Preadolescent Clues to Understanding Depression in Girls

Between the ages of 10 and 15, increases in depression among girls result in a rate that is twice as high as the rate of depression in boys. This sex difference remains throughout early and middle adulthood. Prior to early adolescence, there is essentially no sex difference in the rate of depression. The aim of the present review is to examine whether the preadolescent period is a time during which precursors to depression in girls can be identified. First, existing areas of research on explaining sex differences in depression, including cognitive and affiliative style and the socialization of emotion, are reviewed. Second, the hypothesis that for some girls, preadolescent precursors to depression take the form of excessive empathy, compliance and regulation of negative emotions is articulated. Third, ways of building on existing models by including the proposed preadolescent precursors are proposed. Finally, approaches to testing the hypotheses that individual differences in these domains during preadolescence may explain later individual differences in adolescent onset depression are explored.     

自我面孔识别的独特性

与识别他人的面孔相比,自我面孔识别在行为反应、种系发生、个体发展以及脑机制等方面都具有很大的独特性。行为指标方面,自我面孔识别在速度上快于识别他人的面孔;种系发生方面,只有人类和大猩猩等高级灵长类动物才具有识别自己面孔的能力;个体发展方面,儿童出生后不久即能识别他人面孔,但要在18个月左右才能表现出自我面孔识别能力;脑机制方面,神经心理学和脑成像研究结果表明自我面孔识别可能主要是右脑的功能。该领域的研究进展将为深入了解自我的形成机理提供一个新的探视“窗口”。     

An analysis of initial acquisition and maintenance of sight words following picture matching and copy cover, and compare teaching methods

This study compared the copy, cover, and compare method to a picture-word matching method for teaching sight word recognition. Participants were 5 kindergarten students with less than preprimer sight word vocabularies who were enrolled in a public school in the Pacific Northwest. A multielement design was used to evaluate the effects of the two interventions. Outcomes suggested that sight words taught using the copy, cover, and compare method resulted in better maintenance of word recognition when compared to the picture-matching intervention. Benefits to students and the practicality of employing the word-level teaching methods are discussed.     

Why 8-year-olds cannot tell the difference between Steve Martin and Paul Newman: factors contributing to the slow development of sensitivity to the spacing of facial features

Children are nearly as sensitive as adults to some cues to facial identity (e.g., differences in the shape of internal features and the external contour), but children are much less sensitive to small differences in the spacing of facial features. To identify factors that contribute to this pattern, we compared 8-year-olds' sensitivity to spacing cues with that of adults under a variety of conditions. In the first two experiments, participants made same/different judgments about faces differing only in the spacing of facial features, with the variations being kept within natural limits. To measure the effect of attention, we reduced the salience of featural information by blurring faces and occluding features (Experiment 1). To measure the role of encoding speed and memory limitations, we presented pairs of faces simultaneously and for an unlimited time (Experiment 2). To determine whether participants' sensitivity would increase when spacing distortions were so extreme as to make the faces grotesque, we manipulated the spacing of features beyond normal limits and asked participants to rate each face on a "bizarreness" scale (Experiment 3). The results from the three experiments indicate that low salience, poor encoding efficiency, and limited memory can partially account for 8-year-olds' poor performance on face processing tasks that require sensitivity to the spacing of features, a kind of configural processing that underlies adults' expertise. However, even when the task is modified to compensate for these problems, children remain less sensitive than adults to the spacing of features.     

Category specificity in normal episodic learning: applications to object recognition and category-specific agnosia

Studies of patients with category-specific agnosia (CSA) have given rise to multiple theories of object recognition, most of which assume the existence of a stable, abstract semantic memory system. We applied an episodic view of memory to questions raised by CSA in a series of studies examining normal observers' recall of newly learned attributes of familiar objects. Subjects first learned to associate arbitrarily assigned colors or textures to objects in a training phase, and then attempted to report the newly learned attribute of each object in a recall task. Our subjects' pattern of recall errors was similar both quantitatively and qualitatively to the identification deficits among patients with CSA for biological objects. Furthermore, errors tended to reflect conceptually and structurally based confusions. We suggest that object identification involves recruitment and integration of information across distributed episodic memories and that this process is susceptible to interference from objects that are structurally similar and conceptually related.     

A holistic account of the own-race effect in face recognition: evidence from a cross-cultural study

A robust finding in the cross-cultural research is that people's memories for faces of their own race are superior to their memories for other-race faces. However, the mechanisms underlying the own-race effect have not been well defined. In this study, a holistic explanation was examined in which Caucasian and Asian participants were asked to recognize features of Caucasian and Asian faces presented in isolation and in the whole face. The main finding was that Caucasian participants recognized own-race faces more holistically than Asian faces whereas Asian participants demonstrated holistic recognition for both own-race and other-race faces. The differences in holistic recognition between Caucasian and Asian participants mirrored differences in their relative experience with own-race and other-race faces. These results suggest that the own-race effect may arise from the holistic recognition of faces from a highly familiar racial group.     

Beyond the Obvious: Chronic Vividness of Imagery and the Use of Information in Decision Making

The authors investigate two competing hypotheses about how chronic vividness of imagery interacts with the vividness and salience of information in decision making. Results from four studies, covering a variety of decision domains, indicate that chronic imagery vividness rarely amplifies the effects of vivid and salient information. Imagery vividness may, in fact, attenuate the effects of vivid and salient information. This is because, relative to nonvivid imagers, vivid imagers rely less on information that appears obvious and rely more on information that seems less obvious. This tendency is so robust that vividness of imagery may amplify the effects of vivid information only when this information is the only information available in the decision field. The findings seem to reflect vivid imagers' tendency to totally immerse themselves in a decision problem and scrutinize the available information creatively.     

The recognition potential: An ERP index of lexical access

Recognition potential (RP) is a brain electrical response that appears when a subject views recognizable images of words. However, it has yet to be determined whether the processes reflected by RP are related to orthographic or to semantic analysis. This study aimed to resolve this question by studying the RP evoked by orthographically correct stimuli that were devoid of meaning. Results showed RP not only to this type of stimuli, but also to others achieving lower levels in the reading process. Strikingly, however, the RP amplitude significantly differed in parallel with the levels of the reading processes attained by the stimuli, the amplitude of the RP progressively increasing as the level approached the semantic one, which showed the highest amplitude. These results not only confirm the replicability of RP, but also its promise of potential usefulness in the study and assessment of language perception.     

儿童对抽象画情绪寓意理解的发展及文化因素的影响

本实验旨在探索儿童对抽象图画情绪寓意敏感性的发展规律以及文化因素的影响。被试年龄跨度从 5岁至高中学生。根据被试利用形态、主题、情绪等图片特性作为识辨依据的特点来发现规律。儿童对抽象图画寓意敏感性的发展与表征水平相关。年幼儿童只能利用颜色或图形等单一信息维量进行判断 ,年长儿童及中学生可以综合利用形态、主题、情绪等多个维量判断。在寓意明确的图片识辨中 ,儿童对积极寓意的识辨成绩较优。在双关寓意的图片识辨中 ,儿童组倾向于选择具有积极寓意的线索 ,而中学生组会受到识辨经验的影响。文化与教育方式影响儿童对抽象图画情绪寓意的理解。中国幼教方式有助于儿童对图画认知与情绪成分的识辨。     

Recognition Memory for Faces: Reliability and Validity of the Warrington Recognition Memory Test (RMT) in a Neurological Sample

In response to critiques regarding the psychometric limitations of the Warrington Recognition Memory Test for faces (RMT-F), the current study was conducted to examine the test-retest reliability and validity of the measure in a neurological sample. Forty adult outpatients, ages 35–81, were administered the RMT-F as part of their diagnostic exam. A second evaluation was conducted after an average interval of 7 months (range = 2–20 months). Results yielded a Pearson reliability coefficient of 0.81 (p < .001), indicating a clinically satisfactory index of stability. Correlations with other measures were conducted to examine convergent and divergent validity. Results indicate that the facial component of the RMT has adequate reliability for patients with established neurological disease, shows moderate correlations with other measures of complex visuospatial function, and shows no significant correlation with measures of verbal reasoning, visual problem-solving, or verbal fluency. These findings provide additional support for the clinical efficacy of this instrument for use in a diverse neurological patient sample.