Perseverative responding in a violation-of-expectation task in 6.5-month-old infants

In the present research, 6.5-month-old infants perseverated in a violation-of-expectation task designed to examine their reasoning about width information in containment events. After watching a familiarization event in which a ball was lowered into a wide container, the infants failed to detect the violation in a test event in which the same ball was lowered into a container only half as wide as the ball (narrow-container test event). This negative result (which was replicated in another experiment) was interpreted in terms of a recent problem-solving account of infants' perseverative errors in various means-end tasks (Aguiar, A., & Baillargeon, R. (2000). Perseveration and problem solving in infancy. In H. W. Reese (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 27, pp. 135-180). San Diego, CA: Academic Press). It was assumed that the infants in the present experiments (1) did not attend to the relative widths of the ball and container in their initial analysis of the narrow-container test event, (2) categorized the event as similar to the familiarization event shown on the preceding trials, and (3) retrieved the expectation they had formed for that event ("the ball will fit into the container"), resulting in a perseverative error. This interpretation was supported by additional experiments in which different modifications were introduced that led to non-perseverative responding, indicating that 6.5-month-old infants could detect the violation in the narrow-container test event. The present findings are important for several reasons. First, they provide the first demonstration of perseverative responding in a violation-of-expectation task. Second, they make clear the breadth and usefulness of the problem-solving account mentioned above. Finally, they add to the evidence for some degree of continuity between infants' and adults' problem-solving abilities.     

Representing others' actions: just like one's own?

Previous research has shown that observing others' actions can affect individual performance of the same actions. In the present study, we developed a new paradigm to investigate whether and how complementary actions at the disposal of another agent are represented and influence one's own actions. A spatial compatibility task was distributed among two people so that each participant took care of one of two responses. The identical task was performed alone and alongside another participant. There was a spatial compatibility effect in the group setting only. It was similar to the effect obtained when one person took care of both responses. This result suggests that one's own actions and others' actions are represented in a functionally equivalent way.     

The effects of road traffic noise and meaningful irrelevant speech on different memory systems

To explore why noise has reliable effects on delayed recall in a certain text-reading task, this episodic memory task was employed with other memory tests in a study of road traffic noise and meaningful but irrelevant speech. Context-dependent memory was tested and self-reports of affect were taken. Participants were 96 high school students. The results showed that both road traffic noise and meaningful irrelevant speech impaired recall of the text. Retrieval in noise from semantic memory was also impaired. Attention was impaired by both noise sources, but attention did not mediate the noise effects on episodic memory. Recognition was not affected by noise. Context-dependent memory was not shown. The lack of mediation by attention, and road traffic noise being as harmful as meaningful irrelevant speech, are discussed in relation to where in the input/storing/output sequence noise has its effect and what the distinctive feature of the disturbing noise is.     

Mothers' Overreactive Discipline and Their Encoding and Appraisals of Toddler Behavior

The relations of observed overreactive discipline with mothers' tendencies to notice negative, relative to positive, child behavior (preferential negative encoding), and mothers' negative appraisals of neutral and positive child behavior (negative appraisal bias), were examined in mothers of toddlers. The mothers rated both their own children's and unfamiliar children's behavior. Negative appraisal bias with respect to mothers' own (but not unfamiliar) children was related to mothers' overreactivity, independent of child misbehavior. Overreactivity was not related to mothers' preferential negative encoding either of their own or of unfamiliar children's behavior. However, in the case of mothers' own children, preferential negative encoding moderated the relation between negative appraisal bias and overreactive discipline, such that the negative appraisal bias-overreactivity relation was significant only in the context of high preferential negative encoding.     

On Selective Left Neglect during Walking in a Child

In this article we describe a child affected by right parieto-occipital lesion due to head injury. The patient showed left hemianopia, but not unilateral spatial neglect on traditional paper-and-pencil tests and on "ecological" tests. However, his parents reported frequent collisions with obstacles on the left side. A specific test was set up: The patient had to kick down skittles put on both sides of a route traced on the floor. He kicked down 89% of skittles on the right, but only 38% on the left side. These findings are discussed in light of recent theories on unilateral neglect.     

Hormones and Cognition: Current Concepts and Issues in Neuropsychology

This article provides an extensive and comprehensive review of the effects of hormones on cognition. Studies detailing specific neurocognitive functions affected by variation in hormone levels across the life span are presented. Dysregulation of hormone levels is considered from models of both normal and diseased functioning. Patterns of cognitive dysfunction are described for a range of syndromes involving the neuroendocrine system, and evidence of specific neurophysiological mechanisms that can account for these findings is outlined. This review includes discussion of treatment outcomes and the permanency of endocrine-related cognitive dysfunction. The authors present a set of guidelines for clinical neuropsychologists to use for assessment of patients with neuroendocrine system dysfunction. Clinical and methodological issues in research and treatment settings are discussed.     

Landmark-based spatial search in honeybees. I.

Honeybees were trained to find sugar water in the middle of an array of two landmarks of different colours. Unrewarded tests compared searching on the training array with searching on rotated arrays. On rotated tests, a system using the angles between landmarks would continue to search in the middle. A system using vectors to individual elements would search at locations outside the rotated array at which the distances and compass directions to a subset of landmarks matched. Results indicated that bees used both elements and interlandmark angles, but they relied most on one favourite landmark element. Results support the template model of landmark use in honeybees, with the minor parametric modification that weights given to different elements may be unequal. Received:6 July 1998 / Accepted after revision:7 December 1998     

Infants’ coding of location in continuous space

The ability to code location in continuous space is fundamental to spatial behavior. Existing evidence indicates a robust ability for such coding by 12 months, but systematic evidence on earlier origins is lacking. A series of studies investigated 5-month-olds’ ability to code the location of an object hidden in a sandbox, using a looking-time paradigm. In Experiment 1, after familiarization with a hiding-and-finding sequence at one location, infants looked longer at an object being disclosed from a location 12 inches (30 cm) away than at an object emerging from the hiding location, showing they were able to code location in continuous space. In Experiment 2, infants reacted with greater looking when objects emerged from locations 8 inches (20 cm) away from the hiding location, showing that location coding was more finely grained than could be inferred based on the first study. In Experiment 3, infants were familiarized with an object shown in hiding-and-finding sequences at two different locations. Infants looked longer at objects emerging 12 inches (30 cm) away from the most recent hiding location than to emergence from the other location, showing that infants could code location even when events had previously occurred at each location. In Experiment 4, after familiarization with two objects with different shapes, colors, and sounding characteristics, shown in hiding-and-finding sequences in two locations, infants reacted to location violations as they had in Experiment 3. However, they did not react to object violations, that is, events in which the wrong object emerged from a hiding location. Experiment 5 also found no effect of object violation, even when the infants initially saw the two objects side by side. Spatiotemporal characteristics may play a more central role in early object individuation than they do later, although further study is required.     

Embodied Situationism

Drawing on empirical material from social psychology, ‘situationism’ argues that the astonishing susceptibility of moral behaviour to situational influences undermines certain conceptions of character. The related, albeit more limited, thesis proposed in this paper, ‘embodied situationism’ (ES), engages a larger number of empirical sources from different fields of study and sheds light on the mechanisms responsible for particular, seemingly puzzling, situational judgments and behaviours. It is demonstrated that the empirical material supports the claims of ES and that ES is immune to some important objections against situationism.