Developmental stimulation in child care centers contributes to young infants’ cognitive development

This study examined whether the quality of caregiver behavior in child care centers contributes to infant cognitive development at 9 months of age. Sixty-four infants (34 boys) were observed with their primary caregivers in child care centers at 3, 6, and 9 months of age. Caregiver behavior was rated for sensitivity and for stimulation of infant development during one-to-one caregiving interactions. Infant cognitive development was assessed using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II (Mental Development Index). Higher levels of developmental stimulation in the centers predicted higher levels of infant cognitive development at 9 months, beyond infant cognitive development at 3 months (just before entering child care), parental education, and maternal sensitivity. The results suggest that even small increases in developmental stimulation provided in child care centers in the first year of life may foster infants’ cognitive development.     

Conceptualizing the role of early experience: Lessons from the Minnesota longitudinal study

We draw upon data from a prospective, longitudinal study to evaluate the role of typically occurring variations in early experience on development from birth to adulthood. Such an evaluation is complex for both methodological and conceptual reasons. Methodological issues include the need to control for both later experience and potentially confounding third variables, such as IQ or temperament. Conceptual complexity derives from the fact that the effects of early experience can be both direct and indirect, can interact with other factors, and because whether an effect is found depends on what early experience and what outcomes are assessed. Even direct effects are probabilistic and are more in evidence with cumulative than with single measures. Often early experience has its effect indirectly by initiating a chain of events, by altering the organism in some way, and/or by promoting the impact of later experience. We provide examples where early experience is moderated and mediated by other factors and where it shows latent effects following developmental change. We illustrate developmental processes through which early experience has its effect and conclude that despite the complexity of development variations in early experience retain a vital place in the study of development.     

Developing an understanding of the literature relating to the moral development of people with intellectual disabilities

Recent reviews of moral development theory (Gibbs, Basinger, Grime, & Snarey, 2007) demonstrate that revisionist theoretical perspectives have cross cultural validity, but moral development in relation to people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) has not been considered within this literature. A structured review of the published literature relating to children, adolescents and adults with IDs, and moral development was carried out. Twenty studies meeting the inclusion criteria were found. The review indicated that people with IDs may not progress through the developmental stages of moral reasoning as quickly as typically developing peers, or reach the more advanced stages. This difference from non-disabled peers tends to disappear if groups are matched on some measure of cognitive ability. However, the studies are fraught with methodological problems and there is a need for further research, given the theoretical developments within the area of moral development, including the evidence of a relationship between moral development and anti-social behaviour amongst typically developing children and adolescents.     

Y-Balance Test Performance and Leg Muscle Activations of Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder

This study compared Lower Quarter Y-Balance Test (YBT-LQ) performance and leg muscle kinetics between children with and without developmental coordination disorder (DCD), and investigated the association between YBT-LQ performance and muscle kinetics in children with DCD. Forty-eight children with DCD and 51 children without DCD participated in the study. Leg muscle kinetics were measured using surface electromyography when performing YBT-LQ. Children with DCD exhibited an overall lower YBT-LQ scores than controls. They had a lower peak gastrocnemius medialis activation for YBT-LQ posteromedial direction and shorter duration for the muscle to reach peak torque for YBT-LQ anterior direction. No relationship was found between YBT-LQ performance and leg muscle activations in children with DCD. Children with DCD exhibited a less competent YBT-LQ performance with atypical neuromuscular control.     

The p factor in children: Relationships with executive functions and effortful control

Lower levels of self-regulation have been implicated in multiple psychological disorders. Despite conceptual overlap (broadly reflecting self-regulatory functions), executive functions (EF) and effortful control (EC) are rarely jointly studied in relation to broadband psychopathology. The present study investigated associations of correlated factors (internalizing-externalizing) and bifactor psychopathology models with EF and EC in a large (N = 895) childhood community sample (M_age = 11.54, SD_age = 2.25). Associations between both self-regulation constructs (EF and EC) with psychopathology were largely accounted for via a general psychopathology factor. However, EC evidenced stronger associations, questioning the utility of task-based EF measures to inform self-regulatory psychopathology.     

The semantic pointer theory of emotion: Integrating physiology,appraisal, and construction

Emotion theory needs to explain the relationship of language and emotions, and the embodiment of emotions, by specifying the computational mechanisms underlying emotion generation in the brain. We used Chris Eliasmith’s Semantic Pointer Architecture to develop POEM, a computational model that explains numerous important phenomena concerning emotions, including how some stimuli generate immediate emotional reactions, how some emotional reactions depend on cognitive evaluations, how bodily states influence the generation of emotions, how some emotions depend on interactions between physiological inputs and cognitive appraisals, and how some emotional reactions concern syntactically complex representations. We contrast our theory with current alternatives, and discuss some possible applications to individual and social emotions.     

空格减少汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童的视觉拥挤效应：来自眼动的证据

使用眼动仪记录汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童、正常年龄匹配和能力匹配儿童阅读插入空格文本时的眼动,考察在字、词以及非词间插入空格呈现文本对汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童阅读加工过程的影响。结果发现,阅读障碍儿童在字间空格条件下平均注视时间减少的程度大于正常儿童,注视次数在字间和词间空格条件下未见显著增加,能力匹配儿童的注视次数在这两种空格条件下却显著增加。结果说明,在字间和词间插入空格能够减少儿童的平均阅读时间,且字间空格文本呈现显著地提高了其阅读效率,说明空格对汉语阅读障碍儿童具有促进作用,这种促进主要是由于空格减少了其视觉拥挤效应所致。     

What does rapid automatized naming measure? A new RAN task compared to naming and lexical decision

The present research investigated the relationship between Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) performance, letter-string reading measures of sight vocabulary (SV) and phonetic decoding (PD), and lexical decision. Criterion-based naming rates were obtained from three types of RAN tasks: digits, letters, and letter sounds. Latency measures were obtained from the naming of regular words, exception words, nonwords and pseudohomophones; as well as button press and verbal lexical decision tasks. Regression analyses supported the hypotheses that RAN-Letters latency reflects SV processing in that its variance is uniquely accounted for by exception word naming latency and button press lexical decision latency, and that RAN-Letter Sounds latency best reflects PD processing in that its variance is uniquely accounted for by pseudohomophone and nonword naming latency. Findings are discussed in light of what the RAN tasks are measuring, implications involving visual word recognition models of reading, and the utility of the new RAN-Letter Sounds task with respect to diagnostic and remediation applications.     

A critical review of the “enculturation hypothesis”: the effects of human rearing on great ape social cognition

Numerous investigators have argued that early ontogenetic immersion in sociocultural environments facilitates cognitive developmental change in human-reared great apes more characteristic of Homo sapiens than of their own species. Such revamping of core, species-typical psychological systems might be manifest, according to this argument, in the emergence of mental representational competencies, a set of social cognitive skills theoretically consigned to humans alone. Human-reared great apes capacity to engage in true imitation, in which both the means and ends of demonstrated actions are reproduced with fairly high rates of fidelity, and laboratory great apes failure to do so, has frequently been interpreted as reflecting an emergent understanding of intentionality in the former. Although this epigenetic model of the effects of enculturation on social cognitive systems may be well-founded and theoretically justified in the biological literature, alternative models stressing behavioral as opposed to representational change have been largely overlooked. Here I review some of the controversy surrounding enculturation in great apes, and present an alternative nonmentalistic version of the enculturation hypothesis that can also account for enhanced imitative performance on object-oriented problem-solving tasks in human-reared animals.     

The Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues: How They Are Viewed Today by Clergy

In 1992 the results of a survey on clergy attitudes toward the traditional deadly sins and the schedule of virtues formulated by Erik H. Erikson were published in Pastoral Psychology (D. Capps, 1992). This study reports the results of a similar survey conducted a decade later. It also compares the results of this clergy survey with the findings of our laity survey published in 2000 in Pastoral Psychology (D. Capps & A. H. Cole, 2000). Clergy were asked to rank order the sins (from most to least destructive), to identify one sin with which they were personally struggling, and to indicate whether they consider a given sin to be more characteristic of men, of women, or of both genders equally. Similar questions were asked concerning the virtues, but from a positive rather than a negative perspective. While the results were generally similar to the earlier clergy survey, there were some modest changes in the way respondents ranked the sins and virtues, indicated their personal identification with them, and viewed their gender relatedness. While the number of women respondents to the 2002 survey was small, differences in the way that clergymen and clergywomen responded to the survey questions are noted. We particularly note that clergy view anger as a much more deadly sin than do laity, and also the consistent finding that respondents tend to struggle personally with sins they consider among the least destructive.