A diary after dinner: How the time of event recording influences later accessibility of diary events

Recording the events of a day in a diary may help improve their later accessibility. An interesting question is whether improvements in long-term accessibility will be greater if the diary is completed at the end of the day, or after a period of sleep, the following morning. We investigated this question using an internet-based diary method. On each of five days, participants (n?=?109) recorded autobiographical memories for that day or for the previous day. Recording took place either in the morning or in the evening. Following a 30-day retention interval, the diary events were free recalled. We found that participants who recorded their memories in the evening before sleep had best memory performance. These results suggest that the time of reactivation and recording of recent autobiographical events has a significant effect on the later accessibility of those diary events. We discuss our results in the light of related findings that show a beneficial effect of reduced interference during sleep on memory consolidation and reconsolidation.     

Emotional Expressiveness during Peer Conflicts: A Predictor of Social Maladjustment among High-Risk Preschoolers

Preschool boys' emotional displays during conflicts with mixed-sex peers were related to individual differences in peer sociometric status and teacher ratings of disruptive behavior. Participants were 60 4- to 5-year old boys from low-income families who were videotaped with a small group of classmates in a Head Start preschool classroom. Conflicts were identified and emotional displays were coded from videotape. Results indicated that conflicts were more negative in emotional tone at the end than at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, children tended to mirror each others' emotional displays at the end but not the beginning of the preschool year. In addition, gleeful taunting, a form of emotional aggression, more strongly predicted negative peer nominations and teacher ratings than anger, suggesting that anger may be a more socially accepted form of emotional expression during conflicts among preschool-age children. Implications and directions for future research and interventions are discussed.     

Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome in Prader-Willi Syndrome: An Unrecognized and Untreated Cause of Cognitive and Behavioral Deficits?

Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) is a rare genetic disorder characterized by a range of physical, psychological, and physiological abnormalities. It is also distinguished by the high prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS), i.e., repetitive upper airway collapse during sleep resulting in hypoxia and sleep fragmentation. In non-PWS populations, OSAS is associated with a range of neurocognitive and psychosocial deficits. Importantly, these deficits are at least partly reversible following treatment. Given the findings in non-PWS populations, it is possible that OSAS may contribute to neurocognitive and psychosocial deficits in PWS. The present review examines this possibility. While acknowledging a primary contribution from the primary genetic abnormality to central neural dysfunction in PWS, we conclude that OSAS may be an important secondary contributing factor to reduced neurocognitive and psychosocial performance. Treatment of OSAS may have potential benefits in improving neurocognitive performance and behavior in PWS, but this awaits confirmatory investigation.     

Correcting distorted perception of sleep in insomnia: a novel behavioural experiment?

Patients with primary insomnia overestimate their sleep onset latency (SOL) and underestimate their total sleep time (TST). The present study aimed to test the utility of a novel behavioural experiment designed to correct distorted perception of sleep among patients diagnosed with primary insomnia. Individuals with primary insomnia were asked to wear an actigraph and keep a sleep diary for three nights. On the following day, half were shown the discrepancy between the data recorded on the actigraph and their sleep diary (Shown-Discrepancy Group), the other half were not shown the discrepancy (No-Demonstration Group). Participants were then asked to wear the actigraph and keep a sleep diary for three further nights. Following the behavioural experiment, the Shown-Discrepancy Group estimated their SOL more accurately and reported less anxiety and preoccupation about sleep compared to the No-Demonstration Group. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Working memory and access to numerical information in children with disability in mathematics

The relationship among working memory, mathematic ability, and the cognitive impairment of children with difficulties in mathematics was examined. A group of children with difficulties in mathematics (MD) was compared with a group of children with a normal level of achievement matched for vocabulary, age, and gender (N = 49). The children were required to perform a variety of working memory and short-term memory tasks that had been administered 1 year previously. Moreover, the children were asked to perform tasks designed to provide information about speed of articulation. The results suggest a general working memory deficit in children with MD, specifically in the central executive component of Baddeley's model and primarily in the ability to inhibit irrelevant information. However, the MD children were not impaired in speech rate and counting speed tasks, which mainly involve the role of the articulatory loop.     

The Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire: Psychometric properties of a Lithuanian translation in an adolescent sample

The present study provides a preliminary validation of the Lithuanian version of the Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire (SAQ, Nurmi, et al., 1995), a self-reported measure of social and cognitive behavioral strategies. An attempt to validate SAQ subscales was made by correlating them with the Youth Self-Report (Achenbach, 1991) and school grades. This was done with a sample of 14- to 17-year-old adolescents (N= 734). The results showed that although internal consistency reliabilities were good, they were lower when compared with the original version of SAQ. The SAQ subscales were moderately associated with various validity criteria, such as anxiety/depression, withdrawal, social problems and somatic complaints and school grades. Results also showed moderate correlations between similar strategic components across achievement and affiliative situations. The results provide preliminary evidence for concurrent validity of the Lithuanian version of SAQ.     

Implementing Family-Centered Interventions Within the Public Middle School: Linking Service Delivery to Change in Student Problem Behavior

The Adolescent Transitions Program is a family-centered intervention strategy designed to reduce problem behavior and prevent drug use within a public school environment. A parent consultant within a Family Resource Center (FRC) provided universal, selected, and indicated interventions that enhanced and supported positive parenting practices known to serve as protective factors. Implementation of the 3-year FRC model involved 584 students and their families in 4 middle schools. Analyses focused on the dynamics and effects of parent consultant activities and services. Differences in school “adoption” of the FRC services were found to be a function of both passage of time and school environment. Despite significant variation in implementation across schools, FRC services significantly reduced the growth in problem behavior over the course of the middle-school years. The implications of these findings for dissemination of empirically supported, school-based, family-centered interventions are discussed.     

Psychometric Evaluation of 5- and 7-Year-Old Children's Self-Reports of Conduct Problems

Past research suggests that young children are incapable of reporting information about their own behavior problems. To test this, we examined the validity and the usefulness of children's self-reports in the E-Risk Study, a nationally representative birth cohort of 2,232 children. We used the Berkeley Puppet Interview to obtain children's self-reports of conduct problems when they were 5-years old and the Dominic-R when they were 7-years old. We also collected information about the children and their families by interviewing mothers, sending questionnaires to teachers, and rating examiners' observations during home visits. Results indicate that when children's self-reports are gathered with structured and developmentally appropriate instruments, they are shown to be valid measures: conduct problems reported by the children themselves were associated with known correlates including individual characteristics (e.g., IQ), related behaviors (e.g., hyperactivity), and family variables (e.g., economic disadvantages). Observed correlations closely matched effect sizes reported in the literature using adults' reports of children's behavioral problems. In addition, children's self-reports can be useful: both measures distinguished children meeting DSM-IV criteria for research diagnoses of conduct disorder. Children's reports also contributed unique information not provided by adults. For research and clinical purposes, young children's self-reports can be viewed as a valuable complement to adults' ratings and observational measures of children's behavior problems.     

Severity of Emotional and Behavioral Problems Among Poor and Typical Readers

The purpose of this study was to examine the severity of behavioral and emotional problems among adolescents with poor and typical single word reading ability (N = 188) recruited from public schools and followed for a median of 2.4 years. Youth and parents were repeatedly assessed to obtain information regarding the severity and course of symptoms (depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, aggression, delinquent behaviors, inattention), controlling for demographic variables and diagnosis of ADHD. After adjustment for demographic variables and ADHD, poor readers reported higher levels of depression, trait anxiety, and somatic complaints than typical readers, but there were no differences in reported self-reported delinquent or aggressive behaviors. Parent reports indicated no differences in depression, anxiety or aggression between the two groups but indicated more inattention, somatic complaints, and delinquent behaviors for the poor readers. School and health professionals should carefully assess youth with poor reading for behavioral and emotional symptoms and provide services when indicated.     

关于《易传》美学—文学思想的若干问题——兼论《易传》是我国最早作专书批评的文章—文学理论著作

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