Don’t just repeat after me: Retrieval practice is better than imitation for foreign vocabulary learning

Second language (L2) instruction programs often ask learners to repeat aloud words spoken by a native speaker. However, recent research on retrieval practice has suggested that imitating native pronunciation might be less effective than drill instruction, wherein the learner is required to produce the L2 words from memory (and given feedback). We contrasted the effectiveness of imitation and retrieval practice drills on learning L2 spoken vocabulary. Learners viewed pictures of objects and heard their names; in the imitation condition, they heard and then repeated aloud each name, whereas in the retrieval practice condition, they tried to produce the name before hearing it. On a final test administered either immediately after training (Exp. 1) or after a 2-day delay (Exp. 2), retrieval practice produced better comprehension of the L2 words, better ability to produce the L2 words, and no loss of pronunciation quality.     

Prenatal depression predicts postpartum maternal attachment in low-income Latina mothers with infants

Although maternal attachment is an important predictor of infant attachment security and other developmental outcomes, little is known about the formation of maternal attachment in the first few months of the infant's life, particularly among ethnic minority mothers. The current study examined the predictors of postpartum maternal attachment in a sample of 217 Latina women enrolled in a perinatal depression prevention trial. Mothers’ attachment to their infants was measured at 6-8 weeks postpartum using the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale. A variety of predictors of early attachment were explored including: depressive symptoms during pregnancy, pregnancy intention, feelings about the pregnancy, and the quality of the partner relationship. The strongest predictor of lower maternal attachment was depressive symptoms late in pregnancy; pregnancy intention was marginally predictive of attachment, with lower scores being associated with unwanted pregnancies. The study fills a critical gap in our understanding of the role of depressive symptoms during pregnancy in shaping mothers’ early attachment to their infants.     

Weight perception, weight change intentions, and alcohol use among young adults

Obesity and binge drinking are important health issues for young adults in the United States. Several studies have investigated the relationship between these constructs with mixed results. One possible explanation to disentangle this relationship suggests that how people feel about their weight, regardless of their actual weight, may explain some variation in alcohol use. This study (n = 4497) investigated the relationship between two types of body weight concerns--weight perception and weight change intentions--and binge drinking. Controlling for measured body weight, we considered whether body weight concerns increase risk for binge drinking. Findings suggest that women who reported trying to lose weight had an increased risk of binge drinking. Conversely, men who perceived themselves overweight were significantly less likely to participate in binge drinking. We conclude with a discussion of the finding's implications.     

Intention Attribution in Theory of Mind and Moral Judgment

The present research investigated how children would weigh moral acts pitted against intent, across different moral domains. Twenty primary school children were recruited from an existing database and evaluated a set of acts (good-bad) on the basis of intent (good-bad) across three domains (harm, fairness, and social convention) on a 7-point Likert scale. The study found that children took into account the intention of an agent. Interestingly, intent has a differential effect on the evaluation of acts; it was more pronounced for good acts, but less so for bad acts. For the evaluation of bad acts, children placed greater weight on the intrinsic nature of the act rather than the protagonist’s intent. Conversely, whether the intent is good or bad influenced the evaluation of good acts to a greater extent. These findings not only lend support to the domain-specific view of moral reasoning but also show that children do not attribute intent in a unitary manner within theory of mind.     

Emotion,Decision, and Risk: Betting on Gambles versus Betting on People

We examined the effects of two emotions, fear and anger, on risk‐taking behavior in two types of tasks: Those in which uncertainty is generated by a randomizing device (“lottery risk”) and those in which it is generated by the uncertain behavior of another person (“person‐based risk”). Participants first completed a writing task to induce fear or anger. They then made choices either between lotteries (Experiment 1) or between actions in risky two‐person decisions (Experiments 2 and 3). The experiments involved substantial real‐money payoffs. Replicating earlier studies (which used hypothetical rewards), Experiment 1 showed that fearful participants were more risk‐averse than angry participants in lottery‐risk tasks. However—the key result of this study—fearful participants were substantially less risk‐averse than angry participants in a two‐person task involving person‐based risk (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 offered options and payoffs identical to those of Experiment 2 but with lottery‐type risk. Risk‐taking returned to the pattern of Experiment 1. The impact of incidental emotions on risk‐taking appears to be contingent on the class of uncertainty involved. For lottery risk, fear increased the frequency of risk‐averse choices and anger reduced it. The reverse pattern was found when uncertainty in the decision was person‐based. Further, the effect was specifically on differences in willingness to take risks rather than on differences in judgments of how much risk was present. The impact of different emotions on risk‐taking or risk‐avoiding behavior is thus contingent on the type, as well as the degree, of uncertainty the decision maker faces. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of training for the atomistic schema on the development of the density concept among gifted and nongifted children

The present study was conducted for two purposes. The first was to test the relations between the schema of atomism and the concept of density, and to examine the effects of Piagetian stage and M-capacity on these relations. This was accomplished by giving training for the schema of atomism to children at different stages and with varying M- capacities. The second purpose was to test the effects of age (9–10 versus 11–12 years) and IQ (gifted versus nongified children) as variables that would influence the outcome of training. A total of 120 children were tested. The findings were that the effects of the training and the IQ variables were significant while the effect of the age variable was not. When stage and M-capacity were covaried the effects of training and IQ remained significant. Implications for issues of developmental theory and educational practice are discussed.     

The measurement of pupillary dilation: A facilitating apparatus

The measurement of pupillary dilation has been facilitated by the invention of new sophisticated devices such as remote eye trackers. However, they are expensive and immobile, making their use impossible in studies with low budgets or those conducted outside of the laboratory. As a result, the conventional and tedious method of manually recording the pupil sizes from negatives of movie films, frame by frame, must still be used. The conventional method suffers from various limitations and is quite slow. The present article describes an optical apparatus that overcomes most of the limitations of the conventional method and, hence, increases the measurement efficiency.     

The role of preschoolers' social understanding in evaluating the informativeness of causal interventions

Preschoolers use information from interventions, namely intentional actions, to make causal inferences. We asked whether children consider some interventions to be more informative than others based on two components of an actor’s knowledge state: whether an actor possesses causal knowledge, and whether an actor is allowed to use their knowledge in a given situation. Three- and four-year-olds saw a novel toy that activated in the presence of certain objects. Two actors, one knowledgeable about the toy and one ignorant, each tried to activate the toy with an object. In Experiment 1, either the actors chose objects or the child chose for them. In Experiment 2, the actors chose objects blindfolded. Objects were always placed on the toy simultaneously, and thus were equally associated with the effect. Preschoolers’ causal inferences favored the knowledgeable actor’s object only when he was allowed to choose it (Experiment 1). Thus, children consider both personal and situational constraints on knowledge when evaluating the informativeness of causal interventions.     

Affective and cardiovascular effects of experimentally-induced social status

OBJECTIVE: Observational research suggests subordinate social status is associated with negative mental and physical health outcomes. However, observational studies have limitations, including confounding of social status with other factors, limited ability to infer causality, and difficulty of obtaining detailed affective and physiologic data. This study used experimental methods to test the hypothesis that subordinate social status per se causes psychological distress and cardiovascular arousal. DESIGN: Forty-four women were randomly assigned to an induced subordinate or dominant status condition. Social status was manipulated using a procedure derived from status construction theory. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Affective responses were assessed via self-report. Cardiovascular responses were assessed by measures of systolic and diastolic blood pressures obtained with an automated blood pressure machine. RESULTS: Participants in the subordinate condition perceived themselves as lower in status; the reverse was true for dominant condition participants. Compared with induced dominant status, induced subordinate status produced increased negative affect and systolic blood pressure over the course of the study. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest social status can be experimentally manipulated and short-term induction of subordinate status can have adverse effects on affect and stress-related physiological systems. Results have implications for understanding how socioeconomic status "gets under the skin" to influence health.