The role of action lines in children's memory for pictures

The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that memory for pictorial material is dependent on initial comprehension of the depicted relationships. Subjects at three age levels (second, sixth, and ninth grades) were compared on ability to remember cartoon pictures which did or did not contain action lines as clues to the interaction between actors. It was predicted that the older children, because of extensive experience with still cartoons and comics, would benefit from the action lines. The action lines facilitated recall of pictures for only the older students, specifically, the ninth graders. The object of the action was the most efficient probe, even though the action was more frequently remembered. These results are discussed in terms of the action (interaction) being the basis of comprehension and, consequently, the remembering of the picture.     

Effects of containment and closure policies on controlling the COVID‐19 pandemic in East Asia

Growing efforts have been made to pool coronavirus data and control measures from countries and regions to compare the effectiveness of government policies. We examine whether these strategies can explain East Asia’s effective control of the COVID‐19 pandemic based on time‐series data with cross‐correlations between the Stringency Index and number of confirmed cases during the early period of outbreaks. We suggest that multidisciplinary empirical research in healthcare and social sciences, personality, and social psychology is needed for a clear understanding of how cultural values, social norms, and individual predispositions interact with policy to affect life‐saving behavioural changes in different societies.     

Predictors to Happiness in Primary Students: Positive Relationships or Academic Achievement

This study aimed to examine the role of positive relationships and academic achievement in predicting student well-being, i.e. subjective happiness. This study employed a longitudinal design with two waves of data collection on a sample of 786 primary school students in Hong Kong. Students completed questionnaires on parent-child relationship, teacher-student relationship, peer relationship, academic achievement, and happiness at the beginning and end of the school year. Path analysis was used for data analysis. The results indicated that Time 1 parent-child relationship and peer relationship were associated with Time 2 academic achievement, after controlling for Time 1 academic achievement. However, only Time 1 parent-child relationship was predictive of Time 2 happiness. Time 2 academic achievement was a mediator between Time 1 parent-child relationship and peer relationship and Time 2 happiness. Furthermore, girls reported higher levels of academic achievement when they perceived better peer relationship than did boys, and girls were happier when they had higher levels of academic achievement than were boys. The results suggested the need to put in place strategies to enhance parent-child relationship, peer relationship, and a harmonious classroom.

     

Philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne, 1885–1913

The first university course in experimental psychology in Paris was located in the Faculty of Letters rather than the Faculty of Sciences or Medicine. The historical association of psychology with philosophy helps explain this placement, but this choice reinforced the philosophical character of the position at the expense of the experimental. In fact, the course included no laboratory instruction, with the exception of optional demonstrations conducted at psychological laboratories associated with the Faculty of Medicine. The fragmentation of the emerging discipline, distributed among divergent and competing Faculties, meant that training in experimental psychology may have been more difficult in France than in the United States or Germany, where laboratory research and training were more integrated. The first three instructors of the course—Théodule Ribot, Pierre Janet, and Georges Dumas—had a coherent vision of psychology as a synthesis of medical and philosophical approaches, but the matrix of institutional and disciplinary boundaries prevented them from bringing these approaches together.     

Fibromyalgia impact and depressive symptoms: Can perceiving a silver lining make a difference?

Individuals with fibromyalgia are at greater risk for depressive symptoms than the general population, and this may be partially attributable to physical symptoms that impair day-to-day functioning. However, individual-level protective characteristics may buffer risk for psychopathology. For instance, the ability to perceive a “silver lining” in one’s illness may be related to better mental and physical health. We examined perceived silver lining as a potential moderator of the relation between fibromyalgia impact and depressive symptoms. Our sample of persons with fibromyalgia (N = 401) completed self-report measures including the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire-Revised, Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, and the Silver Lining Questionnaire. Moderation analyses covaried age, sex, and ethnicity. Supporting hypotheses, increasing impact of disease was related to greater depressive symptoms, and perceptions of a silver lining attenuated that association. Despite the linkage between impairment and depressive symptoms, identifying positive aspects or outcomes of illness may reduce risk for psychopathology. Therapeutically promoting perception of a silver lining, perhaps via signature strengths exercises or a blessings journal, and encouraging cognitive reframing of the illness experience, perhaps via Motivational Interviewing or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, may reduce depressive symptoms in persons with fibromyalgia.     

The Past Guides the Future: Implementing the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies

The authors describe the ways in which the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC; Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015) can be viewed from a human rights framework and as the latest iteration in the long history of the multicultural and social justice counseling competency movement. MSJCC implementation and integration are explored, and recommendations for innovating the MSJCC are described.     

Embodying the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competency Movement: Voices From the Field

This article illustrates counselors’ embodiment, over time, of the multicultural and social justice counseling competency movement leading to the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015). The authors discuss the multicultural and social justice counseling competency movement in the context of relationships as appropriate to the counseling field. Aligned with contemporary research perspectives, the authors focus on the lived experiences of 2 pioneering social justice and multicultural competency advocates, Drs. Patricia Arredondo and Derald Wing Sue. The authors integrate scholarship with these historical and personal perspectives, as well as their own, to demonstrate the ways in which people and movements drive counseling leadership and advocacy.     

Correction to: Towards a Better Understanding of Cognitive Deficits in Absence Epilepsy: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Due to an error during the editorial phase, a correction regarding Fig. 2 is added to the original article: “Towards a Better Understanding of Cognitive...     

Enhanced gaze‐following behavior in Deaf infants of Deaf parents

Gaze following plays a role in parent–infant communication and is a key mechanism by which infants acquire information about the world from social input. Gaze following in Deaf infants has been understudied. Twelve Deaf infants of Deaf parents (DoD) who had native exposure to American Sign Language (ASL) were gender‐matched and age‐matched (±7 days) to 60 spoken‐language hearing control infants. Results showed that the DoD infants had significantly higher gaze‐following scores than the hearing infants. We hypothesize that in the absence of auditory input, and with support from ASL‐fluent Deaf parents, infants become attuned to visual‐communicative signals from other people, which engenders increased gaze following. These findings underscore the need to revise the ‘deficit model’ of deafness. Deaf infants immersed in natural sign language from birth are better at understanding the signals and identifying the referential meaning of adults’ gaze behavior compared to hearing infants not exposed to sign language. Broader implications for theories of social‐cognitive development are discussed. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/QXCDK_CUmAI     

Actions speak louder than words: Differences in memory flexibility between monolingual and bilingual 18‐month‐olds

Bilingual infants from 6‐ to 24‐months of age are more likely to generalize, flexibly reproducing actions on novel objects significantly more often than age‐matched monolingual infants are. In the current study, we examine whether the addition of novel verbal labels enhances memory generalization in a perceptually complex imitation task. We hypothesized that labels would provide an additional retrieval cue and aid memory generalization for bilingual infants. Specifically, we hypothesized that bilinguals might be more likely than monolinguals to map multiple perceptual features onto a novel label and therefore show enhanced generalization. Eighty‐seven 18‐month‐old monolingual and bilingual infants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions or a baseline control condition. In the experimental conditions, either no label or a novel label was added during demonstration and again at the beginning of the test session. After a 24‐hr delay, infants were tested with the same stimulus set to test cued recall and with a perceptually different but functionally equivalent stimulus set to test memory generalization. Bilinguals performed significantly above baseline on both cued recall and memory generalization in both experimental conditions, whereas monolinguals performed significantly above baseline only on cued recall in both experimental conditions. These findings show a difference between monolinguals and bilinguals in memory generalization and suggest that generalization differences between groups may arise from visual perceptual processing rather than linguistic processing. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/yXB4pM3fF2k