Children in the public eye: The functioning of Pastors' children

Pastors' children have been thought to have more behavioral problems than other children since they face high expectations and are part of families that are often under public scrutiny. The purpose of this study was to describe the social competencies and behavioral problems of a national sample of pastors' children, aged 4–16, and to compare them to age and sex standardized norms. Data were obtained on 98 children from a random sample of 62 families, using the Child Behavior Checklist. Results indicate that scores for both boys and girls at each age grouping fell within the acceptable norms for both social competencies and behavioral problems.     

From the Desk of Editor-in-Chief

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research -     

The effects of short-term L2 training on components of executive control in Indian bilinguals

This study investigated whether a short training (8 weeks) in the second-language (English) has any facilitative effect on components of executive functions in young adults. A pre-post design was used with two groups of participants: one group (experimental group) of students received English language training for eight weeks, and another group (control group) matched on age and background did not. Executive function tasks (Flanker, Stroop, and color-shape switching task) along with the object naming and working memory tasks were administered before and after the training. We observed that the experimental group demonstrated significant improvement in task switching, working memory capacity, and language skills. Findings from the study provide evidence that short training in second-language can enhance some components of executive functions besides improving language skills in young adult students. This finding contributes to a better understanding of language training and executive function among young adult bilinguals.

     

Simulationist models of face-based emotion recognition

Recent studies of emotion mindreading reveal that for three emotions, fear, disgust, and anger, deficits in face-based recognition are paired with deficits in the production of the same emotion. What type of mindreading process would explain this pattern of paired deficits? The simulation approach and the theorizing approach are examined to determine their compatibility with the existing evidence. We conclude that the simulation approach offers the best explanation of the data. What computational steps might be used, however, in simulation-style emotion detection? Four alternative models are explored: a generate-and-test model, a reverse simulation model, a variant of the reverse simulation model that employs an "as if" loop, and an unmediated resonance model.     

The Thatcher illusion and face processing in infancy

Adults readily detect changes in face patterns brought about by the inversion of eyes and mouth when the faces are viewed upright but not when they are viewed upside down. Research suggests that this illusion (the Thatcher illusion) is caused by the interfering effects of face inversion on the processing of second-order relational information (fine spatial information such as the distance between the eyes). In the current study, 6-month-olds discriminated 'thatcherized' faces when they were viewed upright but not when they were viewed upside down. These results are consistent with the notion that 6-month-olds are sensitive to second-order relational information while processing faces.     

Latent growth curve analyses of accelerating decline in cognitive abilities in late adulthood

Latent growth models were applied to data from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging to discover if the rate of change in cognitive performance increased from middle age to later adulthood. The sample included 590 participants aged 44 to 88 years at first measurement. Data were gathered at 2 follow-up occasions at intervals of 3 years. Cognitive ability was assessed through 11 tests that tapped crystallized, fluid, memory, and spatial abilities and perceptual speed. Results indicated stability for measures of crystallized ability, linear age changes for many cognitive abilities, and a significant acceleration in linear decline after age 65 for measures with a large speed component. Gender differences were found only in mean level, not in rate of decline.     

Parts, cavities, and object representation in infancy

Part representation is not only critical to object perception but also plays a key role in a number of basic visual cognition functions, such as figure-ground segregation, allocation of attention, and memory for shapes. Yet, virtually nothing is known about the development of part representation. If parts are fundamental components of object shape representation early in life, then the infant visual system should give priority to parts over other aspects of objects. We tested this hypothesis by examining whether part shapes are more salient than cavity shapes to infants. Five-month-olds were habituated to a stimulus that contained a part and a cavity. In a subsequent novelty preference test, 5-month-olds exhibited a preference for the cavity shape, indicating that part shapes were more salient than cavity shapes during habituation. The differential processing of part versus cavity contours in infancy is consistent with theory and empirical findings in the literature on adult figure-ground perception and indicates that basic aspects of part-based object processing are evident early in life.     

Activation of shape and semantic information during ambiguous homophone processing: eye tracking evidence from Hindi

In two visual world eye tracking studies, we examined the activation of subordinate meanings of ambiguous homophones in Hindi and particularly when the sentence context is biased towards the dominant meaning. Participants listened to sentences that were either neutral or biased towards the dominant meaning of the homophone and saw a display containing four pictures. In experiment 1, the display had a shape competitor of the subordinate meaning of the homophone in both neutral and biased conditions along with three unrelated distractors. Experiment 2 had semantic competitors of the subordinate meaning of the homophones along with three distractors. Proportion of fixations to different objects overtime suggested that participants activated the subordinate meanings and oriented their attention to the shape and semantic competitors even when the prior context was biased towards the dominant meaning. Overall, these data from Hindi provide further support to those models of lexical access that assume exhaustive access of both the meanings of an ambiguous homophone. These data suggest even a dominant bias does not eliminate the activation of perceptual and conceptual features of the subordinate meaning.     

Infants’ sensitivity to uniform connectedness as a cue for perceptual organization

A new grouping principle, uniform connectedness (UC), has been posited to be a basic organizer of visual pattern information, one that takes precedence over other, more classic grouping principles (Palmer & Rock, 1994), but its ontogenetic origins have not previously been investigated. We examined whether 3- to 4-month-olds and 6- to 7-month-olds utilize UC to organize static two-dimensional displays. Infants habituated to uniformly connected patterns exhibited a novelty preference for disconnected element patterns, whereas those without any habituation failed to exhibit a preference. The results indicate that infants are sensitive to UC as a cue for perceptual organization. Prior studies indicate that some Gestalt principles (e.g., common movement) are functional during the first half year of life, but that other principles (e.g., form similarity) are less readily available. The present finding showing that young infants are sensitive to UC points to the foundational nature of this cue and adds to an emerging body of evidence indicating that at least some of the mechanisms believed to produce perceptual organization in adults are already operational in the first months of life. nt]mis|This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS 0224240) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD042451).     

Three-month-olds' sensitivity to orientation cues in the three-dimensional depth plane

Three-month-olds are sensitive to orientation changes of line drawings when they have a three-dimensional (3-D) interpretation and when the changes are defined by both 3-D depth and two-dimensional (2-D) picture plane cues [Bhatt, R. S., & Bertin, E. (2001). Pictorial cues and three-dimensional information processing in early infancy. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 80, 315-332]. In the current study, we examined whether 3-month-olds are sensitive to pictorial line junction cues that signal orientation changes solely in the 3-D depth plane. The results revealed that infants discriminated a misoriented elongated cube in an array when the stimuli contained both shading and lines (Experiment 2) but not when only lines depicted the elongated cubes (Experiment 1). Testing with comparable 2-D images revealed that, even in the presence of shading information, detection of orientation changes is specific to images that have a 3-D interpretation. Together, the results suggest that 3-month-olds are sensitive to pictorial line junction cues that signal orientation changes in the 3-D depth plane to adults provided that shading information is available and the images have a 3-D interpretation.