in a study which purports to unconfound the roles of judged group size and ingroup–outgroup judgement by presenting subjects first with a small or large ingroup (or outgroup) and then a small comparison outgroup (or ingroup). However, from the perspective of self-categorization theory (SCT), such a procedure actually introduces a confound as SCT predicts that when an ingroup is judged first it should be perceived as relatively heterogeneous due to the intragroup nature of this judgemental context. Close examination of Bartsch and Judd's data bears this point out: the tendency to see the ingroup as less homogeneous than the outgroup when the ingroup was judged first was extinguished when the ingroup was judged second even when the judged groups were of equal size. Consistent with SCT, this re-analysis suggests that manifestations of outgroup homogeneity are not independent of contextual factors which determine the relative appropriateness of category-based perception of ingroup and outgroup.     

Spatial metaphors in thinking about other people

Spatial metaphors contribute to our capacity for abstract thought. Consistent with this idea, it has been shown that processing semantic information (related to valence, power, etc.) can bias performance in a spatial task. Advancing this line of work, the present study examined whether spatial metaphors have a role in thinking about other people. Participants read short vignettes about academic performance, health or social life, which described students in superior and inferior states. In Experiment 1, after reading each vignette, participants were explicitly asked to assign a location to each protagonist using a pen-and-paper task. Findings from this experiment provided initial indication that thinking about the protagonists could recruit spatial metaphors. In Experiments 2 and 3, each vignette was immediately followed by an implicit test of spatial association. In Experiment 2, participants performed a name-recognition task in response to the protagonists’ names presented above or below the central fixation. In this experiment, metaphorical congruency facilitated performance. In Experiment 3, participants were presented with names at central fixation, followed by a visual discrimination target (“X”/”O”) above or below fixation. In this experiment, metaphorical congruency interfered with performance. The diverging patterns of results are explained in terms of the conjunction and separation of the conceptual and perceptual components of the recognition task, respectively, in Experiments 2 and 3. Overall, the findings support the role of spatial metaphors in thinking about other people and, more generally, for the spontaneous use of space in conceptual processes.     

The Role of Implicit Attitudes in Populist Radical‐Right Support

Previous research on the populist radical right (PRR) has focused exclusively on explicit measures in explaining support for these contested political players. In this study, we explore the role of implicit attitudes in predicting vote likelihood for a PRR party. We use an online survey (n = 773) among Dutch respondents in which we measured implicit attitudes towards the Dutch PRR Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) with a Single‐Target Implicit Association Test (ST‐IAT). The results show that the implicit measure predicts vote likelihood in general, as well as in ways beyond that accounted for by traditional explanations of PRR party support. Importantly, the results also show that the impact of implicit attitudes on intended vote choice is greater for less extreme voters; in other words, those voters less likely to say they would vote for the PVV are more heavily influenced at an implicit level, beyond their awareness. This suggests that implicit attitudes of the PRR party may be quite useful for explaining support among voters who would not normally self‐report it.     

Through the eyes of a child: preschoolers’ identification of emotional expressions from the child affective facial expression (CAFE) set

Researchers have been interested in the perception of human emotional expressions for decades. Importantly, most empirical work in this domain has relied on controlled stimulus sets of adults posing for various emotional expressions. Recently, the Child Affective Facial Expression (CAFE) set was introduced to the scientific community, featuring a large validated set of photographs of preschool aged children posing for seven different emotional expressions. Although the CAFE set was extensively validated using adult participants, the set was designed for use with children. It is therefore necessary to verify that adult validation applies to child performance. In the current study, we examined 3- to 4-year-olds’ identification of a subset of children’s faces in the CAFE set, and compared it to adult ratings cited in previous research. Our results demonstrate an exceptionally strong relationship between adult ratings of the CAFE photos and children’s ratings, suggesting that the adult validation of the set can be applied to preschool-aged participants. The results are discussed in terms of methodological implications for the use of the CAFE set with children, and theoretical implications for using the set to study the development of emotion perception in early childhood.     

Emotional cascade theory and non-suicidal self-injury: the importance of imagery and positive affect

Grounded in Emotional Cascade Theory, we explored whether rumination and multisensory imagery-based cognitions moderated the relationships between affect and both odds of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), and frequency of the behaviour. A sample of 393 university students completed self-report questionnaires assessing the constructs of interest. Contrary to expectations, rumination did not emerge as a significant moderator of the affect-NSSI relationship. However, the relationship between affect and frequency of NSSI was moderated by the use of imagery. Further, the relationship between negative affect and NSSI was moderated by positive affect, underscoring the need to consider both negative and positive affect in models of NSSI. Most youth who self-injured reported thinking in images while the urge to self-injure was strong, with 53% thinking in images at least half the time. Future work is needed to explore how positive and negative affect work in concert to govern NSSI, and how imagery might either exacerbate or reduce risk of NSSI.     

Achievement and beliefs outcomes of students with high and low expectation teachers

Social Psychology of Education - Teacher expectation models have theorized that expectations are likely to affect student socio-psychological as well as academic outcomes. Effects on...