The Relationship of Temperament Scores to the Way Young Adults Adapt to Change

Temperament has been suggested as affecting the way individuals adapt to changes. This study examined the relationship of temperament, as measured by the Dimensions of Temperament Scale (Lerner, Palermo, Spiro, & Nesselroade, 1982), to three aspects of adaptation for 167 students starting post-secondary education. Loneliness was measured using Schmidt and Sermat's (1983) Differential Loneliness Scale, involvement was measured using Scales of Satisfaction and Activity (Vinsel, Brown, Altman, & Foss, 1980), and affect was measured using the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist (Zuckerman & Lubin, 1965a). In the sample, feelings of loneliness were related to temperament differentially with regard to friends, romantic-sexual relationships, groups, and family. Involvement was best predicted by the approach/withdrawal dimension, whereas affect was best predicted by the dimensions of mood. The results are consistent with earlier work with children and lend support to the view of temperament as an active mechanism by which the individual adapts to life changes.     

The effects of task instructor status on prospective memory performance in preschoolers

The present study applied a 2 × 2 experimental design to assess prospective memory (PM) development across preschool age and to examine the effect of task instructor status (researcher vs. significant other) on PM performance in 80 preschool children. Participants were required to name pictures (ongoing task [OT]), and to remember to refrain from naming but instead give a different response to certain target cues (PM task). Although the OT was of comparable difficulty for both age groups (as indicated by no performance differences), results still indicated significantly higher PM performance in 5-year-olds than in 3-year-olds, confirming the age-related increase of PM capacities between 3 and 5 years. Furthermore, results showed a performance-enhancing effect of significant others as task instructors on both age-groups. Post-hoc analysis revealed that 3-year-olds instructed by a significant other still performed marginally worse than 5-year-olds instructed by a researcher, underlining the finding that substantial changes of PM capacities take place during early childhood.     

Psychological and Sociocultural Adaptation of Children Adopted from Russia and their Associations with Pre-Adoption Risk Factors and Parenting

We investigated academic and behavioral outcomes of internationally adopted children and the associations between these outcomes and age at adoption, time spent in the adoptive family, and parenting. At two time points (T1 and T2, ~15 months apart), we examined early academic skills (school readiness), and parent-reported behavioral adjustment (internalizing and externalizing behavior) and adaptive functioning of a sample of 75 children (45.9% boys, mean age?=?5.17 years) adopted from Russia into US families. We also collected parents’ self-assessments of their parenting at T1. Children who were adopted at a younger age showed higher levels of early academic skills. Correlations between age at adoption and other outcomes were overall small and mostly non-significant. However, adoptees’ academic and behavioral progress differed notably in several respects. Specifically, adoptees improved in early academic skills over time, whereas, as a group, their adaptive functioning and behavioral adjustment remained stable within the normal range. Early academic skills were not related to behavioral adjustment at each time point and over time. The time spent in the adoptive family was positively related to early academic skills at T2. Whereas outcomes showed little to no relation to parenting as reported by mother and father separately, higher discrepancies between mothers' and fathers' reports of positive parenting were related to higher levels of behavioral symptoms and lower levels of adaptive skills at T2. These differential results may be explained in part by drawing upon the notion of dissociated domains of psychological and sociocultural adaptation and acculturation, outlined in the immigration literature. These results also bring to light the possible importance of between-parent consistency in parenting for adoptees’ behavioral outcomes.     

The beneficial and detrimental effects of major depression on intuitive decision-making

Intuitions play a central role in everyday life decision-making but little is known regarding this capacity during depression. Thus, in Study 1, N?=?39 depressed in-patients completed two well-established tasks, assessing intuitions of visual and semantic coherence. In the semantic coherence task, patients judged whether presented words triads were coherent (e.g. SALT DEEP FOAM, related to SEA) or not (e.g. DREAM BALL BOOK, no denominator). In the visual coherence task, patients judged whether blurred pictures depicted real-life objects (coherent) or not (incoherent). Results showed that higher depressive symptomatology was associated with impaired intuitions of semantic coherence but with enhanced intuitions of visual coherence. In Study 2, visual coherence intuitions of depressed patients (n?=?27) were compared to healthy control participants (n?=?30). Depressed patients outperformed the healthy control subjects in the visual coherence task. This pattern of findings shows both detrimental and beneficial decisional consequences of depression.     

What the eyes already ‘know’: using eye movement measurement to tap into children's implicit numerical magnitude representations

To date, a number of studies have demonstrated the existence of mismatches between children's implicit and explicit knowledge at certain points in development that become manifest by their gestures and gaze orientation in different problem solving contexts. Stimulated by this research, we used eye movement measurement to investigate the development of basic knowledge about numerical magnitude in primary school children. Sixty‐six children from grades one to three (i.e. 6–9 years) were presented with two parallel versions of a number line estimation task of which one was restricted to behavioural measures, whereas the other included the recording of eye movement data. The results of the eye movement experiment indicate a quantitative increase as well as a qualitative change in children's implicit knowledge about numerical magnitudes in this age group that precedes the overt, that is, behavioural, demonstration of explicit numerical knowledge. The finding that children's eye movements reveal substantially more about the presence of implicit precursors of later explicit knowledge in the numerical domain than classical approaches suggests further exploration of eye movement measurement as a potential early assessment tool of individual achievement levels in numerical processing. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social decision making mediates the association between anger and externalising problems in Chinese adolescents

The goal of this study was to test the mediating effect of social decision making in the relations of anger and anger control to externalising and internalising problems. A sample of 174 Chinese adolescents (mean age = 15.36 years) completed self‐reports of trait anger, anger control, externalising problems, internalising problems and social decision making, which was operationalized as situational judgement reflecting an individual's ability to interact effectively with parents, teachers and peers. Findings indicated that adolescents' trait anger and anger control were positively related to both externalising and internalising problems. In addition, path analysis revealed that social decision making mediated the relationship between trait anger, anger control and externalising problems. Findings on the mediating effect will be discussed by referencing appraisal tendency theory and response evaluation and decision.     

The moderating role of arousal on the seductive detail effect in a multimedia learning setting

Arousal has been found to increase learners' attentional resources. In contrast, seductive details (interesting but learning‐irrelevant information) are considered to distract attention away from relevant information and, thus, hinder learning. However, a possibly moderating role of arousal on the seductive detail effect has not been examined yet. In this study, arousal variations were induced via audio files of false heartbeats. In consequence, 100 participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (with or without seductive details) × 2 (lower vs. higher false heart rates) between‐subjects design. Data on learning performance, cognitive load, motivation, heartbeat frequency, and electro‐dermal activity were collected. Results show learning‐inhibiting effects for seductive details and learning‐enhancing effects for higher false heart rates. Cognitive processes mediate both effects. However, the detrimental effect of seductive details was not present when heart rate was higher. Results indicate that the seductive detail effect is moderated by a learner's state of arousal.     

How elevated blood alcohol concentration level and identification format affect eyewitness memory: A field study

Research shows that alcohol has a small and inconsistent effect on eyewitness recall and no effect on witnesses' lineup decisions. Much of this literature has tested participants with low‐to‐moderate blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels, and no study has directly examined how identification procedure impacts intoxicated witnesses' decisions. In the present study, bar patrons' (N = 132) BAC levels were recorded before participating in a task. Midway through the task, they were interrupted by an intruder. Participants then recalled the incident via a staged interview and attempted to identify the intruder from a target‐present or target‐absent showup or lineup. Although elevated BAC levels (high as 0.24%) reduced the quantity and quality of information provided, BAC had no effect on witnesses' identification decisions regardless of format. Results highlight the importance of testing witness memory across a broad BAC spectrum and provide evidence that alcohol does not affect witnesses' identification ability.     

Adjustments to recent and frequent conflict reflect two distinguishable mechanisms

In conflict paradigms such as the Eriksen flanker task, interference has been found to be reduced under conditions of recent and/or frequent cognitive conflict. Using a modified flanker task, we investigated the interplay of conflict recency and conflict frequency by comparing the interference reductions following conflict trials under conditions in which conflict was either frequent or infrequent overall, while controlling for stimulus and response feature repetitions to rule out nonattentional accounts. The reduction of flanker interference after a conflict trial was attenuated when overall conflict was frequent. This result is consistent with models assuming that processing adjustments occur gradually in response to conflict strength, such as the connectionist model of Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, and Cohen (2001), in which both recency and frequency modulations are brought about by the same mechanism. By decomposing response times into initiation times and movement times, we revealed that frequent conflict delayed response initiation but sped up movement. Moreover, whereas frequent conflict reduced interference in both components, interference reduction after individual conflict trials was confined to movement times. Taken together, these results suggest that different mechanisms underlie the two kinds of modulation.