Mother and father adjustment during early parenthood: the roles of infant temperament and coparenting relationship quality

We explored how parent gender, infant temperament, and coparenting dynamics worked together to shape mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms, stress, and parental efficacy during early parenthood. We were interested in the coparenting relationship as a context that shapes how parents respond to their infant's temperamental qualities. Participants were 139 couples who had recently given birth to their first child. Parent reports of temperament were collected when the infant was 4–8 months old and reports of coparenting and parent adjustment were collected at 13 months. Two-level random intercept models revealed interactions between temperament and coparenting, highlighting the family system as a context for how men and women adapt to their parenting role. There was little evidence for mother–father differences in these associations.     

Anticipatory reaching of seven- to eleven-month-old infants in occlusion situations

The present study examined 7- to 11-month-old infants’ anticipatory and reactive reaching for temporarily occluded objects. Infants were presented with laterally approaching objects that moved at different velocities (10, 20, and 40 cm/s) in different occlusion situations (no-, 20 cm-, and 40 cm-occlusion), resulting in occlusion durations ranging between 0 and 4 s. Results show that except for object velocity and occlusion distance, occlusion duration was a critical constraint for infants’ reaching behaviors. We found that the older infants reached more often, but that an increase in occlusion duration resulted in a decline in reaching frequency that was similar across age groups. Anticipatory reaching declined with increasing occlusion duration, but the adverse effects for longer occlusion durations diminished with age. It is concluded that with increasing age infants are able to retain and use information to guide reaching movements over longer periods of non-visibility, providing support for the graded representation hypothesis (Jonsson &; von Hofsten, 2003) and the two-visual systems model (Milner &; Goodale, 1995).     

Planning in young children: A review and synthesis

Research on the development of planning is reviewed in the context of a framework that considers the role of three types of cognitive flexibility in planning development: event-independent temporal representation, executive function, and self-projection. It is argued that the emergence of planning abilities in the preschool period is dependent upon the development of event-independent temporal representation. Research on the development of executive function suggests that its sub-components, in particular inhibitory control, may be linked to developmental improvements on planning tasks. Recently, new paradigms have established that self-projection to the future appears to develop over the preschool period. We consider how these different forms of cognitive flexibility may themselves be related in development.     

Regional differences in brain volume predict the acquisition of skill in a complex real-time strategy videogame

Previous studies have found that differences in brain volume among older adults predict performance in laboratory tasks of executive control, memory, and motor learning. In the present study we asked whether regional differences in brain volume as assessed by the application of a voxel-based morphometry technique on high resolution MRI would also be useful in predicting the acquisition of skill in complex tasks, such as strategy-based video games. Twenty older adults were trained for over 20 h to play Rise of Nations, a complex real-time strategy game. These adults showed substantial improvements over the training period in game performance. MRI scans obtained prior to training revealed that the volume of a number of brain regions, which have been previously associated with subsets of the trained skills, predicted a substantial amount of variance in learning on the complex game. Thus, regional differences in brain volume can predict learning in complex tasks that entail the use of a variety of perceptual, cognitive and motor processes.     

Operation-specific encoding in single-digit arithmetic

Solving simple arithmetic problems involves three stages: encoding the problem, retrieving or calculating the answer, and reporting the answer. This study compared the event-related potentials elicited by single-digit addition and multiplication problems to examine the relationship between encoding and retrieval/calculation stages. Results showed that the operation effect appeared as early as the encoding of the first operand and continued to the retrieval/calculation stage: compared to addition, multiplication elicited larger negative potentials in the left anterior electrodes and larger positive potentials in the right posterior electrodes. The consistency of this operation effect across the first two stages of arithmetic processing suggests that encoding of arithmetic problems can be modulated by the nature of representation of the to-be-retrieved arithmetic facts, and thus these two stages are additive rather than interactive.     

The role of robotic modelling in cognitive science

From the perspective of cognitive robotics, this paper presents a modern interpretation of Newell’s (1973) reasoning and suggestions for why and how cognitive psychologists should develop models of cognitive phenomena. We argue that the shortcomings of current cognitive modelling approaches are due in significant part to a lack of exactly the kind of integration required for the development of embodied autonomous robotics. Moreover we suggest that considerations of embodiment, situatedness, and autonomy, intrinsic to cognitive robotics, provide an appropriate basis for the integration and theoretic cumulation that Newell argued was necessary for psychology to mature. From this perspective we analyse the role of embodiment and modes of situatedness in terms of integration, cognition, emotion, and autonomy. Four complementary perspectives on embodied and situated cognitive science are considered in terms of their potential to contribute to cognitive robotics, cognitive science, and psychological theorizing: minimal cognition and organization, enactive perception and sensorimotor contingency, homeostasis and emotion, and social embedding. In combination these perspectives provide a framework for cognitive robotics, not only wholly compatible with the original aims of cognitive modelling, but as a more appropriate methodology than those currently in common use within psychology.     

Individual differences in children's private speech: Consistency across tasks, timepoints, and contexts

Children often talk themselves through their activities. They produce private speech (PS), which is internalized to form inner speech (silent verbal thought). Twenty-five 8-10-year-olds completed four tasks in a laboratory context (Tower of London, digit span, and two measures of spatial IQ). PS production was recorded. Eleven months later, the same participants completed the Tower of London and academic numeracy tasks, again in a laboratory context, as well as numeracy tasks in a classroom context. Rates of PS production and its level of internalization showed large positive correlations across time, tasks, and contexts. The results are interpreted in terms of the psychometric properties of PS production and are taken as evidence for the development of a domain-general system for verbal self-regulation in childhood.     

Thinking styles and risky decision‐making: Further exploration of the affect–probability weighting link

People usually overweight small probabilities and underweight large probabilities leading to the familiar inverse S‐shaped weighting function. This research explores the link between affect and the structure of probability weighting from the perspective of thinking dispositions, a concept central to dual system theories of reasoning. The effects of affective priming and cognitive load on both probability weighting and the value function are also examined. The evidence suggests that thinking styles do have predictive implications for risky decision‐making. Participants with a more affective thinking style tend to be more risk‐seeking in small probability gambles. However, increasing access to the affective system by affective priming or cognitive load manipulations tend to reduce risk‐seeking behavior in small probability gambles as well as reduce risk averse behavior in large probability gambles. Previous research, manipulating the affective nature of lottery outcomes, found evidence for an increase in curvature (more overweighting of small probabilities and more underweighting of large probabilities) of the weighting function for affect‐rich outcomes, lending support to a hope‐and‐fear deconstruction of probability weighting. The present research suggests that increased anticipatory emotions characterized by the elevation of the weighting function (more overweighting at all probabilities) is also important and could sometimes be more significant than hope‐and‐fear in decision‐making under risk. An integrated approach incorporating the impact of affect on all three, the elevation and curvature of probability weighting as well as the curvature of the value function explains the empirical findings. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can Cyber‐Physical Systems Reliably Collaborate within a Blockchain?

A blockchain can be considered a technological phenomenon that is made up of different interconnected and autonomous systems. Such systems are referred to here as cyber‐physical systems: complex interconnections of cyber and physical components. When cyber‐physical systems are interconnected, a new whole consisting of a system of systems is created by the autonomous systems and their intercommunication and interaction. In a blockchain, individual systems can independently make decisions on joint information transactions. The decision‐making procedures needed for this are executed based on fault‐tolerant communication and voting and consensus procedures, while the results of these decision‐making procedures are stored in distributed ledgers. Due to the intercommunication, interaction, and independent decision making by autonomous systems, the new whole of a blockchain is a complex entity. Complexity science rather than the usual reductionist scientific approach can help us better understand the behaviour of the new and continuously developing whole of a blockchain as a technological phenomenon.     

“It Happens to Girls All the Time”: Examining Sexual Assault Survivors’ Reasons for Not Using Campus Supports

Sexual assault is a prevalent problem in higher education, and despite the increasing availability of formal supports on college campuses, few sexual assault survivors use them. Experiencing sexual assault can have devastating consequences on survivors’ psychological and educational wellbeing, which may intensify if survivors do not receive adequate care. Drawing from existing theoretical frameworks and empirical research, this study used a mixed methodological approach to examine why survivors did not use three key campus supports—the Title IX Office, the sexual assault center, and housing staff—and if these reasons differed across the three supports. Using data from 284 women who experienced sexual assault in college, our qualitative findings identified four overarching themes, including logistical issues (e.g., lacking time and knowledge), feelings, beliefs, and responses that made it seem unacceptable to use campus supports, judgments about the appropriateness of the support, and alternative methods of coping. Quantitative findings revealed that survivors’ reasons for not seeking help differed across supports. Collectively, our findings suggest that community norms and institutional policies can make it challenging for survivors to use campus supports. We propose several suggestions for institutional change (e.g., taking a stronger stance against “less serious” forms of sexual assault, reducing a quasi‐criminal justice approach to investigation and adjudication, limiting mandated reporting).