Weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli.

In 2 studies, 70 overweight and 76 normal-weight undergraduates were administered the Sadness and Elation components of the Nowlis Mood Adjective Check List to investigate weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli. Contrary to past evidence that overweight Ss are more emotional than normals, the emotional state of normal-weight Ss fluctuated with manipulations of their facial expression, whereas that of overweight Ss did not respond to these proprioceptive cues. Although research employing affectively loaded pictures found overweight Ss to be more emotionally responsive than normals to these external stimuli, no such weight differences were obtained when less polarized pictures were used in the present studies. It is concluded that even though overweight Ss were more emotionally responsive to extremely polarized external stimuli that demand perception, they were less responsive to proprioceptive stimuli derived from facial expressions and equally responsive to moderately polarized pictorial stimuli. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recency judgments in children: A production deficiency in the use of redundant background cues.

Presented 8 20-picture lists to 40 2nd and 40 4th graders, and each list followed by 3 test pairs, each pair repeating 2 list items. Ss were required to pick the item they had seen more recently on the list. Background color cues were provided, and half the Ss were instructed in using the cues to simplify the task. Difficulty of the recency judgments was also varied by increasing the separation between the 1st presentation of the tested items from 3 to 9 items. The wider the separation, the better the judgment of relative recency. On cue problems, training improved the performance of 2nd graders but not 4th graders. The developmental implications of the study are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's perceptions of friendships as supportive relationships.

Assessed 122 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th graders' perceptions of the social support provided by friends. During individual interviews, Ss were asked about the frequency of emotional support or intimate self-disclosure, tangible support or prosocial behavior, and other types of support provided by a particular friend. Ss were also asked about the frequency of conflicts with the friend and the frequency of supportive interactions and conflicts with a classmate who was only an acquaintance. Factor analyses revealed an increase with grade in the differentiation between the support and conflict dimensions of friendship and acquaintanceship. At all grades, Ss perceived friends as more supportive than acquaintances, but explanations for the lack of support from acquaintances changed with grade. Sixth graders often gave personal attributions (e.g., saying that the acquaintances were selfish or hostile). Eighth graders favored more situational attributions (e.g., saying that they had few supportive interactions with acquaintances because they rarely came in contact with them). The potential value of perceived-support measures in research on the consequences of friendship is discussed. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonverbal communication: A cross-cultural comparison of American and Japanese counseling students.

Examined the nonverbal acuity of mental health professionals from 2 countries in a cross-cultural study. A nonverbal picture test that measures recognition of affective states was administered to 47 American and 36 Japanese counseling students. The 120-item instrument, devised for a previous study, consisted of posed pictures of American-born graduate students representing 15 specific emotions. The pictures and cuts of pictures contained 4 sections of the body—face, arms, silhouette of body posture (with the facial expression obscured), and whole body. Emotional state labels selected by Ss in this study were compared with the answers previously designated by a panel of American judges of nonverbal information. Thus, the score attained by an S was the number of correct matches with the American judges. Results from the total nonverbal test score show that (a) females were more accurate in judging nonverbal cues than males and (b) American Ss had a higher accuracy rate than Japanese Ss. Results on the 30-item subtest of facial expressions are examined. The ranking of emotional states for each group by number of correct responses yields a fairly similar list. The resulting recognition of emotions from facial pictures is compared to findings from a previous cross-cultural study. Implications regarding cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural counseling interactions are discussed, as are suggestions for further research. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's understanding of verbal and facial display rules.

144 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 10th graders listened to 8 stories designed to elicit either prosocial or self-protective display rules. Ss were asked to predict and explain what the protagonists would say and what facial expressions the protagonists would make in response to the emotion-laden situations. Findings indicate that Ss' knowledge of how and when to control emotional displays increased between 1st and 5th grade but then leveled off. Ss understood verbal display rules better than facial display rules, and they understood prosocial display rules better than self-protective ones. They sometimes failed to realize when other people would wish to regulate their emotional expressions. Findings are discussed in terms of the socialization of emotional displays, particularly the greater pressure placed on children to control verbal expression more than facial expression and to learn more prosocial than self-protective display rules. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive and reverse placebo effects as a function of differences in cues used in self-perception.

76 undergraduates were administered a fear survey and were designated self-produced cue responders (their reports of emotional state were affected by manipulation of their facial expressions), and 37 were designated situational cue responders (they were unaffected by expression manipulations). As predicted, the situational cue group was less afraid of snakes and electric shocks when given a placebo described as a relaxer and more afraid when given an arouser placebo. Ss more responsive to self-produced cues showed the reverse placebo effect and were more afraid when given a relaxer placebo and less afraid when given an arouser. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

General and context-specific encoding: A life-span development study.

Examined general and context-specific encoding across the life span, using the same procedure for all ages. Ss included 2nd- and 5th-grade schoolchildren, college students, and individuals aged 65+ yrs. Ss were asked to generate a personal word association to each of 24 target items prior to a surprise cued-recall test. The cues were either the S-generated associates or category labels. Ss at all ages recalled more associate-cued than category-cued items. Using the college students' performance as a baseline, 2nd graders performed equally poorly with both types of cues; 5th graders performed relatively more poorly with category than associate cues; and the older Ss performed relatively more poorly with associate than with category cues. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of selective attention during visual search.

Monitored eye movements in 8 2nd graders, 8 6th graders, and 8 college students during a search task in which Ss were given different types of information about target location before trial onset. Whereas color cues facilitated search performance in the 2 older groups, form cues were less successful in facilitating search and significantly interfered with search relative to a control condition for the 2nd graders. Both facilitation and interference effects in overall search times were related to number of fixations rather than to average fixation during a trial. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of recognition of emotions: Children's reliance on situational and facial expressive cues.

Examined the influence of nondiscrepance and discrepance between situational and expressive cues on children's emotion recognition. Videotaped episodes in which actors portrayed emotions were presented to 96 4–8 yr old girls. When cues were nondiscrepant, Ss were better at all ages in recognizing happiness, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust than shame and contempt. This was interpreted as reflecting differences in complexity of emotions. When cues were discrepant, Ss preferred cues depicting the most recognizable emotion—that is, cues of simple emotions in preference to cues of complex emotions, and emotional cues in preference to neutral cues. Contrary to expectations, Ss did not rely on more salient cues in preference to less salient cues. Ss' responses to questions regarding the perceived cues reflected a developmental trend from noticing only 1 type of cue to considering both situational and expressive cues. This is interpreted as reflecting a development from centration to decentration. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental rotation of facial profiles: Age-, sex-, and ability-related differences.

48 adults (mean age 28 yrs 4 mo), 48 8th graders, and 48 4th graders determined what the left–right orientations of rotated facial profiles would be were the profiles upright. There were 24 males and 24 females in each group. Ss were all administered the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices and the Picture Vocabulary and Spatial Ability subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery. Results indicate that rate of mental rotation and combined rate of encoding, comparison, and response increased with age. Findings are consistent with a speed–accuracy tradeoff explanation of previous discrepancies in developmental studies of mental rotation. Female Ss' rates of mental rotation were slower on average and more variable than male Ss. Within the entire sample, there was a modest correlation between the ability test scores and both latency and error parameters derived from the rotation task. Only error rate was discriminantly related to spatial ability, however. Patterns of correlations between processing parameters and test scores differed between age groups and, within age groups, between sexes. Mental rotation showed a significant relation to spatial ability only in 4th graders. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A picture is not always worth a thousand words: Pictures as distractors in reading.

Conducted 2 studies with a total of 32 2nd graders and 66 3rd graders to examine the influence of pictures in the periphery on children's speed and accuracy of reading. In both studies, Ss were required to read sets of words under each of 3 conditions: with no pictures, with related pictures, and with unrelated pictures. The 2 studies differed in the age of the Ss (2nd vs 3rd graders) and in the location of the pictures (behind vs above the words). In both studies, the results consistently show the following: (a) The words were read more slowly whenever pictures were present. (b) Unrelated pictures produced more interference than related pictures. (c) The magnitude of both of these effects was inversely related to reading ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's understanding of retrieval cue utilization.

To understand the logic of effective cue utilization, one must know not only that cues are useful but that a specific cue is useful only if it is located where one will be when it is time to remember, and placed so one will encounter it automatically. This experiment investigated 16 1st, 16 2nd, and 16 5th graders' knowledge of the use of retrieval cues to aid memory. Stories representing effective and ineffective cue locations were constructed. Many 1st graders believed that all cue locations were effective; the discrimination of ineffective locations showed a clear order of acquisition by age. Those 1st graders had little understanding of external retrieval cues as mnemonic means. As soon as Ss achieved this understanding, it was coordinated with temporal requirements for using cues effectively. However, full understanding of the temporal criteria required a series of developments. Ss at first knew only that a cue encountered after the time to do the task would be ineffective. Next, Ss understood that a cue would be ineffective if it were encountered after the time one had to remember to do the task. Most 5th graders knew that even a cue encountered before the task would be ineffective if the cue appeared greatly in advance of the time one had to remember. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of investigating children's integrated knowledge, or theories, about memory. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual concommitants of racial attitudes in urban grade-school children.

Investigated children's racial attitudes and their concomitant perceptual responses in a 2-part study. In Phase 1, a total of 400 2nd, 4th and 6th graders at 2 racially integrated urban elementary schools were given a battery of 4 attitude tests (e.g., the Projective Prejudice Test). In Phase 2, a subsample of 96 Ss were classified into high- and low-prejudice groups on the basis of attitude scores and judged the similarity of pictures of facial pairs. Stimuli varied as to color, shade, expression, and hair type. A 4-way factorial design was employed (Grade * Prejudice Level * Race of Subject * Race of Examiner). Findings indicate that the various ways of assessing Ss' racial attitudes were not equivalent. Some instruments were strongly affected by developmental and racial factors, whereas others were not. Correlations between indices were low. Findings in Phase 2 indicated that racial attitudes do have perceptual correlates, particularly for white children. Race-related cues were accentuated by high-prejudice children, whereas non-race-related ones were less salient. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors influencing rule discovery in children.

Reports on 2 studies using the Esper paradigm to determine development of rule application and discovery capabilities. This paradigm employs both learning and generalization phases. In Exp I with 48 3rd and 4th graders, it was determined that Ss could learn and generalize when rule and structure were provided, but there was little evidence of rule discovery. In Exp II with 48 different 3rd and 4th graders, memory and attention manipulations were added. Both manipulations facilitated learning, but only attention facilitated rule discovery. In both studies 4th graders performed better than 3rd graders on generalization but not learning. The relationship between performance on the Esper and Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices (given to all Ss), although inconsistent, when covaried out removed the significant grade but not experimental effects. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mémorisation de textes chez des élèves du primaire et du secondaire.

Examined immediate and delayed recall of a narrative and an informative text by 5th, 9th, and 12th graders. The younger Ss produced shorter recall than the 2 older groups. Informative text led to shorter recall than narrative text at all 3 scholastic levels. Long-term results indicated the same effects for type of text. In the short term, 5th graders produced less similar propositions than did the 2 older groups, suggesting that they had more difficulty accepting the idea that a rewording could be semantically equivalent to a literal sentence. This finding indicates that the capacity to produce synonyms and paraphrases, necessary for the elaboration of summaries, increases with age. This tendency also increased with the passage of time. Differences were found in the quantity of these types of production between the 2 high-school groups, with the 9th graders producing less similar propositions than the 12th graders. (French & English abstracts) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Left-ear superiority in children for processing auditory emotional material.

Investigated hemispheric asymmetries in children for processing auditory material varying in emotional intonation or verbal content. 31 kindergartners, 32 4th graders, and 32 8th graders reported on the emotional content and on the verbal content of dichotically presented sentences. Ss listened to tapes of 4 phrases spoken in tones that were happy, sad, angry, or neutral and to sentences that varied in verbal content only. Ss also completed a handedness questionnaire and a hearing test. All age groups showed a left-ear advantage for reporting on the emotional material and a right-ear advantage for reporting on the verbal material. For the emotional task, the degree of ear asymmetry did not vary significantly as a function of emotional category. Findings indicate the the right hemisphere is specialized for mediating auditory emotional stimuli as early as 5 yrs of age. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When two wrongs make a right: Promoting cognitive change by social conflict.

89 1st graders and 25 2nd graders were given information about conservation tasks that conflicted with their prior nonconservation judgments. Ss in a social interaction situation had higher conservation posttest scores than Ss who were given conflicting information in role-playing, imitation, and control conditions. The spontaneous generation of conservation assertions that occurred in the social interaction condition was related to significantly higher posttest scores. Results suggest that even incorrect information that conflicts with a prior but equally erroneous belief can stimulate cognitive growth. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ambivalence and defense: Effects of a repressive style on normal adolescents' and young adults' mixed feelings.

Ambivalence has been associated in theoretical works with psychopathology and with defenses against conflict. Ambivalence was operationalized as mixed feelings. 75 9th graders (27 boys and 48 girls), 50 12th graders (19 men and 31 women), and 80 Yale University undergraduates (38 men and 42 women) completed questionnaires assessing ambivalence, psychopathological symptoms, and repressive and nonrepressive styles. Compared with nonrepressive Ss, repressive Ss at all grade levels reported lower levels of mixed feelings and relatively less uncertainty about their feelings. Whereas the absence of felt anxiety was sufficient for lower self-reported psychopathological symptoms, a repressive style was necessary for lower self-reported ambivalence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How children learn to listen: The effects of modeling feedback styles on children's performance in referential communication.

48 kindergartners and 48 2nd graders participated as listeners in a referential communication task with an adult speaker. Ss were presented with sets of 4 pictures and asked to choose the referent on the basis of a speaker's message. The messages were either adequate or ambiguous, describing 2 of the 4 possible referents. Ss were instructed to ask questions if they needed more information. Prior to these trials, Ss were exposed to 1 of 3 modeling conditions in which they viewed an adult listener responding to ambiguous messages by asking either general questions, specific questions, or specific questions accompanied by an explanation of the underlying strategy. A 4th group received no modeling. Although each of the modeling groups was successful in increasing the frequency of the modeled question, older Ss benefited more from modeling than younger children. Age differences suggested that the effectiveness of modeling interacted with children's existing cognitive abilities. Auxiliary evidence pointed to the role of information processing in children's abilities to deal with ambiguous communications as listeners. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)