Summation of undetected excitation following extinction of the CER

The effects of compounding two conditioned stimuli (CSs), each of which had been extinguished to varying degrees in different groups of rats given identical acquisition training, was examined within the conditioned emotional response paradigm. Greater suppression to the compound than to the individual CSs was observed following 6, 12, 48, 72, and 96 stimulus extinction trials, although after only 12 extinction trials suppression to the individual stimuli was no longer observed. The amount of compound suppression decreased progressively as the number of extinction trials increased until, after 120 extinction trials on each stimulus, the compound no longer elicited observable suppression. Control group data indicated that the observed summation effect could not be attributed to disinhibition. The possible role of the summation of undetected excitation in studies examining configurai conditioning, avoidance conditioning and reinstatement is discussed briefly.     

The cooking teacher: investigating gender stereotypes in a Korean kindergarten

This article discusses some findings from a small‐scale investigation of children's gendered beliefs and behaviours in a Korean kindergarten which was attempting to challenge gender stereotyping through the anti‐bias intervention of a ‘cooking curriculum’. A sample of 14 children, some with ‘working’ mothers and some with ‘housewife’ mothers, was observed for two months, and informally interviewed on several occasions. The children's mothers were also interviewed. The findings are situated in the context of the changing, but still traditional, culture of Korean society, as well as in the contexts of early childhood education and theories of gender acquisition. They confirm that, although children are highly likely to reproduce the beliefs current in their home environment, they are open to reconstructing these views when actively challenged to consider alternatives, either by the school curriculum or by engaging in debate with a researcher or practitioner. The nature of the ‘alternative’ views available may however be problematic.     

Toddlers' Attachment Security to Child-Care Providers: The Safe and Secure Scale

Attachment relationships of toddlers (N = 45) to their child-care providers were investigated. Children's behaviors with their mothers were observed at home at 24 months and with their child-care providers at 26 months. Attachment Q-Sort procedures were used at home (90 items) and in child care (78 items); the latter yielded a 15-item Safe and Secure Scale describing the safe haven and secure base functions of attachment relationships in child care—being able to (a) seek and receive positive attention, (b) feel safe and protected, (c) receive support for exploration, (d) receive consolation when distressed, and (e) seek and accept assistance. Independent observational measures of child-care quality also were obtained at 24 months. As hypothesized, the Safe and Secure Scale was related to proximal rather than distal indicators of child-care quality, and it was a stronger measure than the child-caregiver Q-security score that was based on all 78 items. Child-mother and child-caregiver security were significantly related.     

An approach to psychosexual counselling

Summary In considering in this paper the origins, development and need for psychosexual counselling to be an integral part of the provision of a counselling service, one must not lose sight of the fact that some higher educational institutions still have no general counselling provision.It is interesting to note that in the UK at a time when the age of consent and voting age were lowered to eighteen years (Family Law Reform Act, 1969, operational 1970 and Representation of the People Act, 1969), and students were rejecting the idea of wardens and academic tutors acting in loco parentis, the National Union of Students (at their annual conference in 1969) passed a resolution pressing for Counselling Services to be established in each higher educational institution-staffed by fully trained personnel, Milner (1974). Nine years later this resolution has not yet been fully implemented.The university community represents a cross-section of the population, any of whom may have a psychosexual problem and seek help from the counselling service. Counsellors must be trained to treat psychosexual problems as part of their normal range of activities.Storr (1960) points out that it is The individual as well as the disease that needs treatment. This applies in counselling as it does in medicine, so that the counsellor should be able to treat the individual as a whole, and at the same time treat his psychosexual problem.University of Reading     

Unique-order interpolative coding for fast querying and space-efficient indexing in information retrieval systems

This paper presents a size reduction method for the inverted file, the most suitable indexing structure for an information retrieval system (IRS). We notice that in an inverted file the document identifiers for a given word are usually clustered. While this clustering property can be used in reducing the size of the inverted file, good compression as well as fast decompression must both be available. In this paper, we present a method that can facilitate coding and decoding processes for interpolative coding using recursion elimination and loop unwinding. We call this method the unique-order interpolative coding. It can calculate the lower and upper bounds of every document identifier for a binary code without using a recursive process, hence the decompression time can be greatly reduced. Moreover, it also can exploit document identifier clustering to compress the inverted file efficiently. Compared with the other well-known compression methods, our method provides fast decoding speed and excellent compression. This method can also be used to support a self-indexing strategy. Therefore our research work in this paper provides a feasible way to build a fast and space-economical IRS.     

Emotional eavesdropping: infants selectively respond to indirect emotional signals

Two experiments examined whether 18-month-olds learn from emotions directed to a third party. Infants watched an adult perform actions on objects, and an Emoter expressed Anger or Neutral affect toward the adult in response to her actions. The Emoter then became neutral and infants were given access to the objects. Infants' actions were influenced by their memory of the Emoter's affect. Moreover, infants' actions varied as a function of whether they were currently in the Emoter's visual field. If the previously angry Emoter was absent (Experiment 1) or turned her back (Experiment 2), infants did not use the prior emotion to regulate their behavior. Infants learn from emotional eavesdropping, and their subsequent behavior depends on the Emoter's orientation toward them.     

Third-Party Sociomoral Evaluations in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

We examined explicit and implicit processes in response to third-party moral transgressions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty 4- to 7-year-old children with ASD and 19 typically developing controls evaluated dynamic visual stimuli depicting intentional or accidental harm to persons or damage to objects. Moral evaluations, eye fixations, and pupil dilations toward the stimuli were collected. Results indicate a preserved capacity to understand the mental states of perpetrators and an implicit moral sensitivity to the third-party harms in children with ASD. Nonetheless, children with ASD showed specific sensitivity and emotional arousal when viewing damage to objects. These findings contribute to the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of moral reasoning in ASD and its possible association with the autistic symptoms.