Mothers' beliefs and children's long-term cognitive change: A developmental task interpretation

A longitudinal study was used to explore the following hypotheses concerning the relation between mothers' beliefs, their use of high distancing utterances and children's cognitive development: (1) beliefs moderate the impact of high-distancing utterances on children's development, and (2) beliefs reflect mothers' normative expectations that motivate themselves and their children to try to satisfy them. The participants consisted of 34 children and their mothers and teachers. Results for the motherchild dialogues indicated that the distancing–cognitive performance relationship was strongest for children whose mothers had the most positive beliefs. In addition, mothers' beliefs about a 4-year-old child were more strongly related to children's cognitive performance at ages 6 and 10 than to cognitive performance at age 4. Characteristics of both verbal parent–child and verbal teacher–child interactions at age 4 supported a developmental task interpretation of these findings.     

高等师范院校公共课心理学整体改革建议

本文作者在实践的基础上,针对我国高等师范院校公共课心理学存在的问题,提出三点整体改革建议;1.在思想上明确认识该课程的双重任务;2.在教材建设方面,强调按照认知因素、非智力因素、社会心理因素和教师心理因素建构新的教材体系,教材内容突出应用性和可读性;3.教学过程教师要结合学生的专业特点。采用多种教学形式与方法传授教材内容。     

Effects of exercise intervention on event-related potential and task performance indices of attention networks in children with developmental coordination disorder

The study investigated whether 10-week soccer training can benefit the inhibitory control and neuroelectric indices in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Fifty-one children were divided into groups of typically developing (TD, n=21), DCD-training (n=16), and DCD non-training (n=14) individuals using the for Children test, and, before and after training, were assessed with the visuospatial attention orienting task with their lower extremities, while brain event-related potentials (ERPs) were concurrently recorded. The results indicated that, when compared to TD children, children with DCD responded significantly more slowly across conditions of the visuospatial attention orienting task and showed a deficit of inhibitory control capacity in their lower extremities, whereas no group differences were observed for the accuracy rate. Neuroelectric data indicated that, before training, P3 amplitude was smaller and P3 latency was slower for both DCD groups compared to TD children across conditions of the visuospatial attention orienting task; after training, the beneficial effects were seen in the strength of inhibitory control and P3 latency in the DCD-training group. The data suggest that soccer training resulted in significant improvements in ERP and task performance indices for the children with DCD.     

Dual-tasking alleviated sleep deprivation disruption in visuomotor tracking: an fMRI study

Effects of dual-responding on tracking performance after 49-h of sleep deprivation (SD) were evaluated behaviorally and with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Continuous visuomotor tracking was performed simultaneously with an intermittent color-matching visual detection task in which a pair of color-matched stimuli constituted a target and non-matches were non-targets. Tracking error means were binned time-locked to stimulus onset of the detection task in order to observe changes associated with dual-responding by comparing the error during targets and non-targets. Similar comparison was made with fMRI data. Our result showed that despite a significant increase in the overall tracking error post SD, from 20 pixels pre SD to 45 pixels post SD, error decreased to a minimum of about 25 pixels 0-6s after dual-response. Despite an overall reduced activation post SD, greater activation difference between targets and non-targets was found post SD in task-related regions, such as the left cerebellum, the left somatosensory cortex, the left extrastriate cortex, bilateral precuneus, the left middle frontal gyrus, and the left motor cortex. Our results suggest that dual-response helps to alleviate performance impairment usually associated with SD. The duration of the alleviation effect was on the order of seconds after dual-responding.     

Prospective associations between physical fitness and executive function in adolescents: The UP&DOWN study

IntroductionThe objective of the present work is to investigate the prospective associations between physical fitness components (cardiorespiratory fitness, motor fitness, and muscular strength) and two domains of executive function (working memory and inhibitory control) in adolescents.MethodsA total of 422 Spanish adolescents (13.35 ± 1.54 years, at baseline) from the UP&DOWN study with assessments at baseline and at 2-year follow-up were included in the analysis. Physical fitness was assessed using the ALPHA Fitness Test Battery. Working memory was measured by the n-back task and inhibitory control by the go/no-go task. Relationships of physical fitness components with working memory and inhibitory control were examined using linear regression models, adjusted for confounders.ResultsHigher baseline levels of the three physical fitness components (cardiorespiratory fitness, motor fitness, and muscular strength) individually predicted better performance on the working memory (β_ranged, from .159 to .207; all p < .012) and inhibitory control (β_ranged, from 0.168 to 0.263; all p < .004) tasks at the 2-year follow-up. Muscular strength was the only component associated with inhibitory control independent of the other 2 physical fitness components (β = 0.266; p = .005).ConclusionsAll components of adolescents’ physical fitness at baseline were individually associated with better working memory and inhibitory control at 2-year follow-up. Specifically, our results revealed that muscular strength was the component showing the strongest association with executive function, and even the only fitness component associated with inhibitory control independent of the other fitness components. These findings may have important public health and educational implication, since promoting exercise programs that improve physical fitness, and particularly, muscular strength, may positively influence cognitive health.     

Profils d’apprenti·e·s reflétant des tensions de rôle en formation professionnelle en alternance en Suisse

Role stress among apprentices are a key element in defining the quality of dual vocational education and training. However, few studies have examined the perceptions and importance of role tensions in this particular context. Accordingly, this contribution focuses on the role stress perceived by dual apprentices through a questionnaire survey. Latent profile analyses allowed to distinguish four apprentices’ profiles in terms of perceptions of role stress, ranging from minimal to prominent role stress. Differences in socio-demographic characteristics, motivation for choosing the training, professional identification, and intention to terminate the apprenticeship contract were also identified. The study provides information on the importance of considering apprentices as a heterogeneous population in terms of role stress, but also on the different motivational and identity issues associated with the profiles. Discussing such issues would also improve the learning experience.     

Suppression of irrelevant activation in the horizontal and vertical Simon task differs quantitatively not qualitatively

The Simon effect is usually explained by the assumption that the irrelevant stimulus location automatically activates the corresponding response. In the case of incongruent stimulus–response assignments automatically activated responses therefore have to be suppressed to ensure correct responses. This account, however, has been called into question for other than horizontally arranged visual Simon tasks. We investigated whether there is a qualitative or quantitative difference in suppression of irrelevant activation between horizontally and vertically arranged Simon tasks, using delta-function analyses. Sequential analyses revealed suppression after incongruent trials in both tasks, supporting the idea of a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference between the tasks. We conclude that automatic response activation is weaker in vertical tasks resulting in lower inhibitory demands as compared to horizontal tasks.     

Comparison of active and purely visual performance in a multiple-string means-end task in infants

The aim of the present study was to understand what factors influence infants’ problem-solving behaviours on the multiple-string task. The main question focused on why infants usually solve the single string-pulling task at 12 months at the latest, whereas most 16-month-old infants still cannot solve the task when several strings are presented, only one of which is attached to the desired object. We investigated whether this difficulty is related to infants’ ability to inhibit their spontaneous immediate actions by comparing active and purely visual performance in this task. During the first part of the experiment, we assessed the ability of infants aged 16–20 months to solve the multiple-string task. The infants were then divided into three groups based on performance (a “failure” group, an “intermediate” group, and a “success” group). The results of this action task suggest that there were differences in infants’ performance according to their level of inhibitory control of their preferred hand. In the second part of the experiment, the three groups’ predictive looking strategies were compared when seeing an adult performing the task. We found that only infants who successfully performed the action task also visually anticipated which string the adult had to pull in the visual task. Our results suggests that inhibitory control was not the only factor influencing infants’ performance on the task. Furthermore, the data support the direct matching hypothesis (Rizzolatti and Fadiga, 2005), according to which infants need to be able to perform actions themselves before being able to anticipate similar actions performed by others.     

Inhibitory mechanisms in single negative priming from ignored and briefly flashed primes: The key role of the inter-stimulus interval

The influence of interstimulus intervals (ISIs) on priming effects was investigated using a single-prime negative priming (NP) paradigm. In all experiments, a brief (16 ms), centrally displayed prime (a Chinese character, to be ignored) appeared, followed by a pattern mask and then a centrally displayed target (another semantically related or unrelated Chinese character); the task required semantic categorization (animate/inanimate) of the target. An ISI could occur either between prime and mask (Experiments 1 and 5) or between mask and target (Experiments 2–4). The results revealed NP when a 470 ms ISI occurred between prime and mask (Experiments 1 and 5) and when a 700 ms ISI occurred between mask and target (Experiments 3 and 4). In contrast, when a long prime-target SOA was maintained but the mask-target ISI was shortened, NP disappeared (Experiment 4). The results indicated that a persisting mask/distractor (without ISI) located in the same position as the following target interfered with the buildup of inhibition, but an ISI between prime and mask or mask and target eliminated this interference, and that inhibition processes induced by an ignore instruction were implemented faster with an ISI placed between prime and mask than with an ISI placed between mask and target.     

Challenging tasks: The role of employees' and supervisors' goal orientations

Research shows that challenging jobs stimulate employee learning and retention. Nevertheless, empirical knowledge on what influences the amount of challenging tasks employees perform in their job is lacking. In this study, we examined the extent to which the performance of challenging tasks is related to employees' and supervisors' goal orientations. We found a positive relationship between employees' mastery-approach orientation and the performance of challenging tasks. Furthermore, if supervisors had authority over the tasks of their employees, supervisors' goal orientations were related to employees' task challenge. Performing challenging tasks was negatively related to supervisors' performance-approach orientation and positively related to supervisors' performance-avoidance orientation.