Developing the couple perspective in parenting support: evaluation of a service initiative for vulnerable families

The importance of the relationship between parents is frequently underestimated by those designing and developing services to support parents in bringing up their children. Instead, the primary focus of recent family support initiatives in the United Kingdom has been on improving parenting skills. This article describes the outcomes of a project designed to maximize the effectiveness of parenting support to vulnerable families through sensitizing the workforce of a community‐based adult mental health agency to take account of the parental couple in providing postnatal support groups, parenting workshops and relationship counselling. Evaluating outcomes from these services suggests that a couple orientation adds significant value to the effectiveness of parenting support.     

Sleep EEG changes during adolescence: An index of a fundamental brain reorganization

Delta (1–4 Hz) EEG power in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep declines massively during adolescence. This observation stimulated the hypothesis that during adolescence the human brain undergoes an extensive reorganization driven by synaptic elimination. The parallel declines in synaptic density, delta wave amplitude and cortical metabolic rate during adolescence further support this model. These late brain changes probably represent the final ontogenetic manifestation of nature’s strategy for constructing nervous systems: an initial overproduction of neural elements followed by elimination. Errors in adolescent brain reorganization may cause mental illness; this could explain the typical age of onset of schizophrenia. Longitudinal studies of sleep EEG are enhancing our knowledge of adolescent brain maturation. Our longitudinal study of sleep EEG changes in adolescence showed that delta power, which may reflect frontal cortex maturation, begins its decline between ages 11 and 12 years and falls by 65% by age 17 years. In contrast, NREM theta power begins its decline much earlier. Delta and theta EEG frequencies are important to sleep theory because they behave homeostatically. Surprisingly, these brain changes are unrelated to pubertal maturation but are strongly linked to age. In addition to these (and other) maturational EEG changes, sleep schedules in adolescence change in response to a complex interaction of circadian, social and other influences. Our data demonstrate that the daytime sleepiness that emerges in adolescence is related to the decline in NREM delta as well as to altered sleep schedules. These longitudinal sleep data provide guideposts for studying cognitive and behavioral correlates of adolescent brain reorganization.     

From blooming,buzzing confusion to media literacy: The early development of television viewing

Television comprehension is a surprisingly demanding task for very young children. Based on a task analysis of television viewing and review of research, we suggest that by 6 months of age, infants can identify objects and people on screen. By 24 months they can comprehend and imitate simple actions contained in single shots and begin to integrate information across shots. Toddlers nevertheless suffer from the video deficit whereby their comprehension is less than from equivalent real life displays. During the preschool years they learn much of the grammar of filmic montage and can comprehend straightforward narrative productions. Essentially adult comprehension appears to be in place by 13 years of age.     

Form follows function: Learning about function helps children learn about shape

Object functions help young children to organize new artifact categories. However, the scope of their influence is unknown. We explore whether functions highlight property dimensions that are relevant to artifact categories in general. Specifically, using a longitudinal training procedure, we assessed whether experience with functions highlights shape as important for categorization. Seventeen-month-olds were provided experience with novel categories of similarly shaped objects. In Study 1, the function group learned about the objects’ shape-based functions; a control group did not. In Study 2, 17-month-olds were trained on the same categories, but the objects’ shapes and functions were no longer causally related. Only the function group in Study 1 subsequently used shape reliably when categorizing novel objects. These results suggest that function is instrumental in establishing a ‘shape bias’ in early categorization and that it does so via conceptually based processes.     

Misleading cues improve developmental assessment of working memory capacity: The color matching tasks

The theory of constructive operators was used as a framework to design two versions of a paradigm (color matching task, CMT) in which items are parametrically ordered in difficulty, and differ only contextually. Items in CMT-Balloon are facilitating, whereas items in CMT-Clown contain misleading cues. Participants of ages 7–14 years and adults (N = 149) were studied. We found significant model-predicted graded differences in performance between the facilitating and misleading tasks, across and within age groups, expressing age versus items’ demand interactions. Younger children were differentially affected by contextual cues. Even though both task versions were highly correlated with a well-established developmental measure of attentional capacity, CMT-Clown, which contained misleading cues, was a better measure of working memory capacity. These results show a need to estimate degree of misleadingness whenever performance levels in working memory or mental attention tasks are compared and interpreted. Developmental profiles of both tasks are discussed in terms of contextual differences and neoPiagetian stages of development.     

从神经可塑性的视角看压力与疾病的关系

压力致病是一个复杂的过程,涉及到与多种致病因素的相互作用、多个器官系统的激活和反馈、不同发育阶段对疾病的易感性等。这个过程中,神经可塑性起着重要的调节作用。本文以神经可塑性为切入点,阐述了压力、发育阶段、个人发展、疾病发生之间的关系。     

Self–other awareness and peer relationships in toddlers: gender comparisons

Toddlers' growing self–other awareness has been linked with their ability to interact with peers, but there is reason to think that self–other awareness may relate to different aspects of peer relationships for boys and girls. We hypothesized that boys would express self–other awareness by separating self from other through claiming toys, while girls would express self–other awareness by creating similarities between self and other through use of the duplicate of a partner's toy. For 52 22–26 month olds, self–other awareness was assessed through four tasks: mirror self recognition, perceptual role taking, pronoun recognition and pronoun use. Each child subsequently interacted with a same‐sex peer for 30 min. Girls high in self–other awareness, and their partners were more likely to engage in duplicate toy use than girls low in self–other awareness. No differences in toy claiming were found. Future longitudinal research would clarify how the onset of self–other awareness relates to developments in peer interaction for girls and boys. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

儿童特质推理中的信息利用

特质研究是心理理论框架中一个重要方面。儿童进行特质推理时对特质信息的利用,是考察其是否拥有完整特质概念的一个重要指标。综述以往研究可以看到在获得完整的特质概念之前,儿童倾向于运用到特质以外的其他信息做出跨特质范畴的推论,尤其是这些信息比特质信息更加具体明显时。文章概述了六个可能影响到儿童特质推理的信息:情境信息、行为频率、示例频率、效价信息、随意性信息、规则信息。在此基础上,对该领域的研究趋势作了展望。     

叙述方式、自我视角与自我发展

叙事取向的自我研究认为, 个体在叙述人生故事与回忆自传体记忆的过程中建构与发展自我。新近研究探讨了影响叙事的因素及其对于自我发展的意义, 相关结果显示, 一致性积极叙事、叙事模式、人格特质等与人生故事和自我发展程度存在一致性关系; 一系列实验结果也证明, 回忆自传体记忆时采用的不同视角和不同人称会对个体的情绪、行为和身体生理等产生影响。在此基础上, 研究者应用研究结论进行临床干预, 开展脑神经活动机制等基础研究工作。未来的工作是扩大叙事材料, 更深入探讨影响因素, 如叙事方式和自我视角的跨文化研究。