Loving and angry? Happy and sad? Understanding and reporting of mixed emotions in mother–child relationships by 6‐ to 12‐year‐olds

The Evaluative Space Model of emotions allows for the coactivation of positive‐appetitive and negative‐avoidant systems, but few studies have examined mixed emotions in child development. Existing research suggests children's understanding of opposite valence emotion combinations emerges by approximately 11 years of age. However, it is not yet clear whether various opposite valence combinations are understood at different ages, nor whether children can understand them in others before they have experienced such mixed emotions themselves. Semi‐structured interviews with 97 children investigated whether they regarded six combinations of opposite valence mixed emotions as possible, could provide reasons for them, and report their own experience of each in the context of mother–child relationships. Both understanding that such combinations are possible and ability to provide reasons for them increased after age 6 and up to age 11, but were still incomplete in 12‐year‐olds. Understanding of different opposite valence combinations developed at different rates. At each age, fewer children who showed understanding of these combinations in others reported having had a similar experience themselves. The findings suggest a need to systematically examine a range of mixed emotions in order to develop a comprehensive theory of the development of mixed emotion understanding. They also suggest extending research into adolescence.     

A general model for the analysis of multilevel data

A general model is developed for the analysis of multivariate multilevel data structures. Special cases of the model include repeated measures designs, multiple matrix samples, multilevel latent variable models, multiple time series, and variance and covariance component models.We would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Ruth Silver. We also wish to thank the referees for helping to clarify the paper. This work was partly carried out with research funds provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (U.K.).     

Multilevel models in developmental psychological research: Rationales and applications

The armoury of statistical techniques has recently been enhanced with the multilevel model for longitudinal data. The present article explains the multilevel model for longitudinal data to the statistically non-sophisticated reader. It shows how the model relates to the five rationales of longitudinal research, as they were put forward by Baltes and Nesselroade (1979). In addition, it shows how the model matches Wohlwill's methodology of developmental functions. To elucidate the model further, three applications are given. The applications pertain to the development of children's sleeping duration during the first 18 months of life, the effects of early hospitalization on the daily frequency of crying, and the developmental relationship between social and solitary play.     

Criterion-related construct validity

Established results on latent variable models are applied to the study of the validity of a psychological test. When the test predicts a criterion by measuring a unidimensional latent construct, not only must the total score predict the criterion, but the joint distribution of criterion scores and item responses must exhibit a certain pattern. The presence of this population pattern may be tested with sample data using the stratified Wilcoxon rank sum test. Often, criterion information is available only for selected examinees, for instance, those who are admitted or hired. Three cases are discussed: (i) selection at random, (ii) selection based on the current test, and (iii) selection based on other measures of the latent construct. Discriminant validity is also discussed.This work was supported in part by Grant SES-87-01890 from the Measurement Methods and Data Improvement Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation.     

Connectionist models of conditioning: A tutorial

Models containing networks of neuron-like units have become increasingly prominent in the study of both cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. This article describes the basic features of connectionist models and provides an illustrative application to compound-stimulus effects in respondent conditioning. Connectionist models designed specifically for operant conditioning are not yet widely available, but some current learning algorithms for machine learning indicate that such models are feasible. Conversely, designers for machine learning appear to have recognized the value of behavioral principles in producing adaptive behavior in their creations.     

A structural model for postpartum responses to the somatic and cognitive items on the Beck Depression Inventory

A distinction can be drawn between those items on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) that reflect mainly cognitive and emotional symptoms and those that reflect somatic symptoms. Responses to the BDI were obtained from women at 3, 6, 9, and 24 weeks postpartum. The covariances of cognitive and somatic symptom scores across the four time points were closely fit by a structural equations model referred to as the simplex. The modeling indicates that earlier cognitive scores directly predict later somatic scores but that early somatic scores do not directly predict later cognitive scores. Other data confirm the results.Much of this research was supported while the first author was an NIMH Fellow at the University of Iowa (MH15168).     

Choice between reliable and unreliable outcomes: mixed percentage-reinforcement in concurrent chains.

Pigeons' choices between alternatives that provided different percentages of reinforcement in mixed schedules were studied using the concurrent-chains procedure. In Experiment 1, the alternatives were terminal-link schedules that were equal in delay and magnitude of reinforcement, but that provided different percentages of reinforcement, with one schedule providing, reinforcement twice as reliably as the other. All pigeons preferred the more reliable schedule, and their level of preference was not systematically affected by variation in the absolute percentage values, or in the magnitude of reinforcement. In Experiment 2, preference for a schedule providing 100% reinforcement over one providing 33% reinforcement increased systematically with increases in the duration of the terminal links. In contrast, preference decreased systematically with increases in the duration of the initial links. Experiment 3 examined choice with equal percentages of reinforcement but unequal delays to reinforcement. Preference for the shorter delay to reinforcement was not systematically affected by variation in the absolute percentage of reinforcement. The overall pattern of results supported predictions based on an extension of the delay-reduction hypothesis to choice procedures involving mixed schedules of percentage reinforcement.     

Control of responding during stimuli that precede transitions in reinforcement frequency

Pigeons' responses were reinforced on a variant of a mixed variable-interval extinction schedule of reinforcement in which the transition to the higher reinforcement rate was signaled by a trace stimulus projected on the response key prior to the onset of the component correlated with food delivery. In the first of two experiments, the duration of the trace stimulus preceding the component correlated with food delivery was varied from 1.5 to 50.0 s and in the second experiment, the reinforcement frequency in the same component was varied from 10 to 60 reinforcers per hour. Pigeons pecked at the trace stimulus preceding the onset of the component correlated with food delivery even though responding was not reinforced in its presence and only one of the changes in reinforcement rate (i.e., from extinction to reinforcement) was signaled. The rate of pecking during the trace stimulus was a function of its duration but not of the reinforcement frequency in the following component. Higher rates generally occurred at the shorter trace-stimulus durations. Component responding following the offset of the trace stimulus was under discriminative control of the trace stimulus whether or not responding occurred in the presence of the trace stimulus.     

A taxonomy of item response models

A number of models for categorical item response data have been proposed in recent years. The models appear to be quite different. However, they may usefully be organized as members of only three distinct classes, within which the models are distinguished only by assumptions and constraints on their parameters. “Difference models” are appropriate for ordered responses, “divide-by-total” models may be used for either ordered or nominal responses, and “left-side added” models are used for multiple-choice responses with guessing. The details of the taxonomy and the models are described in this paper. The present study was supported in part by two postdoctoral fellowships awarded to Lynne Steinberg: an Educational Testing Service Postdoctoral Fellowship at ETS, Princeton, NJ and an NIMH Individual National Research Service Award at Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Helpful comments by the editor and three anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.