Do academically gifted and nongifted students differ on the Big-Five and adaptive status? Some recent data and conclusions

This study examined a representative sample of academically gifted (N = 374) and non-gifted (N = 428) Israeli high-school students in order to compare these different student populations on the Big-Five and adaptive outcomes. Consistent with prior research, gifted students scored higher than non-gifted peers on Openness to Experience but scored lower on Neuroticism. In addition, gifted students scored lower on state anxiety facets and were not reliably different from their nongifted counterparts on mental distress or subjective well being. Overall, the empirical data are consistent with recent research suggesting that when gifted students are compared with nongifted students on various socio-emotional and personality characteristics, the results are not unfavorable to gifted students.     

The developmental trajectory of children's auditory and visual statistical learning abilities: modality‐based differences in the effect of age

Infants, children and adults are capable of extracting recurring patterns from their environment through statistical learning (SL), an implicit learning mechanism that is considered to have an important role in language acquisition. Research over the past 20 years has shown that SL is present from very early infancy and found in a variety of tasks and across modalities (e.g., auditory, visual), raising questions on the domain generality of SL. However, while SL is well established for infants and adults, only little is known about its developmental trajectory during childhood, leaving two important questions unanswered: (1) Is SL an early‐maturing capacity that is fully developed in infancy, or does it improve with age like other cognitive capacities (e.g., memory)? and (2) Will SL have similar developmental trajectories across modalities? Only few studies have looked at SL across development, with conflicting results: some find age‐related improvements while others do not. Importantly, no study to date has examined auditory SL across childhood, nor compared it to visual SL to see if there are modality‐based differences in the developmental trajectory of SL abilities. We addressed these issues by conducting a large‐scale study of children's performance on matching auditory and visual SL tasks across a wide age range (5–12y). Results show modality‐based differences in the development of SL abilities: while children's learning in the visual domain improved with age, learning in the auditory domain did not change in the tested age range. We examine these findings in light of previous studies and discuss their implications for modality‐based differences in SL and for the role of auditory SL in language acquisition. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kg35hoF0pw .     

“Feeling” the pain of those who are different from us: Modulation of EEG in the mu/alpha range

We explored how apparently painful stimuli and the ability to identify with the person on whom the pain is inflicted modulate EEG suppression in the mu/alpha range (8–12 Hz). In a 2 × 2 design, we presented pictures of hands either experiencing needle pricks or being touched by a Q-tip. In the dissimilar-other condition, the hand was assigned to a patient suffering from a neurological disease in which Q-tips inflicted pain, whereas needle pricks did not. In the similar-other condition, the hand was assigned to a patient who responded to stimulation in the same way as the healthy participant. Participants were instructed to imagine the feeling of the person whose hand was shown and to evaluate his or her affective state. Pain conditions elicited greater EEG suppression than did nonpain conditions, particularly over frontocentral regions. Moreover, an interaction between pain and similarity revealed that for similar others, the pain effect was significant, whereas in the dissimilar-other group, suppression was equally large in the pain and no-pain conditions. We conclude that mu/alpha suppression is elicited both automatically, by observing a situation that is potentially painful for the observer, and by empathy for pain, even if the other person is different from oneself.     

The Relationship between Power Perception and Couple's Conflict Management Strategy

Interpersonal conflict is integral to intimate spousal relationships, and while potentially destructive, it can also enhance sharing of feelings and thoughts and the sense of being loved. Its positive or negative effects partly rely on how partners deal with it. This study was conducted in Israel with 160 participants. All participants were Jewish and involved in long-term heterosexual intimate relationships (married/in a serious relationship). The study examines a model that suggests that perceived socioemotional and materialistic power of a couple predicts their conflict management strategies. In addition, we tested whether this relationship is mediated by perceived quality of spousal relationship. The perceived socioemotional power was found to predict only cooperative conflict management stratagies and only for women. It was also found that this correlation is mediated by the perceived quality of the relationship. This study enhances our understanding of the way individuals grapple with spousal conflicts and reveals the positive power that can be nurtured and embodied within the spousal relationship. In addition, this study reveals that the effect of power perception differs between men and women. Clinical and research implications for couple and family therapists are discussed, and suggestions for effective clinical practice in addressing marital power are given.     

Adolescents' attachment representations and developmental tasks in emerging adulthood

The association between attachment representations and adolescents' coping with 3 developmental tasks of emerging adulthood-leaving home, advancing in the capacity for mature intimacy, and developing individuation-was examined. Israeli male adolescents (N = 88) were administered the Adult Attachment Interview during their high-school senior year. A year later, they and their friends reported on the adolescents' adjustment to mandatory military service. Three years later, participants and their parents reported on the adolescents' capacity for intimacy using an in-depth interview and on their individuation. An autonomous state of mind was associated with better coping with basic training and with a higher capacity for mature intimacy but was not associated with markers of individuation. The results highlight the importance of attachment representations in shaping an individual's developmental trajectory.     

Verbal ability modulates the associative neighbors effect

The number of associative neighbors (ANs) of a word has been found to modulate the associative priming effect (Cañas &; Bajo, 1994). Pilot studies have shown that this influence might be dependent on verbal ability. This possibility was examined by comparing the influence of a prime’s ANs on the priming effect in students with high and low verbal ability, using a lexical decision task. Participants with high verbal ability showed a priming effect regardless of ANs. In contrast, low-verbal-ability students showed a significant influence of ANs upon the priming effect, which was demonstrated in responding to related targets. In particular, the lexical decisions to targets that were preceded by primes with a large number of ANs were slower. The effects were not modulated by stimulus onset asynchrony. The results are discussed in relation to automatic and strategic mechanisms of word processing. These findings have important implications for studies in the field of word recognition.     

Multilevel factorial experiments for developing behavioral interventions: power, sample size, and resource considerations

Factorial experimental designs have many potential advantages for behavioral scientists. For example, such designs may be useful in building more potent interventions by helping investigators to screen several candidate intervention components simultaneously and to decide which are likely to offer greater benefit before evaluating the intervention as a whole. However, sample size and power considerations may challenge investigators attempting to apply such designs, especially when the population of interest is multilevel (e.g., when students are nested within schools, or when employees are nested within organizations). In this article, we examine the feasibility of factorial experimental designs with multiple factors in a multilevel, clustered setting (i.e., of multilevel, multifactor experiments). We conduct Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate how design elements-such as the number of clusters, the number of lower-level units, and the intraclass correlation-affect power. Our results suggest that multilevel, multifactor experiments are feasible for factor-screening purposes because of the economical properties of complete and fractional factorial experimental designs. We also discuss resources for sample size planning and power estimation for multilevel factorial experiments. These results are discussed from a resource management perspective, in which the goal is to choose a design that maximizes the scientific benefit using the resources available for an investigation.     

Further Insight and Additional Inference Methods for Polynomial Regression Applied to the Analysis of Congruence

In their seminal paper, Edwards and Parry (1993) presented the polynomial regression as a better alternative to applying difference score in the study of congruence. While this method is increasingly applied in congruence research, its complexity relative to other methods for assessing congruence (e.g., difference score methods) was one of the main claims against its use. The objective of this work is to gain additional insight into the use of polynomial regression in the area of social and behavioral sciences. First, we elaborate on the meaning and the inference based on the coefficients obtained by applying polynomial regression and explain the mathematical terms that are used to describe response surfaces. Then, we introduce additional inference methods and illustrate their application on a real life example from the area of supportive exchanges, using data collected by the Smithers Institute at Cornell University (supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism). Our work is aimed to provide a guide to researchers who apply polynomial regression in order to assess the effect of congruence between two constructs and enable better understanding and interpretation of the results obtained.