Components of attentional effort for repeated tasks

This paper identifies four attentional processes that increase efficiency and accuracy in repeated lexicographic tasks using an instructed strategy approach. We propose a framework to decompose attentional effort used to make a decision into four components: Orientation, Wrong Target, Duration, and Repetition. Orientation assesses attention to decision rules and the location of relevant information. Wrong Target measures wasted effort on unneeded information. Duration gauges time spent on each piece of needed information. Repetition measures the number of views on each relevant item. Greater Orientation is associated with lower effort in other components and increased accuracy. Repetition is most variable across individuals but generates the greatest improvement with practice. Duration is less affected by the other components and shows minimal improvement with experience. Finally, Wrong Target is similarly resistant to practice, but it is the only component strongly and positively associated with making errors.     

Seek,and ye shall find: Differences between spontaneous and voluntary analogical retrieval

The present study tackles two overlooked aspects of analogical retrieval: (a) whether argumentation activities elicit a spontaneous search for analogical sources, and (b) whether strategic search can relax the superficial bias typically obtained in experimental studies of analogical retrieval. In Experiment 1, participants had to generate arguments for a target situation under three conditions: without indication to use analogies, with indication to use analogies, and with indication to search for sources within domains provided by the experimenters. Results showed that while voluntary search yields analogical retrievals reliably, the argumentation activity seldom elicits spontaneous remindings. A second set of results demonstrated that the superficial bias can be strategically relaxed, leading to a majority of distant retrievals. Experiment 2 replicated this result with the instruction to search within domains different from that of the target, and without providing a list of specific domains. The theoretical and educational implications of these findings are discussed.     

Profiles of emotional intelligence and demotivation to attend school in Chilean adolescents

The aim of this study was twofold: to identify different emotional intelligence (EI) profiles and to verify possible statistically significant differences in school refusal factors that result in a demotivation to attend school. Participants were 2362 Chilean adolescents aged from 13 to 17 (M?=?15.25; SD?=?1.33), who completed the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24 (TMMS-24) and the School Refusal Assessment Scale-Revised (SRAS-R). Cluster analysis identified four EI profiles: high scores in repair and low in attention, high scores in attention and low in clarity and repair, low EI and high EI. Students with high scores in attention and low in repair scored higher in the first three factors of the SRAS-R, whereas in the fourth factor of the SRAS-R, students with high EI had significantly higher scores. Emotional regulation seems to be one of the determinant factors to prevent the appearance of school refusal. Based on these findings, we recommend that EI training be a part of future programs to overcome school attendance demotivation issues.     

The Ethical and Academic Implications of the Jeffrey Beall (www.scholarlyoa.com) Blog Shutdown

Science and Engineering Ethics - A very important event took place on January 15, 2017. On that day, the Jeffrey Beall blog ( www.scholarlyoa.com ) was silently, and suddenly, shut down by Beall...     

Adolescent maternity: A risk factor in poverty situations?

This paper describes the psychosocial characteristics of adolescent mothers living in poverty in urban communities of Uruguay, whose children are now 0 to 5 years old. A sample of 965 mothers representative of the poor urban communities in the entire country was studied. One hundred thirty-six of these mothers were adolescents, 19 years old or younger. Six major areas were explored: socioeconomic status and social support, family characteristics, child-rearing practices, maternal and paternal availability, and characteristics of the child. In the group of children 2 to 5 years of age, psychomotor development was explored using the Test de Desarrollo Psicomotor (TEPSI). Psychosocial risk and child development were compared for adolescent and nonadolescent poor urban mothers. Children in both groups showed negative effects. It was not found that children of adolescent mothers did worse than those of nonadolescent mothers. Therefore, it was concluded that adolescent maternity is a complex phenomenon that cannot be viewed in isolation from the social environment in which it takes place. The results indicated that in poor communities the poverty-related risk factors may obscure the effect of the age-related ones.     

COCAINE ADDICTS AND THEIR FAMILIES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE PROCESSES OF IDENTIFICATION

The processes of identification between adolescent cocaine addicts and their parents were studied in 402 subjects, in total 134 familial triads (father"mother"son), subdivided into two groups of 67 triads, one of these groups having as the child an adolescent of masculine sex dependent on cocaine and the other, equal in number, being a control group, duly matched for age and socio-economic status. The instrument employed was the Rorschach test (1922), limited to the application of the Lerner Defense Scale (LDS; Lerner & Lerner, 1980). The findings in the affected triads showed up as consistent statistically for the presence of intense processes of pathological identification, especially between father and son, a sign of the importance of the presence of disturbances of paternal function in the development of this addiction. The utilisation of very regressive defence mechanisms, above all of projective identification, was the predominant mode of procedure in triads with a dependent child. In comparisons between the fathers the odds ratio (OR) for projective identification was 8.66 to 1, which points to the association between cocaine addiction and the primitive mental functioning of the fathers. With empirical methodology these findings serve to corroborate the psychoanalytical conclusions based on studies of single case studies, testifying that the dysfunctions of identificatory phenomena in familial functioning are predominant in the mental organisation of cocaine addicts.     

Alone at the playground

Starting pre-school is a major stepping stone for children’s peer relations. Yet, some children spend their recess time alone, albeit in the presence of playful peers. These solitary behaviours have been noted in the literature as an alarm signal for a maladaptive social development. In this study, we identified four kinds of non-social behaviours engaged at recess (reticent, solitary-pretend, -functional, and -passive); and we examined the extent to which these different behaviours were related to social solitude at the playground six months later. Therefore, 97 children (aged 4–6 years old) were observed at the playground and their social-emotional skills were tested. Solitude was assessed through an innovative measuring method, based on Radio Frequency Identification Devices. The results demonstrated that solitary-pretend play in girls was related to an increase in solitary behaviours later on. Nevertheless, children who engaged in non-social behaviours showed a general lack of emotional skills, which may explain their initial withdrawal.     

Vestibular stimulation interferes with the dynamics of an internal representation of gravity

The remembered vanishing location of a moving target has been found to be displaced downward in the direction of gravity (representational gravity) and more so with increasing retention intervals, suggesting that the visual spatial updating recruits an internal model of gravity. Despite being consistently linked with gravity, few inquiries have been made about the role of vestibular information in these trends. Previous experiments with static tilting of observers’ bodies suggest that under conflicting cues between the idiotropic vector and vestibular signals, the dynamic drift in memory is reduced to a constant displacement along the body’s main axis. The present experiment aims to replicate and extend these outcomes while keeping the observers’ bodies unchanged in relation to physical gravity by varying the gravito-inertial acceleration using a short-radius centrifuge. Observers were shown, while accelerated to varying degrees, targets moving along several directions and were required to indicate the perceived vanishing location after a variable interval. Increases of the gravito-inertial force (up to 1.4G), orthogonal to the idiotropic vector, did not affect the direction of representational gravity, but significantly disrupted its time course. The role and functioning of an internal model of gravity for spatial perception and orientation are discussed in light of the results.