Anticipatory concern: a study in autism

There has been substantial research on children's empathic responsiveness towards distressed people, and on the limited responsiveness of children with autism. To date, however, there have not been experimental studies to test how far children show concern towards someone who might be expected to feel badly, when that person has not (yet) expressed any negative feelings. We tested matched groups of children with autism and learning disability, and typically developing children of similar verbal mental age (approximately 6 years), with a novel procedure in which participants witnessed one person (E1) tearing the drawing of another (E2). In a comparison condition, a blank card was torn. In the torn‐drawing condition, as predicted, fewer participants with autism orientated towards E2 with an immediate look, and as a group, they were rated as showing less concern for, and fewer concerned looks towards, E2. We discuss possible implications for theoretical perspectives on the early development of empathy in typically as well as atypically developing children.     

The effects of aging and dual task demands on language production

A digital pursuit rotor task was used to measure dual task costs of language production by young and older adults. After training on the pursuit rotor, participants were asked to track the moving target while providing a language sample. When simultaneously engaged, young adults experienced greater dual task costs to tracking, fluency, and grammatical complexity than older adults. Older adults were able to preserve their tracking performance by speaking more slowly. Individual differences in working memory, processing speed, and Stroop interference affected vulnerability to dual task costs. These results demonstrate the utility of using a digital pursuit rotor to study the effects of aging and dual task demands on language production and confirm prior findings that young and older adults use different strategies to accommodate to dual task demands.     

The Relationship of Sexual Values and Emotional Awareness to Sexual Activity in Young Adulthood

A sample of 170 college freshman completed assessments related to emotional awareness, sexual values, and levels of sexual activity. There was a significant relationship between sexual values and sexual activity. Abstinence values appear to be important in the decision to engage in sexual activity.     

Prevalence of dating violence and victimization: regional and gender differences

This report examines (1) the prevalence of dating violence victimization from a national sample of rural adolescents and (2) patterns by gender and region. Analyses are based on 20,274 adolescents who reported violence victimization using the Community Drug and Alcohol Survey. The relationship of dating violence with gender and region was assessed with HLM5 using Bernoulli's logistic regression. Approximately 16% of adolescents reported being a victim of dating violence. Females reported higher incidence of victimization than males. Dating violence is more prevalent in the South. While it is important to address the underlying values in society that may contribute to dating violence, it is equally productive to include regional and cultural values.     

Contriving transitive conditioned establishing operations to establish derived manding skills in adults with severe developmental disabilities

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate derived manding skills in 2 adults with severe developmental disabilities and language deficits by contriving transitive conditioned establishing operations. Specifically, we evaluated whether a history of reinforced conditional discrimination learning would ultimately result in a derived mand repertoire, in which participants manded for items that were needed to complete chained tasks. After mastering the first three phases of the picture exchange communication system (PECS), participants were taught to mand for the needed items by exchanging pictures of the items for the items themselves. They were then taught to conditionally relate the dictated names of the items to the corresponding pictures of the items and to relate the dictated names to the corresponding printed words. We then tested, in the absence of reinforcement, whether participants would mand for the items needed to complete the chained tasks using text rather than pictures. Both participants showed the emergence of derived mands and some derived stimulus relations as a result of this instruction. Some of the derived relations were shown to be intact at 1-month follow-up, and scores on derived mand probes were higher at follow-up than before training. In addition, the 2 participants vocally requested the needed items on maintenance test probes, a skill that was never trained and was not previously in their repertoires. These results suggest that a history of reinforced relational responding may facilitate the expansion of a number of verbal skills and emphasize the possibility of a synthesis of Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior and derived stimulus relations into language-training efforts for persons with significant disabilities.     

Habermas,lifelong learning and citizenship education

Citizenship and its education is again gaining importance in many countries. This paper uses England as its primary example to develop a Habermasian perspective on this issue. The statutory requirements for citizenship education in England imply that significant attention be given to the moral and social development of the learner over time, to the active engagement of the learner in community and to the knowledge skills and understanding necessary for political action. This paper sets out a theoretical framework that offers a perspective on learning suitable for these far-reaching aims. We argue that schools need to shift from the currently dominant discourse of accountability to incorporate a discourse of care in order to make room for an effective and appropriate pedagogy for citizenship. Habermas’s social theory gives us a theoretical framework that properly locates schools within the lifeworld as part of civil society. Schools should therefore attend to hermeneutical and emancipatory concerns, not only to strategic interests. We put these in the context of Habermas’s social theory to paint an alternative vision learning for citizenship education which is based in developing the dispositions, values and attitudes necessary for lifelong learning with a view to developing ongoing communicative action.

Why minority group members resent impostors

An impostor is defined as somebody who publicly lays claim to an identity while simultaneously disguising their failure to fulfill key criteria for group membership. The current study aimed to identify why minority group members feel negatively toward impostors. In two experiments, gay participants evaluated a person who claimed to be either gay or straight. In half of the conditions the target's claims for identity were consistent with their behavior, and in the other half the target's claims for identity were inconsistent with their behavior (impostors). Participants perceived a straight target that claimed to be gay to be doing more damage to the group than a consistent straight target. This effect was mediated by ratings of the extent to which the target was threatening the distinctiveness of gay identity. Furthermore, a gay target who claimed to be straight was seen to be less likeable and was seen to be doing more damage to the group than a consistent gay target, effects that were mediated by the extent to which the target was perceived to feel shame about their group identity. Implications of the results for our understanding of impostorism are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The time course of perceptual grouping: the role of segregation and shape formation

The time course of perceptual grouping was examined in two experiments, using a primed matching task. In different conditions, elements were grouped into columns/rows by common lightness, into a shape (triangle/ arrow or square/cross) by common lightness, and into a shape without segregation of elements. The results showed an early and rapid grouping into columns/rows by common lightness and into a shape when no segregation from other elements was involved. Goodness of shape (i.e., triangle/arrow vs. square/cross) had no influence on how early grouping was evident, but the relatively poorer shapes appeared to consolidate with time. In contrast, grouping into a shape that involved segregation and required resolving figure-ground relations between segregated units, as grouping into a shape by common lightness, consumed time, regardless of shape goodness. These results suggest that the time course of grouping varies as a function of the processes involved in it (e.g., segregation and shape formation) and the conditions prevailing for each process.     

Direct and Indirect Pathways between Parental Constructive Behavior and Adolescent Affiliation with Achievement-Oriented Peers

We investigated the direct and indirect pathways through which parental constructive behavior may influence the adolescent’s affiliation with achievement-oriented peers. Using a longitudinal survey data set from nine California and Wisconsin high schools (from 9th through 12th grades, with an approximate age range from 14 through 18) structural equation models were estimated. Our longitudinal analyses confirmed an indirect effect from Time 1 parental constructive behavior and a direct effect from Time 2 parental constructive behavior on an increase in the perceived achievement orientation of friends at Time 2, net of the stability effect from the prior values of the perceived achievement orientation of friends at Time 1. A point to be emphasized is that parental influence on peer affiliation in late adolescence remains significant even as parental involvement in adolescents’ lives diminishes. In addition, the direct effect from Time 2 parental constructive behavior on the perceived achievement-orientation of friends appears stronger for boys than for girls.     

Effects of daily environmental enrichment on memory deficits and brain injury following neonatal hypoxia-ischemia in the rat

Environmental enrichment (EE) results in improved learning and spatial memory, as well as attenuates morphological changes resulting from cerebral ischemia in adult animals. This study examined the effects of daily EE on memory deficits in the water maze and cerebral damage, assessed in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex, caused by neonatal hypoxia-ischemia. Male Wistar rats in the 7th postnatal day were submitted to the Levine-Rice model of neonatal hypoxia-ischemia (HI), comprising permanent occlusion of the right common carotid artery and a period of hypoxia (90 min, 8%O(2)-92%N(2)). Starting two weeks after the HI event, animals were stimulated by the enriched environment (1h/day for 9 weeks); subsequent to the stimulation, performance of animals in the water maze was assessed. HI resulted in spatial reference and working memory impairments that were completely reversed by EE. Following the behavioral study, animals were killed and the hippocampal volume and cortical area were estimated. There was a significant reduction of both hippocampal volume and cortical area, ipsilateral to arterial occlusion, in HI animals; environmental stimulation had no effect on these morphological measurements. Presented data indicate that stimulation by the daily environmental enrichment recovers spatial memory deficits caused by neonatal hypoxia-ischemia without affecting tissue atrophy in either hippocampus or cortex.