Social reciprocity in handicapped and nonhandicapped children in a dyadic play situation

Social reciprocity behavior was compared for handicapped and nonhandicapped preschool children when they were in play situations with both handicapped and nonhandicapped partners. In a counterbalanced design, handicapped and nonhandicapped children were paired with both handicapped and nonhandicapped play partners, and the social initiation and response sequences of the dyads were observed. Types of initiation observed were friendly statements, friendly questions, mildly negative advances, and demanding statements. Friendly, ignoring, and negative responses were observed to these initiations. Handicapped and nonhandicapped children did not differ on overall number of initiations. However, they did differ on the types of initiation they made. Handicapped children asked fewer friendly questions and engaged in more demanding initiations than expected. Both groups made more initiations when paired with handicapped partners than when paired with nonhandicapped partners, but the groups did not differ on the types of initiation made to handicapped and nonhandicapped partners. The handicapped children made more ignoring and negative responses to friendly initiations than the nonhandicapped children. Behaving similarly, both groups tended to respond negatively to negative and demanding initiations.     

Visual and auditory selective attention and reflection-impulsivity in normal and learning-disabled boys at two age levels

Selective attention to visual and auditory stimuli and reflection-impulsivity were studied in normal and learning-disabled 8- and 12-year-old boys. Multivariate analyses, followed by univariate and paired-comparison tests, indicated that the normal children increased in selective attention efficiency with age to both visual and auditory stimuli. Learning-disabled children increased in selective attention efficiency with age to auditory, but not to visual, stimuli. Both groups increased with age in reflection as measured by Kagan's Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF). The 8-year-old learning-disabled children were more impulsive than the 8-year-old normals on MFF error scores, but not on MFF latency scores. No difference occurred between the 12-year-old learning-disabled and normal children on either MFF error or MFF latency scores. Correlations between the selective attention scores and MFF error and latency scores were not significant.This research was supported in part by BEH grant G007507227. The authors are indebted to Eleanor McCandless for her assistance in securing the learning-disabled subjects and to James McLeskey and Michael Popkin for their assistance in collecting and analyzing data.     

Reflection-impulsivity in normal and behavior-disordered children

The primary index of reflection- impulsivity is Kagan's Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF), which yields both a latency and an error score. To evaluate further the construct validity of these measures, both the latency and error scores of 9- and 15-year-old normal and acting-out behavior-disordered children were compared. Young behavior-disordered children were found to be more impulsive than the other groups on the MFF error measure. No differences occurred on the MFF latency measure. This result is consistent with previous findings with normal children in supporting the construct validity of the MFF error score and raising questions about the construct validity of the MFF latency score. Findings were inconsistent with Kagan's assertion that normal children become more reflective with age. The older behavior-disordered children were more reflective on the error measure than the younger behavior-disordered children and had equivalent error scores to both age groups of normals. This finding suggested a lag in the development of reflection in behavior-disordered children.The authors wish to thank Dr. Kenneth C. Molkner for his valuable assistance in obtaining subjects and for his kind support.     

To Challenge the Morning Lark and the Night Owl: Using Smartphone Sensing Data to Investigate Day–Night Behaviour Patterns

For decades, day–night patterns in behaviour have been investigated by asking people about their sleep–wake timing, their diurnal activity patterns, and their sleep duration. We demonstrate that the increasing digitalization of lifestyle offers new possibilities for research to investigate day–night patterns and related traits with the help of behavioural data. Using smartphone sensing, we collected in vivo data from 597 participants across several weeks and extracted behavioural day–night pattern indicators. Using this data, we explored three popular research topics. First, we focused on individual differences in day–night patterns by investigating whether ‘morning larks’ and ‘night owls’ manifest in smartphone-sensed behavioural indicators. Second, we examined whether personality traits are related to day–night patterns. Finally, exploring social jetlag, we investigated whether traits and work weekly day–night behaviours influence day–night patterns on weekends. Our findings highlight that behavioural data play an essential role in understanding daily routines and their relations to personality traits. We discuss how psychological research can integrate new behavioural approaches to study personality.     

From Human–Nature to Cultureplace in Education Via an Exploration of Unity and Relation in the Work of Peirce and Dewey

In outdoor education discourse the notion of relation is often employed to convey basic connections between humanity and nature as human–nature relationships, yet the sense of relation itself is rarely questioned. Drawing on the work of Peirce and Dewey, I explore the ramifications of a more nuanced understanding of relation, specifically how relation works with and within differing senses of unity. These ramifications have consequences for how we understand human–nature relationships, which I argue are better conveyed in terms of culture–place. The various forms of unity described by Peirce inform more nuanced understandings of culture–place as cultureplace, with implications for the notion of transculturality. My specific concern with outdoor education then enables me to show how cultureplace and culture–place may be considered to have relevance pedagogically, especially in relation to dealing with cultural and environmental crises.     

Personality Traits Predict Smartphone Usage

The present study investigates to what degree individual differences can predict frequency and duration of actual behaviour, manifested in mobile application (app) usage on smartphones. In particular, this work focuses on the identification of stable associations between personality on the factor and facet level, fluid intelligence, demography and app usage in 16 distinct categories. A total of 137 subjects (87 women and 50 men), with an average age of 24 (SD = 4.72), participated in a 90‐min psychometric lab session as well as in a subsequent 60‐day data logging study in the field. Our data suggest that personality traits predict mobile application usage in several specific categories such as communication, photography, gaming, transportation and entertainment. Extraversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness are better predictors of mobile application usage than basic demographic variables in several distinct categories. Furthermore, predictive performance is slightly higher for single factor—in comparison with facet‐level personality scores. Fluid intelligence and demographics additionally show stable associations with categorical app usage. In sum, this study demonstrates how individual differences can be effectively related to actual behaviour and how this can assist in understanding the behavioural underpinnings of personality. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology