Perceived mattering in stepfamilies: A social relations model analysis

The current study examined the respective role of stepfamily members' individual characteristics and their dyadic relationships in stepfamily members' perceptions of mattering to one another. Parents, stepparents, and adolescents from 86 stepfamilies participated. Applying social relations model analyses, several trends emerged regarding the relative importance of individual and dyadic factors. Parents' and adolescents' reports of mattering to one another were mainly driven by individual factors, whereas relational factors were important to understand the reports of mattering in which the stepparent was one of the dyad members. These findings contribute to stepfamily research by highlighting that stepfamily members' sense of belonging is at least partly a function of the interpersonal adaptation between the stepparent and other family members.     

Children's understanding of habitual behaviour

Research into the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) has shown how children from a very early age infer other people's goals. However, human behaviour is sometimes driven not by plans to achieve goals, but by habits, which are formed over long periods of reinforcement. Habitual and goal‐directed behaviours are often aligned with one another but can diverge when the optimal behavioural policy changes without being directly reinforced (thus specifically hobbling the habitual learning strategy). Unlike the flexibility of goal‐directed behaviour, rigid habits can cause agents to persist in behaviour that is no longer adaptive. In the current study, all children predict agents will tend to behave consistently with their goals, but between the ages of 5 and 10, children showed an increasing understanding of how habits can cause agents to persistently take suboptimal actions. These findings stand out from the typical way the development of social reasoning is examined, which instead focuses on children's increasing appreciation of how others' beliefs or expectations affect how they will act in service of their goals. The current findings show that children also learn that under certain circumstances, people's actions are suboptimal despite potentially ‘knowing better.’     

Focal lung pathology detection in radiology: Is there an effect of experience on visual search behavior?

In radiology, 60% to 80% of diagnostic errors are perceptual. The use of more efficient visual search behaviors is expected to reduce these errors. We collected eye-tracking data from participants with different levels of experience when interpreting chest X-rays during the completion of a pathology-detection task. Eye-tracking measures were assessed in the context of three existing visual search theories from the literature to understand the association between visual search behavior and underlying processes: the long-term working memory theory, the information-reduction hypothesis, and the holistic model of image perception. The most experienced participants (radiology residents) showed the highest level of performance, albeit their visual search behaviors did not differ from the intermediate group. This suggests that radiology residents better processed the represented information on the X-ray, using a visual search strategy similar to the intermediate group. Since similar visual search resulted in more information extraction in the radiology residents compared with the intermediates, we suggest that this result might support the long-term working memory theory. Furthermore, compared with novices, intermediates and radiology residents fixated longer on areas that were more important to avoid missing any pathology, which possibly confirms the information-reduction hypothesis. Finally, the larger distances between fixations observed in more experienced participants could support the holistic model of image perception. In addition, measures of generic skills were related to a lower time cost for switching between global and local information processing. Our findings suggest that the three theories may be complementary in chest X-ray interpretation. Therefore, a unified theory explaining perceptual-cognitive superiority in radiology is considered.

     

Effects of Case and Transitivity on Processing Dependencies: Evidence From Niuean

We investigate the processing of wh questions in Niuean, a VSO ergative–absolutive Polynesian language. We use visual‐world eye tracking to examine how preference for subject or object dependencies is affected (a) by case marking of the subject (ergative vs. absolutive) and object (absolutive vs. oblique), and (b) by the transitivity of the verb (whether the object is obligatory). We find that Niuean exhibits (a) an effect of case, whereby dependencies of arguments with absolutive case (whether subjects or objects) are preferred over dependencies of arguments with ergative or oblique case, and (b) an effect of transitivity, whereby dependencies of obligatory objects (i.e., of transitive verbs) are preferred over dependencies of optional objects (i.e., of intransitive verbs). These results constitute evidence against theories that appeal to a universal subject advantage, or to the linear distance between filler and gap. Instead, the effect of case is consistent with a frequency‐based account: Because absolutive case has a wider syntactic distribution than ergative or oblique, absolutive dependencies are easier to process. The effect of transitivity reflects sensitivity of the parser to whether or not an argument is obligatory. We propose that these two strategies could be unified if the parser prefers dependencies with arguments that are more likely to materialize.     

The perception of causality in infancy

Michotte proposed a rationalist theory of the origin of the human capacity to represent causal relations among events. He suggested that the input analyzer that underlies the causal perception in launching, entraining, and expulsion events is innate and is the ultimate source of all causal representations. We review the literature on infant causal representations, providing evidence that launching, entraining and expulsion events are interpreted causally by young infants. However, there is as of yet no good evidence that these representations are innate. Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that these representations are not the sole source of the human capacity for causal representation.     

Impaired reversal but intact acquisition: probabilistic response reversal deficits in adult individuals with psychopathy

The performance of adult psychopathic individuals on a novel response reversal task involving 2 reward-punishment contingencies (100-0 and 80-20) was investigated. In line with predictions, adults with psychopathy presented with impairment on the response reversal component but not on the acquisition component of this task. This selective impairment for response reversal was seen for both reward-punishment contingencies and was related to the tendency of individuals with psychopathy to be less likely to stay with a rewarded correct response to a stimulus on the subsequent presentation of that stimulus. Results are discussed with reference to current models of the development of psychopathy.     

Children use vowels to help them spell consonants

English spelling is highly inconsistent in terms of simple sound-to-spelling correspondences but is more consistent when context is taken into account. For example, the choice between ch and tch is determined by the preceding vowel (coach, roach vs. catch, hatch). We investigated children's sensitivity to vowel context when spelling consonants in monosyllabic nonwords. Second graders (7-year-olds) tended to use vowel context correctly when spelling word-final consonants (codas). This use of context was progressively stronger for third and fifth graders as well as for college students. The increase is not due to differences in vocabulary because the contextual patterns are similar in reading materials targeted at all four age groups. Vowel letters (graphotactics) had a stronger influence than did vowel pronunciation. Children also used vowel context when spelling word-initial consonants (onsets); this effect was as strong for second graders as for adults. Thus, novice spellers take advantage of graphotactic information.     

Stagnation and generativity: structure, validity, and differential relationships with adaptive and maladaptive personality

Erikson's concepts of stagnation and generativity were investigated in two studies. Study 1 (N=457) yields two important results. First, it revealed that a model in which stagnation and generativity load on a separate dimension showed a significantly better fit to the data than a one-dimensional model. Second, the stagnation and generativity measures were valid predictors of parental behavior. In Study 2 (N=191), the relationships between stagnation and generativity and the dimensions underlying comprehensive measures of personality were investigated. It was found that stagnation was strongly related to Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience, whereas generativity bore strong relationships with Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. In the discussion, stagnation is distinguished from several related variables and a profile of the stagnant individual is constructed and compared with the generative individual. Finally, the interaction between stagnation and generativity in producing specific outcomes is discussed.     

Rimes are not necessarily favored by prereaders: evidence from meta- and epilinguistic phonological tasks

This article explores young children's facility in phonological awareness tasks requiring either the detection or the articulation of head, coda, onset, and rime subsyllabic units shared in word pairs. Data are reported from 70 nonreading children and 21 precocious readers attending preschools. Prereading children were able to articulate shared heads, codas, and onsets, although rimes rarely were articulated. Precocious readers were able to articulate shared rimes, but articulation performance was still most accurate for onsets and codas. Rimes and heads were equally accessible in the detection task and were identified more often than onsets and codas (nonreaders) and codas (readers). It is concluded that the articulation advantage for nonrime units cannot simply reflect early reading instruction. This disjoint pattern of phonological awareness in detection and production tasks does not support Goswami's phonological status hypothesis. Results may instead reflect quite distinct influences on epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological development.     

A survey of psychological test use patterns among forensic psychologists

Clinical psychologists are frequently called on to testify in court regarding mental health issues in civil or criminal cases. One of the legal criteria by which admissibility of testimony is determined includes whether the testimony is based on methods that have gained "general acceptance" in their field. In this study, we sought to evaluate the psychological tests used in forensic assessments by members of the American Psychology-Law Society Division of the American Psychological Association, and by diplomates in the American Board of Forensic Psychology. We present test results from this survey, based on 152 respondents, for forensic evaluations conducted with adults using multiscale inventories, single-scale tests, unstructured personality tests, cognitive and/or intellectual tests, neuropsychological tests, risk assessment and psychopathy instruments, sex offender risk assessment instruments, competency or sanity-related instruments, and instruments used to evaluate malingering. In addition, we provide findings for psychological testing involving child-related forensic issues.