Face detection in 2‐ to 6‐month‐old infants is influenced by gaze direction and species

Humans detect faces efficiently from a young age. Face detection is critical for infants to identify and learn from relevant social stimuli in their environments. Faces with eye contact are an especially salient stimulus, and attention to the eyes in infancy is linked to the emergence of later sociality. Despite the importance of both of these early social skills—attending to faces and attending to the eyes—surprisingly little is known about how they interact. We used eye tracking to explore whether eye contact influences infants' face detection. Longitudinally, we examined 2‐, 4‐, and 6‐month‐olds' (N = 65) visual scanning of complex image arrays with human and animal faces varying in eye contact and head orientation. Across all ages, infants displayed superior detection of faces with eye contact; however, this effect varied as a function of species and head orientation. Infants were more attentive to human than animal faces and were more sensitive to eye and head orientation for human faces compared to animal faces. Unexpectedly, human faces with both averted heads and eyes received the most attention. This pattern may reflect the early emergence of gaze following—the ability to look where another individual looks—which begins to develop around this age. Infants may be especially interested in averted gaze faces, providing early scaffolding for joint attention. This study represents the first investigation to document infants' attention patterns to faces systematically varying in their attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that infants develop early, specialized functional conspecific face detection.     

Emergent Motivation to Read in Prekindergarten Children

This study aimed to develop and validate a measure of emergent reading motivation designed for prekindergarten children, called the Emergent Reading Motivation Scale (ERMS). The development of the ERMS was to overcome the limitation that current existing reading motivation measures are not developmentally appropriate for young children. Fifty-six native-English speaking children who were enrolled in a prekindergarten program participated in the study. The ERMS had 17 items that were drawn from reading self-concept, reading performance goal, and reading learning goal. The scale was administered through two sock puppets. For each item, the puppets represented contrasting behaviors regarding reading motivation. The children were asked to choose the puppet that was most like themselves. Results suggested that the ERMS is an age-appropriate reading motivation measure for prekindergarten children and has a three-factor structure as assumed even though its internal consistency is moderate and is of limited predictive power of emergent literacy skills.     

What is an “appropriate” migrant? Impact of the adoption of meritocratic worldviews by potential newcomers on their perceived ability to integrate into a Western society

The acceptance of migrant populations and the definition of an “appropriate” migrant are controversial issues in many countries. The present research focuses on the ideological determinants of how newcomers are evaluated by a host population in a Western country with a strongly rooted meritocratic ideology. We carried out two studies to examine how the expression of meritocratic beliefs by a male potential migrant affects the way he is evaluated by the host population. We measured the host population's perception of the potential migrant's ability to integrate into society, his tendency to adopt the host country's culture, and the general desirability of his world vision for all newcomers. We also noted the host population's judgments of the target's agency and communality. The results showed that a potential newcomer who expresses a strong (vs. weak) belief in a just world (Study 1) or an internal (vs. external) locus of control (Study 2) is evaluated more favorably by the host population. In addition, judgments of the target's integration capacity were only mediated by his perceived agency. We discuss these results in the light of work on the meritocratic ideology and intercultural relations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Teaching Package Utilizing Behavioral Skills Training and In Situ Training to Teach Gun Safety Skills in a Preschool Classroom

There are a number of different safety threats that children face in their lives. One infrequent, but highly dangerous situation a child can face is finding a firearm. Hundreds of children are injured or killed by firearms each year. Fortunately, behavioral skills training (BST) and in situ training (IST) are effective approaches for teaching a number of different skills, including safety skills. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a teaching package for preschool teachers to learn to conduct BST to teach safety skills. Following teacher-implemented BST, the experimenter completed in situ training and supplemental instructions. A multiple baseline across subjects design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of this teaching package implemented by the teacher and experimenter with five preschoolers. Five children demonstrated the skills following IST and additional reinforcement or time out. The use of additional reinforcement, as well as treatment fidelity are discussed.     

Information processing biases concurrently and prospectively predict depressive symptoms in adolescents: Evidence from a self-referent encoding task

Negative information processing biases have been hypothesised to serve as precursors for the development of depression. The current study examined negative self-referent information processing and depressive symptoms in a community sample of adolescents (N = 291, M_age at baseline = 12.34 ± 0.61, 53% female, 47.4% African-American, 49.5% Caucasian and 3.1% Biracial). Participants completed a computerised self-referent encoding task (SRET) and a measure of depressive symptoms at baseline and completed an additional measure of depressive symptoms nine months later. Several negative information processing biases on the SRET were associated with concurrent depressive symptoms and predicted increases in depressive symptoms at follow-up. Findings partially support the hypothesis that negative information processing biases are associated with depressive symptoms in a nonclinical sample of adolescents, and provide preliminary evidence that these biases prospectively predict increases in depressive symptoms.     

Perceptual simulation in developing language comprehension

We tested an embodied account of language proposing that comprehenders create perceptual simulations of the events they hear and read about. In Experiment 1, children (ages 7–13 years) performed a picture verification task. Each picture was preceded by a prerecorded spoken sentence describing an entity whose shape or orientation matched or mismatched the depicted object. Responses were faster for matching pictures, suggesting that participants had formed perceptual-like situation models of the sentences. The advantage for matching pictures did not increase with age. Experiment 2 extended these findings to the domain of written language. Participants (ages 7–10 years) of high and low word reading ability verified pictures after reading sentences aloud. The results suggest that even when reading is effortful, children construct a perceptual simulation of the described events. We propose that perceptual simulation plays a more central role in developing language comprehension than was previously thought.     

Two-year-olds' search strategies and visual tracking in a hidden displacement task

Children younger than 3 years have difficulty with search tasks that involve hidden displacement. Partial visual information was provided about a ball's path as it moved toward a hiding place. Children (2.0 and 2.5 years old) saw a ball rolling down a ramp placed behind a transparent screen with 4 opaque doors. A wall, placed on the ramp and directly behind 1 of the doors, protruded above the screen and stopped the ball. Children were asked to find the ball. The transparency of the screen permitted visual tracking of the ball between the doors, but its final resting place was obscured. Both age groups were equally proficient at tracking the ball as it rolled behind the screen, but the 2.5-year-olds were more likely to reach to the correct door. Looking behavior was related to errors in the younger group in that tracking that stopped short or continued past the correct door was associated with incorrect choices.     

Maladaptive conflict monitoring as evidence for executive dysfunction in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

Using an adaptation of the Attentional Networks Test, we investigated aspects of executive control in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (DS22q11.2), a common but not well understood disorder that produces non-verbal cognitive deficits and a marked incidence of psychopathology. The data revealed that children with DS22q11.2 demonstrated greater difficulty than controls in locating and processing target items in the presence of distracters. Importantly, children with DS22q11.2 showed a deficit in the ability to monitor and adapt to stimulus conflict. These data provide evidence of inadequate conflict adaptation in children with DS22q11.2, a problem that is also present in schizophrenia. The findings of specific executive dysfunction in this group may provide a linkage between particular genetic abnormalities and the development of psychopathology.     

On the Tedium of the Good

It seems to be a phenomenon of contemporary life that we consider goodness embarrassing and rather dull. In contrast, the activities and inner lives of villains are deemed more complex and fascinating than those of good people. This paper attempts to understand the conception of goodness that underlies this phenomenon, and I suggest that informing it is the combination of two ideas, in tension with each other: firstly, a distorted understanding of the ancient conception of full virtue as the absence of all inner conflict; and secondly, the intuition that real goodness is only apparent and generated in inner conflict. In response, I offer an alternative picture of goodness as an ongoing, active and progressive relation to value, and conclude that in order to render goodness attractive again we need more adequate portraits of goodness from both philosophy and art.