Jason B. Almerigi

Positive Youth Development, Participation in Community Youth Development Programs, and Community Contributions of Fifth-Grade Adolescents: Findings From the First Wave Of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development

The 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), a longitudinal investigation of a diverse sample of 1,700 fifth graders and 1,117 of their parents, tests developmental contextual ideas linking PYD, youth contributions, and participation in community youth development (YD) programs, representing a key ecological asset. Using data from Wave 1 of the study, structural equation modeling procedures provided evidence for five firstorder latent factors representing the “Five Cs” of PYD (competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring) and for their convergence on a second-order PYD latent construct. A theoretical construct, youth contribution, was also created and examined. Both PYD and YD program participation independently related to contribution. The importance of longitudinal analyses for extending the present results is discussed.

Structural Relations among Spirituality, Religiosity, and Thriving in Adolescence.

Using the randomly selected subsample of 1,000 youth (472 boys, M age = 12.2 years, SD = 1.5; 528 girls, M age = 12.1 years, SD = 1.4) drawn by Dowling, Getsdottir, Anderson, von Eye, and Lerner (in press) from a Search Institute (1984) archival data set, Young Adolescents and Their Parents (YAP), this research employed structural equation modeling procedures to appraise the structural relations among second-order factors of religiosity, spirituality, and thriving. Three hierarchically related models were tested: The first model was a complete mediation model that involved a direct effect of spirituality on thriving and an indirect effect of spirituality on thriving, mediated by religiosity, the second model only consisted of the mediated effect, and the third model only consisted of the direct effects of spirituality on thriving and religiosity on thriving. Consistent with expectations, the complete mediation model provided reasonably good fit to the data and was significantly better than either of the alternative models. The importance of the findings reported here for the future study of youth thriving using either the YAP data set or new, longitudinal studies is discussed.

Is maternal depression related to side of infant holding

Studies show that 65–85% of mothers hold their infants on the left side of their own body and that this left-bias may be reduced or reversed when mothers have symptoms similar to depression or dysphoria (de Château, Holmberg, & Winberg, 1978). No studies, however, have used diagnostic criteria to assess the mother’s psychological state. The current study examined the relationship between maternal report of depressive symptoms on the Beck Depression Inventory and holding-side bias in a high-risk sample of 177 mothers participating with their infants in a larger longitudinal study of mother–infant relationships and domestic violence. Mothers classified as nondepressed showed a significant left-bias; those classified as depressed showed a nonsignificant right-bias; mothers who reported experiencing domestic violence also showed a reduced left-bias. The results are interpreted in terms of current theory and research on lateralised hemispheric activation and depression.

Mothers' and fathers' lateral biases for holding their newborn infants: a study of images from the World Wide Web.

Photographic and direct-observation studies show that most adults hold infants on the left side. This basic directional effect is well established, but other details are still uncorroborated, uncertain, or inconsistent across studies. These include the overall strength of the bias, the role of the sex, parental status, and experience of the holder, and the sex and age of the infant. Given their importance for understanding the bias, we sought further information from a large sample of photographs of mothers and fathers, some of them first-time parents, others not, holding their infants in the first minutes, hours, or days after birth. The results confirmed the basic directional effect and provided information on the other variables. They also raise questions for further research, especially as it pertains to the use of photographs vs direct observation.

Probing the human brain with stimulating electrodes: The story of Roberts Bartholow's (1874) experiment on Mary Rafferty

Roberts Bartholows 1874 experiment on Mary Rafferty is widely cited as the first demonstration, by direct application of stimulating electrodes, of the motor excitability of the human cerebral cortex. The many accounts of the experiment, however, leave certain questions and details unexamined or unresolved, especially about Bartholows goals, the nature and quality of the evidence, and the experiments role in the history of theory and research on localisation of function. In this article, we try to fill these gaps and to tell the full story. We describe Bartholows career up to 1874, review the theoretical and empirical background for the experiment, and present Bartholows own account of the experiment as well as those of his supporters and critics. We then present our own analysis, assess the experiments influence on contemporaneous scientific opinion about cortical excitability, and trace its citation record into our own time. We also review and assess ethical criticisms of Bartholow and their effects on his career, and we close by discussing the role we think the experiment deserves to play in the history of theory and research on cortical excitability.

The left visual hemispace bias for the perception of chimeric faces: A further test of the difficulty of discrimination hypothesis

When people make judgments of visual-spatial forms, they generally perform better if the information is presented in their left visual hemispace (LVH), whereas for verbal material, they generally show a right visual hemispace (RVH) bias. For verbal material, the strength and direction of the effect also has been linked to task difficulty, with the bias shifting toward the RVH as task difficulty increases. Two experiments are presented that show the reverse direction of change for a nonverbal task; that is, when a nonverbal task is more difficult, the usual LVH effect shifts toward an RVH bias. Taking into account recent developments in theory and research on hemispheric differences in styles of information processing, we propose that task difficulty is related more generally to changes in processing style.When people make judgments of visual-spatial forms, they generally perform better if the information is presented in their left visual hemispace (LVH), whereas for verbal material, they generally show a right visual hemispace (RVH) bias. For verbal material, the strength and direction of the effect also has been linked to task difficulty, with the bias shifting toward the RVH as task difficulty increases. Two experiments are presented that show the reverse direction of change for a nonverbal task; that is, when a nonverbal task is more difficult, the usual LVH effect shifts toward an RVH bias. Taking into account recent developments in theory and research on hemispheric differences in styles of information processing, we propose that task difficulty is related more generally to changes in processing style.

Why are infants held on the left? A test of the attention hypothesis with a doll, a book, and a bag

Most adults, especially women, hold infants and objects representing infants, such as dolls, preferentially on the left side. The attention hypothesis credits the effect to left-directed attention for perception of emotionally salient targets, faces being prime examples. Support comes from studies showing stronger left visual hemispace (LVH) biases in left-holders than right-holders on the Chimeric Faces Test (CFT), but control tests with non-social/emotional objects are needed. We therefore observed young women holding a doll, a book, and a bag, and compared their scores with their performance on the CFT. We also assessed their handedness to check on its possible role. Overall, only the doll elicited a significant side bias, with 57% of all holds on the left, 2% in the middle, and 41% on the right. On the CFT, only left-holders had an LVH bias, whereas right-holders had no bias in either direction. Only the doll-hold scores were consistently related to CFT scores, and for none of the objects was handedness related to side-of-hold.

Adults' preferences for side-of-hold as portrayed in paintings of the Madonna and Child

Most women hold infants on their left side. They do the same when depicted in works of art. Does the latter accurately reflect the real-life bias, the artists own aesthetic preference, or something else, such as the artists handedness, sex, direction of attentional bias, or even the artists own side-preference for holding infants? As a first step to finding out, we showed 272 young adults (85 men, 187 women) 20 pairs of paintings of the Madonna and Child, the original on one side, its mirror-reversal on the other, and asked which one they preferred. Along with assessing the effects of the variables already mentioned, we used equal numbers of paintings originally depicting left-holds and right-holds to control for the possible effects of differences between the paintings other than side-of-hold itself, such as in their colour scheme, background details, and the type of hold shown (e.g., cradle vs seated on lap). Each pair was presented twice, once with the original on the left, once on the right, for a total of 40 trials. Women and men alike more often preferred left-hold images, but the difference was significant only for women. Preferences were also stronger for original left-hold paintings than for the mirror-reversals of original right-hold paintings, suggesting that the originals differed in ways affecting preference beyond those we tried to control. Overall preference for left-hold images was enhanced when the images were on the viewers left. As for the other variables, they were for the most part unrelated to preferences. The reasons for the preference thus remain unclear but it is evidently affected by multiple variables, with at least some clearly different from those affecting side-of-hold preferences of real mothers holding real infants.

Are only infants held more often on the left? If so, why? Testing the attention-emotion hypothesis with an infant, a vase, and two chimeric tests, one “emotional,” one not

ABSTRACT Most adults, especially women, hold infants and dolls but not books or packages on the left side. One reason may be that attention is more often leftward in response to infants, unlike emotionally neutral objects like books and packages. Womens stronger bias may reflect greater responsiveness to infants. Previously, we tested the attention hypothesis by comparing womens side-of-hold of a doll, book, and package with direction-of-attention on the Chimeric Faces Test (CFT) [Harris, L. J., Cárdenas, R. A., Spradlin, Jr., M. P., & Almerigi, J. B. (2010). Why are infants held on the left? A test of the attention hypothesis with a doll, a book, and a bag. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 15(5), 548–571. doi:10.1080/13576500903064018]. Only the doll was held more often to the left, and only for the doll were side-of-hold and CFT scores related, with left-holders showing a stronger left-attention bias than right-holders. In the current study, we tested men and women with a doll and the CFT along with a vase as a neutral object and a “non-emotional” chimeric test. Again, only the doll was held more often to the left, but now, although both chimeric tests showed left-attention biases, scores were unrelated to side-of-hold. Nor were there sex differences. The results support left-hold selectivity but not the attention hypothesis, with or without the element of emotion. They also raise questions about the contribution of sex-of-holder. We conclude with suggestions for addressing these issues.

Aesthetic preferences for direction of bias in artistic depictions of mothers holding infants

mal controls. In both cases, performance on the gambling task was clearly impaired, with a tendency for both children and adults to prefer less advantageous decks and to fail to improve their behavior throughout the task duration. For ADHD children, failure to perform the task was unrelated to any of two versions of the Stroop test. For psychopaths, gambling performance was marginally correlated to Stroop performance, but was very significantly correlated to the degree of psychopathy (assessed by the Hare’s psychopathy check list). Interestingly, these correlations were found in the control group as well. Taken together, these results suggest that ADHD children as well as adults with psychopathy tendencies have a dysfunction in brain reward mechanisms.