Children's understanding of the simultaneity of two emotions: A five-stage developmental acquisition sequence.

Documented a five-stage scalable developmental sequence of children's understanding of the simultaneity of two emotions, defined by combinations of the valence of the two emotions (same valence or different valence) and the number of targets toward which the two emotions were directed (one target or two). The following sequence, documented across ages 4 through 12, emerged: Level 0, no acknowledgment of simultaneous emotions (at the remaining levels, simultaneity toward particular combinations is acknowledged, and each level represents a new acquisition); Level 1, simultaneity of emotions of same valence directed toward one target; Level 2, emotions of same valence, each directed toward a different target; Level 3, emotions of different valence, each directed toward a different target; and Level 4, emotions of different valence directed toward the same target. The ages of the children systematically increase across levels. The ordering of these levels was interpreted in terms of Fisher's skill theory, which provides a cognitive-structural analysis. Additional findings revealed developmental differences in the types of errors children made at the various levels. Moreover, young children were more likely to select positive rather than negative emotions, whereas the pattern was the reverse for older children. Finally, young children selected basic emotion terms (e.g., happy, sad, mad, scared) with great frequency. With increasing level, older children demonstrated a greater understanding of emotion terms that were more differentiated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of learned helplessness.

Examined susceptibility to learned helplessness among 20 children from each of kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 3, and Grade 5 classes by exposing groups of Ss to either repeated failure or repeated success on hidden figures problems. Helplessness was measured by Ss' persistence in looking for hidden figures and their capacity to find them following repeated success or failure. It was hypothesized that younger Ss would be less susceptible to helplessness than older ones, due to age-related differences in causal attributions for success and failure. Results confirm the hypothesis in that failure, relative to success, had significantly less influence on the level of helplessness in younger Ss' behavior. It is suggested that the development of attributional capabilities during the preschool and early elementary school years has important ramifications for cognitive theories of motivation. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A general model for the study of developmental problems.

Various research designs employed in developmental psychology for the investigation of maturational and aging effects are examined. Discrepancies and contradictions in the conclusions derived from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies are consequences of the violation of assumptions implicit in these research designs. The conventional methods are shown to be special cases of a general model for research on behavior change over time. The properties of the general model are explicated and the assumptions for the customary designs are reviewed in the light of these properties. The complete model requires consideration of the components of age, time and cohort differences in the identification of developmental change. Both the longitudinal and cross-sectional methods in this context require strong assumptions which can rarely be met. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cognitive developmental study of metaphor comprehension.

In metaphor, sentence elements are classified according to principles of similarity, as in "hair is spaghetti" (both mixed up), or of proportionality, as in "my head is an apple without any core" (head is to apple as brain is to core). Metaphors of similarity and of proportionality, along with a pictorial form of the similarity metaphors, proverbs, and several Piaget-type cognitive tasks, were presented to 50 5-13 yr old males. Results indicate that metaphor comprehension is a type of classificatory behavior and, as such, is strongly related to maturing cognitive operations as well as to age. Rudimentary forms of metaphor comprehension exist earlier in the child's life than hitherto supposed. Significant (p     

Competence and the overjustification effect: A developmental study.

Examined the conditions under which information regarding competence would mitigate the negative side effects of rewards on the intrinsic interest of preschool and middle elementary school children. 144 nursery school and 3rd–5th graders engaging in a task of high initial interest anticipated a reward made contingent either upon meeting a standard based on absolute performance level or upon task engagement alone, or they were not rewarded. In addition, Ss were provided with direct information concerning competence presented in terms of social comparison. Results indicate that the preschool children were primarily affected by information about meeting the absolute standard but not the social comparison information. That is, the overjustification effect did not occur when attaining a reward was made contingent on meeting an absolute standard of performance. Social comparison information superseded the effect of the contingency of the reward on subsequent interest in the target task for the older children. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of three components of attention.

While heart rate, striate muscle activity, and respiration were continuously monitored, 36 6 yr olds and 36 10 yr olds, equally divided as to sex, were exposed to 2 situations designed to elicit orienting to surprising stimuli, 2 designed to elicit sustained attention to search conditions, and 2 designed to elicit internal attention to memory conditions. Within each category of attention, one situation was in the visual mode and the other in the auditory. Results for both the visual and auditory conditions indicate that (a) orienting was characterized by cardiac deceleration, muscle inhibition, and little change in cardiac variability; (b) sustained environmental attention was characterized by significantly greater cardiac deceleration and electromyographic inhibition than orienting, and by a marked reduction in cardiac variability; (c) internal attention was characterized by cardiac acceleration, increased muscle activity, and a marked reduction in cardiac variability; (d) there were significant, but low, positive correlations between heart rate and muscle activity in 4 of the 6 conditions; and (e) there were no significant age or sex differences in either physiological responses to the conditions or cardiac-somatic coupling. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Components of line-drawing interpretation: A developmental study.

In 2 experiments, with school-age children and adults, age changes in a line-drawing classification task were explored. Pairs of drawings were presented in Experiment 1. In 1 task, observers indicated whether the drawings were the same or different; in the second, they indicated whether the drawings could be interpreted as parts of the same object. Age differences in response time and accuracy were larger in the second task, pointing to the importance of the interpretation component. In Experiment 2, observers were instructed in 1 of 2 strategies, and the presentation of the 2 drawings was separated by 0–4 s. Instructions to engage in active hypothesis testing improved the performance of younger children more than older children, relative to instructions to simply form clear images of the drawings. Increases in the time interval between drawings made the task more difficult for younger children in both instruction conditions. This implies that younger children were less active in the interval between successive drawings, independent of the specific instructions they were given. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of recall from natural categories.

27 6th graders, 25 college students, and 26 older adults (aged 57–77 yrs) were asked to list exemplars from the semantic domains of animals and occupations for 6 min each. Cumulative recall curves were found to fit a hyperbolic model of recall and to be stable over age in the animal domain; in the occupation domain, 6th graders reached asymptote earlier. A slope-difference algorithm was used to identify clusters within recall. It was found that the size of clusters was stable over time. Older adults tended to find new clusters at a faster rate in the later stages of recall, and the youngest and oldest Ss reported items within clusters at a slower rate. Results demonstrate the stability of some basic functions in semantic memory and support a production deficiency view of reported deficits in episodic memory tasks. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of effort and ability attributions.

Used paired-comparison and serial-integration measures to determine ability attributions (from effort and outcome information) and effort attributions (from ability and outcome information) for 16 males and 16 females at each of the following levels: 1st grade, 3rd grade, 5th grade and undergraduate. First and 3rd graders were tested individually and orally; 5th graders and undergraduates were tested in groups and in written form. Analysis of responses on the 4 paired-comparison and the 4 serial-integration questions revealed that, by the 1st grade, children demonstrate some appreciation of the inverse relation between effort and ability. Further, it appears that inferring effort expenditure from ability and outcome information occurs developmentally prior to making ability attributions from effort and outcome information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental imagery verbal processes: A developmental study.

Administered a battery of 9 tests, including verbal and imaginal measures, to 200 children in Grades 1-5 at 2 private suburban elementary schools. Results reveal that verbal processes and mental imagery developed in a curvilinear manner with parallel rates of change. Factor analyses also showed that the 2 components of imagery (cognitive and subjective) were distinct from each other and from verbal abilities. Conclusions drawn from this data support the theory of Piaget (1971) and A. Paivio (1971) claiming that verbal and imaginal processes are independent traits whose development parallels each other rather than one (imagery) being the predecessor of the other (verbal) as stated by J. S. Bruner (1966). (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social-comparison jealousy: A developmental and motivational study.

72 6–11 yr olds were read 12 stories in which the protagonists failed to excel or attain something in each of 6 areas: possessions, sports, art, appearance, mathematics, and reading. In 6 stories, one child failed, whereas another excelled; in 6 stories no other child was involved. Ss rated the importance of the 6 areas to themselves and completed the PPVT-R and the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale. Measures from the responses to the stories were grouped into 3 components of social-comparison jealousy—spontaneous comparisons, affect, and thoughts about jealous behavior. Jealousy was a common response to comparison failure situations. Older Ss revealed more social-comparison jealousy in areas of greater importance to themselves, whereas younger Ss did not show this differentiation as clearly. No sex differences in the experience of social-comparison jealousy were found. Results are discussed in terms of social-comparison theory, and a stage model of jealousy development is proposed. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of Spanish-English production in bilingual children.

30 Spanish–English bilingual and 30 English monolingual children aged 3–7 yrs were asked to imitate Spanish and English lexical and syntactic constructions. Lexical items contained phonemes that have been previously identified as "high risk" for monolingual speakers of Spanish or English. Therefore, specific error patterns were predictable. Sentence constructions emphasized plurality, possessiveness, and adjective–noun word order. Monolinguals and bilinguals did not significantly differ on English imitations: Both groups scored near 100% correct. As expected, bilinguals scored significantly higher than monolinguals on all Spanish tasks. Errors for both bilinguals and monolinguals on Spanish sentence tasks took the form of omissions. Results indicate that Spanish competency on tasks like these does not "handicap" similar competencies in English for bilingual children at these age levels. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of practical problem solving in adults.

Previous research indicates that young and middle-aged adults perform better than other age groups on problems similar to those they might encounter in their everyday lives. However, elderly adults have not performed better than other age groups on problems designed to give them the advantage. In order to ensure that the problems used in the present study were ones that elderly adults might encounter, elderly adults were recruited to help develop the problems. The resulting problems were administered to adults between the ages of 20 and 80. Performance was found to increase from the 20- to 40-year-old age group and decrease thereafter. Thus, when elderly adults devise practical problems that are intended to give elderly adults the advantage, the elderly adults still perform less well than do middle-aged adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of categorical organization in short-term memory.

Studied 3rd and 4th graders and college undergraduates to investigate the development of the ability to use taxonomic, phonemic, and sense impression categories as dimensions. Results indicate that the more sophisticated the level of encoding needed to discriminate between 2 opposing classes of information, the older the child must be before he can accomplish the task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of the cognitive basis of performance impairment after failure.

Tested the egotism hypothesis against the learned-helplessness hypothesis while considering developmental variation in reasoning about ability, using 30 male and 30 female 2nd graders and 30 male and 30 female 6th graders. The egotism hypothesis states that performance impairment after failure follows from attempts to avoid appearing low in ability. The learned-helplessness hypothesis states that this performance impairment occurs as a result of the perception of noncontingency. Ss were assigned either solvable or unsolvable matching-familiar-figures task items. Performance on a subsequent anagram task constituted the dependent measure. Results show that performance deficits on anagrams following failure on the matching-familiar-figures task appeared for 6th graders only. These deficits occurred when the anagrams were purported to be of moderate normative difficulty but not when they were said to be of high difficulty. Moreover, performance deficits were apparent only in those 6th graders who had a mature conception of ability. Males tended to increase performance when task conditions were unfavorable; females, especially younger ones, faced with this combination of adverse conditions showed substantial declines in performance. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A factor-analytic study of the acquisition of a conditioned emotional response in rats.

Analyzed data from 30 male Moll-Wistar albino rats on a fixed-ratio 15 schedule of reinforcement for food acquiring a conditioned emotional response (CER). Factor 1 represented the conditioning process; Factor 2 was believed to represent the orienting response. The 2nd factor had high loadings on the early trials and a gradually decreasing loading for later trials. The shape of the curve of factor loadings over trials indicates that there was initially sensitization (including dishabituation) and then habituation of the orienting response as the CER was acquired. Data from prehabituation and changes in stimulus conditions confirms that Factor 2 represented the orienting response. 2 independent processes appear to be involved during CER learning: the orienting response and the ordinary CER acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further study of hantavirus circulation in the Russian Federation

Lung specimens of 1514 small mammals of 35 species captured in 1991-1995 at 9 territories of Russia were tested in ELISA for virus antigens of hemorrhagic fever with the renal syndrome (HFRS). The antigens were detected in lung specimens of Clethrionomys glareolus, Microtus arvalis, Microtus gregalis, Microtus fortis, Arvicola terrestris, Apodemus agrarius, Micromys minutus, and Sorex sp., well known as Hantavirus reservoirs, captured in the Vologda, Yaroslavl, Saratov, Astrakhan, and Chita regions. Infection of Microtus maximoviczii revealed in the Chita region was first found in China. Previously there were no reports about the circulation of hantaviruses in this region. Our study added one more host to the list of HFRS virus hosts: Meliones tamariscinus.     

Gender stereotypes and social inferences: A developmental study.

Investigated changes between childhood and adulthood in reliance on gender stereotypes when making inferences about another person. 36 children from each of 3 age groups (kindergarten [mean age 5 yrs 8 mo], 3rd grade [mean age 8 yrs 9 mo], and 6th grade [mean age 11 yrs 8 mo]) and 36 college students were told that a boy or a girl had chosen activities consistent or inconsistent with gender stereotypes. Ss were asked to predict the actor's future behavior, rate the actor on several traits, and estimate the actor's popularity with peers. College students predicted that the actor's future behavior would be approximately as consistent (or inconsistent) with gender stereotypes as their past behavior. College students' ratings of the actor's traits and their judgments about the popularity of boys were also influenced by the actor's past behavior. Sixth graders showed a similar pattern of social inferences, but the effects of the actor's past behavior were weaker than at college age. By contrast, 3rd graders predicted that the actor's future behavior would be stereotypical, even if his or her past behavior was not. Past behavior had some effect on 3rd graders' trait ratings but not on their popularity judgments. At kindergarten, only predictions for a girl's future behavior were affected by past-behavior information. The age differences are discussed in the context of current models of the development and functioning of gender stereotypes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)