Differential emergence of representational systems: Drawings,letters, and numerals

This study investigated the process by which the representational activity and knowledge about drawing and letter and number writing emerge in children 21–46 months old. The results revealed that representational activities developed with age through several phases. Beginning at age 2, children produced different marks for different systems, but children under two produced common graphic marks. Representational systems were significantly correlated with developmental processes, but drawing developed faster than letters or numbers with respect to both their production and their classification. Three-year-old children were able to recognize each system correctly in a sample-matching task, but the recognition of each system was not correlated with representational activity. These findings indicate that only after children engaged in graphic production did they begin to make representational distinctions among systems by drawing on their domain-specific knowledge, although alternative explanations can be suggested.     

Emergence of representational activity during the early drawing stage: process analysis

This study analyzed the process underlying the emergence of representational drawing. Eighty-seven children aged 1–3 years were asked to color or draw either a simple picture (P) or a contour for an object (DC) in a shared task. After that, they were asked to draw their mother on a blank sheet of paper in a no drawn contour task (NC). Whereas 1½- and 2-year-olds were more successful in the P task than in the DC task, the 2½- and 3-year-olds were successful in both. The 2-year-olds were better in the DC than the NC task. The results show that 1½- and 2-year-olds can extract the component parts of a drawing even though they cannot produce them and children over 2½ years old can organize these components into a drawing by themselves. These findings indicate that representational drawing is based on the extraction of the component parts and the acquisition of the drawing ability to combine the parts into a drawing and that the beginnings of representational drawing are found in 1½- and 2-year-old children.     

Genetic and environmental structure of Cloninger's temperament and character dimensions

The multivariate genetic and environmental structure of Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) was investigated in a sample of 617 pairs of adolescent and young adult twins from Japan. Additive genetic factors accounted for 22% to 49% of the variability on all TCI temperament scales. Although the theory predicts lower heritability for the character scales, all character subscales had a substantial genetic contribution, and nonshared environmental influences accounted for the remainder. Multivariate genetic analyses showed that several subscales used to define one dimension shared a common genetic basis with subscales defining others. Using the degree of shared genetic influence as the basis to rearrange the TCI subscales into new dimensions, it was possible to create genetically independent scales. The implications for personality measurement, theory, and molecular genetic research are discussed.     

VALUES MOTHERS HOLD FOR HANDICAPPED AND NONHANDICAPPED PRESCHOOL CHILDREN IN JAPAN,PUERTO RICO,AND THE UNITED STATES MAINLAND*

This study examines the values held by mothers in Japan, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Mainland for their handicapped and nonhandicapped preschoolers in the contexts of home and school. In order to study values, mothers from the three cultures were asked to rank twelve value items relating to four value areas: physical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and sociocultural. The value rankings were different in the three cultures and depended upon the home and school contexts. The presence of a diagnosed orthopedic and/or neurological impairment in the child had no overall effect on value ratings but did interact with culture and context to influence mothers' values.     

Impaired Learning and Motor Behavior in Heterozygous Pafah1b1 (Lis1) Mutant Mice

Heterozygous mutation or deletion of Pafah1b1 (LIS1) in humans is associated with syndromes with type 1 lissencephaly, a severe brain developmental disorder resulting from abnormal neuronal migration. We have created Lis1 heterozygous mutant mice by gene targeting. Heterozygous mutant mice are viable and fertile, but display global organizational brain defects as a result of impaired neuronal migration. To assess the functional impact of the mutation, Lis1 heterozygous mice and their wild-type littermates were evaluated on a wide variety of behavioral tests. Lis1 mutant mice displayed abnormal hindpaw clutching responses and were impaired on a rotarod test. Lis1 heterozygous mice were also impaired in the spatial learning version of the Morris water task. Impaired motor behavior and spatial learning and memory in Lis1 mutant mice indicates that impaired neuronal migration can have functional effects on complex behavioral responses. The behavioral findings also support the use of the Lis1 mutant mice as a model from human type 1 lissencephaly.     

Substance and artifact in the higher-order factors of the Big Five

J. M. Digman (1997) proposed that the Big Five personality traits showed a higher-order structure with 2 factors he labeled alpha and beta. These factors have been alternatively interpreted as heritable components of personality or as artifacts of evaluative bias. Using structural equation modeling, the authors reanalyzed data from a cross-national twin study and from American cross-observer studies and analyzed new multimethod data from a German twin study. In all analyses, artifact models outperformed substance models by root-mean-square error of approximation criteria, but models combining both artifact and substance were slightly better. These findings suggest that the search for the biological basis of personality traits may be more profitably focused on the 5 factors themselves and their specific facets, especially in monomethod studies.     

Does culture shape face perception in autism? Cross‐cultural evidence of the own‐race advantage from the UK and Japan

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with face perception atypicalities, and atypical experience with faces has been proposed as an underlying explanation. Studying the own‐race advantage (ORA) for face recognition can reveal the effect of experience on face perception in ASD, although the small number of studies in the area present mixed findings. This study probed the ORA in ASD by comparing two cultural groups simultaneously for the first time. Children with ASD in the UK (N = 16) and Japan (N = 26) were compared with age‐ and ability‐matched typically developing (TD) children in the UK (N = 16) and Japan (N = 26). Participants completed a two‐alternative forced‐choice task, whereby they had to recognize a just seen face from a foil which was manipulated in one of four ways (IC: identity change; EE: easy eyes; HE: hard eyes; HM: hard mouth). Face stimuli were Asian and Caucasian, and thus the same stimuli were own and other race depending on the cultural group. The ASD groups in the UK and Japan did not show impaired face recognition abilities, or impairments with recognizing faces depending on manipulations to the eye region, and importantly they showed an ORA. There was considerable heterogeneity in the presence of the ORA in ASD and TD and also across cultures. Children in Japan had higher accuracy than children in the UK, and TD children in Japan did not show an ORA. This cross‐cultural study challenges the view that atypical experiences with faces lead to a reduced/absent ORA in ASD.     

The recognized benefits of negative thinking/affect in depression and anxiety: Developing a scale

Negative thinking/affect (NTA) in depression and anxiety is an important target of clinical intervention. However, individuals recognize the benefit of NTA. There is a need to develop a scale for empirical studies of NTA. Two‐hundred and fifty‐nine Japanese university students were assigned to answer: (a) the state in the past week (positive affect (PA) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale), (b) the current state (PA and State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory‐State (STAI‐S)), and (c) the usual state (PA and STAI‐Trait), after completing the Recognized Benefit of NTA Scale (RBNTA). Another 291 students completed the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale and the Revised Life Orientation Test, after completing the RBNTA. Two weeks later, 76 participants completed the RBNTA. The RBNTA with nine subscales was developed after comparing the indices of fitness from 14 different factor solutions. The internal and test‐retest reliability and content validity were confirmed. Correlation analyses revealed that the recognition of trying to obtain benefits/avoid costs tends to associate with positive/negative affect and that most of such recognitions did not associate with self‐esteem and optimism.     

Cosmos and life (According to Henry and Bergson)

Continental Philosophy Review -     

The perception of self-motion induced by central and peripheral visual stimuli moving in opposite directions

The effects of the size of a stimulus and its eccentricity (central or peripheral) on the visually induced perception of horizontal translational self-motion (vection) were investigated. The central and peripheral areas of the observers' visual field were simultaneously stimulated by random dot patterns that moved in opposite directions. The results of two experiments indicated that the effects of central and peripheral presentations of the moving visual pattern are equivalent, and that vection strength is determined by the stimulus size and speed but not by its eccentricity. These results are consistent with the findings of previous studies that suggested that there are no qualitative differences in the vection-inducing potentials of the central and peripheral areas of the visual field, and are counter to the more traditional hypothesis, which has assumed that the perception of self-motion is specifically assigned to peripheral vision.