Infant attachment in the Czech Republic: Categorical and dimensional findings from a post-communist country

Infant attachment remains virtually unexplored in former Eastern Bloc countries. The dimensional approach to infant attachment, which could ease common obstacles in cross-cultural attachment research, necessitates more empirical support. This study explores infant attachment in the Czech Republic, a post-communist country with a unique family policy, using both the categorical and the dimensional models. It also compares the Czech infant attachment distribution to infant attachment distributions in other countries and compares infant attachment distributions in European countries to the Baltimore study sample. In the Strange Situation Procedure, forty-nine (74 %) out of sixty-six mother-infant dyads (35 boys, M = 13.8, SD = 0.9) received the B classification. Despite the generous family policy and cultural emphasis on close mother-infant relationships, the Czech distribution of insecure categories did not differ from the Baltimore study sample. Out of other post-communist countries, only the infant attachment distribution in former East Germany differed from the Czech and the Baltimore study samples due to a lower proportion of type B and a higher proportion of type A infants. There were also more type A infants in the Italian sample. Interactive behavior scales accurately predicted attachment categories in 91 % of cases. Contact-maintenance and proximity-seeking scales substantially improve the assessment of insecure resistant behavior. Our findings support the universality and normativity of attachment and the utility of the dimensional approach.     

Practice effects on intra-team synergies in football teams

Developing synchronised player movements for fluent competitive match play is a common goal for coaches of team games. An ecological dynamics approach advocates that intra-team synchronization is governed by locally created information, which specifies shared affordances responsible for synergy formation. To verify this claim we evaluated coordination tendencies in two newly-formed teams of recreational players during association football practice games, weekly, for fifteen weeks (thirteen matches). We investigated practice effects on two central features of synergies in sports teams – dimensional compression and reciprocal compensation here captured through near in-phase modes of coordination and time delays between coupled players during forward and backwards movements on field while attacking and defending. Results verified that synergies were formed and dissolved rapidly as a result of the dynamic creation of informational properties, perceived as shared affordances among performers. Practising once a week led to small improvements in the readjustment delays between co-positioning team members, enabling faster regulation of coordinated team actions. Mean values of the number of player and team synergies displayed only limited improvements, possibly due to the timescales of practice. No relationship between improvements in dimensional compression and reciprocal compensation were found for number of shots, amount of ball possession and number of ball recoveries made. Findings open up new perspectives for monitoring team coordination processes in sport.     

Structure factorielle et qualités psychométriques du questionnaire d’auto-évaluation pour adolescents (Youth Self-Report) d’Achenbach et Rescorla

IntroductionRecent research on the prognostic significance of subthreshold comorbid disorders highlighted the need for instruments allowing for the comprehensive exploration of symptomatology of adolescents.ObjectiveTo verify the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Achenbach and Rescorla's Youth Self-Report French translation, which allows this investigation.MethodWe had 1450 adolescents 11–17- year old (747 girls) complete the YSR in secondary schools in the Paris metropolitan area.ResultsConfirmatory Factor Analyses and Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling supported the 8-syndrome structure. However, since ESEM allows cross-loadings, the number of indicators for each factor in the ESEM models is much higher than in the CFA models. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were satisfactory, and multigroup analyses confirmed the metric and scalar invariance across age and gender of most of the items examined (70 out of 89). We can therefore affirm that girls score lower on Social problems than boys, 15–17-year-old adolescent score higher on Thought problems, Attention problems, and Rule-Breaking Behavior than the younger, and these differences are substantive and independent of differential item functioning.ConclusionThese results are likely to encourage the use of YSR in research and clinical practice with French-speaking adolescents.     

Examining the dimensional structure and factorial validity of the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory in a sample of male athletes

Objectives

Research examining how emotional intelligence (EI) relates to the performance of athletes has been conducted using various EI measures including the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i; Bar-On, 1997), but no one has investigated the factor structure of the EQ-i in the area of sport psychology. The current study explored the dimensional structure and factorial validity of the EQ-i in a sample of male athletes.

Design

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine [Bar-On, 1997] and [Bar-On, 2004] model of emotional-social intelligence and the 1-5-15 dimensional structure which underpins the EQ-i.

Method

A total sample of 706 male athletes from various sports and competing at the national age group level through to the professional level of competition completed the EQ-i.

Results

Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the 1-5-15 dimensional structure was a poor fit for the data. A re-specification of the model representing the best fit for the data was a 1-4-15 dimensional structure. The factorial validity of the individual subscales was also examined at the item level using confirmatory factor analysis. Thirteen of the 15 subscales showed close, reasonably good, or mediocre fit for the data.

Conclusion

Further construct validation of Bar-On’s model and measure is required. Sport psychologists administering the EQ-i in applied practice should consider using the EQ-i subscales rather than referring back to the 1-5-15 dimensional structure.     

Bottom-up and top-down dynamics in young children's executive function: Labels aid 3-year-olds’ performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort

Executive function (EF) improves between the ages of 3 and 5 and has been assessed reliably using the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS), a task in which children first sort bivalent cards by one dimension (e.g., shape) and then are instructed to sort by a different dimension (e.g., color). Three-year-olds typically perseverate on the pre-switch dimension, whereas 5-year-olds switch flexibly. Labeling task stimuli can facilitate EF performance (0110 and 0060), but the nature of this effect is unclear. In 3 experiments we examined 2 hypotheses deriving from different theoretical perspectives: first, that labels facilitate performance in a more bottom-up fashion, by biasing attention to relevant task rules (Kirkham et al., 2003); and second, that labels aid performance in a more top-down fashion by prompting reflection and an understanding of the hierarchical nature of the task (Zelazo, 2004). Children performed better on the DCCS when labels referred to the relevant sorting dimension (Experiment 1). This was a function of the content of the labels rather than the change in auditory signal across phases (Experiment 2). Furthermore, labeling the opposite dimension only did not have a symmetrically negative effect on performance (Experiment 3). Together, these results suggest external, verbal labels bias children to attend to task-relevant information, likely through interaction with emerging top-down, endogenous control.     

Automatization of personal and impersonal discourse with narrative re-telling as a function of age

When older adults retell an impersonal story, the resulting narratives are typically characterized by more prolixity and less coherence than those produced by younger adults. We aimed to determine whether this pattern is also observed when retelling a personal narrative. Younger and older participants told a personal story three consecutive times. With retelling, no evidence of increased coherence or fluency or reduction in hesitancy was observed for either age group. The nature of autobiographical narrative construction explains why such stories are not subject to automatization. A failure to automatize personal narratives is not, therefore, a symptom of aging.     

The link between preschoolers' executive function and theory of mind and the role of epistemic states

The aim of this study was to assess the specific relation between 3- to 6-year-olds’ performance on a task measuring executive function (EF), the Dimensional Change Card Sort task (DCCS), and different developmental attainments in their theory of mind (ToM) by employing a battery of scaled ToM tasks that were comparable in task format and task demands. In addition, individual differences on the temperamental dimensions emotionality, activity, sociability, and shyness were assessed by parental rating. The main findings show that children’s (N = 195) performance on the DCCS related to their overall performance on the ToM scale but that this relation was specific to those ToM tasks that tap children’s understanding of epistemic states such as knowledge access, diverse beliefs, and false beliefs regarding content and location. The relation between children’s EF and overall ToM performance remained significant after controlling for age, sentence comprehension, child temperament, and parental education. Individual differences in child activity showed consistent negative relation to EF and ToM abilities. The findings point to a differential involvement of the various EF components in reasoning about different mental concepts.     

Automatic shifts of attention in the Dimensional Change Card Sort task: Subtle changes in task materials lead to flexible switching

Two experiments tested a hypothesis that reducing demands on executive control in a Dimensional Change Card Sort task will lead to improved performance in 3-year-olds. In Experiment 1, the shape dimension was represented by two dissimilar values (stars and flowers), and the color dimension was represented by two similar values (red and pink). This configuration of stimuli rendered shape more salient than color. In Experiment 2, attentional weights of each dimension value were manipulated by using two versus four values to represent the dimensions of shape and color. The results indicated that increasing saliency of the postswitch dimension (Experiment 1) and reducing attentional weights of individual dimension values (Experiment 2) lead to a marked improvement in the postswitch sorting accuracy in 3-year-olds.     

知觉加工中存在颜色类别知觉效应的证据

对于颜色的辨别具有类别知觉效应：类间两种颜色的辨别能力比同等颜色空间距离的类内两种颜色的辨别能力更高。对于类别知觉效应的产生机制存在两种观点：知觉特性假设、语言标签假设。以往的研究范式由于实验任务涉及到工作记忆成分,被试在完成任务时会自动地对颜色命名以利于记忆,因此所得证据大多支持语言标签假设,而对知觉特性假设的支持证据则很少。本文利用目标觉察范式最大限度去掉了工作记忆成分,通过测量被试辨别两种颜色的反应时,得到了类别知觉效应。并通过语言干扰任务进一步证实在该实验范式下类别知觉效应与语言的无关性。从而,为知觉特性假设提供了证据     

Position of compression garment around the knee affects healthy adults’ knee joint position sense acuity

Athletes use compression garments (CGs) to improve sport performance, accelerate rehabilitation from knee injuries or to enhance joint position sense (JPS). The position of CGs around the knee may affect knee JPS but the data is inconsistent. The purpose of the present study was to determine the effects of CG position on healthy adults’ knee joint position sense acuity. In a counterbalanced, single-blinded study, 16 healthy young adults (8 female, age: 25.5 y) performed an active knee joint position-matching task with and without (CON) a below-knee (BK), above-knee (AK), or whole-knee (WK) CG in a randomized order on the dominant (CompDom) or the non-dominant leg (CompNon-Dom). We also determined the magnitude of tissue compression by measuring anatomical thigh and calf cross sectional area (CSA) in standing using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Subjects had less absolute repositioning error (magnitude of error) in BK compared with CON condition. On the other hand, the analysis of the direction of error (constant error) revealed that in each condition subjects tended to underestimate the target position (AK, BK and CON: 75%; WK: 94%). In WK condition there was a significantly larger negative error (−2.7 ± 3.4) as compared with CON (−1.6 ± 3.7) condition. There also was less variable error, in WK compared to BK and CON conditions, indicating less variability in their position sense using a WK CG, regardless of the underestimation. CG reduced thigh CSA by 4.5 cm² or 3% and calf CSA by Δ1.3 cm² or 1%. The position of CG relative to the knee modifies knee JPS. The findings helps us better understand how the application of a WK CG may support athletic activities.