Sensitivity to value-driven attention is predicted by how we learn from value

Reward learning is known to influence the automatic capture of attention. This study examined how the rate of learning, after high- or low-value reward outcomes, can influence future transfers into value-driven attentional capture. Participants performed an instrumental learning task that was directly followed by an attentional capture task. A hierarchical Bayesian reinforcement model was used to infer individual differences in learning from high or low reward. Results showed a strong relationship between high-reward learning rates (or the weight that is put on learning after a high reward) and the magnitude of attentional capture with high-reward colors. Individual differences in learning from high or low rewards were further related to performance differences when high- or low-value distractors were present. These findings provide novel insight into the development of value-driven attentional capture by showing how information updating after desired or undesired outcomes can influence future deployments of automatic attention.     

Early childhood cortisol reactivity moderates the effects of parent–child relationship quality on the development of children's temperament in early childhood

Positive parenting has been related both to lower cortisol reactivity and more adaptive temperament traits in children, whereas elevated cortisol reactivity may be related to maladaptive temperament traits, such as higher negative emotionality (NE) and lower positive emotionality (PE). However, no studies have examined whether hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal axis activity, as measured by cortisol reactivity, moderates the effect of the quality of the parent–child relationship on changes in temperament in early childhood. In this study, 126 3‐year‐olds were administered the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab‐TAB; Goldsmith et al., 1995) as a measure of temperamental NE and PE. Salivary cortisol was collected from the child at 4 time points during this task. The primary parent and the child completed the Teaching Tasks battery (Egeland et al., 1995), from which the quality of the relationship was coded. At age 6, children completed the Lab‐TAB again. From age 3 to 6, adjusting for age 3 PE or NE, a better quality relationship with their primary parent predicted decreases in NE for children with elevated cortisol reactivity and predicted increases in PE for children with low cortisol reactivity. Results have implications for our understanding of the interaction of biological stress systems and the parent–child relationship in the development of temperament in childhood.     

Longitudinal stability of pre‐reading skill profiles of kindergarten children: implications for early screening and theories of reading

Research suggests that early identification of developmental dyslexia is important for mitigating the negative effects of dyslexia, including reduced educational attainment and increased socioemotional difficulties. The strongest pre‐literacy predictors of dyslexia are rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge, and verbal short‐term memory. The relationship among these constructs has been debated, and several theories have emerged to explain the unique role of each in reading ability/disability. Furthermore, the stability of identification of risk based on these measures varies widely across studies, due in part to the different cut‐offs employed to designate risk. We applied a latent profile analysis technique with a diverse sample of 1215 kindergarten and pre‐kindergarten students from 20 schools, to investigate whether PA, RAN, letter knowledge, and verbal short‐term memory measures differentiated between homogenous profiles of performance on these measures. Six profiles of performance emerged from the data: average performers, below average performers, high performers, PA risk, RAN risk, and double‐deficit risk (both PA and RAN). A latent class regression model was employed to investigate the longitudinal stability of these groups in a representative subset of children (n = 95) nearly two years later, at the end of 1st grade. Profile membership in the spring semester of pre‐kindergarten or fall semester of kindergarten was significantly predictive of later reading performance, with the specific patterns of performance on the different constructs remaining stable across the years. There was a higher frequency of PA and RAN deficits in children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. There was no evidence for the IQ–achievement discrepancy criterion traditionally used to diagnose dyslexia. Our results support the feasibility of early identification of dyslexia risk and point to the heterogeneity of risk profiles. These findings carry important implications for improving outcomes for children with dyslexia, based on more targeted interventions.     

Preferences for ‘Gender‐typed’ Toys in Boys and Girls Aged 9 to 32 Months

Many studies have found that a majority of boys and girls prefer to play with toys that are typed to their own gender but there is still uncertainty about the age at which such sex differences first appear, and under what conditions. Applying a standardized research protocol and using a selection of gender‐typed toys, we observed the toy preferences of boys and girls engaged in independent play in UK nurseries, without the presence of a parent. The 101 boys and girls fell into three age groups: 9 to 17 months, when infants can first demonstrate toy preferences in independent play (N = 40); 18 to 23 months, when critical advances in gender knowledge occur (N = 29); and 24 to 32 months, when knowledge becomes further established (N = 32). Stereotypical toy preferences were found for boys and girls in each of the age groups, demonstrating that sex differences in toy preference appear early in development. Both boys and girls showed a trend for an increasing preference with age for toys stereotyped for boys. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed with regard to biological predispositions, cognitive development and environmental influences on toy preference. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of the family environment: gene-environment interaction and passive gene-environment correlation

The classical twin study provides a useful resource for testing hypotheses about how the family environment influences children's development, including how genes can influence sensitivity to environmental effects. However, existing statistical models do not account for the possibility that children can inherit exposure to family environments (i.e., passive gene-environment correlation). The authors introduce a method to simultaneously estimate the effects of passive gene- environment correlation and gene- environment interaction and use it to investigate the relationship between chaos in the home and verbal ability in a large sample of 4-year-old twins.     

Globalization and its discontents: challenges to developmental theory and practice in Africa

The three contributions to this Special Section on Culture and Human Development are summarized and critiqued. In considering the nature of contemporary psychological science, as well as applications to early childhood care and development, education to prevent HIV/AIDS, and formal academic education, the various authors are in general agreement on the limitations of current knowledge as it applies to African populations. There is also a common focus on the promise of scientific procedures that take seriously the importance of local understandings, institutions, and social settings.     

It's a wonderful life: mentally subtracting positive events improves people's affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts

The authors hypothesized that thinking about the absence of a positive event from one's life would improve affective states more than thinking about the presence of a positive event but that people would not predict this when making affective forecasts. In Studies 1 and 2, college students wrote about the ways in which a positive event might never have happened and was surprising or how it became part of their life and was unsurprising. As predicted, people in the former condition reported more positive affective states. In Study 3, college student forecasters failed to anticipate this effect. In Study 4, Internet respondents and university staff members who wrote about how they might never have met their romantic partner were more satisfied with their relationship than were those who wrote about how they did meet their partner. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the literatures on gratitude induction and counterfactual reasoning.     

The Effects of Contact with Asians and Asian Americans on White American College Students: Attitudes, Awareness of Racial Discrimination, and Psychological Adjustment

On the basis of acculturation theory, explicating mutual influences between different cultural or ethnic groups coming into contact, this study focused "on the other side of acculturation" theory by examining the effects of intercultural contact with Asians and Asian Americans on the psychosocial experiences of White American college students. Participants (N = 315), undergraduates attending a public university located within the state of Massachusetts, completed a survey that assessed demographic and personal characteristics, acculturation (extent of intercultural contact with Asian people and Asian cultures), attitudes towards Asians and Asian Americans, awareness of institutional discrimination and blatant racial issues, and psychological distress. Results indicated that White American students' intercultural contact with Asians and Asian Americans contributed significant variance to the prediction of their attitudes towards this ethnic group and awareness of discrimination and racial issues, but not to psychological distress. This study provides implications for understanding mutual acculturative influences between different ethnic groups in the United States.     

Handwriting process and product characteristics of children diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder

Deficits in handwriting performance limit the school participation of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The aim of this study was to compare the handwriting process and product characteristics of children with DCD to those of typically developing (TD) children in order to determine the best means of differentiation between the groups. Participants were 40 children, from 7 to 10 years old. The experimental group consisted of 20 children who met the criteria of DCD, and the control group consisted of 20 age- and gender-matched controls. The children were asked to perform three graded writing tasks on an electronic tablet, which was part of a computerized handwriting evaluation system (ComPET), in order to obtain measures of their handwriting process. The children's handwriting product was then evaluated by the Hebrew Handwriting Evaluation (HHE). Results showed significant differences between the groups for the handwriting process measures (on-paper and in-air time, mean pressure) and for the handwriting product characteristics (global legibility, number of letters erased or overwritten, spatial arrangement, and number of letters written in the first minute). The discriminant analysis yielded a high significant discrimination (80-90%), with the 'number of letters erased or overwritten' variable as the most differentiating variable (-.67). We concluded that an evaluation of both handwriting process and product characteristics among children with DCD provides a more comprehensive picture of their deficits. Using this method may enable practitioners to focus on children's main deficits and to tailor intervention methods so as to prevent academic underachievement and its consequences on their emotional well-being.     

Advancing prevention research on the role of culture in suicide prevention

Despite evidence of considerable racial/ethnic variation in adolescent suicidal behavior in the United States, research on youth of European American descent accounts for much of what is know about preventing adolescent suicide. In response to the need to advance research on the phenomenology and prevention of suicidal behavior among ethnic minority populations, NIMH co-sponsored the "Pragmatic Considerations of Culture in Preventing Suicide" workshop to elicit through interdisciplinary dialogue how culture can be considered in the design, development, and implementation of suicidal behavior prevention programs. In this discussion paper we consider the three ethnic minority suicide prevention efforts described in the articles appearing in this issue, along with workshop participants' comments, and propose six major areas where issues of culture need to be better integrated into suicidal behavior research.