Early cognitive development and parental education

Relations between cognitive development in infancy and early childhood, and parental education were examined. Previous research has found little association between measures of the parenting environment, including parental education and socio‐economic status (SES), and cognitive development in infants and children under 2 years of age. However, the earlier studies may not have reliably measured individual differences in cognitive abilities, thus, there is uncertainty as to what age elements in the parental environment affect cognitive development. Seventy‐six infants were tested on a range of cognitive tasks at 3‐month intervals between the ages of 9 and 18 months. Information on parental education (a component of SES) was collected. Seventy‐one of the children returned at 27 months and completed the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Mental Scale, which was used as an outcome measure for the earlier tasks. The findings present a clear indication that cognitive development in early childhood is affected by the parenting environment, at least from as early as 12 months. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The potential effects of the implanted memory paradigm on child subjects

The purpose of this article is to examine the appropriate use of the implanted memory paradigm with children. In this paradigm, participants are asked repeatedly about fictitious events that never transpired. The responses of children in these investigations demonstrate clearly that they can be led to unintentionally create false memories. This article addresses whether memory research should continue to encourage children to create memories for events that never happened. The literature in other areas of psychology suggests that deception may lessen respect for authority, affect a child's self-esteem, and create stress. We propose that the use of the implanted memory paradigm be suspended indefinitely or until appropriate research demonstrates that the paradigm does not affect children negatively. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conditions for young infants' failure to perceive trajectory continuity

When viewing an event in which an object moves behind an occluder on part of its trajectory, 4-month-old infants perceive the trajectory as continuous only when time or distance out of sight is short. Little is known, however, about the conditions under which young infants perceive trajectories to be discontinuous. In the present studies we focus first on infants' perception of trajectories that change during a period of occlusion. Four-month-olds perceive discontinuity in trajectories that change in height or orientation while behind an occluder, and this is true even when a change in direction could be due to an invisible bouncing collision with a surface. Further experiments reveal that infants do not perceive diagonal linear trajectories as continuous across an occlusion unless the occluding and revealing edges are orthogonal to the path of movement. Implications for theories of perceptual and cognitive development are discussed.     

Gödel's and Other Paradoxes

Francesco Berto has recently written “The Gödel Paradox and Wittgenstein's Reasons,” about a paradox first formulated by Graham Priest in 1971. The major reason for disagreeing with Berto's conclusions concerns his elucidation of Wittgenstein's understanding of Gödel's theorems. Seemingly, Wittgenstein was some kind of proto‐paraconsistentist. Priest himself has also, though in a different way, tried to tar Wittgenstein with the same brush. But the resolution of other paradoxes is intimately linked with the resolution of the Gödel Paradox, and with understanding Wittgenstein's views of Gödel's theorems. So this paper discusses some other paradoxes before looking at Wittgenstein's relevant views.     

Experiencing Adverse Social Relationships: the Development and Validation of a Self-Report Scale that Measures Individuals’ Histories of Social Punishment (HoSP)

Although the relationship between childhood trauma and psychological maladjustment is well established, the link between punishing social interactions and psychopathology has yet to be explored. This may be due, in part, to the lack of appropriate measurement tools. This investigation aimed to develop and validate an instrument to measure histories of social punishment defined as adverse, day-to-day interactions with significant others. Study 1 examined the factor structure and test-retest reliability of the scale. Study 2 confirmed the factor structure solution and tested its convergent and discriminant validity. Study 3 explored the relationship between social punishment and obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, as well as the role of gender. Overall, the scale had very good to excellent psychometric properties. Significant correlations were found between ratings of social punishment and certain pathological behaviors. Further, our findings demonstrated that males tended to report more adverse social experiences than females and as a consequence more symptoms of psychopathology. These findings extend and support the link between adverse experiences and the development of various psychopathological conditions.     

Brief daily exposures to Asian females reverses perceptual narrowing for Asian faces in Caucasian infants

Perceptual narrowing in the visual, auditory, and multisensory domains has its developmental origins during infancy. The current study shows that experimentally induced experience can reverse the effects of perceptual narrowing on infants' visual recognition memory of other-race faces. Caucasian 8- to 10-month-olds who could not discriminate between novel and familiarized Asian faces at the beginning of testing were given brief daily experience with Asian female faces in the experimental condition and Caucasian female faces in the control condition. At the end of 3 weeks, only infants who received daily experience with Asian females showed above-chance recognition of novel Asian female and male faces. Furthermore, infants in the experimental condition showed greater efficiency in learning novel Asian females compared with infants in the control condition. Thus, visual experience with a novel stimulus category can reverse the effects of perceptual narrowing during infancy via improved stimulus recognition and encoding.