Organizational social context and psychopathology of youth in residential care: The intervening role of youth–caregiver relationship quality

Drawing on an ecological approach with multiple informants, this study investigated the mediating role of youth–caregiver relationship quality in associations between different features of residential care settings' organizational social context and youth's psychopathology. Participants were 378 youth aged between 12 and 25 years old, and 54 caregivers aged between 24 and 57 years old, from 29 generalist residential youth care settings in Portugal. Given the hierarchical structure of data, analyses were performed using multilevel modeling. Results revealed that organizational social contexts characterized by higher levels of engagement, stress, and centralization, as perceived by the caregivers, were associated with lower levels of youth's externalizing problems (e.g., aggressive behavior and delinquency), reported by the caregivers, via better youth–caregiver relationship quality, perceived by the youth in care. These findings highlight the relevance of creating an organizational social context in residential care settings that supports caregivers in establishing high-quality relationships with the youth in care, thereby promoting their mental health. This study contributes to the clarification of conflicting findings in previous studies of this field, by offering further empirical investigation of these issues.     

A zero-bounded model of operant demand

Contemporary approaches for evaluating the demand for reinforcers use either the Exponential or the Exponentiated model of operant demand, both derived from the framework of Hursh and Silberberg (2008). This report summarizes the strengths and complications of this framework and proposes a novel implementation. This novel implementation incorporates earlier strengths and resolves existing shortcomings that are due to the use of a logarithmic scale for consumption. The Inverse Hyperbolic Sine (IHS) transformation is reviewed and evaluated as a replacement for the logarithmic scale in models of operant demand. Modeling consumption in the “log₁₀-like” IHS scale reflects relative changes in consumption (as with a log scale) and accommodates a true zero bound (i.e., zero consumption values). The presence of a zero bound obviates the need for a separate span parameter (i.e., k) and the span of the model may be more simply defined by maximum demand at zero price (i.e., Q₀). Further, this reformulated model serves to decouple the exponential rate constant (i.e., α) from variations in span, thus normalizing the rate constant to the span of consumption in IHS units and permitting comparisons when spans vary. This model, called the Zero-bounded Exponential (ZBE), is evaluated using simulated and real-world data. The direct reinstatement ZBE model showed strong correspondence with empirical indicators of demand and with a normalization of α (ZBEn) across empirical data that varied in reinforcing efficacy (dose, time to onset of peak effects). Future directions in demand curve analysis are discussed with recommendations for additional replication and exploration of scales beyond the logarithm when accommodating zero consumption data.     

Quantifying the psychopathic stare: Automated assessment of head motion is related to antisocial traits in forensic interviews

Clinicians have long noted that individuals with high psychopathic traits exhibit unique interpersonal style often observable during forensic interviews. Here we develop an automated approach for quantifying head dynamics during video-recorded naturalistic clinical interviews. We expected head dynamics would be related to psychopathic traits. As predicted, dwell times indicate that those with higher levels of psychopathic traits are characterized by more stationary head positions, focused directly towards the camera/interviewer, than were individuals low in psychopathic traits. These associations were primarily driven by developmental/antisocial features of psychopathy, indicating that those with severe and life-course persistent antisocial behavior exhibit more rigid and focused orienting of their head during interpersonal communication. These results encourage more research into the automated quantification of behavioral manifestations of personality to support clinical observations that psychopaths exhibit unique qualities in non-verbal interpersonal communication.     

A Computational Evaluation of Two Models of Retrieval Processes in Sentence Processing in Aphasia

Can sentence comprehension impairments in aphasia be explained by difficulties arising from dependency completion processes in parsing? Two distinct models of dependency completion difficulty are investigated, the Lewis and Vasishth (2005) activation-based model and the direct-access model (DA; McElree, 2000). These models' predictive performance is compared using data from individuals with aphasia (IWAs) and control participants. The data are from a self-paced listening task involving subject and object relative clauses. The relative predictive performance of the models is evaluated using k-fold cross-validation. For both IWAs and controls, the activation-based model furnishes a somewhat better quantitative fit to the data than the DA. Model comparisons using Bayes factors show that, assuming an activation-based model, intermittent deficiencies may be the best explanation for the cause of impairments in IWAs, although slowed syntax and lexical delayed access may also play a role. This is the first computational evaluation of different models of dependency completion using data from impaired and unimpaired individuals. This evaluation develops a systematic approach that can be used to quantitatively compare the predictions of competing models of language processing.     

儿童运动视觉表象操作水平的发展及影响因素

采用计算机软件控制实验,以暴露运动一段行程后进入遮蔽的光点为刺激物,光点以三种不同运动速度、三种不同运动行距组合呈现,要求儿童判断光点到达目标位置时按键反应。结果表明：5—19岁儿童运动视觉表象操作水平的发展存在5一8岁、11—14岁两个加速期;客体运动速度对运动视觉表象操作绩效有显著影响,5、8、11岁组快速较中速下．5．8岁组中速较慢速下操作准确性均有显著降低;客体运动行距对运动视觉表象操作绩效也有显著的影响．5、8、11岁组右目标位置下较中目标位置下操作准确性显著降低;性别对运动视觉表象操作水平无显著影响。     

运动视觉中计时行为的控制操作理论

运动视觉中的计时行为分为两类 :拦截行为和制动行为。“环境—活动者系统”(EAS)中的信息决定着计量行为的控制操作。本文阐明了信息和EAS的特性 ,通过对 tau-margin在拦截行为中的作用以及视觉变量τ对于制动操作重要性的分析 ,论述了运动视觉中计时行为的控制操作理论。     

Inter-individual differences in intra-individual variability in personality within and across contexts

This study focuses on intra-individual variability in personality at work, and how it relates to job performance. 288 professionals completed contextualised adjective-based personality assessments in work and non-work contexts, and a non-contextualised personality measure. Ratings of their personality were also obtained from colleagues, family members and friends. Supervisors provided performance ratings for 130 participants. Results indicate that personality is context- and source-dependent, and varies systematically within contexts intra-individually regardless of source. Whilst this variability was predictive of some performance criteria when based on other-ratings, overall predictive effects were small in number and size. This study adds to the relatively small body of research on personality variability and performance and contributes to the conceptualisation of personality as a dynamic construct.     

Friends in Low-Entropy Places: Orthographic Neighbor Effects on Visual Word Identification Differ Across Letter Positions

Visual word recognition is facilitated by the presence of orthographic neighbors that mismatch the target word by a single letter substitution. However, researchers typically do not consider where neighbors mismatch the target. In light of evidence that some letter positions are more informative than others, we investigate whether the influence of orthographic neighbors differs across letter positions. To do so, we quantify the number of enemies at each letter position (how many neighbors mismatch the target word at that position). Analyses of reaction time data from a visual word naming task indicate that the influence of enemies differs across letter positions, with the negative impacts of enemies being most pronounced at letter positions where readers have low prior uncertainty about which letters they will encounter (i.e., positions with low entropy). To understand the computational mechanisms that give rise to such positional entropy effects, we introduce a new computational model, VOISeR (Visual Orthographic Input Serial Reader), which receives orthographic inputs in parallel and produces an over-time sequence of phonemes as output. VOISeR produces a similar pattern of results as in the human data, suggesting that positional entropy effects may emerge even when letters are not sampled serially. Finally, we demonstrate that these effects also emerge in human subjects' data from a lexical decision task, illustrating the generalizability of positional entropy effects across visual word recognition paradigms. Taken together, such work suggests that research into orthographic neighbor effects in visual word recognition should also consider differences between letter positions.