Young children's non‐numerical ordering ability at the start of formal education longitudinally predicts their symbolic number skills and academic achievement in maths

Ordinality is a fundamental feature of numbers and recent studies have highlighted the role that number ordering abilities play in mathematical development (e.g., Lyons et al., 2014 ), as well as mature mathematical performance (e.g., Lyons & Beilock, 2011 ). The current study tested the novel hypothesis that non‐numerical ordering ability, as measured by the ordering of familiar sequences of events, also plays an important role in maths development. Ninety children were tested in their first school year and 87 were followed up at the end of their second school year, to test the hypothesis that ordinal processing, including the ordering of non‐numerical materials, would be related to their maths skills both cross‐sectionally and longitudinally. The results confirmed this hypothesis. Ordinal processing measures were significantly related to maths both cross‐sectionally and longitudinally, and children's non‐numerical ordering ability in their first year of school (as measured by order judgements for everyday events and the parents’ report of their child's everyday ordering ability) was the strongest longitudinal predictor of maths one year later, when compared to several measures that are traditionally considered to be important predictors of early maths development. Children's everyday ordering ability, as reported by parents, also significantly predicted growth in formal maths ability between Year 1 and Year 2, although this was not the case for the event ordering task. The present study provides strong evidence that domain‐general ordering abilities play an important role in the development of children's maths skills at the beginning of formal education.     

Longitudinal associations between low morning cortisol in infancy and anger dysregulation in early childhood in a CPS‐referred sample

Children who experience early adversity are at increased risk for developing psychopathology, and dysfunction of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis is a possible mechanism conferring this risk. This study sought to characterize the association between morning cortisol during different developmental periods and deficits in children's emotion regulation, a core feature of many psychological disorders. Morning cortisol was collected at two time points (i.e., during infancy, M = 13.0 months old, and during early childhood, M = 36.8 months old) from 120 children with histories of child protective services (CPS) involvement. Children completed a lab visit during early childhood (M = 38.6 months old) that involved an observational measure of anger regulation. Results showed that low morning cortisol during infancy, but not early childhood, predicted increased anger dysregulation during early childhood. These results highlight the importance of developmental timing in assessing the effects of HPA axis functioning and suggest that low cortisol during infancy is a risk factor for later emotion regulation difficulties.     

The Compositionality of Logical Connectives in Child Italian

This paper investigates the interpretation that Italian-speaking children and adults assign to negative sentences with disjunction and negative sentences with conjunction. The aim of the study was to determine whether children and adults assign the same interpretation to these types of sentences. The Semantic Subset Principle (SSP) (Crain et al., in: Clifton, Frazer, Rayner (eds) Perspective on sentence processing, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillside, 1994) predicts that children’s initial scope assignment should correspond to the interpretation that makes sentences true in the narrowest range of circumstances, even when this is not the interpretation assigned by adults. This prediction was borne out in previous studies in Japanese, Mandarin and Turkish. As predicted by the SSP, the findings of the present study indicate that Italian-speaking children and adults assign the same interpretation to negative sentences with conjunction (conjunction takes scope over negation). By contrast, the study revealed that some children differed from adults in the interpretation they assigned to negative sentences with disjunction. Adults interpreted disjunction as taking scope over negation, whereas children were divided into two groups: one group interpreted disjunction as taking scope over negation as adults did; another group interpreted negation as taking scope over disjunction, as predicted by the SSP. To explain the findings, we propose that Italian-speaking children initially differ from adults as dictated by the SSP, but children converge on the adult grammar earlier than children acquiring other languages due to the negative concord status of Italian, including the application of negative concord to sentences with disjunction.     

Sexual‐perception processes in acquaintance‐targeted sexual aggression

This study analyzes data from seven published studies to examine whether three performance‐based indices of men's misperception of women's sexual interest (MSI), derived from a self‐report questionnaire, are associated with sexual‐aggression history, rape‐supportive attitudes, sociosexuality, problem drinking, and self‐reported MSI. Almost 2000 undergraduate men judged the justifiability of a man's increasingly unwanted advances toward a woman on the Heterosocial Perception Survey‐Revised. Participants self‐reported any sexual‐aggression history, and some completed questionnaires assessing rape‐supportive attitudes, sociosexuality, problem drinking, and self‐reported MSI. A three‐parameter logistic function was fitted to participants’ justifiability ratings within a non‐linear mixed‐effects framework, which provided precise participant‐specific estimates of three sexual‐perception processes (baseline justifiability, bias, and sensitivity). Sexual‐aggression history and rape‐supportive attitudes predicted: (a) reduced sensitivity to women's affect; (b) more liberal biases, such that the woman's affect had to be more negative before justifiability ratings dropped substantially; and (c) greater baseline justifiability of continued advances after a positive response. Sexual‐aggression history and attitudes correlated more strongly with sensitivity than baseline justifiability; remaining variables showed the opposite pattern. This work underscores the role of sexual‐perception processes in sexual aggression and illustrates the derivation of performance‐based estimates of sexual‐perception processes from questionnaire responses.

     

Bouncing Back from Setbacks: On the Mediating Role of Team Resilience in the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Team Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of team resilience on different facets of effectiveness (team viability and quality of the group experience). Moreover, given the importance of team resilience for the organizational context, it was also our aim to contribute to the study of the conditions that promote team resilience, analyzing the role of transformational leadership. Finally, we examined whether the relationship between transformational leadership and team resilience stimulates positive team outcomes. Ninety teams (445 employees from 40 companies) were surveyed and path analysis was used in the test of the hypotheses. The results showed a positive direct effect of team resilience on both team viability and the quality of the group experience. Moreover, a positive relationship was also identified between transformational leadership and team resilience. Finally, support was found for the mediated effect of team resilience on the relationship between transformational leadership and the dimensions of team effectiveness considered. The findings of this study highlight the role of team resilience as an intervening process between transformational leadership and team effectiveness. Supervisors should promote team resilience, adopting transformational leadership behaviors, in order to contribute to increase team viability and the quality of the group experience.     

Infants' ability to use luminance information to individuate objects

Recent research indicates that infants first use form and then surface features as the basis for individuating objects. However, very little is known about the underlying basis for infants' differential sensitivity to form than surface features. The present research assessed infants' sensitivity to luminance differences. Like other surface properties, luminance information typically reveals little about an object. Unlike other surface properties (e.g. pattern, color), the visual system can detect luminance differences at birth. The outcome of two experiments indicated that 11.5-month-olds, but not 7.5-month-olds, used luminance differences to individuate objects. These results suggest that it is not the age at which infants can detect a feature, but the nature of the information carried by the feature, that determines infants' capacity to individuate objects.     

Eighteen month test-retest stability of the youth self report in a sample of Catalonian adolescents

The aim of this study is to assess the test-retest stability of the Spanish version of Youth Self Report after 18 mo. for a sample of 357 Catalonian high school students (158 boys and 199 girls). At Time 2 the girls' scores increased on Delinquent and Aggressive Behavior scales and, therefore on Externalizing scores. At Time 2 the boys' scores increased on Attention Problems and Delinquent Behavior and decreased on Anxious/Depressed, Social Problems, and Internalizing scales. Significant differences in the remaining scales were not observed. The test-retest intraclass correlations for the broad-band scales ranged between .62 (Internalizing) and .68 (Externalizing) and for the narrow-band scales between .37 and .67. The correlations for girls and boys were similar but slightly higher for girls on Anxious/Depressed and Thought Problems.     

Sex-specific differences in olfactory sensitivity for putative human pheromones in nonhuman primates

In humans, the volatile C19-steroids androsta-4,16-dien-3-one (AND) and estra-1,3,5(10),16-tetraen-3-ol (EST) have been shown to modulate autonomic nervous system responses, and to cause hypothalamic activation in a gender-specific manner. Using two conditioning paradigms, the authors here show that pigtail macaques and squirrel monkeys of both sexes were able to detect AND and EST at concentrations in the micromolar and mM range, respectively. Male and female spider monkeys, in contrast, differed markedly in their sensitivity to these two odorous steroids, with males not showing any behavioral responses to the highest concentrations of AND tested and females not responding to the highest concentrations of EST. These data provide the first examples of sex-specific bimodal distributions of olfactory sensitivity in a nonhuman primate species.     

Lists of Spanish sentences with equivalent predictability, phonetic content, length, and frequency of the last word

This paper presents a pool of Spanish sentences designed for use in cognitive research and speech processing in circumstances in which the effects of context are relevant. These lists of sentences are divided into six lists of 25 equivalent high-predictability sentences and six lists of 25 low-predictability sentences according to the extent to which the last word can be predicted by the preceding context. These lists were also equivalent in phonetic content, length and frequency of the last word. These lists are intended for use in psycholinguistic research with Spanish-speaking listeners.