Knowing When Help Is Needed: A Developing Sense of Causal Complexity

Research on the division of cognitive labor has found that adults and children as young as age 5 are able to find appropriate experts for different causal systems. However, little work has explored how children and adults decide when to seek out expert knowledge in the first place. We propose that children and adults rely (in part) on “mechanism metadata,” information about mechanism information. We argue that mechanism metadata is relatively consistent across individuals exposed to similar amounts of mechanism information, and it is applicable to a wide range of causal systems. In three experiments, we show that adults and children as young as 5 years of age have a consistent sense of the causal complexity of different causal systems, and that this sense of complexity is related to decisions about when to seek expert knowledge, but over development there is a shift in focus from procedural information to internal mechanism information.     

Translating the ICAP Theory of Cognitive Engagement Into Practice

ICAP is a theory of active learning that differentiates students’ engagement based on their behaviors. ICAP postulates that I nteractive engagement, demonstrated by co‐generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning to C onstructive engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement exceed the benefits of A ctive or P assive engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively. This paper discusses a 5‐year project that attempted to translate ICAP into a theory of instruction using five successive measures: (a) teachers’ understanding of ICAP after completing an online module, (b) their success at designing lesson plans using different ICAP modes, (c) fidelity of teachers’ classroom implementation, (d) modes of students’ enacted behaviors, and (e) students’ learning outcomes. Although teachers had minimal success in designing Constructive and Interactive activities, students nevertheless learned significantly more in the context of Constructive than Active activities. We discuss reasons for teachers’ overall difficulty in designing and eliciting Interactive engagement.     

Sequenced neurocognitive and behavioral parent training for the treatment of ADHD in school-age children

The present study examines the potential of sequencing a neurocognitive intervention with behavioral parent training (BPT) to improve executive functions (EFs), psychiatric symptoms, and multiple indices of functional impairment in school-age children aged 7 to 11 years who have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Specifically, in a randomized controlled trial design, 85 children were assigned to either Cogmed Working Memory Training (CWMT) followed by an empirically supported, manualized BPT intervention, or to a placebo version of CWMT followed by the same BPT intervention. Working memory maintenance (i.e., attention control/short-term memory), working memory processing and manipulation, ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms, impairment in parent–child dynamics, familial impairment, and overall functional compromise were evaluated as outcomes. The results suggest specific effects of the combined CWMT and BPT program on verbal and nonverbal working memory storage and nonverbal working memory processing and manipulation but no incremental benefits in regard to ADHD symptoms, ODD symptoms, and functional outcomes. The present findings do not support the hypothesis regarding the complementary and augmentative benefits of sequenced neurocognitive and BPT interventions for the treatment of ADHD. These results, the study’s limitations, and future directions for research are further discussed.     

Who knows what's good to eat? Infants fail to match the food preferences of antisocial others

Humans gather most of their knowledge about the world, including objectively true facts and specific cultural norms, by observing and being taught by others. Some individuals are worthy teachers and objects of imitation, having knowledge of cultural practices and positive intentions to inform. Others are better ignored because they are ignorant, because they mean us harm, or simply because we do not wish to be “like them.” This study examines whether 16-month-olds are sensitive to the pro- or antisocial behavior of a source that demonstrates preference for two novel foods. Infants took the emotional reactions displayed by novel and previously prosocial sources, but not antisocial sources, into account when deciding what to eat. These results suggest that others’ social behavior influences infants’ likelihood to match their preferences, illustrating the influence of social evaluation on social learning.     

Using finite mixture of GLMs to explore variability in children's flexibility in a task-switching paradigm

The present study illustrates the usefulness of finite mixture of generalized linear models (GLMs) to examine variability in cognitive strategies during childhood. More precisely, it addresses this variability in set-shifting situations where task-goal updating is endogenously driven. In a task-switching paradigm 5–6-year-olds had to switch between color- and shape-matching rules as a function of a predetermined, predictable task sequence. A finite mixture of GLMs was fitted to explore individual differences in performance. The statistical model revealed five response profiles, defined by accuracy and response times. These response profiles likely correspond to different cognitive strategies with varying efficiency and differential relations to working memory capacity (assessed by backward digit span). These results illustrate the heuristic value of statistical modeling to reveal the behavioral and cognitive variability in the temporal dynamics of children's cognitive functioning.     

Inhibitory control in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks: A neo-Piagetian inter-task priming study

We investigated whether success in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks relies on a general ability to inhibit misleading strategies. Two groups of 10-year-olds performed inter-task priming between computerized versions of class-inclusion and number-conservation tasks (Experiment 1). In one group, the class-inclusion task served as a prime and the number-conservation task as an assessment probe and vice versa in the other group. Response times were shorter in the number-conservation task when performed after the class-inclusion task (and vice versa in the other group) than in control prime-probe sequences in which the primes did not require the inhibition of a misleading strategy. Experiment 2 showed that these inter-task priming effects did not simply reflect that class inclusion and number conservation rely on the reversibility of concrete operations as Piaget would have hypothesized. Taken together the results are consistent with the neo-Piagetian assumption that cognitive development is rooted in both the acquisition of knowledge of incremental complexity and the ability to resist (inhibit) previous knowledge. Critically, the present finding suggests that the inhibitory ability is not domain- or strategy-specific.     

Memory systems within a cognitive architecture

This article addresses the division of memory systems in relation to an overall cognitive architecture. As understanding the architecture is essential to understanding the mind, developing computational cognitive architectures is an important enterprise in computational psychology (computational cognitive modeling). The article proposes a set of hypotheses concerning memory systems from the standpoint of a cognitive architecture, in particular, the four-way division of memory (including explicit and implicit procedural memory and explicit and implicit declarative memory). It then discusses in detail how these hypotheses may be validated through examining qualitatively the literature on memory. A quick review follows of computational simulations of a variety of quantitative data (which are not limited to narrowly conceived “memory tasks”). Results of accounting for both qualitative and quantitative data point to the promise of this approach.     

Effects of White Noise on Off-Task Behavior and Sleep for Elementary-Age Students with ADHD

Abstract

Children with ADHD were administered 75?dB of continuous white noise during independent seat work in the classroom and during bedtime in their homes. Compared to baseline all three students exhibited decreases in off-task behavior. Off-task behavior returned to original baseline levels when white noise was removed and decreased again when reintroduced in classrooms. White noise also decreased bedtime sleep latency and spontaneous night wakings at home. Both sleep latencies and night wakings increased during return-to-baseline conditions. Surprisingly, when white noise was reintroduced only in the classrooms sleep improved a second time. White noise in classrooms with or without simultaneous treatment during sleep at night resulted in lower levels of off-task classroom behavior as well as less disruptive sleep. Results were independent of whether children were on ADHD medication. Children, teachers, and parents all rated white noise favorably.     

Bion’s discovery of alpha function: Thinking under fire on the battlefield and in the consulting room

This paper has traced Bion’s discovery of alpha function and its subsequent elaboration. His traumatic experiences as a young tank commander in World War I (overlaid on, and intertwined with, childhood conflicts) gave him firsthand exposure to very painful emotions that tested his capacity to manage. Later, in the 1950s, after his analysis with Melanie Klein and marriage to Francesca Bion, he undertook the analysis of psychotic patients and learned how they disassembled their ability to know reality as a defense against unbearable emotional truths in their lives. This led Bion to identify an aspect of dreaming that was necessary in order for reality experience to be given personal meaning so that one may learn from experience. Simultaneous with working out this new theory of dreaming, Bion also revisited his World War I experiences that had remained undigested and all these elements coalesced into a selected fact – his discovery of alpha function. In subsequent writings, Bion explored the constituent factors of alpha function, including the container/contained relationship, the PS?D balance, reverie, tolerated doubt and other factors which I have termed the ‘Constellation for Thinking’.     

Clinical issues in analyses over the telephone and the internet

There is professional consensus that teleanalysis, the practice of psychoanalysis conducted remotely using the telephone and the Internet, is increasing in response to more mobility in the population. But there is controversy as to whether the use of technology leads to a dilution of analysis or to adaptive innovation that is clinically effective and true to the tenets of psychoanalysis. The author reviews the psychoanalytic literature and shows the development of analytic thinking about this technology-assisted practice of psychoanalysis. She summarizes analysts' perceptions and experiences of the advantages and disadvantages, and considers the indications and contra-indications. She focuses on the clinical concerns that arise in terms of the frame, resistance, and the development of analytic process through the unconscious communication of internal objects, unconscious fantasy, transference and countertransference. She gives vignettes from the analysis of a man with trauma-related depression to address the concerns raised and to support her argument that analysis using the telephone and the Internet is a viable, clinically effective alternative to traditional analysis where necessary.