The effects of a responsive parenting intervention on parent-child interactions during shared book reading

This study examined mother-child shared book reading behaviors before and after participation in a random-assignment responsive parenting intervention called Play and Learning Strategies (PALS) that occurred during infancy (PALS I), the toddler-preschool (PALS II) period, or both as compared with a developmental assessment (DAS) intervention (DAS I and/or II). The efficacy of PALS was previously demonstrated for improving mother and child behaviors within play contexts, everyday activities, and standardized measures of child language. We hypothesized that PALS effects would generalize to influence maternal and child behaviors during a shared reading task even though this situation was not a specific focus of the intervention and that this would be similar for children who varied in biological risk. Participation in at least PALS II was expected to have a positive effect due to children's increased capacity to engage in book reading at this age. Four groups of randomized mothers and their children (PALS I-II, PALS I-DAS II, DAS I-PALS II, DAS I-II) were observed in shared reading interactions during the toddler-preschool period and coded for (a) mother's affective and cognitive-linguistic supports and (b) child's responses to maternal requests and initiations. Support was found for significant changes in observed maternal and child behaviors, and evidence of mediation was found for the intervention to affect children's behaviors through change in maternal responsiveness behaviors. These results add to other studies supporting the importance of targeting a broad range of responsive behaviors across theoretical frameworks in interventions to facilitate children's development.     

Does delaying judgments of learning really improve the efficacy of study decisions? Not so much

A widely held assumption in metamemory is that better, more accurate metamemory monitoring leads to better, more efficacious restudy decisions, reflected in better memory performance--we refer to this causal chain as the restudy selectivity hypothesis. In 3 sets of experiments, we tested this hypothesis by factorially manipulating metamemory monitoring accuracy and self-regulation of study. To manipulate monitoring accuracy, we compared judgments of learning (JOLs) made contemporaneously with a delayed retrieval attempt to JOLs either made at a delay without attempting retrieval or made immediately after study; in previous studies, delayed retrieval-based JOLs have robustly predicted recall with greater relative accuracy than have the other JOL types. To manipulate self-regulation of study, in Experiments 1A-1C and 2A-2C, we compared conditions in which participants' restudy selections were honored with conditions in which they were completely or randomly dishonored; in Experiments 3A-3C, we randomly honored or dishonored half of the restudy selections and half of the nonselections. Results revealed that the benefit of delayed, retrieval-based JOLs for final memory performance was due largely to the selection of more items for restudy rather than to better discriminations between items that would benefit more versus less from restudy. In most cases, gains in recall due to greater self-regulation of study did not increase with better monitoring accuracy; when they did, the effect was extremely small. The surprising conclusion was that restudy decisions were not very much more efficacious under conditions that yield greater monitoring accuracy than under those that do not.     

Using the movement-related cortical potential to study motor skill learning

The movement-related cortical potential (MRCP) is a low-frequency negative shift in the electroencephalographic recording that occurs about 2 s before voluntary movement production. The MRCP is thought to reflect the cortical processes involved in movement planning and movement preparation. In recent years, researchers have used this potential to investigate the processes involved in motor skill learning. Their findings indicate differences in the amplitude and onset times of the MRCP between experienced and novice performers, which have been attributed to long-term training in the experts. The authors discuss these findings critically and consider their implications for both future research and practice.     

Profiles of anger control in second-grade children: examination of self-report, observational, and physiological components

The current study used latent profile analysis (LPA) to examine anger control in 257 second-grade children (∼8 years of age). Anger was induced through losing a game and prize to a confederate who cheated. Three components of anger control were assessed: self-report of awareness of anger, observed intensity of angry facial expressions, and skin conductance reactivity. These components served as indicators in an LPA conducted to determine whether distinct groups of children who differed in anger control profiles would emerge. Five groups were found: (a) Physiology-and-Expression Controllers (high self-report, low expression, low physiological arousal), (b) Expression-Only Controllers (high self-report, low expression, high physiological arousal), (c) Non-controllers (high self-report, high expression, medium physiological arousal), (d) Non-reactive (low self-report, low expression, low physiological arousal), and (e) Non-reporters (low self-report, medium expression, medium physiological arousal). These findings are discussed in terms of implications for the assessment of children’s anger control skills and intervention programs for children’s anger management.     

Foundations of an ontology of philosophy

We describe an ontology of philosophy that is designed to aid navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that is oriented around what philosophical literature is about.     

Integrating advice and experience: learning and decision making with social and nonsocial cues

When making decisions, people typically gather information from both social and nonsocial sources, such as advice from others and direct experience. This research adapted a cognitive learning paradigm to examine the process by which people learn what sources of information are credible. When participants relied on advice alone to make decisions, their learning of source reliability proceeded in a manner analogous to traditional cue learning processes and replicated the established learning phenomena. However, when advice and nonsocial cues were encountered together as an established phenomenon, blocking (ignoring redundant information) did not occur. Our results suggest that extant cognitive learning models can accommodate either advice or nonsocial cues in isolation. However, the combination of advice and nonsocial cues (a context more typically encountered in daily life) leads to different patterns of learning, in which mutually supportive information from different types of sources is not regarded as redundant and may be particularly compelling. For these situations, cognitive learning models still constitute a promising explanatory tool but one that must be expanded. As such, these findings have important implications for social psychological theory and for cognitive models of learning.     

Development and validation of a Spanish version of the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory, ACSI-28

This study involved the translation, cultural adaptation and validation of the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI-28) for a Spanish-speaking sport environment. The sample was made up of 1,253 Spanish athletes, 967 males and 286 females. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that the 7-factor structure found in the English version was replicated in the Spanish translation in both males and females. Likewise, the reliability coefficients were similar to those of the English version, with values exceeding .80 for the total score. Several of the subscales correlated positively with sports experience and performance level. The Spanish version of the ACSI-28 thus maintains the factor structure of the original and exhibits similar psychometric properties. Consequently, it can reliably be applied to Spanish-speaking athletes for research and evaluation purposes.     

Reducing Psychotropic Medications in an Intensive Residential Treatment Center

Medication rates in behaviorally disordered children and youth have greatly increased to current high levels and are very controversial. This study examined changes in psychotropic medication use, levels of behavioral disturbance, and use of personal restraint and seclusion in a population of youth with serious behavioral disorders receiving medically directed cognitive-behavioral treatment in an intensive residential setting. The hypothesis was that there would be significant reductions in medication rates, without the unintended consequences of increased rates of problem behavior or offsetting increases in the use of seclusion or personal restraint. Results showed significant reductions in both the number of youth on medication and the average number of psychotropic medications during the residential stay. There were also significant reductions in behavioral disturbance, seclusions, and personal restraints. These results demonstrate that psychotropic medication can be significantly reduced without increases in problem behavior or the use of seclusions or personal restraints. We conclude that it is possible to significantly reduce psychotropic medication rates to far more conservative levels within the context of a clinically directed cognitive-behavioral treatment milieu.