The stability of mastery motivation and its relationship with home environment in infants and toddlers

Mastery motivation (intrinsic drives to explore and master one's environment) is a key developmental element. The aims of this study were to investigate (1) the stability of mastery motivation between 2 and 3 years of age for two genders; and (2) the associations between early home environment and toddlers’ mastery motivation in children with typical development.

Methods

Data of 102 children developing typically from a birth cohort study at Northern Taiwan were analyzed in two parts: (1) stability part: mastery motivation of children were measured at 2 and 3 years of age; (2) environment part: child-parent dyads were assessed from birth, 4 months, 6 months, and 2-3 years of age. Outcomes variables were measured at ages 2 and 3 years by the Dimension of Mastery Questionnaire-17th version. Main predictive variables were measured by Home Observation for Measuring Environment Inventory (HOME) to collect data of the qualities of home environment at 6 months and 2 years; by the Revised Infant Temperament Questionnaire to obtain 4-month activity levels; and by the Comprehensive Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers to obtain 2-year developmental quotient (DQ).

Results

There was moderate stability of mastery motivation from 2 to 3 years, and girls’ stability was higher than boys’. 6-Month HOME rather than 2-year HOME measures were positively and significantly correlated with instrumental mastery motivation even when controlling for gender, activity level, and DQ.

Conclusion

Mastery motivation had moderate stability during the toddler period. The quality of home environment in infancy appeared to have a significant impact on toddler's mastery motivation. To promote mastery motivation, caregivers should provide better quality of home environment for infants/toddlers during the very early years.     

Transmission and refutation of organisational rumours: Consumer identification and processing types

If consumers accept rumours without verifying them, considerable damage to individuals or organisations could result. By applying the appraisal theory of emotions, this article provides a framework for clarifying rumour communications by people who identify strongly or weakly with an organisation that is the object of a rumour. Study 1 reveals that when people identify strongly with the rumour object and hear an important rumour, they spread positive information more readily than negative information. They are also more likely to transmit information of high (vs. low) importance when the rumour is positive. Conversely, weak identifiers are equally likely to spread positive and negative information, regardless of importance. Study 2 incorporates a heuristic‐systematic model and demonstrates that strong identifiers process refutations systematically when those refutations refer to a positive, less important rumour. Conversely, they process refutation information heuristically if they confront positive, important rumours or if they receive a refutation of a negative rumour. Identification with the rumour object affects its spread, but rumour objects can develop refutation strategies to halt the spread of negative rumours or encourage the spread of positive rumours about the organisation. Rumour refutation efforts cannot be generalised but instead should be targeted according to consumers' strong or weak identification.     

Task shifting in dual-task settings

When a participant is asked to perform two tasks in alternation, their mean reaction times were slower than when they performed the same tasks repeatedly. This "shift cost" has been hypothesized to reflect the time course of a single central executive that exerts control over thought and actions in task shifting. This study attempted to test this hypothesis using dual-task methodology. Participants were asked to carry out both a subtracting task and a rule-shifting task simultaneously. The main interest is to examine the effect of dual task on the magnitude of shift cost. The results showed that performing a concurrent subtracting task significantly interfered with the shifting operation resulting in over-additive time cost for shifting of task set. We further suggest that such interference may arise from the competition between activations of various rules.     

Motion fading and the motion aftereffect share a common process of neural adaptation

After prolonged viewing of a slowly drifting or rotating pattern under strict fixation, the pattern appears to slow down and then momentarily stop. Here, we show that this motion fading occurs not only for slowly moving stimuli, but also for stimuli moving at high speed; after prolonged viewing of high-speed stimuli, the stimuli appear to slow down but not to stop. We report psychophysical evidence that the same neural adaptation process likely gives rise to motion fading and to the motion aftereffect.     

Detection of spatial cues in linear and logarithmic frequency-modulated sweeps

Frequency- and amplitude-modulated (FM and AM) sounds are the building blocks of complex sounds. In the present study, we investigated the ability of human observers to process spatial information in an important class of FM sounds: broadband directional sweeps common in natural communication signals such as speech. The stimuli consisted of linear or logarithmic unidirectional FM pulses that swept either up or down in frequency at various rates. Spatial localization thresholds monotonically improved as sweep duration decreased and as sweep rate increased, but no difference in performance was observed between logarithmic and linear or between upand down-frequency sweeps. Counterintuitive reversals in localization were observed which suggested that the localization of high-frequency sweeps may be strongly dominated by amplitude information even in situations in which one might consider timing cues to be critical. Implications of these findings for the localization of complex sounds are discussed.     

Loving-kindness brings loving-kindness: The impact of Buddhism on cognitive self–other integration

Common wisdom has it that Buddhism enhances compassion and self-other integration. We put this assumption to empirical test by comparing practicing Taiwanese Buddhists with well-matched atheists. Buddhists showed more evidence of self-other integration in the social Simon task, which assesses the degree to which people co-represent the actions of a coactor. This suggests that self-other integration and task co-representation vary as a function of religious practice.     

A Network Approach for Evaluating Coherence in Multivariate Systems: An Application to Psychophysiological Emotion Data

We present an approach for evaluating coherence in multivariate systems that considers all the variables simultaneously. We operationalize the multivariate system as a network and define coherence as the efficiency with which a signal is transmitted throughout the network. We illustrate this approach with time series data from 15 psychophysiological signals representing individuals’ moment-by-moment emotional reactions to emotional films. First, we summarize the time series through nonparametric Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves. Second, we use Spearman rank correlations to calculate relationships between each pair of variables. Third, based on the obtained associations, we construct a network using the variables as nodes. Finally, we examine signal transmission through all the nodes in the network. Our results indicate that the network consisting of the 15 psychophysiological signals has a small-world structure, with three clusters of variables and strong within-cluster connections. This structure supports an effective signal transmission across the entire network. When compared across experimental conditions, our results indicate that coherence is relatively stronger for intense emotional stimuli than for neutral stimuli. These findings are discussed in relation to multivariate methods and emotion theories.     

Spatial and temporal frequency in figure-ground organization

Figure-ground organization of an ambiguous pattern can be manipulated by the spatial and temporal frequency content of the two regions of the pattern. Controlling for space-averaged luminance and perceived contrast, we tested patterns in which the two regions of the ambiguous pattern contained sine-wave gratings of 8, 4, 1, or 0.5 cycles per degree (cpd) undergoing on:off flicker at the rates of 0, 3.75, 7.5, or 15 Hz. For a full set of combinations of temporal frequency differences, with each spatial frequency the higher temporal frequency was seen as background for more of the viewing time. For two spatial frequency combinations, 1 and 4 cpd, and 1 and 8 cpd, tested under each of the four temporal frequencies, the lower spatial frequency region was seen as the background for more of the viewing time. When the effects of spatial and temporal frequency were set in opposition, neither was predominant in determining perceptual organization. It is suggested that figure-ground organization may parallel the sustained-transient response characteristics of the visual system.