Navigating Community Development Conflicts: Contested Visions of Poverty & Poverty Alleviation

This article explores an ethical dilemma that arose from the author's involvement in a project intended to identify and address the needs of seven batey communities in the Dominican Republic. In the summer of 2014, the author conducted a large‐scale needs assessment to inform strategic planning for a foundation that was invested in community development work in those communities. Through a collaborative process, the author worked with the foundation, representatives of the migrant communities, and other researchers to develop survey and focus group tools that were administered to 1,360 and 54 people, respectively. Data collection, analysis, and dissemination proceeded as planned. The conflict and resulting ethical dilemma emerged at the point of data interpretation and strategic planning, processes that revealed that the different parties held conflicting theories of poverty. The ideological conflicts related to why poverty exists, who is responsible for it, and what should be done about it made proceeding with the project ethically tenuous for the author. The author describes the values and theories of ethics on which she relied to navigate this challenge, as well as reflections on her continued participation in the community development process.     

Interactive context integration in children? Evidence from an action memory study

Action–object phrases (e.g., “lift the bottle”) are remembered better if they have been enacted rather than learned verbally. This enactment effect is largest in free recall for phrases with objects (e.g., “bottle”) present because these phrases can be interactively encoded with those context objects (interactive context integration) that serve as retrieval cues. The current study investigated whether 6- and 8-year-olds are already capable of interactive context integration. Experiment 1 demonstrated interactive context integration with 8-year-olds. This was hindered in a condition where attention was directed away from context objects. Experiment 2 demonstrated interactive context integration with 6-year-old kindergartners. Taken together, our findings show that even 6-year-olds are capable of incidental context integration through enactment and that this process is attention based.     

Shedding new light on an old problem: The estimation of shadow sizes in children and adults

Two experiments using the 'projection of shadows' paradigm investigated multidimensional reasoning, implicit and explicit knowledge, and the nonlinearity concept in 5-, 9-, and 13-year-olds and adults. Participants estimated the resulting shadow lengths of differently sized objects, placed at varying distances from a light source. Experiment 1 (N=80) revealed that, on the group level, 5-year-olds took both object size and light-object distance into account when estimating shadow size. Moreover, half of the children in this age group even considered the subordinate distance dimension. In addition, we found a large discrepancy between implicit and explicit knowledge about shadows in 5-year-olds that decreased with age. Finally, only a minority of older participants and very few younger children recognized the nonlinear relationship between light-object distance and shadow size, suggesting domain dependence of the nonlinearity concept. Experiment 2 (N=20) predominately replicated the findings for 5-year-olds using slightly different stimuli.     

依恋的神经生理机制

在动物社会依恋的神经生物学研究基础上,研究者对人类依恋的神经生理机制进行了初步探讨,一致的结论是无论婴儿还是成人,不安全依恋个体的心率、皮质醇水平高于安全依恋的个体。而在依恋系统激活时婴儿和成人的脑电活动和大脑的功能定位研究却发现了不一致：较之安全依恋婴儿,不安全依恋婴儿的左侧前额大脑区域显示了较少的活动;成人依恋类型的脑机制研究并无定论。所有这些研究多为相关研究,今后有待于在神经生物水平上对依恋的基本理论问题如内部工作模式的意识和无意识性、母婴依恋与成人依恋的关系（特别是一般依恋表征和特殊依恋表征）以及母婴依恋对婴幼儿大脑发育的影响等问题展开深入研究     

The Role of Animacy in Children's Interpretation of Relative Clauses in English: Evidence From Sentence–Picture Matching and Eye Movements

Subject relative clauses (SRCs) are typically processed more easily than object relative clauses (ORCs), but this difference is diminished by an inanimate head-noun in semantically non-reversible ORCs (“The book that the boy is reading”). In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated the influence of animacy on online processing of semantically reversible SRCs and ORCs using lexically inanimate items that were perceptually animate due to motion (e.g., “Where is the tractor that the cow is chasing”). In Experiment 1, 48 children (aged 4;5–6;4) and 32 adults listened to sentences that varied in the lexical animacy of the NP1 head-noun (Animate/Inanimate) and relative clause (RC) type (SRC/ORC) with an animate NP2 while viewing two images depicting opposite actions. As expected, inanimate head-nouns facilitated the correct interpretation of ORCs in children; however, online data revealed children were more likely to anticipate an SRC as the RC unfolded when an inanimate head-noun was used, suggesting processing was sensitive to perceptual animacy. In Experiment 2, we repeated our design with inanimate (rather than animate) NP2s (e.g., “where is the tractor that the car is following”) to investigate whether our online findings were due to increased visual surprisal at an inanimate as agent, or to similarity-based interference. We again found greater anticipation for an SRC in the inanimate condition, supporting our surprisal hypothesis. Across the experiments, offline measures show that lexical animacy influenced children's interpretation of ORCs, whereas online measures reveal that as RCs unfolded, children were sensitive to the perceptual animacy of lexically inanimate NPs, which was not reflected in the offline data. Overall measures of syntactic comprehension, inhibitory control, and verbal short-term memory and working memory were not predictive of children's accuracy in RC interpretation, with the exception of a positive correlation with a standardized measure of syntactic comprehension in Experiment 1.     

Ups and Downs in Auditory Development: Preschoolers’ Sensitivity to Pitch Contour and Timbre

Much research has explored developing sound representations in language, but less work addresses developing representations of other sound patterns. This study examined preschool children's musical representations using two different tasks: discrimination and sound–picture association. Melodic contour—a musically relevant property—and instrumental timbre, which is (arguably) less musically relevant, were tested. In Experiment 1, children failed to associate cartoon characters to melodies with maximally different pitch contours, with no advantage for melody preexposure. Experiment 2 also used different‐contour melodies and found good discrimination, whereas association was at chance. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2, but with a large timbre change instead of a contour change. Here, discrimination and association were both excellent. Preschool‐aged children may have stronger or more durable representations of timbre than contour, particularly in more difficult tasks. Reasons for weaker association of contour than timbre information are discussed, along with implications for auditory development.     

3-6年级小学生师生关系:结构、类型及其发展

本研究采用师生关系教师评定量表,由14名班主任教师对498名3-6年级学生与教师的关系进行评价.结果表明:(1)师生关系量表具有较好的信度和效度,师生关系特点主要表现在冲突性、亲密性和反应性三个维度上.(2)快速聚类分析的结果表明,3-6年级学生的师生关系可划分为3种类型:冷漠型、冲突型、亲密型,其分布比例分别为23.0%、33.7%、43.3%.(3)师生关系随学生年级增长而变化.在师生关系各维度及总分上,存在显著的年级差异.随年级的上升,积极师生关系类型的比例逐渐下降,而消极师生关系类型的比例逐步上升.     

中学生写作文本形成能力的发展特点

从一所普通中学六个年级随机选取801名被试,使用自编测验研究了中学生写作文本形成能力的发展特点,结果发现：（1）中学生写作文本形成能力起点较高,初三年级是其基本形成的关键期;（2）中学生写作文本形成能力在高中阶段发展平缓;（3）中学生写作文本形成能力分维度的不同方面发展不均衡,较高水平方面受到认知加工容量、概括水平和抽象逻辑思维水平等心理因素的制约;（4）中学生写作文本形成能力存在性别差异,女生优于男生。     

小学三～五年级儿童类比问题解决及策略运用发展

以270名小学三~五年级儿童为被试,采用问题解决类比任务范式,探讨了小学儿童类比问题解决及策略运用的发展趋势.结果发现:(1)在儿童类比问题解决质量的发展方面,不同年级儿童差异显著,四年级儿童成绩最好;而儿童类比问题解决速度则随着年级增高而加快;(2)儿童类比策略发展更符合混合模型;随着年级发展,儿童初级、中级和高级类比策略运用逐渐增加,而非类比策略运用渐少;儿童类比策略发展的“飞跃”发生在四到五年级之间;儿童策略运用的发展呈现出多样性、竞争性、适应性的特点.     

The Associations of Greek and Religious Organization Participation with College Students' Social Well-Being and Purpose

Two online-survey studies examined the associations of Greek (i.e., sorority and fraternity) and religious (i.e., church or campus ministry) organization participation with college students' social well-being and sense of purpose. In study 1 (N = 281), religious organization membership (versus no membership) was associated with connectedness and purpose, but for Greek organizations the associations held only with respect to level of organization involvement. In study 2 (N = 426), Greek and religious organization membership were both associated with most social well-being and purpose indicators, but only Greek membership was linked to lower loneliness. As in study 1, level of involvement in Greek, but not religious, organizations was linked to social well-being. Hypothesized moderators of the associations between organization membership and the purpose and social well-being variables were not supported. We discuss implications for professionals who work with college students to promote well-being, and we present future research ideas.