Music therapy with hospitalized infants—the art and science of communicative musicality

Infants seek contingent, companionable interactions with others. Infants in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), while receiving care that optimizes their chances of survival, often do not have the kind of interactions that are optimal for their social development. Live music therapy (MT) with infants is an intervention that aims for contingent, social interaction between therapist and infant. This study, with a limited numbers of infants, examined the effectiveness of an MT intervention in the NICU at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne. Two groups of late pre‐term and full‐term infants were recruited to the study; one was given MT and the other was not. A healthy group of infants not given MT served as an additional control. The effect of MT was indexed using two measures reflecting infant social engagement: the Neurobehavioral Assessment of the Preterm Infant (NAPI) and the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB). Results suggest that the MT intervention used at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne supports infants' neurobehavioral development. In particular, hospitalized infants who received MT were better able to maintain self‐regulation during social interaction with an adult, were less irritable and cried less, and were more positive in their response to adult handling, when compared with infants who did not receive the intervention. These are important prerequisites for social interaction and development. Further and larger scale research using MT with this population is indicated.     

Compliance to a cell phone-based ecological momentary assessment study: The effect of time and personality characteristics

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a method that is now widely used to study behavior and mood in the settings in which they naturally occur. It maximizes ecological validity and avoids the limitations of retrospective self-reports. Compliance patterns across time have not been studied. Consistent compliance patterns could lead to data not missing at random and bias the results of subsequent analyses. In order to use modern statistical approaches for handling missing data, it is important to include variables predicting missing values into the statistical analysis. Therefore, these predictors have to be known and measured. The authors collected data on 3 four-item mood scales measuring well-being, wakefulness, and nervousness on 6 occasions per day for 7 days (N = 305) and examined compliance rate across time, within day, and within week. Results show good global compliance (mean compliance: 74.9% of calls answered). Compliance varied more within day than within week. Within day, it was lower for the first call of the day between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. and higher for the call between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Within week, calls were equally answered across days of the week, but, as the study progressed, there was a slight drop in compliance with a progressive decrease that was stronger for the first 2 calls. Compliance on the person level did not depend on personality or on satisfaction with life. Practical consequences of the results for conducting ambulatory assessment studies are discussed, and some recommendations are given. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Introducing the Geneva Multimodal expression corpus for experimental research on emotion perception

Research on the perception of emotional expressions in faces and voices is exploding in psychology, the neurosciences, and affective computing. This article provides an overview of some of the major emotion expression (EE) corpora currently available for empirical research and introduces a new, dynamic, multimodal corpus of emotion expressions, the Geneva Multimodal Emotion Portrayals Core Set (GEMEP-CS). The design features of the corpus are outlined and justified, and detailed validation data for the core set selection are presented and discussed. Finally, an associated database with microcoded facial, vocal, and body action elements, as well as observer ratings, is introduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Encoding location and serial order in auditory working memory: evidence for separable processes

In this study, we investigated the interactions between temporal and spatial information in auditory working memory. In two experiments, participants were presented with sequences of sounds originating from different locations in space and were then asked to recall either their position or their serial order. In Experiment 1, attention during encoding was manipulated by contrasting 'pure' blocks (i.e., location-only or serial-order-only trials) to 'mixed' blocks (i.e., different percentages of spatial and serial-order trials). In Experiment 2, 'pure' blocks were contrasted to blocks in which spatial and serial-order trials were intermixed with a third task requiring a semantic categorization of sounds. Results from both experiments showed that, whereas serial-order recall is linearly affected by the simultaneous encoding of a concurrent feature, the recall of position is mostly unaffected by concurrent feature encoding. Contrastingly, overall performance level was lower for spatial recall than serial recall. We concluded that serial order and location of items appear to be independently encoded in auditory working memory. Serial order is easier to recall, but strongly affected by the processing of concurrent item dimensions, while item location is more difficult to recall, but relatively automatic, as shown by its strong resistance to interfering dimensions in encoding.     

Unequal impairment in the recognition of positive and negative emotions after right hemisphere lesions: a left hemisphere bias for happy faces

The processing of several important aspects of a human face was investigated in a single patient (LZ), who had a large infarct of the right hemisphere involving the parietal, and temporal lobes with extensions into the frontal region. LZ showed selective problems with recognizing emotional expressions, whereas she was flawless in recognizing gender, familiarity, and identity. She was very poor in recognizing negative facial expressions (fear, disgust, anger, sadness), but scored as well as the controls on the positive facial expression of happiness. However, in two experiments using both static and dynamic face stimuli, we showed that LZ also did not have a proper notion of what a facial expression of happiness looks like, and could not adequately apply this label. We conclude that the proper recognition of both negative and positive facial expressions relies on the right hemisphere, and that the left hemisphere produces a default state resulting in a bias towards evaluating expressions as happy. We discuss the implications of the current findings for the main models that aim to explain hemispheric specializations for processing of positive and negative emotions.     

Über die Treffsicherheit der standardisierten Risikoeinschätzungsverfahren Static-99 und Stable-2007 bei aus einer Sicherungsmaßnahme entlassenen Sexualstraftätern

The accuracy of the recidivism risk assessment instruments Static-99 and Stable-2007 for sexual offenders was examined in a population of released male forensic sexual offenders hospitalized under mandatory treatment in Austria (N?=?96). The Static-99 with an area under the curve (AUC) ?value of 0.86 and the Stable-2007 (AUC?=?0.71) were significantly related to sexual reoffending after nearly 7 years time at risk, thus revealing a predictive power comparable with offenders released from prison (N?=?274). Also the Stable-2007 incrementally supplemented the predictive accuracy of the Static-99. Static-99/Stable-2007 risk/need categories identified a high risk group with a 50?% chance for sexual reconviction within 5 years after release despite a favorable risk assessment as the precondition for release and post-release risk management. On the other hand, there was virtually no relapse in the three lowest risk categories suggesting a specific effect of the mandatory treatment at least in these offender categories. The data suggest that the instruments are valid not only for offenders released from prison but also for forensic sexual offenders.     

Morningness‐eveningness and educational outcomes: the lark has an advantage over the owl at high school

Background. Chronotype refers to individuals’ preference for morning or evening activities. Its two dimensions (morningness and eveningness) are related to a number of academic outcomes. Aims. The main goal of the study was to investigate the incremental validity of chronotype as a predictor of academic achievement after controlling for a number of traditional predictors. In so doing, a further aim was ongoing validation of a chronotype questionnaire, the Lark‐Owl Chronotype Indicator. Sample. The sample comprised 272 students attending 9th and 10th grades at five German high schools. Data was also obtained from 132 parents of these students. Method. Students were assessed in class via self‐report questionnaires and a standardized cognitive test. Parents filled out a questionnaire at home. The incremental validity of chronotype was investigated using hierarchical linear regression. Validity of the chronotype questionnaire was assessed by correlating student ratings of their chronotype with behavioural data on sleep, food intake, and drug consumption and with parent ratings of chronotype. Results. Eveningness was a significant (negative) predictor of overall grade point average (GPA), math–science GPA, and language GPA, after cognitive ability, conscientiousness, need for cognition, achievement motivation, and gender were held constant. Validity evidence for the chronotype measure was established by significant correlations with parent‐ratings and behavioural data. Conclusions. Results point to the possible discrimination of adolescents with a proclivity towards eveningness at school. Possible explanations for the relationship between chronotype and academic achievement are presented. Implications for educational practice are also discussed.     

The effect of observational learning on students’ performance,processes, and motivation in two creative domains

Background . Previous research has shown that observation can be effective for learning in various domains, for example, argumentative writing and mathematics. The question in this paper is whether observational learning can also be beneficial when learning to perform creative tasks in visual and verbal arts. Aims . We hypothesized that observation has a positive effect on performance, process, and motivation. We expected similarity in competence between the model and the observer to influence the effectiveness of observation. Sample . A total of 131 Dutch students (10^th grade, 15 years old) participated. Method . Two experiments were carried out (one for visual and one for verbal arts). Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions; two observational learning conditions and a control condition (learning by practising). The observational learning conditions differed in instructional focus (on the weaker or the more competent model of a pair to be observed). Results . We found positive effects of observation on creative products, creative processes, and motivation in the visual domain. In the verbal domain, observation seemed to affect the creative process, but not the other variables. The model similarity hypothesis was not confirmed. Conclusions . Results suggest that observation may foster learning in creative domains, especially in the visual arts.