The Influence of Maternal Schizotypy on the perception of Facial Emotional Expressions during Infancy: an Event-Related Potential Study

Parenting directly affects the developmental and clinical outcomes of children. How parental personality relates to perceptual and cognitive mechanisms during early development is not clear. For parents with traits of the personality dimension schizotypy, would their infant display brain responses similar to those on the schizophrenia-spectrum? This study investigates whether maternal personality influences early social-cognitive awareness during the first 6 postnatal months.Schizotypy is a dimension of personality within the general population. If deficits contribute to the development of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders by influencing the development of symptom-like characteristics, they may be observable in neurotypical individuals with schizotypal characteristics. Parents and their infants were shown standardised positive and negative faces and event-related potential responses were assessed. It was hypothesised that the infants of schizotypic mothers would display differential Negative-central event-related potentials for the happy and fearful expressions when compared to infants of non-schizotypic mothers.Results support prior literature; indicating 6-month-old infants allocate more attentional resources to fearful when contrasted to happy faces. The adult cohort displays this same ability. In addition, schizotypic mothers displayed comparable amplitudes for both expressions in comparison to the control mothers who exhibited larger amplitudes towards the fearful compared to the happy expression. Infants of schizotypic mothers did not show a greater sensitivity to facial expressions at 6-months, but schizotypic mothers showed a generalised response towards facial expressions compared to the typical P600 response illustrated by the control mothers. The present study suggests that development in the higher cognitive domains, such as the allocation of attention to novel stimuli, are not affected at 6 months of age by maternal personality related to schizotypy when examined at the group level. Implications for personality development, maternal-infant interactions and cognitive neuroscience methodologies are discussed.     

外倾个体的自我参照加工程度效应

采用事件相关电位技术和三类刺激的经典oddball范式,以内隐的方式探讨外倾特质个体的自我参照加工程度效应及其神经机制。实验发现,外倾被试的高自我相关名字在各个ERP成分上都比其他刺激诱发了更大波幅。在P2上,高自我相关的刺激比其他刺激诱发了更大的P2波幅和更长的P2潜伏期,其中中线脑区的效应最大。在N2上,高自我相关的刺激比其他刺激诱发了更大的N2波幅和更短的N2潜伏期,其中额区位置的效应最大。控制组被试的高自我相关名字比外倾型被试的高自我相关名字诱发了更大的N2的波幅和更短的N2潜伏期。在P3平均波幅上,高自我相关的刺激比其他刺激诱发了更大的P3波幅,其中中线效应最大。对比外倾型被试,控制组被试的自我参照刺激诱发了更大的P3波幅。研究结果表明外倾特质个体的自我参照加工具有程度效应,但对比控制组被试,外倾特质个体的自我参照加工的程度效应更弱。     

Conceptual influences on induction: A case for a late onset

This research examines the mechanism of early induction, the development of induction, and the ways attentional and conceptual factors contribute to induction across development. Different theoretical views offer different answers to these questions. Six experiments with 4- and 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds and adults (N = 208) test these competing theories by teaching categories for which category membership and perceptual similarity are in conflict, and varying orthogonally conceptual and attentional factors that may potentially affect inductive inference. The results suggest that early induction is similarity-based; conceptual information plays a negligible role in early induction, but its role increases gradually, with the 7-year-olds being a transitional group. And finally, there is substantial contribution of attention to the development of induction: only adults, but not children, could perform category-based induction without attentional support. Therefore, category-based induction exhibits protracted development, with attentional factors contributing early in development and conceptual factors contributing later in development. These results are discussed in relation to existing theories of development of inductive inference and broader theoretical views on cognitive development.     

Learning to infer the time of our actions and decisions from their consequences

Research shows that people infer the time of their actions and decisions from their consequences. We asked how people know how much time to subtract from consequences in order to infer their actions and decisions. They could either subtract a fixed, default, time from consequences, or learn from experience how much time to subtract in each situation. In two experiments, participants’ actions were followed by a tone, which was presented either immediately or after a delay. In Experiment 1, participants estimated the time of their actions; in Experiment 2, the time of their decisions to act. Both actions and decisions were judged to occur sooner or later as a function of whether consequences were immediate or delayed. Estimations tended to be shifted toward their consequences, but in some cases they were shifted away from them. Most importantly, in all cases participants learned progressively to adjust their estimations with experience.     

From task characteristics to learning: A systematic review

Wielenga‐Meijer, E. G. A., Taris, T. W., Kompier, M. A. J. & Wigboldus, D. H. J. (2010). From task characteristics to learning: A systematic review. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 363–375. Although many theoretical approaches propose that job characteristics affect employee learning, the question is why and how job characteristics influence learning. The present study reviews the evidence on the relationships among learning antecedents (i.e., job characteristics: demands, variety, autonomy and feedback), learning processes (including motivational, meta‐cognitive, cognitive and behavioral processes) and learning consequences. Building on an integrative heuristic model, we quantitatively reviewed 85 studies published between 1969 and 2005. Our analyses revealed strong evidence for a positive relation between job demands and autonomy on the one hand and motivational and meta‐cognitive learning processes on the other. Furthermore, these learning processes were positively related to learning consequences.     

Continuities across continents: Assessing African American cultural themes among Black and Coloured South Africans

Much of the scholarship concerning African American culture is premised on the notion that it is a legacy of African origins but there has been essentially no attempt to document that relationship empirically. This paper briefly reviews existing evidence for cultural continuity in the Diaspora and then compares the responses of Black and Coloured South African and African Americans on measures of culture emic to African American populations. The observed patterns of psychometric performance, participants' responses, and the predictive utility of the measures employed were consistent with the thesis that despite inevitable variation, these three groups of the African Diaspora share similar orientations on the cultural themes assessed. This research hopes to initiate empirical work on the continuity thesis as it applies to connecting African American culture with a legacy of Africa and as related more broadly to the study of global Diasporas.