Evolving the biobehavioral family model: the fit of attachment

The 1993 Biobehavioral Family model (BBFM) posits that family relational patterns and biobehavioral reactivity interact so as to influence the physical and psychological health of the children. The revised 1999 BBFM incorporates parent-child attachment as a pivotal construct. The current study tests the 1999 BBFM by predicting, in asthmatic children, that child perception of parental relationship quality, triangulation of child in marital conflict, and parent-child security of relatedness will be associated with hopelessness and vagal activation (one mechanism of airway compromise in asthma). In this study, 22 children with asthma (11 males/11 females, aged 8 to 16), watched, alone, an emotionally challenging movie, then engaged in family discussion tasks (problem solving, loss, conflict, cohesion) and completed the Children's Perception of Interparental Scale, the Relatedness Questionnaire, The Multidimensional Scale of Anxiety in Children, and the Hopelessness Scale for Children. Heart rate variability, measured at baseline and throughout the movie and family tasks, was used to compute respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)--an inferential measure of vagal activation. The child's perception of parental conflict showed trends of association with triangulation and insecure father-child relatedness. Triangulation and hopelessness also were associated with insecure father-child relatedness, all of which were associated with vagal activation. Insecure mother-child relatedness was correlated only with hopelessness. Anxiety was not related to any variables. These findings lend support to the 1999 BBFM, and suggest a key role for parent-child attachment.     

Using a cognitive architecture to examine what develops

Different theories of development propose alternative mechanisms by which development occurs. Cognitive architectures can be used to examine the influence of each proposed mechanism of development while keeping all other mechanisms constant. An ACT-R computational model that matched adult behavior in solving a 21-block pyramid puzzle was created. The model was modified in three ways that corresponded to mechanisms of development proposed by developmental theories. The results showed that all the modifications (two of capacity and one of strategy choice) could approximate the behavior of 7-year-old children on the task. The strategy-choice modification provided the closest match on the two central measures of task behavior (time taken per layer, r = .99, and construction attempts per layer, r = .73). Modifying cognitive architectures is a fruitful way to compare and test potential developmental mechanisms, and can therefore help in specifying "what develops."     

Access to attitude-relevant information in memory as a determinant of persuasion: The role of message attributes

Recipients with access to attitude-relevant information in memory were thought to draw on these beliefs and prior experiences to evaluate the validity of message arguments. Consistent with this idea, persuasion for these recipients was largely a function of the perceived validity of message content: Messages containing high-quality arguments were more persuasive than messages containing lowquality arguments, whereas variations in a structural attribute of the message (its length) proved to have little impact on opinion change. In contrast, people who tend to retrieve little attitude-relevant information were believed to be less able to evaluate the validity of message arguments in terms of information accessed from memory. Instead, it was anticipated that they would base their opinion judgments on a more superficial analysis of persuasion cues, focusing on attributes like message length. Consistent with this reasoning, these recipients were more persuaded by long than short messages. Recipients with moderate levels of retrieval functioned much like the high-retrieval subjects.     

An Hebrew language version of the Stroop test

We present normative data from a Hebrew language version of the Stroop color-word test. In this sample of college-educated Israeli young adults, 18 women and 28 men with a mean age of 28.4 yr. completed a Hebrew language Stroop test. When compared with 1978 English language norms of Golden, Hebrew speakers were slower on color-word reading and color naming, similar on naming the color of incongruently colored names of colors, and showed less interference. Slowed color-word reading and color-naming may reflect the two-syllable length of the Hebrew names for one-syllable length English language colors; reduced interference may reflect the exclusion of vowels in much Hebrew printing and subjects' ability to provide competing, nonconflicting words while naming the color of words in which the hue and the lexical content do not match.     

Algorithms for fast and precise computation of the normal integral

Five highly accurate algorithms that evaluate the normal distribution function are presented. The algorithms, which are based on either numerical integration or series expansions, are explicated, and applications of Simpson’s rule are discussed. Computer programs that implement the algorithms were compared with respect to accuracy and speed. The programs attain from 11- to 15-decimal-place accuracy in finding one-tailed areas of the normal curve, and most execute very quickly. Recommendations are made for selection of algorithms and programs to approximate the normal distribution.     

Externalization as a self-protective mechanism in a stigmatized group.

The Nowicki-Strickland measure of internal-external locus of control was administered to 110 African-American adolescents. Analysis indicated high externalization, even though these students had a higher than average self-concept.     

Negative priming without ignoring

Negative priming is conventionally defined by slowed responses to a target item that appeared previously as a distractor. As a result, it is widely assumed that negative priming is caused by an act of ignoring. Three experiments are reported in which novel abstract shapes were studied with either “shallow” or “deep” encoding instructions. This study phase was followed by asame-different discrimination task similar to that employed by DeSchepper and Treisman (1996). Same-different discrimination was slower for old than for new target shapes, and this negative priming effect depended on the difficulty of the discrimination task. The results suggest that negative priming may not be caused by the ignoring of a prime stimulus.     

Using Qualitative Methods to Develop Contextually Relevant Measures and Preventive Interventions: An Illustration

Qualitative methods were used to develop a contextually relevant quantitative measure of parenting stress and inform the design of family-focused interventions aimed at preventing adolescent mental and behavioral health problems. The study focused on the experiences of low-income one- and two-parent families representing three ethnic groups (Mexican, African, and European Americans) living in low-income neighborhoods in a large Southwestern city. This report describes the place of this study in a broader program of prevention research, the qualitative methods and data analysis procedures employed, and how the results were used to develop a new measure of parenting stress and inform future program design. The report also includes reflective comments on the methods used and lessons gained.     

THERE ARE TWO WORD-LENGTH EFFECTS IN VERBAL SHORT-TERM MEMORY:

Abstract— In the word-length effect (WLE), lists of shorter words are better recalled than lists of longer words This effect a fundamental to decay-based theories of verbal short-term memory, such as the phonological loop theory (Baddeley, 1986) The WLE has been attributed to the time taken to articulate words, not their structure, a critical point in the debate between decay and interference theories However, this article, we show that the traditional WLE comprises two opposed effects an advantage for words spoken more quickly (short words in terms of duration) and an advantage for words with more elements (long words in terms of complexity) We also report two interactions a disadvantage for a midlist change in duration and an advantage for a midlist change in complexity These results contradict simple decay- based theories and establish the importance of interference in short- term memory We discuss whether decay is also required     

Auditory and phonetic levels of processing in speech perception: neurophysiological and information-processing analyses.

Two new experimental operations were used to distinguish between auditory and phonetic levels of processing in speech perception: the first based on reaction time data in speeded classification tasks with synthetic speech stimuli, and the second based on average evoked potentials recorded concurrently in the same tasks. Each of four experiments compared the processing of two different dimensions of the same synthetic consonant-vowel syllables. When a phonetic dimensions was compared to an auditory dimension, different patterns of results were obtained in both the reaction time and evoked potential data. No such differences were obtained for isolated acoustic components of the phonetic dimension or for two purely auditory dimensions. Together with other recent evidence, the present results constitute additional converging operations on the distinction between auditory and phonetic processes in speech perception and on the idea that phonetic processing involves mechanisms that are lateralized in one cerebral hemisphere.