How well do ratings of academic performance by mothers and their sons correspond to grades,achievement test scores,and teachers' ratings?

Accurate perceptions of their child's academic performance are pivotal for parents' encouragement of their child's academic efforts. In research studies, parents' reports of their child's academic achievement, as well as the child's own reports, are often used as a proxy for teachers' ratings or grades. However, are parents' reports or their child's reports accurate and unbiased? We investigated whether ratings of academic performance made by mothers and their sons corresponded more closely to final grades and achievement test scores than did similar ratings made by teachers for three large samples of boys. Mothers' ratings correlated with final grades as well or better than teachers' ratings but more poorly with achievement test scores than did teachers' ratings. The seventh-grade boys' ratings correlated more poorly with both final grades and achievement test scores than did teachers' or mothers' ratings. Across all three samples combined, mothers were more likely to over-estimate rather than under-estimate the final grade. The same was true of the seventh grade sample of boys. Once the effect of final grade had been controlled, little evidence of a consistent pattern of associations between maternal demographic, parenting, and child behavior variables and either over- or underestimation was found.     

Mechanisms of Behavioral and Affective Treatment Outcomes in a Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Boys

Evidence for effective treatment for behavioral problems continues to grow, yet evidence about the effective mechanisms underlying those interventions has lagged behind. The Stop Now and Plan (SNAP) program is a multicomponent intervention for boys between 6 and 11. This study tested putative treatment mechanisms using data from 252 boys in a randomized controlled trial of SNAP versus treatment as usual. SNAP includes a 3 month group treatment period followed by individualized intervention, which persisted through the 15 month study period. Measures were administered in four waves: at baseline and at 3, 9 and 15 months after baseline. A hierarchical linear modeling strategy was used. SNAP was associated with improved problem-solving skills, prosocial behavior, emotion regulation skills, and reduced parental stress. Prosocial behavior, emotion regulation skills and reduced parental stress partially mediated improvements in child aggression. Improved emotion regulation skills partially mediated treatment-related child anxious-depressed outcomes. Improvements in parenting behaviors did not differ between treatment conditions. The results suggest that independent processes may drive affective and behavioral outcomes, with some specificity regarding the mechanisms related to differing treatment outcomes.     

With the past behind and the future ahead: Back-to-front representation of past and future sentences

Several studies support the psychological reality of a mental timeline that runs from the left to the right and may strongly affect our thinking about time. Ulrich and Maienborn (Cognition 117:126–138, 2010) examined the linguistic relevance of this timeline during the processing of past- and future-related sentences. Their results indicate that the timeline is not activated automatically during sentence comprehension. While no explicit reference of temporal expressions to the left–right axis has been attested (e.g., *the meeting was moved to the left), natural languages refer to the back–front axis in order to encode temporal information (e.g., the meeting was moved forward). Therefore, the present study examines whether a back–frontal timeline becomes automatically activated during the processing of past- and future-related sentences. The results demonstrate a clear effect on reaction time that emerges from a time–space association along the frontal timeline (Experiment 1). However, this activation seems to be nonautomatic (Experiment 2), rendering it unlikely that this frontal timeline is involved in comprehension of the temporal content of sentences.     

Incidental picture exposure affects later reading: evidence from the N400

Language comprehenders form a mental representation of the implied shape of objects mentioned in the text. In the present study, the influence of prior visual experience on subsequent reading was assessed. In two separate phases, participants saw a picture of an object and read a text about the object, suggesting the same or a different shape. When the shapes in the two phases mismatched, ERPs during reading showed a larger N400 amplitude than when the shapes matched, suggesting that a picture presented incidentally 15 min earlier affected reading. These results further strengthen the case for the interaction of language and visual experience during language comprehension.     

Time-course analysis of temporal preparation on central processes

Participants usually respond faster to a response signal (RS) when this signal is preceded by a warning stimulus than when it is not. A question of theoretical importance is the locus of this facilitating effect within the information processing stream. Recently, Los and Schut (Cogn Psychol 57:20–55, 2008) suggested that temporal preparation acts on central processes while perception of the RS is under way. The present study provides a stochastic model (central preparation model, CPM) based on this hypothesis and presents three experiments testing this model. To track the complete time-course of temporal preparation, the warning signal could either precede or follow the RS. The data show some systematic deviation from the model’s predictions, questioning CPM’s assumption that temporal preparation acts only on central processes. An alternative mechanism of temporal preparation based on the parallel grains model [Miller and Ulrich (Cogn Psychol 46:101–151, 2003)] is discussed.     

Estimating discrimination performance in two-alternative forced choice tasks: Routines for MATLAB and R

Ulrich and Vorberg (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 71: 1219–1227, 2009) introduced a novel approach for estimating discrimination performance in two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) tasks. This approach avoids pitfalls that are inherent when the order of the standard and the comparison is neglected in estimating the difference limen (DL), as in traditional approaches. The present article provides MATLAB and R routines that implement this novel procedure for estimating DLs. These routines also allow to account for processing failures such as lapses or finger errors and can be applied to experimental designs in which the standard and comparison differ only along the task-relevant dimension, as well as to designs in which the stimuli differ in more than one dimension. In addition, Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to check the quality of our routines.     

Fusion prevents the redundant signals effect: evidence from stereoscopically presented stimuli

In a simple reaction time (RT) experiment, visual stimuli were stereoscopically presented either to one eye (single stimulation) or to both eyes (redundant stimulation), with brightness matched for single and redundant stimulations. Redundant stimulation resulted in two separate percepts when noncorresponding retinal areas were stimulated, whereas it resulted in a single fused percept when corresponding areas were stimulated. With stimulation of noncorresponding areas, mean RT was shorter to redundant than to single stimulation, replicating the redundant signals effect (RSE) commonly found with visual stimuli. With stimulation of corresponding areas, however, no RSE was observed. This suggests that the RSE is driven by the number of percepts rather than by the number of stimulated receptors or sensory organs. These results are consistent with previous findings in the auditory modality and have implications for models of the RSE.