What do two-year-olds understand about hidden-object events?

Preferential-looking studies suggest that by 2 months of age, infants may have knowledge about some object properties, such as solidity. Manual search studies of toddlers examining these same concepts, however, have failed to provide evidence for the same understanding. Investigators have recently attempted to reconcile this disparity but failed to control for the visual novelty of test outcomes. The current design corrected this problem and also tested toddlers' predictions of the object's location. The task involved the same events and apparatus that have been used in manual search tasks but used looking as the dependent measure. Children looked longer when an agent opened the correct door and found no ball than when an incorrect door was opened to reveal no ball. A 2nd experiment indicated that children's preferential-looking performance did not differ from that in manual search tasks simply because additional response time had been allowed to respond. Previous comparisons of looking versus reaching tested children's postdiction response to an object in an unexpected location, but these findings indicate that toddlers can predict where the object should be.     

Learning from successful and failed experience: the moderating role of kind of after-event review

The claim that appropriate "after-event review (AER)" may increase the relative value of drawing lessons from successes, as compared with failures, was examined in the present study. The study was a laboratory experiment in which the effect of type of AER (failure-focused, success-focused, failure- and success-focused, and no AER review) on performance improvement and causal attributions was tested under conditions of earlier success and earlier failure. In general, 2 results were demonstrated: (a) Drawing lessons from successful experience is feasible, and its effectiveness is contingent upon the type of AER. More specifically, after successful events, the most effective review is that of wrong actions, whereas after failed events, any kind of event review (correct or wrong actions) is effective. (b) AERs elicit more internal (as opposed to external) and specific (as opposed to general) attributions. These 2 classifications moderate the effect of AERs on task performance.     

Training student teachers to reposition infants frequently

We evaluated the effects of an intervention designed to increase the variety of positions experienced by infants in a child-care setting. Six student teachers were trained, using a multicomponent intervention, to reposition infants according to a chart. The intervention was successful in increasing the mean percentage of correct position changes made by all 6 student teachers, and performance gains by 3 student teachers persisted when supervisor feedback was briefly removed.     

The effectiveness of early head start for 3-year-old children and their parents: lessons for policy and programs

Early Head Start, a federal program begun in 1995 for low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers, was evaluated through a randomized trial of 3,001 families in 17 programs. Interviews with primary caregivers, child assessments, and observations of parent-child interactions were completed when children were 3 years old. Caregivers were diverse in race-ethnicity, language, and other characteristics. Regression-adjusted impact analyses showed that 3-year-old program children performed better than did control children in cognitive and language development, displayed higher emotional engagement of the parent and sustained attention with play objects, and were lower in aggressive behavior. Compared with controls, Early Head Start parents were more emotionally supportive, provided more language and learning stimulation, read to their children more, and spanked less. The strongest and most numerous impacts were for programs that offered a mix of home-visiting and center-based services and that fully implemented the performance standards early.     

A review of reinforcement control procedures

A demonstration of the effects of reinforcement requires comparison of response rates in the presence of a contingency with those in another condition that controls for the influence of extraneous variables. We describe several control conditions that have been used in evaluating the effects of positive and negative reinforcement. The methodological rigor and practical utility of each type of control condition are discussed, and recommendations for the use of these conditions are presented.     

Spirituality and Dream Work in Counseling: Clients’ Experiences

The authors suggest that focusing on dreams in counseling may be a useful framework to explore clients’ spiritual values and beliefs. Because little is known about how spirituality and dream work are integrated in practice, the purpose of this article is to document how some counselors and clients work on spirituality and dreams. Responses of clients who focused on dreams from a spiritual perspective are described and discussed. Relevant clinical issues that counselors may encounter are identified. Recommendations are made for counselors who wish to integrate spirituality and dream work in counseling.An earlier version of this article was presented at the Semi-Annual Meeting of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists, Salt Lake City, Utah, April 2004.     

The BOLD response during Stroop task-like inhibition paradigms: Effects of task difficulty and task-relevant modality

Previous studies of the Stroop task propose two key mediators: the prefrontal and cingulate cortices but hints exist of functional specialization within these regions. This study aimed to examine the effect of task modality upon the prefrontal and cingulate response by examining the response to colour, number, and shape Stroop tasks whilst BOLD fMRI images were acquired on a Siemens 3T MRI scanner. Behavioural analyses indicated facilitation and interference effects and a noticeable effect of task difficulty. Some modular effects of modality were observed in the prefrontal cortex that survived exclusion of task difficulty related activations. No effect of task-relevant information was observed in the anterior cingulate. Future comparisons of the mediation of selective attention need to consider the effects of task context and task difficulty.     

The effects of focal and global attentional systems on spatial biases

The background page on which a stimulus is presented can influence the allocation of attention to that stimulus. The purpose of this study was to learn if there are hemispheric asymmetries in how background distraction affects attentional processing. Asymmetries were investigated by having right eye dominant subjects perform line bisections and manipulating the side of background distraction (right versus left), the eye of regard (right versus left), and the type of attention allocated (focal versus global). Overall subjects bisected lines to the left of center (pseudoneglect) and when viewing with the right eye (versus left) deviated more to the left. Subjects had more background distraction when viewing symbol than solid lines. Although overall, bias did not differ with the side of background distraction or the line being on one side or the other, when subjects viewed symbol, but not solid lines, this leftward bias was increased when the line was displaced to the right, thereby increasing the size of the left sided background. These findings suggest that when engaging the left hemisphere by using focused attention and placing the line on the right side, there is more distraction than when the right hemisphere is engaged.     

Remembrance of remembrance past

Arnold and Lindsay (2002) found that individuals more often failed to remember they had previously recalled an item if that item had been cued in a qualitatively different way on two recall occasions: the "forgot-it-all-along" (FIA) effect. Experiment 1 was designed to determine if the FIA effect arises because participants incorrectly believe they have not been previously tested for an item, or because they incorrectly believe they have failed to recall the item when previously tested. Experiment 2 measured participants' confidence in their incorrect prior-recall judgements, and Experiment 3 tested participants' ability to "recover" their previous recollection when the prior-recall context was restored. Results indicated that participants usually believed they had not previously been cued for the items they failed to remember previously recalling; they were often confident in their incorrect judgements of prior non-remembering; and re-introducing the context of prior remembering sometimes enabled them to recapture their memories of previous recall.     

Assessing Parental Satisfaction with Children’s Mental Health Services with the Youth Services Survey for Families

We assessed parent satisfaction with childrens mental health services with a new instrument: The Youth Services Survey for Families (YSSF). The Dillman method was used to administer the survey to a random sample of 1,500 parents of Medicaid youth from Kentuckys 14 community mental health centers (CMHCs). The response rate was 37% (n = 534 parents). A factor analysis of YSSF identified five parent-perceived factors: (a) Appropriateness, (b) Outcome, (c) Participation in Treatment, (d) Access, and (e) Cultural Sensitivity. About 70% of parents reported a high level of endorsement with the Appropriateness factor, but only 47% reported high levels of endorsement with the Outcome factor. Results were interpreted as providing support for the reliability of the YSSF in evaluating childrens mental health services in CMHCs.