Threat Vigilance in Child Witnesses of Domestic Violence: A Pilot Study Utilizing the Ambiguous Situations Paradigm

Research has found that children exposed to family violence exhibit higher rates of maladjustment. We review relevant literature on family violence, marital conflict, and cognitive factors implicated in child behaviour problems. A bias toward perceiving threat in ambiguous contexts has been identified as one factor mediating both aggressive and anxious behaviour disorders. We conducted a study utilizing the ambiguous situations paradigm to assess whether children exposed to violent spousal conflict were more likely than children not exposed to violence (divided into children with an externalizing behaviour disorder and non-clinic children) to perceive threat in two classes of ambiguous situations: Peer and Inter-Parental. The results indicated that children exposed to violent spousal conflict perceived more threat in parental situations than either of the other two groups. A number of considerations were taken into account given the exploratory nature of the study, particularly sample limitations. We conclude with suggestions for improvements to the research design and the further relevance of exploring cognitive factors involved in the adjustment of children from backgrounds of violence.     

认知发展研究趋势的探讨

该文阐明了认知科学、建构主义和新皮亚杰学派对认知发展研究的影响,着重论述了新皮亚杰学派对认知发展研究的新趋势及主要观点,并对这些趋势予以了较为详尽的评述,以期为认知发展心理学家重新审视和思考原有认知发展理论假设的合理性、提出新的假设和新的研究方向有所启示。     

论内隐认知

人的认知活动是意识过程和无意识过程的统一,该文论证了内隐认知过程的存在性、普遍性、有效性,相对独立性,并就内隐与外显认知过程的关系及其在认识中的作用做了分析和评价。     

Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account

Strong forms of dualism and eliminative materialism block any significant dialogue between the neurosciences and theology. The present article thus challenges the Sufficiency Thesis, according to which neuroscientific explanations will finally be sufficient to fully explain human behavior. It then explores the various ways in which neuroscientific results and theological interpretations contribute to an overall theory of the person. Supervenience theories, which hold that mental events are dependent on their physical substrata but not reducible to them, are explained. Challenging the determinism of "strong" supervenience, I defend a version of "soft" supervenience that allows for genuine mental causation. This view gives rise in turn to an emergentist theory of the person. Still, I remain a monist: there are many types of properties encountered in the world, although it is only the one nature that bears all these properties. The resulting position, emergentist monism , allows for diversity within the context of the one world. This view is open at the top for theological applications and interpretations while retaining the close link to neuroscientific study and its results. Theology offers an interpretation of the whole world based on a yet higher order of emergence, although the notion of God moves beyond the natural order as a whole. It therefore supplements the natural scientific study of the world without negating it.     

空间导航的脑网络基础和调控机制

空间导航在生活中时刻发生,空间能力衰退是阿尔兹海默症的重要早期表现。早期关于空间导航神经机制的研究主要关注单个脑区的特异性功能,但这些脑区如何交互以整合不同模态的信息支持复杂导航行为尚不清楚。脑成像技术、脑网络建模方法和神经调控手段的发展,为在脑网络水平理解人类空间导航的认知神经机制提供了重要研究手段。本研究试图融合空间导航认知神经机制研究的最新进展,借助脑网络建模、大数据分析、微电流刺激等前沿研究手段,研究空间导航脑网络的关键拓扑属性特征(如模块化、核心节点等),探寻该功能特异性神经网络的重要影响因素和调控机制,并构建空间导航的脑网络理论模型。研究成果将有利于理解人类复杂导航行为的脑网络基础,为阿尔兹海默症等相关认知障碍脑疾病的筛查和诊断提供重要参考。     

Utilizing response times in cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive testing under the higher-order deterministic input,noisy ‘and’ gate model

Methods of cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive testing (CD-CAT) under higher-order cognitive diagnosis models have been developed to simultaneously provide estimates of the attribute mastery statuses of examinees for formative assessment and estimates of a latent continuous trait for overall summative evaluation. In a typical CD-CAT environment, examinees are often subject to a time limit, and the examinees’ response times (RTs) for specific test items can be routinely recorded by custom-made programs. Because examinees are individually administered tailored sets of test items from the item pool, they may experience different levels of speededness during testing and different levels of risk of running out of time. In this study, RTs were considered during the item-selection procedure to control the test speededness and the RTs were treated as useful information for improving latent trait estimation in CD-CAT under the higher-order deterministic input, noisy ‘and’ gate (DINA) model. A modified posterior-weighted Kullback–Leibler (PWKL) method that maximizes the item information per time unit and a shadow-test method that assembles a provisional test subject to a specified time constraint were developed. Two simulation studies were conducted to assess the effects of the proposed methods on the quality of CD-CAT for fixed- and variable-length exams. The results show that, compared with the traditional PWKL method, the proposed methods preserve a lower risk of running out of time while ensuring satisfactory attribute estimation and providing more accurate estimates of the latent trait and speed parameters. Finally, several suggestions for future research are proposed.     

A developmental study of the bat/ball problem of CRT: How to override the bias and its relation to executive functioning

In two experiments, we explored the nature of the bias observed in the bat/ball problem of the cognitive reflection test (Frederick, 2005, J. Econ. Perspect., 19, 25), how to override it, and its relation to executive functioning. Based on the original bat/ball problem, we designed two additional isomorphic items. In Experiment 1, for four age groups, including 7-, 11-, and 15-year-olds and adults, we determined that the bias is related to the System 1 intervention; the performance in this item was not a matter of mathematical ability and it could be facilitated by changing the order in which the problems were presented. In Experiment 2, we determined that for 15-year-olds, good and bad performances in the item were related to executive functioning, particularly response-distractor inhibition, updating information in working memory, and the regulation of attention; however, subtle differences were identified when the problem was performed in a facilitative context compared with a non-facilitative context. The results indicated that cognitive abilities are a necessary but non-sufficient condition to resolve the problem.     

The longitudinal association between social status insecurity and relational aggression: Moderation effects of social cognition about relational aggression

Previous research has shown that adolescents’ insecurity about their social status is related to their use of relational aggression. However, little is known about how adolescents’ social cognition may moderate this association. Employing a mixed-method approach and a short-term longitudinal design, this study addresses this issue by examining the moderation effects of attribution and outcome expectancies regarding relational aggression on the associations between social status insecurity and relational aggression among 476 Chinese adolescents (238 girls). The main results showed that self-serving attributions and instrumental outcome expectancies strengthened the positive and longitudinal association between social status insecurity and self-reported relational aggression. The findings of this study enrich our knowledge about the social cognitive processes pertinent to peer status and relational aggression among adolescents.     

Being proven wrong elicits learning in children – but only in those with higher executive function skills

This study investigated whether prompting children to generate predictions about an outcome facilitates activation of prior knowledge and improves belief revision. 51 children aged 9–12 were tested on two experimental tasks in which generating a prediction was compared to closely matched control conditions, as well as on a test of executive functions (EF). In Experiment 1, we showed that children exhibited a pupillary surprise response to events that they had predicted incorrectly, hypothesized to reflect the transient release of noradrenaline in response to cognitive conflict. However, children's surprise response was not associated with better belief revision, in contrast to a previous study involving adults. Experiment 2 revealed that, while generating predictions helped children activate their prior knowledge, only those with better inhibitory control skills learned from incorrectly predicted outcomes. Together, these results suggest that good inhibitory control skills are needed for learning through cognitive conflict. Thus, generating predictions benefits learning – but only among children with sufficient EF capacities to harness surprise for revising their beliefs.     

Individual differences in neonatal “imitation” fail to predict early social cognitive behaviour

The influential hypothesis that humans imitate from birth – and that this capacity is foundational to social cognition – is currently being challenged from several angles. Most prominently, the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal study of neonatal imitation to date failed to find evidence that neonates copied any of nine actions at any of four time points (Oostenbroek et al., [2016] Current Biology, 26, 1334–1338). The authors of an alternative and statistically liberal post‐hoc analysis of these same data (Meltzoff et al., [2017] Developmental Science, 21, e12609), however, concluded that the infants actually did imitate one of the nine actions: tongue protrusion. In line with the original intentions of this longitudinal study, we here report on whether individual differences in neonatal “imitation” predict later‐developing social cognitive behaviours. We measured a variety of social cognitive behaviours in a subset of the original sample of infants (N = 71) during the first 18 months: object‐directed imitation, joint attention, synchronous imitation and mirror self‐recognition. Results show that, even using the liberal operationalization, individual scores for neonatal “imitation” of tongue protrusion failed to predict any of the later‐developing social cognitive behaviours. The average Spearman correlation was close to zero, mean r_s = 0.027, 95% CI [?0.020, 0.075], with all Bonferroni adjusted p values > .999. These results run counter to Meltzoff et al.'s rebuttal, and to the existence of a “like me” mechanism in neonates that is foundational to human social cognition.