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.     

The effects of self‐explaining when learning with text or diagrams

Self‐explaining is an effective metacognitive strategy that can help learners develop deeper understanding of the material they study. This experiment explored if the format of material (i.e., text or diagrams) influences the self‐explanation effect. Twenty subjects were presented with information about the human circulatory system and prompted to self‐explain; 10 received this information in text and 10 in diagrams. Results showed that students given diagrams performed significantly better on post‐tests than students given text. Diagrams students also generated significantly more self‐explanations that text students. Furthermore, the benefits of self‐explaining were much greater in the diagrams condition. To discover why diagrams can promote the self‐explanation effect, results are interpreted with reference to the multiple differences in the semantic, cognitive and affective properties of the texts and diagrams studied.     

The heterogeneity of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms and conduct problems: Cognitive inhibition,emotion regulation,emotionality, and disorganized attachment

This study examined the contributions of several important domains of functioning to attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and conduct problems. Specifically, we investigated whether cognitive inhibition, emotion regulation, emotionality, and disorganized attachment made independent and specific contributions to these externalizing behaviour problems from a multiple pathways perspective. The study included laboratory measures of cognitive inhibition and disorganized attachment in 184 typically developing children (M age = 6 years, 10 months, SD = 1.7). Parental ratings provided measures of emotion regulation, emotionality, and externalizing behaviour problems. Results revealed that cognitive inhibition, regulation of positive emotion, and positive emotionality were independently and specifically related to ADHD symptoms. Disorganized attachment and negative emotionality formed independent and specific relations to conduct problems. Our findings support the multiple pathways perspective on ADHD, with poor regulation of positive emotion and high positive emotionality making distinct contributions to ADHD symptoms. More specifically, our results support the proposal of a temperamentally based pathway to ADHD symptoms. The findings also indicate that disorganized attachment and negative emotionality constitute pathways specific to conduct problems rather than to ADHD symptoms.     

Unit price as a useful metric in analyzing effects of reinforcer magnitude.

In this paper, we applied the behavioral-economic concept of unit price to the study of reinforcer magnitude in an attempt to provide a consistent account of the effects of reinforcer magnitude on behavior. Recent research in the experimental analysis of behavior and in behavioral pharmacology suggests that reinforcer magnitude interacts with the schedule of reinforcement to determine response rate and total consumption. The utility of the unit-price concept thus stems from its ability to quantify this interaction as a cost-benefit ratio (i.e., unit price = characteristics of the schedule of reinforcement divided by magnitude of reinforcement). Research employing the unit-price concept has shown that as unit price increases, a positively decelerating function exists for consumption (i.e., a function with an increasingly negative slope, when plotted on log coordinates) and a bitonic function exists for response rate. Based on these findings, the present analysis applied the unit-price concept to those studies of reinforcer magnitude and drug self-administration that examined the effects of reinforcer magnitude on response rate using simple schedules of reinforcement (e.g., fixed-ratio schedule). This resulted in three findings: (a) Reinforcer-magnitude manipulations and schedule manipulations interact in a manner that can be quantified in terms of unit price as benefit and cost factors, respectively; (b) different reinforcer-magnitude manipulations are functionally interchangeable as benefit factors in the unit-price ratio; and (c) these conclusions appear warranted despite the differences in reinforcers (food or drug), species (dogs, monkeys, or rats), and schedules (interval or ratio), and despite the fact that these studies were not designed for a unit-price analysis. In methodological terms, these results provide further evidence that employing the unit-price concept is a parsimonious method for examining the effects of reinforcer magnitude. In theoretical terms, these results suggest that a single process may underlie the effect of combined reinforcer-magnitude and schedule manipulations.     

《尚书》、《左传》、《国语》的心理学思想研究

《尚书》、《左传》、《国语》是我国最古老的三部文献。我国古代的心理学思想有不少都可以在其中找到源头。本文主要讨论：《尚书》的五行观念、人贵论和人性论思想、认知心理思想、个性心理思想、心理测验思想;《左传》的情感心理思想、病理心理思想、文艺心理思想;《国语》的缺陷心理思想。     

Behavioral economics of drug self-administration. II. A unit-price analysis of cigarette smoking.

In behavioral economics, the ratio of response requirement to reinforcer magnitude is referred to as unit price. Previous research with nonhuman subjects has demonstrated that (a) comparable amounts of food are consumed at the same unit price even though different response requirements and reinforcer magnitudes comprise that unit price and (b) increases in unit price decrease food consumption in a positively decelerating fashion. The present study assessed the generality of these findings to the cigarette smoking of 5 human volunteers. During approximately 18 3-hr sessions, various combinations of response requirement (fixed-ratio 200, 400, and 1,600) and reinforcer magnitude (1, 2, and 4 puffs per bout) were arranged. Consumption (i.e., the number of puffs) generally was comparable at the same unit price independent of the response requirement and reinforcer magnitude comprising that unit price. In addition, increasing unit price generally decreased consumption in a positively decelerating fashion. These results extend the generality of the unit-price analysis to human cigarette smoking. Moreover, these results further support the position that reinforcer magnitude and response requirement are functionally equivalent and interact to determine consumption. The concept of unit price, by integrating and summarizing the effects of those two operations, provides a more parsimonious explanation of the results than do separate evaluations of the effects of response requirement and reinforcer magnitude.     

Alexithymia as a potential source of symptom over‐reporting: An exploratory study in forensic patients and non‐forensic participants

The traditional interpretation of symptom over‐reporting is that it indicates malingering. We explored a different perspective, namely that over‐reporting of eccentric symptoms is related to deficits in articulating internal experiences (i.e., alexithymia). Given that alexithymia has been linked to sleep problems and that fatigue may fuel inattentive responding to symptom lists, we administered measures of alexithymia (TAS ‐20) and symptom over‐reporting (SIMS ), but also sleep quality (SLEEP ‐50) to forensic psychiatric outpatients (n = 40) and non‐forensic participants (n = 40). Forensic patients scored significantly higher on all three indices than non‐forensic participants. In the total sample as well as in subsamples, over‐reporting correlated positively and significantly with alexithymia, with r s being in the 0.50–0.65 range. Sleep problems were also related to over‐reporting, but in the full sample and in the forensic subsample, alexithymia predicted variance in over‐reporting over and above sleep problems. Although our study is cross‐sectional in nature, its results indicate that alexithymia as a potential source of over‐reporting merits systematic research.     

THE COMMUNITY VIEW REVISITED

Abstract: Joining a vast Wittgensteinian anti‐theoretical movement, John Canfield has argued that it is possible to read the claims that (1) “language is essentially communal” and (2) “it is conceptually possible that a Crusoe isolated from birth should speak or follow rules” in such a way that they are perfectly compatible, and, indeed, that Wittgenstein held them both at once. The key to doing this is to drain them of any theoretical content or implications that would put each claim at odds with the other. I argue here, first of all, that it is not possible to detheorize both (1) and (2) and still hope to say anything illuminating about the nature of language. In fact, Canfield himself does not succeed in detheorizing both (1) and (2) but ends up trivializing (1) and leaving (2) with quite a bit of theoretical content. I further argue, however, that this is getting the matter the wrong way around. Contra Canfield et al., it is only when we recognize this that we can appreciate how radical and innovative Wittgenstein's claims about language really are.     

Decision Support System and Multi‐Criteria Decision Aid: A State of the Art and Perspectives

The aim of this paper is to highlight the role of the Decision Support System within the field of multi‐criteria decision aid (MCDA). The MCDA tools have been incorporated into systems to create Multi‐Criteria Decision Support Systems (MCDSSs). In our literature review, we noticed that more than 100 papers have been written over a 20‐year period in which MCDSS was used as a decision‐making tool. The present paper describes some real applications of MCDSS in different fields, harmoniously combined with decision‐making methods such as analytic hierarchy process, Utility Additive, and Goal Programming. The present study proposes an integrative MCDSS evaluation through guidance on the tools most useful for a specific user with a particular decision problem. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.