The integration of cognition and emotion during infancy and early childhood: regulatory processes associated with the development of working memory

This study was an attempt to integrate cognitive development (i.e., cognitive control) and emotional development (i.e., emotion regulation) in the first years of life. The construct of temperament was used to unify cognition and emotion because of its focus on attentional and regulatory behaviors. Children were seen at 8 months and 412-years of age in a study designed to examine the correlates of working memory development. Frontal brain electrical activity and temperament predicted working memory performance at 8 months. Similarly, frontal brain electrical activity, temperament, and language predicted working memory at age 412-years. Temperament in early childhood mediated the relation between infant temperament and early childhood working memory performance. These associated temperament characteristics highlight the value of early-learned regulatory and attentional behaviors and the impact of these early skills on later development.     

青少年期母子性格与家庭亲密度的关系:性格喜好的作用

研究旨在考察性格喜好与母子性格、家庭成员亲密度的关系以及性格喜好在其他两个变量之间的中介作用。成都市632对初高中学生及其母亲分别自评并填写了艾森克人格问卷,同时评价喜欢对方性格的程度。另外,青少年还报告了与家庭成员的亲密程度。通过相关分析、多元方差分析、层级回归分析以及结构方程模型建模,结果发现：性格喜好与母亲性格、青少年性格均有显著关系,青少年对母亲的性格喜好程度与家庭成员间的亲密感有显著正相关。青少年性格和青少年对母亲的性格喜好程度能直接预测家庭成员亲密度,同时青少年和母亲的性格还通过青少年对母亲的性格喜好程度间接作用于家庭亲密度,提示性格喜好在二者的关系中发挥了重要的中介作用。     

Depressogenic inferential styles, negative events, and depressive symptoms in youth: an attempt to reconcile past inconsistent findings

Research examining the diathesis-stress component of the hopelessness theory (HT) in youth has provided mixed support for the theory. One explanation for inconsistent findings is the failure to consider relationships among the three inferential styles posited to serve as vulnerability factors by the theory. The weakest link hypothesis posits that an individual is as vulnerable to depression as his/her most depressogenic inferential style (DIS) makes him/her. A second explanation is that researchers have operationalized "high stress" from a nomothetic, as opposed to an idiographic, perspective. The current study tested the diathesis-stress component of the HT in 230 third-grade and 152 seventh-grade schoolchildren using both a weakest link and an idiographic approach towards analysis. Children completed measures assessing depressive symptoms and DISs. Children subsequently completed measures assessing depressive symptoms and negative events once a week for 6 weeks. Hierarchical linear modeling and time-lagged analyses indicated that a depressogenic weakest link was associated with greater elevations in depressive symptoms following elevations in stress.     

Effectiveness of treatment of childhood memories in cognitive therapy for personality disorders: a controlled study contrasting methods focusing on the present and methods focusing on childhood memories

This study tested the hypothesis that treatment of childhood memories is an effective way to change personality disorder related schemas and psychopathology in cognitive therapy for personality disorders. To test this hypothesis, a crossover design was used to compare the effectiveness of methods focusing on the present and methods focusing on childhood memories. After the exploration period, the therapist focused either first on the present during 24 sessions and than for 24 sessions on childhood memories, or followed the reverse order. Twenty-one patients with one or more Axis II disorders were included. Participants were randomly assigned to order of focus. Results indicate that CT methods focusing on childhood memories produce good outcomes, comparable to those of methods focusing on the present. There was no significant effect of order, but both patients and therapists preferred the past-present order. Total effects of the package were large and were maintained till one-year follow-up (d's 0.97-1.90). Experience of the therapist with CT for personality disorders was related to better outcome (d=0.73).     

Phonological awareness and the use of phonological similarity in letter-sound learning

The effects of the phonological similarity between a letter sound and the sound in a spoken word, and phonological awareness on letter-sound learning were examined. Two groups of 41 kindergartners were taught four letter sounds. First, both groups had to learn the associations between four symbols and four familiar words. Next, both groups were taught the letter sounds that were paired to these same symbols. Each letter sound corresponded to the first sound of the word that was previously associated with that symbol in the phonological similarity group, whereas such a relation was absent in the other group. In addition, measures of vocabulary, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness were administered. Phonological similarity facilitated letter-sound learning. Individual differences in phonological awareness had a strong effect on letter-sound learning even after current letter knowledge was controlled. Unexpectedly, the effects of phonological awareness and the ability to use phonological similarity on letter-sound learning were found to be independent.     

Time to completion of web-based physics problems with tutoring

We studied students performing a complex learning task, that of solving multipart physics problems with interactive tutoring on the web. We extracted the rate of completion and fraction completed as a function of time on task by retrospectively analyzing the log of student-tutor interactions. There was a spontaneous division of students into three groups, the central (and largest) group (about 65% of the students) being those who solved the problem in real time after multiple interactions with the tutorial program (primarily receiving feedback to submitted wrong answers and requesting hints). This group displayed a sigmoidal fraction-completed curve as a function of logarithmic time. The sigmoidal shape is qualitatively flatter for problems that do not include hints and wrong-answer responses. We argue that the group of students who respond quickly (about 10% of the students) is obtaining the answer from some outside source. The third group (about 25% of the students) represents those who interrupt their solution, presumably to work offline or to obtain outside help.     

Assessment and Decision-Making in Early Childhood Education and Intervention

Assessment within the fields of early childhood education and early childhood intervention is guided by the deductive-psychometric model, which is a framework for legitimizing constructs that arise from theories. An alternative approach, termed the inductive-experimental model, places significantly more restrictions on what constitutes a legitimate construct. In this paper, the utility of these two assessment models, one more generative and one more restrictive, are evaluated within the context of a Head Start setting. Given the pragmatic goal of informing instruction, we argue for the superiority of the more restrictive approach. Implications for early childhood intervention are also discussed.     

Horse-parts,White-parts,and Naming: Semantics,Ontology, and Compound Terms in the White Horse Dialogue

In this article I argue against Chad Hansen’s version of the “White Horse Dialogue” (Baimalun) of Gongsun Longzi as intelligible through writings of the later Moists. Hansen regards the Baimalun as an attempt to demonstrate how the compound baima, “white horse,” is correctly analyzed in one of the Moist ways of analyzing compound term semantics but not the other. I present an alternative reading in which the Baimalun arguments point out, via reductio, the failure of either Moist analysis; in particular they point out how neither analysis accounts for ordinary, acceptable inferences like “There is a white horse; therefore there is a horse.” At issue for Gongsun Longzi is a fundamental problem with atomic terms: none of them seems capable of referring to a particular, “stand-alone” individual.     

中国青少年心理健康素质·应对风格的研究

应用《青少年心理健康素质调查表·应对风格分量表》对全国23个省、市、自治区44063名青少年的应对风格状况进行了调查。结果发现：（1）在应对风格的行为—生理策略、行为—表达策略、认知—表达策略、防御策略和混合策略上,我国青少年的得分从小学五年级逐渐上升至初二年级,之后下降,到高三年级和大学回升。（2）在认知—情境策略和行为—情境策略上表现为从小学五年级到初中阶段逐渐下降,从高三年级后开始回升。