Language development at 18 months is related to multimodal communicative strategies at 12 months

The present study investigated the degree to which an infants’ use of simultaneous gesture–speech combinations during controlled social interactions predicts later language development. Nineteen infants participated in a declarative pointing task involving three different social conditions: two experimental conditions (a) available, when the adult was visually attending to the infant but did not attend to the object of reference jointly with the child, and (b) unavailable, when the adult was not visually attending to neither the infant nor the object; and (c) a baseline condition, when the adult jointly engaged with the infant's object of reference. At 12 months of age measures related to infants’ speech-only productions, pointing-only gestures, and simultaneous pointing–speech combinations were obtained in each of the three social conditions. Each child's lexical and grammatical output was assessed at 18 months of age through parental report. Results revealed a significant interaction between social condition and type of communicative production. Specifically, only simultaneous pointing–speech combinations increased in frequency during the available condition compared to baseline, while no differences were found for speech-only and pointing-only productions. Moreover, simultaneous pointing–speech combinations in the available condition at 12 months positively correlated with lexical and grammatical development at 18 months of age. The ability to selectively use this multimodal communicative strategy to engage the adult in joint attention by drawing his attention toward an unseen event or object reveals 12-month-olds’ clear understanding of referential cues that are relevant for language development. This strategy to successfully initiate and maintain joint attention is related to language development as it increases learning opportunities from social interactions.     

Relationships of career adaptabilities with explicit and implicit self-concepts

Career adaptability is a psychosocial construct that incorporates a set of essential resources to one's career development. The adaptability resources' relevance is even higher when it comes to former communist countries, such as Romania, where job security and stability were seen as central benefits for workers. The aim of this study was to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the stable underpinnings of career adaptabilities by exploring their relationships with aspects of the self that are driven by automatic processes and that are less affected by self-presentation biases. A sample of 359 participants completed the Career Adapt Abilities Scale (CAAS)-Romanian form, out of which a subsample of 212 participants also completed a set of scales comprising explicit and implicit measures of conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and self-esteem. Results revealed nonsignificant additive contributions of the implicit self-concept measures over what was already explained by the explicit self-concepts. The most noticeable effect resides in the significant interaction between explicit and implicit self-esteem in relation to control, confidence, and overall adaptability. These results reveal that individuals with high explicit and low implicit self-esteem perceive themselves as being the most adaptable. Notably, these results were obtained using a Romanian version of CAAS that possesses very good psychometric properties (i.e., excellent internal consistencies, the same four-factor multidimensional solution, replicated patterns of associations between CAAS and explicit self-concepts of personality).     

Conceptualizing the Religious Dimensions of Armed Conflicts: A Response to “Shrouded: Islam,War, and Holy War in Southeast Asia”

Here I react to an article published in Volume 53 of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion by Ian Barter and Zatkin‐Osburn. My principal disagreement with Barter and Zatkin‐Osburn concerns their operational and methodological critiques of my work. However, the exchange also speaks to larger questions of how to conceptualize and measure religious dimensions of armed conflicts. It also highlights the importance of methodological pluralism in the study of religion and conflict.     

The embodiment of emotional words in a second language: An eye-movement study

The hypothesis that word representations are emotionally impoverished in a second language (L2) has variable support. However, this hypothesis has only been tested using tasks that present words in isolation or that require laboratory-specific decisions. Here, we recorded eye movements for 34 bilinguals who read sentences in their L2 with no goal other than comprehension, and compared them to 43 first language readers taken from our prior study. Positive words were read more quickly than neutral words in the L2 across first-pass reading time measures. However, this emotional advantage was absent for negative words for the earliest measures. Moreover, negative words but not positive words were influenced by concreteness, frequency and L2 proficiency in a manner similar to neutral words. Taken together, the findings suggest that only negative words are at risk of emotional disembodiment during L2 reading, perhaps because a positivity bias in L2 experiences ensures that positive words are emotionally grounded.     

Exploring the dynamics of design fluency in children with and without ADHD using artificial neural networks

The neuropsychology of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been extensively studied, with a general focus on global performance measures of executive function. In this study, we compared how global (i.e., endpoint) versus process (i.e., dynamic) measures of performance may help characterize children with and without ADHD using a design fluency task as a case study. The secondary goal was to compare the sensitivity of standard versus connectionist statistical models to group differences in cognitive data. Thirty-four children diagnosed with ADHD and 37 children without ADHD aged 8–11 years old were tested on the Five-Point Test. The continuous process measure of performance, indexed as the number of produced designs at each consecutive 1 minute interval during 5 minutes, was analyzed against the discrete process measure, that is, the number of designs between first and last intervals and the standard global performance measure of total number of produced designs. Results show that the continuous process measure distinguished the two groups better than the two other measures. The detailed observation of production patterns revealed a decreasing linear trajectory in children without ADHD that contrasts with the flat, but fluctuating productivity pattern of children with ADHD. With regards to the second goal, results show that the connectionist and standard methods are equally sensitive to group differences for the three types of measures. This illustrates the utility of quantitative process measures together with the connectionist method in neuropsychological research and suggests great potential for a dynamical approach to cognition.     

Depression and stressful environments: identifying gaps in conceptualization and measurement

Background and Objectives: Stress is well known as a trigger of depressive reactions, fear, anxiety, and behavioral disorders. However, there are many gaps in the conceptualization and measurement of environmental stress. Results: Exciting developments in the neuroscience of stress have increasingly expanded our knowledge of mechanisms by which stress may affect emotional and behavioral adjustment. Ironically, environmental stress has often been a silent player in human studies of stress processes. There is a significant need for increased efforts to include environmental stress variables in models of internalizing and other disorders. Measurement and conceptualization issues are prominent, and this article makes the case for improved methods of measuring acute, chronic, and early life stress, and for additional conceptualization of the dynamically changing and bidirectional effects of stress on disorder over time. Conclusions: There is a critical need for greater focus on and better measurement of the environment and its impact on emotional and other disorders, with emphasis on developmentally informed hypotheses. Empirical findings and new perspectives may contribute enormously to our understanding of normal and abnormal outcomes, and also to the challenge of effective interventions to promote mental health and optimal functioning.     

The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of two subjective career success instruments

This study investigated the psychometric properties of two subjective career success instruments within the South African context: Perceived Career Success (PCSS: Gattiker &; Larwood, 1986 Gattiker, U. E., &; Larwood, L. (1986). Subjective career success: A study of managers and support personnel. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1(2), 78–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01018805[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Life Success Measures Scale (LSMS: Parker &; Chusmir, 1992 Parker, B., &; Chusmir, L. H. (1992). Development and validation of a life-success measures scale. Psychological Reports, 70(2), 627–637. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1992.70.2.627[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Data were collected via a convenient sample of 708 South African Police Services (SAPS) personnel (females = 36.8%; Sotho language = 62.50%). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on both instruments, followed by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Both instruments showed acceptable construct validity and reliability of scores.     

The safety performance of connected vehicles on slippery horizontal curves through enhancing truck drivers’ situational awareness: A driving simulator experiment

Although drivers can adequately adjust their operating speed according to the road curvature, they show a lack of recognition regarding the pavement friction conditions. In this regard, inappropriate speed selection on Horizontal Curves (HCs) with reduced surface friction can lead to a remarkable rate of run-off-road, sideswipe, head-on, and rollover crashes, especially on rural highways. Aligned with the Connected Vehicle (CV) Pilot Program on Interstate-80 in Wyoming, this study scrutinizes how CV advisory/warning messages can enhance traffic safety on slippery HCs. To this aim, a roadway consists of two HCs with regular and slippery pavement conditions was designed in a high-fidelity driving simulator experiment. A total of 24 professional truck drivers were recruited to drive the simulated roadway under CV and non-CV environments. In the CV scenario, drivers were informed about the pavement conditions and the advisory speeds before entering HCs. In contrast, no messages were given to non-CV drivers. Truck drivers' behaviors in both scenarios were quantified using four Kinematic-based Surrogate Measures of Safety (K-SMoS), including deviation from the pathway, instantaneous acceleration, lateral speed, and steering angle. CVs’ trajectories were statistically compared to non-CVs in terms of the central tendency and dispersion using the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test (WSRT) and Median Absolute Deviation (MAD), respectively. The results of WSRT depicted, under the effect of CV advisory/warning messages and throughout the slippery HC, the central tendency of four K-SMoS could be shifted toward zero by 23% up to 99%. This shifting is associated with a significant safety enhancement that potentially can reduce the likelihood of curve-related crashes on slippery HCs. It was revealed that the variation in drivers’ behavior on the slippery HC could be minimized in the CV environment, where 54% up to 95% reduction in the dispersions of four K-SMoS were observed, leading to more certainty in drivers’ behavior.     

One of the troubles with outcome measures: Lost in translation

This paper presents the concerns of a client diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder about completing outcome measures. He was asked to complete CORE‐10 each time he attended a therapy session with the first author. This paper takes an epistemological position of co‐production, and written in response to the client's concerns, but this is limited by the client's wish and capacity to be involved in the writing up of this article. Implications of his experiences are drawn out for both clients with this diagnosis and more generally for all clients. Recommendations are made to recognise the limitations of measures and how to use outcome measures with more validity.