The early origins of goal attribution in infancy

We contrast two positions concerning the initial domain of actions that infants interpret as goal-directed. The 'narrow scope' view holds that goal-attribution in 6- and 9-month-olds is restricted to highly familiar actions (such as grasping). The cue-based approach of the infant's 'teleological stance', however, predicts that if the cues of equifinal variation of action and a salient action effect are present, young infants can attribute goals to a 'wide scope' of entities including unfamiliar human actions and actions of novel objects lacking human features. It is argued that previous failures to show goal-attribution to unfamiliar actions were due to the absence of these cues. We report a modified replication of Woodward (1999) showing that when a salient action-effect is presented, even young infants can attribute a goal to an unfamiliar manual action. This study together with other recent experiments reviewed support the 'wide scope' approach indicating that if the cues of goal-directedness are present even 6-month-olds attribute goals to unfamiliar actions.     

Next Steps in Research on Children Exposed to Domestic Violence

The papers in this special issue of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review provided an overview of what is known about children's exposure to domestic violence, and include indications of gaps in extant research. These gaps and research needs are summarized in this conclusion. Specifically, there is need for further research in several broad areas: definition and measurement of children's exposure to domestic violence; development of research methods and statistical designs that provide detailed information and provide for evidence of intervention effectiveness; impact of domestic violence on parenting and family functioning; the role of child factors and exposure to violence factors in predicting developmental risk and resilience; medical and health consequences of exposure to violence; and the nature of child-system interaction in response to domestic violence. Research needs in these areas are discussed in greater detail, and specific questions are raised for further development.     

Next Steps in Research on Children Exposed to Community Violence or War/Terrorism

The articles in this special issue of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review provide an overview of what is known about children's exposure to community violence and war/ terrorism, and indicate significant gaps in extant research. These gaps and research needs are summarized in this conclusion.     

Introduction

This issue of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: Current Status and Research Directions, addresses the current status of our knowledge as well as critical research needs in the area of children exposed to domestic violence. Although much has been learned in recent years about children exposed to violence, significant research gaps remain, the identification of which may help to build a more complete and rigorous science base in this area. This journal issue represents the distillation of a 3-day workshop on children exposed to violence, held in July of 2002, that identified what is known about children exposed to violence and what this information tells us about future research directions. Although many federal agencies have supported some research in this area, there is a need for more targeted attention on the topic, particularly with regard to measurement, sampling, and interventions/services. The papers in this issue were selected with these themes in mind. Although no single issue could cover the entire field, we intend to offer a representative sample of where we are and where we need to go with the hope of stimulating additional thought, collaboration, and research in this important area.     

Therapeutic versus genuine cloning: what are the real moral issues?

In order to answer the question raised in the title of my paper, I first put forward a general ethical theory, which is based on the traditional maxim neminem laedere. Second, I show how this principle in conjunction with certain assumptions concerning the value of life entails certain fundamental bioethical principles. Thus killing a living being Y is morally wrong whenever the intrinsic value of the life that Y would otherwise live is positive. But procreating a living being Y is prima facie (i.e., with regard to the interests of Y) morally neutral, i.e. neither bad nor good. Third I will argue that the question of moral rights should always be reduced to the question of the morality of certain corresponding actions. In particular, granting Y a right to life should be taken to mean that it would be morally wrong if someone else were to put an end to Y's life. In a similar vein, I suggest answers to some other questions of the reproductive rights issue. Fourth, with respect to the controversial issue of genuine cloning, I do not see any compelling moral reasons against this utopian way of procreating full-grown individuals. Nevertheless, I think there are a lot of other good (pragmatic, rational) reasons not to try to produce a human Dolly. Finally, as regards the use or abuse of human embryos as potential suppliers of stem-cells for the cure of other people's diseases, it seems morally safe to perform experiments at least with those embryos which, like spare embryos that remained from measures of in vitro fertilization, would not have a life anyway. It's more difficult to decide, however, whether it would be morally safe to produce embryos (for instance through cloning) only for the sake of using them in the aforementioned way.     

There is more to anger coping than "in" or "out"

There is growing dissatisfaction with a dichotomized "anger-in" versus "anger-out" view of anger coping. Three studies using student and community adultsamples revealed a broader understanding of the nature of anger coping styles and led to the development of the new Behavioral Anger Response Questionnaire (BARQ). The BARQ is empirically derived and factorially validated and has good psychometrics. Results suggest that dichotomizing anger responses as "in" versus "out" is too coarse and that a 6-factor model may be more appropriate. The 6 factors identified here are Direct Anger-Out, Assertion, Support-Seeking, Diffusion, Avoidance, and Rumination. Women reported use of a wider range of anger coping styles, especially more social support-seeking and more use of anger diffusion strategies than men.     

Motor learning enhances perceptual judgment: a case for action-perception transfer

Transfer from perception to action is well documented, for instance in the form of observational learning. Transfer from action to perception, on the other hand, has not been researched. Such action-perception transfer (APT) is compatible with several learning theories and has been predicted within the framework of common coding of perceptual and motor events (Prinz, 1992, 1997). Our first experiment aimed at an empirical evaluation of APT and involved motor practice of timed two-cycle arm movements on verbal command without visual feedback. In a transfer test, visual judgments of similar patterns had to be made. In addition, transfer from the visual to the motor task was studied. In Experiment 2 we separated kinesthetic aspects of motor practice from preparatory and efferent contributions to APT. The experiments provide evidence that transfer between perception and action is bi-directional. Transfer from perception to action and, more importantly, from action to perception was found. Furthermore, APT was equally pronounced for participants who had actively practiced movements during training and for passive participants who had received merely kinesthetic feedback about the movement. This kinesthetic-visual transfer is likely to be achieved via visuomotor-kinesthetic matching or via timekeeping mechanisms that are involved in both motor and visual performance. Received: 2 June 1999 / Accepted: 20 June 2000     

Directing attention to movement effects enhances learning: a review

Studies investigating the influence of the learner’s focus of attention, induced by instructions or feedback, on motor skill learning are reviewed. In general, directing performers’ attention to the effects of their movements (external focus of attention) appears to be more beneficial than directing their attention to their own movements (internal focus of attention). Preliminary evidence is presented indicating that an internal attentional focus constrains the motor system by interfering with natural control processes, whereas an external focus seems to allow automatic control processes to regulate the movements. Support for the view that actions are controlled by their anticipated effects comes from research demonstrating functional variability in motor control, as well as the benefits of purposeful activity in occupational therapy. We explain these results in terms of the ideomotor principle of human actions (James, 1890) and its more modern derivatives (Hommel, 1996; Prinz, 1990, 1997).     

Picture naming deficits in developmental dyslexia in German

Recent research with English developmental dyslexics comparing the picture naming performance of these children to the picture naming performance of non-dyslexic (‘garden variety’) poor readers, reading age matched controls and chronological age matched controls has suggested that a selective difficulty in retrieving the phonological codes of known names on demand underlies the picture naming deficit found in developmental dyslexia (Swan & Goswami, Picture naming deficits in developmental dyslexia: the phonological representations hypothesis, Brain and Language, 56 (1997), 334–353). If the underlying causal factors in dyslexia are independent of the orthography that the child is learning to read, then a difficulty in retrieving the phonological codes of known names on demand should also be found in developmental dyslexics who are learning to read other languages. We therefore set out to replicate Swan and Goswami’s study with a group of German developmental dyslexics. We were interested to see whether a phonological deficit is characteristic of dyslexia in all orthographies, even those, such as German, in which high orthographic transparency means that dyslexic children read with considerable accuracy.     

Zur Boltzmannschen Theorie des zweiten Hauptsatzes

Ohne Zusammenfassung