Intersensory Perception at Birth: Newborns Match Nonhuman Primate Faces and Voices

Previous studies have shown that infants, including newborns, can match previously unseen and unheard human faces and vocalizations. More recently, it has been reported that infants as young as 4 months of age also can match the faces and vocalizations of other species raising the possibility that such broad multisensory perceptual tuning is present at birth. To test this possiblity, we investigated whether newborns can match monkey facial and vocal gestures. Using a paired preference procedure, in Experiment 1 we presented pairs of different visible monkey calls in silence and then in the presence of one or the other corresponding audible call and compared preferences across the silent and in‐sound conditions. In Experiment 2 , we presented the same monkey visible calls but this time together with a tone analog of the natural calls in the in‐sound trials. We found that newborns looked longer at the matching visible call in the in‐sound condition than in the silent condition in both experiments. These findings indicate that multisensory perceptual tuning is so broad at birth that it enables newborns to integrate the facial and vocal gestures of other primates and that integration is based on newborns’ detection of audio‐visual temporal synchrony relations.     

Valuing Informal Care Experience: Does Choice of Measure Matter?

Well-being equations are often estimated to generate monetary values for non-marketed activities. In such studies, utility is often approximated by either life satisfaction or General Health Questionnaire scores. We estimate and compare monetary valuations of informal care for the first time in the UK employing both measures, using longitudinal data on well-being and informal care provision. The choice of well-being measure has some effect on the estimated parameters and resulting monetary valuations, but any differences are not statistically significant. Further research is needed to confirm the comparability of these measures if researchers are to continue to use them interchangeably.     

The relevance of situation awareness in older adults’ cognitive functioning: a review

Age-related declines in cognition may have detrimental effects on older adults’ ability to complete everyday activities that young- and middle-aged individuals perform automatically. Theories of cognitive aging have found deficits in older adults’ fluid intelligence, capacity for inhibition, number of processing resources, and speed of processing, and in recent years, studies have proposed cognitive strategies to ameliorate these declines. However, few strategies directly train the cognitive strategies necessary to improve performance in dynamic environments and physical activities. One such strategy may be the enhancement of situation awareness, the capability to perceive and understand one’s environment. Although the term has typically been applied to pilots and other expert performers, situation awareness may also be relevant to cognitive aging, where older adults’ perception and comprehension of their environment become critical to everyday functioning and physical activities. If older adults’ situation awareness can be facilitated, then it may be possible to reduce the impact of age-related cognitive declines, allowing older adults to successfully participate in dynamic situations and sports where the environment is constantly changing (e.g., driving and tennis). The following review outlines cognitive deficits in aging, details their relation to situation awareness, and discusses how training in situation awareness may reduce cognitive declines. Portions of this paper were reported at the annual meeting of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity in June, 2005.     

Incorporation of historical controls using semiparametric mixed models

The analysis of animal carcinogenicity data is complicated by various statistical issues. A topic of recent debate is how to control for the effect of the animal's body weight on the outcome of interest, the onset of tumours. We propose a method which incorporates historical information from the control animals in previously conducted experiments. We allow non-linearity in the effects of body weight by modelling the relationship nonparametrically through a penalized spline. A simple extension of the penalized spline model allows the relationship between weight and the onset of tumour to vary from one experiment to another.     

Family transitions and juvenile delinquency

There is a large body of research that shows children from non-intact homes show higher rates of juvenile delinquency than children from intact homes, partially due to weaker parental control and supervision in non-intact homes. What has not been adequately addressed in the research is the influence of changes in family structure among individual adolescents over time on delinquent offending. Using the first and third waves of the National Youth Study, we assess the effect of family structure changes on changes in delinquent offending between waves through the intermediate process of changes in family time and parental attachment. Although prior research has documented adolescents in broken homes are more delinquent than youth in intact homes, the process of family dissolution is not associated with concurrent increases in offending. In contrast, family formation through marriage or cohabitation is associated with simultaneous increases in offending. Changes in family time and parental attachment account for a portion of the family formation effect on delinquency, and prior parental attachment and juvenile offending significantly condition the effect of family formation on offending.     

The Salience of a Career Calling Among College Students: Exploring Group Differences and Links to Religiousness,Life Meaning,and Life Satisfaction

The authors examined the degree to which 1st‐year college students endorse a career calling and how levels of calling differ across demographic variables and religiousness, life meaning, and life satisfaction. Forty‐four percent of students believed that having a career calling was mostly or totally true of them, and 28% responded to searching for a calling in the same fashion. Students seeking advanced professional degrees were more likely to feel a career calling, and the presence of a calling was found to weakly correlate with religiousness and life satisfaction and moderately correlate with life meaning. Practice implications are suggested.     

Whatever it takes: Leaders' perceptions of abusive supervision instrumentality

In this paper we examine how leaders' perceptions of the instrumental benefits of abusive supervision shape their tendencies to abuse their employees. We posit that leaders who believe abuse has a positive impact on employee performance will engage in more abusive supervision than their peers, with downstream implications for employees' counterproductive work behaviors. Furthermore, we position leader empathic concern as a boundary condition, whereby empathic concern mitigates the effects of leaders' perceptions of abusive supervision's instrumentality. Data from two studies employing both experimental and field survey designs offer convergent support for our hypotheses. Overall, our findings challenge the prevailing view that abusive supervision is primarily motivated by a desire to aggress, instead demonstrating that leaders sometimes abuse their employees in the pursuit of more pro-organizational goals.