The role of internal inhibition and the frontal lobes in child development

The theory that children show a predominance of excitation over internal inhibition and that this is due to inadequate development of the frontal lobes is explored and extended. Experimental results show that children resemble leucotomised monkeys in their difficulty in overcoming an initial preference in discrimination tasks.     

An investigation of changes in auditory sensitivity during the performance of a mental task

Auditory thresholds were measured while the subject was relaxed and while he was doing mental arithmetic. Thresholds were lowered under the second condition. Some possible explanations are briefly considered.     

Attentional processes in young children with congenital visual impairment

The study investigated attentional processes of 32 preschool children with congenital visual impairment (VI). Children with profound visual impairment (PVI) and severe visual impairment (SVI) were compared to a group of typically developing sighted children in their ability to respond to adult directed attention in terms of establishing, maintaining, and shifting attention on toys. The measures of children's sensory‐motor understanding (SMU) and language ability were obtained using the Reynell‐Zinkin scales of mental development. The video‐recordings of these play‐based assessments were coded for three categories of behavioural responses (Establish, Maintain, and Shift). The three groups were matched on verbal comprehension (VC), but differed significantly in their SMU and their chronological age. The groups of children with PVI and SVI were found to be comparable in their ability to establish and maintain attention on objects. Despite a relatively good performance overall both groups scored significantly lower on those skills than children who were sighted. However, with regards to attention shifting, children with PVI showed significantly lower performance than both the children with SVI and the sighted children who were similar on this component. Ability to maintain and shift attention was significantly related to the cognitive ability of children with PVI; however the poorer attentional responses were not confined only to the children with low IQ. The results are discussed in relation to the role of vision, cognitive ability and executive function in attentional processes in children with congenital VI.     

Relations between emotion, illusory word perception, and orthographic repetition blindness: Tests of binding theory

This study reports effects of meaning and emotion (taboo vs. neutral words) on an illusory word (IW) phenomenon linked to orthographic repetition blindness (RB). Participants immediately recalled rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) lists consisting of two critical words (C1 and C2) containing shared letters, followed by a word fragment: for example, lake (C1) brake (C2) ush (fragment). For neutral critical words, participants often recalled C1, but not C2 or the fragment, reporting instead a nonoccurring or illusory word: here, brush (a blend of C2 and the fragment). Forward RB (defined as reduced report of orthographically similar C2s) was more common for neutral than for taboo C2s, and taboo IWs were reported significantly more often than were neutral IWs. Moreover, when both C2 and the potential IW were taboo, a new phenomenon emerged: Participants reliably reported both the IW and the intact C2. These and other results supported a binding theory of the IW phenomenon and orthographic RB.     

Incongruent Feeling States in Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT

Analysts occasionally find that we have dreamt of a patient or experienced feelings in sessions that appear to have nothing to do with the feelings or content presented by the patient. This can be disturbing or confusing, but is always fascinating. This article defines and illustrates these phenomena, grapples with their meanings, and attempts to understand how they came about.     

Dual processes in decision making and developmental neuroscience: A fuzzy-trace model

From Piaget to the present, traditional and dual-process theories have predicted improvement in reasoning from childhood to adulthood, and improvement has been observed. However, developmental reversals—that reasoning biases emerge with development—have also been observed in a growing list of paradigms. We explain how fuzzy-trace theory predicts both improvement and developmental reversals in reasoning and decision making. Drawing on research on logical and quantitative reasoning, as well as on risky decision making in the laboratory and in life, we illustrate how the same small set of theoretical principles apply to typical neurodevelopment, encompassing childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and to neurological conditions such as autism and Alzheimer’s disease. For example, framing effects—that risk preferences shift when the same decisions are phrased in terms of gains vs. losses—emerge in early adolescence as gist-based intuition develops. In autistic individuals, who rely less on gist-based intuition and more on verbatim-based analysis, framing biases are attenuated (i.e., they outperform typically developing control subjects). In adults, simple manipulations based on fuzzy-trace theory can make framing effects appear and disappear depending on whether gist-based intuition or verbatim-based analysis is induced. These theoretical principles are summarized and integrated in a new mathematical model that specifies how dual modes of reasoning combine to produce predictable variability in performance. In particular, we show how the most popular and extensively studied model of decision making—prospect theory—can be derived from fuzzy-trace theory by combining analytical (verbatim-based) and intuitive (gist-based) processes.