Prenatal maternal depression predicts neural maturation and negative emotion in infants

Despite widespread acceptance that prenatal symptoms of depression in mothers are detrimental to infants’ long-term emotional and cognitive development, little is known about the mechanisms that may integrate outcomes across these domains. Rooted in the integrative perspective that emotional development is grounded in developing cognitive processes, we hypothesized that prenatal symptoms of depression in mothers would be associated with delays in neural maturation that support sociocognitive function in infants, leading to more problematic behaviors. We used a prospective longitudinal study of mothers (N = 92) and their infants to test whether self-reported symptoms of depression in mothers during the second and third trimesters were associated with neural development and infant outcomes at 4 months of age. While controlling for postpartum symptoms of depression, more prenatal symptoms of depression in mothers predicted less neural maturation in the parietal region of 4-month-old infants. Less neural maturation, in turn, was associated with greater infant negativity, suggesting neural maturation as a putative mechanism linking maternal symptoms of depression with infant outcomes. Differences in neural regions and developmental timing are also discussed.     

Partial reinforcement and autoshaping of the pigeon's key-peck behavior

Pigeons were exposed to continuous and partial reinforcement (25%) schedules in an autoshaping procedure. The number of trials and/or pairings per session were equated across two factorial group sets and all groups were trained for a fixed total number of acquisition trials (192). When acquisition was analyzed as a function of reinforcements delivered, the groups receiving fewer number of trials per session acquired the response faster, independently of the percentage of reinforced trials. Moreover, the number of reinforcements to satisfy an acquisition criterion was a monotonic function of the number of trials per session but not of the schedule. The results are discussed in relation to the neocontinuity and the scalar expectancy theories.     

测验同质性系数及其区间估计

在决定将多维测验分数合并成测验总分时, 应当考虑测验同质性。如果同质性太低, 合成总分没有什么意义。同质性高低可以用同质性系数来衡量。用来计算同质性系数的模型是近年来受到关注的双因子模型(既有全局因子又有局部因子), 测验的同质性系数定义为测验分数方差中全局因子分数方差所占的比例。本文用Delta法推导出计算同质性系数的标准误公式, 进而计算其置信区间。提供了简单的计算同质性系数及其置信区间的程序。用一个例子说明如何估计同质性系数及其置信区间, 通过模拟比较了用Delta法和用Bootstrap法计算的置信区间, 发现两者差异很小。     

Identifying marks of Latin American psychoanalysis Towards the defi nition of a River Plate model1

The author considers the infl uences that different psychoanalytic trends have had on the thought processes of psychoanalysts in the River Plate region. She begins by giving a history of the way in which these trends were shaped by the sociocultural context of the region, and of how the dialectical relationship between these two factors produced the River Plate region's (Argentina and Uruguay) own theoretical model. The author includes a study‐albeit incomplete‐of major local developments, and attempts to defi ne the characteristics of a regional model. The model is based on the following parameters: the fundamental rules of evenly suspended attention and free association; the technical frame; links between theory and clinical practice such as transference‐countertransference, resistance, identifi cation, the analytic fi eld; the concept of psychic change and its indicators; and the interpretive instrument. The author considers the past and present infl uence of Lacanian thought on this model. She concludes by reviewing some of these theoretical and clinical concepts.     

Group Threat, Collective Angst, and Ingroup Forgiveness for the War in Iraq

We examine the consequences of threat to the ingroup for emotional reactions to ingroup harm doing. It was hypothesized that reminders of a past threat to the ingroup would induce collective angst, and this emotional reaction would increase forgiveness of the ingroup for its harmful actions toward another group. In Experiment 1, Americans read an article about the war in Iraq that implied Americans would soon experience another attack or one where such implied future threat to the ingroup was absent. When the ingroup's future was threatened, forgiveness for the harm Americans have committed in Iraq was increased, to the extent that collective angst was induced. In Experiment 2, Americans experienced more collective angst and were more willing to forgive their ingroup for their group's present harm doing in Iraq following reminders of either the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor compared to when the victimization reminder was irrelevant to the ingroup. We discuss why ingroup threat encourages ingroup forgiveness for current harm doing.     

List-level transfer effects in temporal learning: Further complications for the list-level proportion congruent effect

Congruency effects are larger when most trials are congruent relative to incongruent. According to the conflict adaptation account, this proportion congruent effect is due to the decreased attention to words when most of the trials are conflicting. This paper extends on previous work arguing that list-level (contingency-unbiased) proportion congruent effects might be explainable by temporal learning biases. That is, congruency effects are larger in an easier task (i.e., mostly congruent) due to the faster pace of the task. Two non-conflict analogues of the proportion congruent effect are presented, one with a contrast manipulation and another with a contingency manipulation. Critically, both experiments control for potential item-specific temporal learning biases by intermixing biased context and unbiased transfer items. Results show a proportion congruent-like interaction for both item types, supporting the notion of task-wide temporal learning as an explanation for list-level proportion congruency effects. Distributional analyses lend further credence to the temporal learning account by showing that proportion congruent and proportion congruent-like effects are localised in the fastest and intermediate responses.     

艺术作品中的世界与作为世界精神的河流--论海德格尔思想的转折

1936年左右是海德格尔思想发展的关键时期,也即是其思想转折完成的时机,于是弄清楚这一转折(跨越30年代前期)的过程就相当重要了。随着《存在与时间》之后的一系列演讲的出版,其中尤其是海氏对荷尔德林诗歌的解释,可以使我们准确地理解他如何借助艺术与诗歌把存在的真理与美的显像关联来实现这一转折。本文主要通过重新阅读《艺术作品的本源》,并把它置于与荷尔德林的诗歌的关系中来讨论这一转折,从而使海德格尔这一阶段的世界理论更为明确,并为理解后期海德格尔以及第65卷对Ereignis的阐发提供了指引与路标。     

The relationship between perception and production of /w/, /r/, and /l/ by three-year-old children

Twenty-one normally developing 3-year-old children were tested on two approximant consonant contrasts, rake-lake and wake-rake, and a control contrast, wake-bake. Perception was assessed in a two-choice picture identification paradigm; stimuli were (1) natural and computer synthesized “clear cases” of the minimal pairs, and (2) synthetic stimulus series which interpolated on acoustic dimensions that differentiate the minimal pairs. As a group, the children showed very accurate perception of the minimal pairs. Performance on the synthetic series yielded consistent identification of the endpoint stimuli and monotonic functions with abrupt crossovers at the phoneme boundary. Children who did not yet articulate /r/ and /l/ appropriately showed somewhat less consistent perception than children who produced all phonemes correctly.