Inhibitory control in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks: A neo-Piagetian inter-task priming study

We investigated whether success in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks relies on a general ability to inhibit misleading strategies. Two groups of 10-year-olds performed inter-task priming between computerized versions of class-inclusion and number-conservation tasks (Experiment 1). In one group, the class-inclusion task served as a prime and the number-conservation task as an assessment probe and vice versa in the other group. Response times were shorter in the number-conservation task when performed after the class-inclusion task (and vice versa in the other group) than in control prime-probe sequences in which the primes did not require the inhibition of a misleading strategy. Experiment 2 showed that these inter-task priming effects did not simply reflect that class inclusion and number conservation rely on the reversibility of concrete operations as Piaget would have hypothesized. Taken together the results are consistent with the neo-Piagetian assumption that cognitive development is rooted in both the acquisition of knowledge of incremental complexity and the ability to resist (inhibit) previous knowledge. Critically, the present finding suggests that the inhibitory ability is not domain- or strategy-specific.     

What Does Successful Aging Sound Like? Profiling Communication About Aging

We draw on the recently developed communicative ecology model of successful aging (CEMSA) to examine how adults communicate about aging and how these communication patterns relate to experiences of successful aging. Using latent class analysis across 2 datasets collected in New Zealand and the United States, we identify 3 distinct classes of agers (disengaged, engaged, and bantering) defined by different profiles of communication behavior. Across samples, an engaged profile was generally associated with the most positive experiences of aging, whereas a disengaged profile was associated with the least positive experiences, although these differences were surprisingly small. Our results highlight the diverse ways in which individuals communicatively engage with the process of aging and experience aging as positive and successful.     

A politics of affect: Re/assembling relations of class and race at the museum

This article takes as its focus a politics of affect and its potentially transformative effects. Drawing on feminist new materialism and the process philosophy of Deleuze, I map moments in which this politics is enacted as school children encounter museum exhibits designed to address issues of class and race. Taking affect to be a matter of the capacity of bodies to affect and be affected, I attend to how the body's power of acting is increased or diminished through these encounters. Affect emerges as central to negotiations around issues relating to class and race, with some assemblages produced being particularly able to effect changes in capacities. Politics presents as a process of affective encounter through which dominant cultural norms of class and race can be contested and their exclusions ‘undone’. The argument is made that a politics of affect has the potential to unsettle normative power relations and address issues of social inequality and do so in an affirmative way. And, that attending to affect extends identity-based framings of class and race by bringing the constitutive role and contribution of the material, the micropolitical and the radically relational into view.     

攻击性初中生的类别转变：潜在转变分析

研究采用潜在转变分析探讨了攻击性初中生的类别转变。276名初中参加了为期一年的短期纵向追踪研究,在一年中分两次报告了自己的攻击行为。用潜在转变模型分析了初二到初三时青少年的攻击类别转变,结果表明初中生有三种攻击模式。研究以潜在转变模型进一步探究了这三种攻击模式的变化,结果发现两种模式具有很强的稳定性,不同模式之间也有一定程度的转变。最后,研究探讨了攻击类别转变的影响因素,结果表明性别与友谊质量可以起到显著作用。针对实际意义,文章最后进行了讨论和总结。     

Inhibition and language pragmatic view in redundant data problem solving

The present study concerns redundant data problems, defined as problems in which irrelevant data is provided. This type of problem provides a misleading context [Pascual-Leone, J. (1987). Organismic process for neo-Piagetian theories: A dialectical causal account of cognitive development. International Journal of Psychology, 22, 531–570] similar to the Piagetian class inclusion task. The two experiments performed showed that adding the a-pragmatic cue ‘in total’ to the final question of redundant data problems increased both 7- and 9-year-old children's failure rate, without modifying the structure of the problem. This indicates that a non-structural linguistic cue can bias children towards failure by enhancing the lack of inhibition of the ordinary adding schema.     

The Social Production of Altruism: Motivations for Caring Action in a Low-Income Urban Community

Contemporary social science paints a bleak picture of inner-city relational life. Indeed, the relationships of low-income, urban-residing Americans are represented as rife with distress, violence and family disruption. At present, no body of social scientific work systematically examines the factors that promote loving or selfless interactions among low-income, inner-city American individuals, families and communities. In an effort to fill that gap, this ethnographic study examined the motivations for altruism among a sample of adults (n = 40) who reside in an economically distressed housing community (i.e., housing project) in New York City. Content analyses of interviews indicated that participants attributed altruism to an interplay between 14 motives that were then ordered into four overarching categories of motives: (1) needs-centered motives, (2) norm-based motives deriving from religious/spiritual ideology, relationships and personal factors, (3) abstract motives (e.g., humanism), and (4) sociopolitical factors. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Biological and psychological predictors of heart rate patterns during physical activity

ObjectiveLatent class modeling (LCM) offers a promising approach for examining correlates of heart rate (HR) patterns over multiple exercise sessions. This research examined biological and psychological variables associated with different patterns of HR response to physical activity (PA).MethodsIn a three-arm randomized controlled trial (exercise video games vs. standard exercise vs. non-exercise control), HR was recorded during PA sessions over a 12-week period. LCM identified three patterns of HR during PA across 189 participants in active arms: 1) high HR across sessions with low variability within sessions, 2) linear increase in HR across sessions with low variability within sessions, and 3) high variability in HR across all sessions. Associations with biological (resting heart rate, blood pressure, BMI, age, cholesterol, triglycerides, HbA1c) and psychological (depression, motivations for PA, PA-induced feelings) predictors of latent class membership were iteratively tested.ResultsPsychological variables played as important a role in the final model as biological variables for predicting latent class membership. Few differences were found between LC1 and LC2, but LC3 differed from the other two groups in that participants were likelier to report that they feel revitalized after PA (vs. LC1 and LC2), to be less motivated for PA (vs. LC1), reported greater depression (vs. LC1 and LC2), and were younger (vs. LC1).ConclusionsThese findings demonstrate the potential of LCM to identify biological and psychological factors associated with chronotropic responses to PA, and advance understanding of the role of psychological factors in chronotropic PA outcomes.     

Naïve and Robust: Class‐Conditional Independence in Human Classification Learning

Humans excel in categorization. Yet from a computational standpoint, learning a novel probabilistic classification task involves severe computational challenges. The present paper investigates one way to address these challenges: assuming class‐conditional independence of features. This feature independence assumption simplifies the inference problem, allows for informed inferences about novel feature combinations, and performs robustly across different statistical environments. We designed a new Bayesian classification learning model (the dependence‐independence structure and category learning model, DISC‐LM) that incorporates varying degrees of prior belief in class‐conditional independence, learns whether or not independence holds, and adapts its behavior accordingly. Theoretical results from two simulation studies demonstrate that classification behavior can appear to start simple, yet adapt effectively to unexpected task structures. Two experiments—designed using optimal experimental design principles—were conducted with human learners. Classification decisions of the majority of participants were best accounted for by a version of the model with very high initial prior belief in class‐conditional independence, before adapting to the true environmental structure. Class‐conditional independence may be a strong and useful default assumption in category learning tasks.     

What Are They Thinking? A National Study of Stability and Change in Divorce Ideation

This study reports on a nationally representative sample of married individuals ages 25–50 (N = 3,000) surveyed twice (1 year apart) to investigate the phenomenon of divorce ideation, or what people are thinking when they are thinking about divorce. Twenty‐eight percent of respondents had thought their marriage was in serious trouble in the past but not recently. Another 25% had thoughts about divorce in the last 6 months. Latent Class Analysis revealed three distinct groups among those thinking about divorce at Time 1: soft thinkers (49%), long‐term‐serious thinkers (45%), and conflicted thinkers (6%). Yet, divorce ideation was not static; 31% of Time 1 thinkers were not thinking about it 1 year later (and 36% of nonthinkers at Time 1 were thinking about it 1 year later). Also, Latent Transition Analysis revealed 49% of Time 1 long‐term‐serious thinkers, 56% of soft thinkers, and 51% of conflicted thinkers had shifted groups at Time 2, mostly in the direction of less and softer thinking about divorce. Overall, divorce ideation is common but dynamic, and it is not necessarily an indication of imminent marital dissolution.