Mothers' beliefs about listening: Implications for children's comprehension and conceptions of listening

Forty-four mothers offered their beliefs about listening and methods for encouraging listening in their 3- to 5-year-old children. Children's comprehension performance and conceptions of listening were also obtained. Mother perceived themselves as the primary agent responsible for children's development of basic listening competencies, such as figuring out the main point of what someone said to them, not interrupting others, and asking a question of the speaker when confused. Children who had strong comprehension skills had mothers who believed that listening is a complex set of activities, emphasized their own responsibility in ensuring that their children develop basic listening competencies, stressed comprehension processes and question asking in their conceptions of listening and in their techniques for enhancing children's listening, and began reading to their children at an early age.     

On the Robustness of Outcome Bias: No Constraint by Prior Culpability

Research on outcome bias has shown that blame attributions for behavioral decisions depend on the decision's consequences. Five studies of American undergraduates (N = 219, N = 83, N = 62, N = 279, and N = 45, respectively) demonstrated robust outcome effects across a variety of circumstances. A manipulation of prior negligence (Study 1), and attempts to keep prior negligence exceedingly low (Studies 2-4) produced converging results. In Study 5, a within-participants manipulation failed to eradicate outcome effects. Furthermore, outcome effects were not moderated by beliefs in a just world. Across all studies, mediational analyses suggested that participants adjusted estimates of negligence to match outcomes, which in turn led to more outcome-consistent attributions of blame. Study 5 showed that those low in belief in a just world were especially likely to adjust their negligence ratings in this way. These studies demonstrate that outcome effects contravene both the standards for rationality delineated by rational decision theorists, and also the more relaxed standards embodied in established legal doctrine.     

Perspectives on the Social Psychology of Creativity

Scholars began serious study into the social psychology of creativity about 25 years after the field of creativity research had taken root. Over the past 35 years, examination of social and environmental influences on creativity has become increasingly vigorous, with broad implications for the psychology of human performance, and with applications to education, business, and beyond. In this article, we revisit the origins of the social psychology of creativity, trace its arc, and suggest directions for its future.     

Similarity-based interference in a working memory numerical updating task: age-related differences between younger and older adults

Similarity among representations held simultaneously in working memory (WM) is a factor which increases interference and hinders performance. The aim of the current study was to investigate age-related differences between younger and older adults in a working memory numerical updating task, in which the similarity between information held in WM was manipulated. Results showed a higher susceptibility of older adults to similarity-based interference when accuracy, and not response times, was considered. It was concluded that older adults' WM difficulties appear to be due to the availability of stored information, which, in turn, might be related to the ability to generate distinctive representations and to the process of binding such representations to their context when similar information has to be processed in WM.     

Observational learning in mice can be prevented by medial prefrontal cortex stimulation and enhanced by nucleus accumbens stimulation

The neural structures involved in ongoing appetitive and/or observational learning behaviors remain largely unknown. Operant conditioning and observational learning were evoked and recorded in a modified Skinner box provided with an on-line video recording system. Mice improved their acquisition of a simple operant conditioning task by observational learning. Electrical stimulation of the observer's medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) at a key moment of the demonstration (when the demonstrator presses a lever in order to obtain a reward) cancels out the benefits of observation. In contrast, electrical stimulation of the observer's nucleus accumbens (NAc) enhances observational learning. Ongoing cognitive processes in the demonstrator could also be driven by electrical stimulation of these two structures, preventing the proper execution of the ongoing instrumental task (mPFC) or stopping pellet intake (NAc). Long-term potentiation (LTP) evoked in these two cortical structures did not prevent the acquisition or retrieval process--namely, mPFC and/or NAc stimulation only prevented, or modified, the ongoing behavioral process. The dorsal hippocampus was not involved in either of these two behavioral processes. Thus, both ongoing observational learning and performance of an instrumental task require the active contribution of the mPFC and/or the NAc.     

The Relation Between Co-rumination, Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Child Psychopathology

Little is known about which processes explain the well-established link between maternal and child symptomatology. Interpersonal coping processes may be worth exploring, as depressed mothers have characteristic coping styles that may influence interactions with their children. We examined two interpersonal coping processes as potential factors explaining how depressive symptomatology in mothers impacts child psychopathology: parent-child co-rumination (dwelling on negative affect, over-analyzing problems) and impaired problem-solving. We analyzed 198 aggressive children (most of whom also had elevated internalizing symptoms) who engaged in structured discussions with their mothers. Coders rated the extent to which dyads problem-solved and co-ruminated during discussions, and mothers filled out questionnaires assessing maternal and child symptoms. Path analysis tested whether higher levels of co-rumination and poor problem-solving statistically mediated the relation between depressive symptoms in mothers and child internalizing and externalizing behaviour. Maternal depressive symptomatology was correlated with greater child symptoms, higher rates of co-rumination and poorer problem-solving. Statistical mediation was non-significant. Results support the established link between maternal depression and child psychopathology, and suggest that dysphoric mothers and their children engage in maladaptive coping interactions.     

Tactile sensitivity in Asperger syndrome

People with autism and Asperger syndrome are anecdotally said to be hypersensitive to touch. In two experiments, we measured tactile thresholds and suprathreshold tactile sensitivity in a group of adults with Asperger syndrome. In the first experiment, tactile perceptual thresholds were measured. Two frequencies of vibrotactile stimulation were used: 30 and 200 Hz. The results demonstrated significantly lower tactile perceptual thresholds in the Asperger group at 200 Hz but not at 30 Hz, thus confirming tactile hypersensitivity but only for one class of stimulus. A second experiment investigated whether self-produced movement affected the perception of touch in a group of adults with Asperger syndrome. A suprathreshold tactile stimulus was produced either by the participant (self-produced condition) or by the experimenter (externally produced condition) and participants were asked to rate the perception of the tactile stimulation. The results demonstrated that, while both Asperger and control groups rated self-produced touch as less tickly than external touch, the Asperger group rated both types of tactile stimulus as significantly more tickly and intense than did the control group. This experiment confirms the finding of tactile hypersensitivity, but shows that the perceptual consequences of self-produced touch are attenuated in the normal way in people with Asperger syndrome. An abnormality in this process cannot therefore account for their tactile hypersensitivity.     

Working memory and executive control: inhibitory processes in updating and random generation tasks

Working Memory (WM) span predicts subjects' performance in control executive tasks and, in addition, it has been related to the capacity to inhibit irrelevant information. In this paper we investigate the role of WM span in two executive tasks focusing our attention on inhibitory components of both tasks. High and low span participants recalled targets words rejecting irrelevant items at the same time (Experiment 1) and they generated random numbers (Experiment 2). Results showed a clear relation between WM span and performance in both tasks. In addition, analyses of intrusion errors (Experiment 1) and stereotyped responses (Experiment 2) indicated that high span individuals were able to efficiently use the inhibitory component implied in both tasks. The pattern of data provides support to the relation between WM span and control executive tasks through an inhibitory mechanism.     

Adaptation of Child's Report of Parent Behavior Inventory for a Spanish population

This study presented an adaptation in Spanish of the Child's Reports of Parental Behavior Inventory (CRPBI) . The CRPBI is an instrument that allows us to assess family discipline perceived by children in the relation with their mothers and with their fathers. It's considered a good instrument to assess the perceptions that children have of parent behavior. The Spanish adaptation has been carried out with a sample of 1,274 Spanish adolescents (males and females) from different educational centers of the Valencian Community (13-18 years). The results show that affect, support and control are the main dimensions in the perceived child rearing styles of parents in our population.     

Heterosocial perceptual organization: application of the choice model to sexual coercion

Luce's (1959, 1963) choice model was used to characterize individual differences in men's perception of women's affect as friendly, sexually interested, sad, or rejecting. Women's clothing styles were associated with differences in the model's parameters. Sensitivity to sadness, rejection, and friendliness declined when women were dressed provocatively, whereas sensitivity to sexual interest increased. Provocative clothing was also associated with an increased bias to assume that positive affect was sexual interest rather than friendliness. Men at risk for perpetrating sexual aggression were less sensitive to women's affect than low-risk men were. They were also more likely than low-risk men to associate provocative clothing with sexual interest, and conservative clothing with friendliness. Results indicate that heterosocial perception may help to predict sexually coercive behavior and may be an important target for intervention.