Three-state models of memory development: A review of advances in statistical methodology

A certain family of three-state Markov processes has been widely used in experiments on children's memory. Although the statistical machinery for these models is well developed in most respects, two shortcomings have been noted in recent literature reviews. First, the parameters of the models are not identifiable. Second, goodness-of-fit tests are laborious to execute and their sampling distributions are unknown. New procedures for dealing with these difficulties are reported.     

On the measurement of storage and retrieval contributions to memory development

We report two free recall experiments and a cued recall experiment in which a new two-stage model was used to obtain numerical measurements of age changes in various aspects of storage and retrieval. The subjects in all three experiments were 7-year-olds (second graders) and 11-year-olds (sixth graders). The major findings in the free recall experiment were that getting a trace into storage posed less of a problem for elementary schoolers than learning how to get it out on test trials, that retrieval development is more rapid during the elementary school years than storage development, and that the superiority of older children's storage and retrieval abilities tends to become more pronounced as learning progresses. A similar pattern of results was obtained under different conditions in the cued recall experiment.     

The Role of Children's Neurophysiological Functioning in the Links Between Emotion-Parenting Behaviors and Child Anxiety Symptoms: A Biological Sensitivity to Context Framework

A plethora of data supports links between parenting behaviors and child anxiety, but few studies have examined factors that can contribute to variability in these relations. Adopting a biological sensitivity to context framework, this study explored the role of children's physiological stress reactivity in the links between emotion-parenting and child anxiety symptoms in a group of Chinese families. Sixty-one parent–child dyads (child M_age = 8.21 years, SD = 1.40, range = 6–12 years) participated in an acute stress protocol, from which children's physiological (cortisol and respiratory sinus arrhythmia) responses to a social speech task were recorded. Participants then completed questionnaires assessing parents’ emotion-parenting behaviors and children's anxiety symptoms. Results showed that the relation between supportive emotion-parenting and child anxiety was stronger in the context of greater child RSA suppression to acute stress, such that children higher in RSA suppression exhibited lower anxiety symptoms when supportive emotion-parenting was higher than when it was lower. Thus, these findings supported the biological sensitivity to context model. No significant moderation effect was detected for cortisol reactivity or recovery. Instead, exploratory mediation analyses showed that supportive emotion-parenting was negatively related to child anxiety via greater cortisol recovery. There was also a significant indirect path where unsupportive emotion-parenting was related to blunted cortisol recovery, which in turn was associated with higher child anxiety. The results highlight the importance of coaching parents to respond in supportive ways to children's emotional expressions, particularly in the context of greater child reactivity, to help buffer against childhood anxiety symptoms.     

Emotional avoidance: an experimental test of individual differences and response suppression using biological challenge

The present study examined the affective consequences of response inhibition during a state of anxiety-related physical stress. Forty-eight non-clinical participants were selected on the basis of pre-experimental differences in emotional avoidance (high versus low) and subjected to four inhalations of 20% carbon dioxide-enriched air. Half of the participants were instructed to inhibit the challenge-induced aversive emotional state, whereas the other half was instructed to simply observe their emotional response. Participants high in emotional avoidance compared to those low in emotional avoidance responded with greater levels of anxiety and affective distress but not physiological arousal. Individuals high in emotional avoidance also reported greater levels of anxiety relative to the low emotional avoidance group when suppressing compared to observing bodily sensations. These findings are discussed in terms of the significance of emotional avoidance processes during physical stress, with implications for better understanding the nature of panic disorder.     

Learning about life and death in early childhood

have argued that young children initially understand biological phenomena in terms of vitalism, a mode of construal in which "life" or "life-force" is the central causal-explanatory concept. This study investigated the development of vitalistic reasoning in young children's concepts of life, the human body and death. Sixty preschool children between the ages of 3 years, 7 months and 5 years, 11 months participated. All children were initially given structured interviews to assess their knowledge of (1) human body function and (2) death. From this sample 40 children in the Training group were taught about the human body and how it functions to maintain life. The Control group (n=20) received no training. All 60 children were subsequently reassessed on their knowledge of human body function and death. Results from the initial interviews indicated that young children who spontaneously appealed to vitalistic concepts in reasoning about human body functioning were also more sophisticated in their understanding of death. Results from the posttraining interviews showed that children readily learned to adopt a vitalistic approach to human body functioning, and that this learning coincided with significant development in their understanding of human body function, and of death. The overall pattern of results supports the claim that the acquisition of a vitalistic causal-explanatory framework serves to structure children's concepts and facilitates learning in the domain of biology.     

Increasing the conspicuity of cyclists at night by using bicycle lights and clothing to highlight their biological motion to oncoming drivers

Reduced conspicuity is an important contributing factor to increased motor vehicle-bicycle crashes and cyclist fatalities at night. This study explored ways of making night-time cyclists more conspicuous to oncoming vehicles through cyclist clothing options and bicycle light position. Fifteen young participants (M = 29.1 ± 4.5 years) drove a closed-road at night and indicated when they first recognized a cyclist pedalling in place at the roadside, facing the approaching vehicle. The bicycle had a static forward-facing white light located either on the handlebars or the helmet and wore one of five clothing configurations: fluorescent vest, retroreflective vest, retroreflective ankle strips, retroreflective vest plus retroreflective ankle strips, retroreflective vest plus biomotion retroreflective strips. There was a significant effect of light position (p < 0.001) and clothing (p < 0.001), where recognition distances were longer when the light was helmet-mounted and when retroreflective strips were worn on the lower legs to highlight the cyclist’s biological motion compared to either of the vest conditions. There was also a significant interaction between light position and clothing (p = 0.007) such that the benefit of retroreflective strips was greater when the bicycle light was helmet-mounted rather than on the handlebars. Importantly, the benefits of leg markings were apparent even when positioned at the ankles alone. These findings highlight that retroreflective material is most useful for improving cyclist conspicuity at night when positioned on cyclists’ lower legs, particularly the ankles (highlighting the cyclist's pedalling motion), rather than on the torso, and have important practical implications for maximising cyclists’ conspicuity and hence safety on night-time roads.     

An Auto‐Ethnographic Study of “Open Dialogue”: The Illumination of Snow

This auto‐ethnographic study describes the changes in the author's thinking and clinical work connected to her first‐hand experience of Open Dialogue, which is an innovative, psychosocial approach to severe psychiatric crises developed in Tornio, Finland. In charting this trajectory, there is an emphasis on three interrelated themes: the micropolitics of U.S. managed mental health care; the practice of “dialogicality” in Open Dialogue; and the historical, cultural, and scientific shifts that are encouraging the adaptation of Open Dialogue in the United States. The work of Gregory Bateson provides a conceptual framework that makes sense of the author's experience and the larger trends. The study portrays and underscores how family and network practices are essential to responding to psychiatric crises and should not be abandoned in favor of a reductionist, biomedical model.     

Short-Term Kinesthetic Training for Sensorimotor Rhythms: Effects in Experts and Amateurs

The authors’ aim was to examine whether short-term kinesthetic training affects the level of sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) in different frequency band: alpha (8–12 Hz), lower beta (12.5–16 Hz) and beta (16.5–20 Hz) during the execution of a motor imagery task of closing and opening the right and the left hand by experts (jugglers, practicing similar exercises on an everyday basis) and amateurs (individuals not practicing any sports). It was found that the performance of short kinesthetic training increases the power of alpha rhythm when executing imagery tasks only in the group of amateurs. Therefore, kinesthetic training may be successfully used as a method increasing the vividness of motor imagery, for example, in tasks involving the control of brain–computer interfaces based on SMR.