Preschoolers search for hidden objects

The issue of whether young children use spatio-temporal information (e.g., movement of objects through time and space) and/or contact-mechanical information (e.g., interaction between objects) to search for a hidden object was investigated. To determine whether one cue can have priority over the other, a dynamic event that put these cues into conflict was created, with only spatio-temporal information being valid. The 3-year-olds used in the study were found to use the valid spatio-temporal cue exclusively and seemed to ignore the contact-mechanical cue. Both search behavior and eye tracking during the event support the view of a sophisticated sensitivity to the validity of a cue in indicating a target’s hidden location.     

Factors for radical creativity, incremental creativity, and routine, noncreative performance

This study extends theory and research by differentiating between routine, noncreative performance and 2 distinct types of creativity: radical and incremental. We also use a sensemaking perspective to examine the interplay of social and personal factors that may influence a person's engagement in a certain level of creative action versus routine, noncreative work. Results demonstrate that willingness to take risks, resources for creativity, and career commitment are associated primarily with radical creativity; that the presence of creative coworkers and organizational identification are associated with incremental creativity; and that conformity and organizational identification are linked with routine performance. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

An analysis of an optimal selection process for characteristics and technical performance of baseball pitchers

Selection of a qualified pitcher has relied previously on qualitative indices; here, both quantitative and qualitative indices including pitching statistics, defense, mental skills, experience, and managers' recognition were collected, and an analytic hierarchy process was used to rank baseball pitchers. The participants were 8 experts who ranked characteristics and statistics of 15 baseball pitchers who comprised the first round of potential representatives for the Chinese Taipei National Baseball team. The results indicated a selection rate that was 91% consistent with the official national team roster, as 11 pitchers with the highest scores who were recommended as optimal choices to be official members of the Chinese Tai-pei National Baseball team actually participated in the 2009 Baseball World Cup. An analytic hierarchy can aid in selection of qualified pitchers, depending on situational and practical needs; the method could be extended to other sports and team-selection situations.     

Psychological stress in childhood and susceptibility to the chronic diseases of aging: moving toward a model of behavioral and biological mechanisms

Among people exposed to major psychological stressors in early life, there are elevated rates of morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases of aging. The most compelling data come from studies of children raised in poverty or maltreated by their parents, who show heightened vulnerability to vascular disease, autoimmune disorders, and premature mortality. These findings raise challenging theoretical questions. How does childhood stress get under the skin, at the molecular level, to affect risk for later diseases? And how does it incubate there, giving rise to diseases several decades later? Here we present a biological embedding model, which attempts to address these questions by synthesizing knowledge across several behavioral and biomedical literatures. This model maintains that childhood stress gets "programmed" into macrophages through epigenetic markings, posttranslational modifications, and tissue remodeling. As a consequence these cells are endowed with proinflammatory tendencies, manifest in exaggerated cytokine responses to challenge and decreased sensitivity to inhibitory hormonal signals. The model goes on to propose that over the life course, these proinflammatory tendencies are exacerbated by behavioral proclivities and hormonal dysregulation, themselves the products of exposure to early stress. Behaviorally, the model posits that childhood stress gives rise to excessive threat vigilance, mistrust of others, poor social relationships, impaired self-regulation, and unhealthy lifestyle choices. Hormonally, early stress confers altered patterns of endocrine and autonomic discharge. This milieu amplifies the proinflammatory environment already instantiated by macrophages. Acting in concert with other exposures and genetic liabilities, the resulting inflammation drives forward pathogenic mechanisms that ultimately foster chronic disease.     

Repetition benefit in mental rotation is independent of stimulus repetition

In this study, we investigated whether there is a repetition benefit in mental rotation that is independent of stimulus repetition (i.e., due to increased efficiency in postencoding processing). Three experiments were conducted, in which different conditions of stimulus repetition (different letters on consecutive trials in Experiment 1, letters of different orientations on consecutive trials in Experiment 2, and priming of rotation direction in Experiment 3) were used, and the extent of repetition of rotation direction between two consecutive trials was manipulated. The results of all three experiments showed clear evidence of a repetition benefit without repeating the stimulus, suggesting that this effect is independent of stimulus repetition and lending support to the notion of increased efficiency in mental rotation as a result of repeated rotation direction per se.     

Natural Mentoring Processes Deter Externalizing Problems Among Rural African American Emerging Adults: A Prospective Analysis

A 3-wave model linking natural mentoring relationships to externalizing behavior was tested with 345 rural African American emerging adults in their final year of high school. Structural equation models were executed linking multi-informant reports of mentor-emerging adult relationship quality with youths' externalizing behavior 18 months later. Consistent with our primary hypotheses, emerging adults whose relationships with their natural mentors were characterized by instrumental and emotional support and affectively positive interactions reported lower levels of anger, rule-breaking behavior, and aggression. These effects emerged independent of the influences of family support and youth gender. Two intrapersonal processes, a future orientation and self-regulation, emerged as mediators of the influence of natural mentoring relationships. The influence of natural mentors was most pronounced for emerging adults experiencing high levels of life stress.     

Two types of behavioral inhibition: Relations to effortful control and attention in school children

This study aimed to examine the relationship of two types of behavioral inhibition, social inhibition and nonsocial inhibition, to effortful control and attention in 7–9-year olds. Social and nonsocial inhibition and effortful control were assessed by questionnaires. The child version of the Attention Network Task was used to measure attention including alerting, orienting and executive attention. Results indicated that in girls, social inhibition was negatively related to effortful control and alerting, while nonsocial inhibition was positively related to orienting; there was an interaction between social and nonsocial inhibition in predicting executive attention in boys. Thus, it is of great significance to differentiate social and nonsocial inhibition when examining the association between behavioral inhibition and effortful control and attention in school-age children.     

Approaching the “Resistant:” Exploring East Asian International Students’ Perceptions of Therapy and Help-Seeking Behavior Before and After They Arrived in the United States

In this study we investigated cultural, familial, and individual beliefs that influenced international students’ perceptions of therapy and help-seeking behaviors. Included were changes in perception or behavior before and after the students came to the US, and factors that influenced help-seeking behaviors. Six international students from East Asian countries where English is a foreign language, including Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, and South Korea, were interviewed. We used semi-structured interviews and participant observations for collecting data. The findings indicated changes after students came to the US. Further discussions focus on encouraging and discouraging factors relative to seeing therapists, and culturally sensitive interventions for family therapy clinicians.     

Contextual illusions reveal the limit of unconscious visual processing

The perception of even the most elementary features of the visual environment depends strongly on their spatial context. In the study reported here, we asked at what level of abstraction such effects require conscious processing of the context. We compared two visual illusions that alter subjective judgments of brightness: the simultaneous brightness contrast illusion, in which two circles of identical physical brightness appear different because of different surround luminance, and the Kanizsa triangle illusion, which occurs when the visual system extrapolates a surface without actual physical stimulation. We used a novel interocular masking technique that allowed us to selectively render only the context invisible. Simultaneous brightness contrast persisted even when the surround was masked from awareness. In contrast, participants did not experience illusory contours when the inducing context was masked. Our findings show that invisible context is resolvable by low-level processes involved in surface-brightness perception, but not by high-level processes that assign surface borders through perceptual completion.