The generalized matching law in elite sport competition: football play calling as operant choice

A mathematical model of operant choice, the generalized matching law was used to analyze play-calling data from the 2004 National Football League season. In all analyses, the relative ratio of passing to rushing plays was examined as a function of the relative ratio of reinforcement, defined as yards gained, from passing versus rushing. Different analyses focused on season-aggregate data for the league as a whole, game-by-game data for the league as a whole, and game-by-game data for individual teams. In all analyses except those for a few individual teams, the generalized matching law accounted for a majority of variance in play calling. The typical play-calling pattern reflected undermatching (suggesting imperfect sensitivity of play calling to yardage-gained reinforcers) and a bias for calling rushing plays. Bias was found to be a function of both the relative risk of turnovers and the relative variability in yards gained associated with passing versus rushing plays. The external validity of the matching analyses was supported by significant correlations between parameters of the generalized matching law and team success on offense and season winning percentage. These results illustrate the broad applicability of the generalized matching law to problems outside of the laboratory.     

Dynamics of the dyad: How mothers and infants co-construct interaction spaces during object play

Studies of dyadic interaction often examine infants’ social exchanges with their caregivers in settings that constrain their physical properties (e.g., infant posture, fixed seating location for infants and adults). Methodological decisions about the physical arrangements of interaction, however, may limit our ability to understand how posture and position shape them. Here we focused on these embodied properties of dyadic interaction in the context of object play. We followed 30 mother–infant dyads across the first year of life (at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months) and observed them during 5 min of play with a standard set of toys. Using an interval-based coding system, we measured developmental change in infant posture, how mothers and infants positioned themselves relative to one another, and how they populated interaction spaces with objects. Results showed that mother–infant dyads co-constructed interaction spaces and that the contributions of each partner changed across development. Dyads progressively adopted a broader spatial co-orientation during play (e.g., positioned at right angles) across the first year. Moreover, advances in infants’ postural skills, particularly increases in the use of independent sitting in real time, uniquely predicted change in dyadic co-orientation and infants’ actions with objects, independent of age. Taken together, we show that the embodied properties of dyadic object play help determine how interactions are physically organized and unfold, both in real time and across the first year of life.     

Use of non-directive therapy for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review

In this review, we systematically explored research on the use of non-directive therapies with adolescents (aged 11–18 years) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). N = 12 studies were eligible for inclusion. The findings suggested four therapeutic components which were consistently present across all non-directive interventions and held similarities with play therapy principles: (a) collaboration between adolescent and therapist; (b) adolescent-led discussions; (c) reflection and reframing; and (d) encouragement and acceptance of the adolescent as they were. Therapeutic outcomes improved when the therapists had an understanding of ASD in order to tailor the intervention to the individual. Future primary research investigating the applicability of play therapy principles and limitations is discussed.     

Intensive Child-Centered Play Therapy for Children on the Autism Spectrum: A Pilot Study

To investigate the effectiveness of intensive child-centered play therapy (CCPT) for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the authors randomly assigned 23 children with diagnosed ASD and symptoms of ASD on the Social Responsiveness Scale–2nd Edition (Constantino, 2012), to an intensive CCPT condition (n = 12) or a no-intervention control group (n = 11). Children who participated in 24 sessions of CCPT showed a statistically significant decrease in ASD core symptoms and behavioral symptoms, such as externalizing problems, attention problems, and aggression, compared with children in the control group. Implications are discussed.     

群体任务中合作行为的跨阶段演变

合作是电子商务时代群体工作的重要基础。本实验通过资源两难任务研究群体工作中的合作行为的演变。111名被试参加了实验。研究发现,在动态博弈过程中,群体其他成员行为的多个阶段反馈将成为决策者合作机制形成的主要基础,与决策者价值等内部因素和环境不确定性等外部因素,共同影响合作行为的演变     

两难情景下任务结构与价值取向的效用特征转换

实验采用两难对策任务的情景模拟 ,研究决策者在群体决策情景当中的效用特征转换。 6 2名被试参加了实验。研究发现 ,任务结构与个体价值取向都是影响决策效用特征转换的重要因素 ,并且这种效用特征的转换有稳定关系存在 ,以此为基础来设计组织计算机团队工作具有重要意义     

Children’s developing views of social excluders: A dissociation between social evaluation and partner preference

When facing social exclusion, children seek to strengthen existing social connections and form new ones. This study asked whether they also make strategic choices about the targets of their affiliative goals. Three- to six-year-olds (N = 69; 36 female; mostly non-Hispanic White) observed characters acting inclusively or exclusively. All ages viewed excluders more negatively than includers, but only five- and six-year-olds preferred includers as play partners. Despite easily detecting and remembering exclusion events, younger children expressed no play partner preference. Children's verbal justifications revealed that older children choose partners more carefully and draw on a richer understanding of exclusion. More generally, the initial dissociation between social evaluation and preference formation underscores that these are distinct processes with different developmental trajectories.     

Early communicative gestures and play as predictors of language development in children born with and without family risk for dyslexia

The present study investigated early communicative gestures, play, and language skills in children born with family risk for dyslexia (FR) and a control group of children without this inheritable risk at ages 12, 15, 18, and 24 months. Participants were drawn from the Tromsø Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (TLD) which follows children's cognitive and language development from age 12 months through Grade 2 in order to identify early markers of developmental dyslexia. Results showed that symbolic play and parent reported play at age 12 months and communicative gestures at age 15 months explained 61% of the variance in productive language at 24 months in the FR group. These early nonlinguistic measures seem to be potentially interesting markers of later language development in children born at risk for dyslexia.     

Prospective relations among preschoolers' play,coping, and adjustment as moderated by stressful events

This study evaluated the prospective contribution of preschoolers' pretend play to observer reports of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems one year later, as mediated by observed coping flexibility during a delay of gratification task and as moderated by children's exposure to stressful life events. Preschoolers' (N = 250; M_age = 49.05 months, SD = 2.95; 50% female) fantasy and affect expression in pretend play were assessed during a laboratory visit. Moderated mediation models tested for conditional indirect effects of play fantasy and affect expression on behavior problems through coping flexibility as a function of the child's exposure to stress. Preschoolers' fantasy and negative affect expression in pretend play predicted lower rates of internalizing, but not externalizing, problems. Coping flexibility partially mediated this relation, particularly among children with relatively more life stress. These findings clarify processes by which, and contexts within which, preschoolers' pretend play influences later behavioral adjustment.     

It’s Child’s Play: Contemplative Anthropocosmic Creativity

The implicate or quantum connectivity of the coevolving phenomena of the cosmos, the ontohermeneutic complementarity relations between ourselves and the vast and minute systems we coconstitutingly participate, observe, prolong, and contextualize, and the eco-reciprocities among all forms of life afford us an understanding of ourselves as fractal or microcosmic embodiments and performances of what is irreducibly nondual anthropo-cosmogenesis. And if cosmogenesis is a self-referential process having nothing external to itself from which to obtain gain or satisfaction, we may analogously interpret our noninstrumentalizing contemplative experiences in complete attentiveness without regard to external payoffs as the fractal play of its creatively emergent self-delighting anthropocosmic self-awareness in the human dimensionality. Our attentive, noninstrumentalizing, and nonobjectifying contemplativity aconceptually presences connectivity and reciprocity in an aperspectivally transparent enactment of anthropocosmic ongoing-wholing whose meaning is the being of its own self-delighting. The sustainability of cocreative anthropocosmogenesis on Earth flourishes where our conduct and intrinsically rewarding contemplativity are consonant with and recreate the spontaneous coevolutionary play of intrinsically rewarding creatio continua unreduced, unobstructed, unfragmented, and uneclipsed by partial, excessively dualizing perspectives and related efforts for extrinsic gain.