Children can be trained to recognise emotions

Children can using training to spot crucial cues on someone's emotional state, new research from the University of Lincoln, UK, has show.

Children can learn to better recognise other people's emotions through games which emphasise the significance of the eyes and the mouth in conveying feelings, new research has shown.

The study by cognitive neuroscientists at the University of Lincoln, UK, suggests that simple training programmes could help children better understand which expressive facial features offer the most important cues to other people's emotional state.

It is hoped the findings, published in the peer reviewed science journal PLOS ONE, could lead to new or improved interventions for children and adults who have difficulty recognising emotional states in others.

Dr Petra Pollux, a cognitive neuroscientist from the University of Lincoln's School of Psychology, said: "How we recognise and process facial expressions plays a big part in our social interaction skills."

"We've all experienced walking into a room, looking around and immediately understanding that something has happened, and that's because we're reading the expressions on people's faces."

"This ability to understand and read facial expressions is a crucial skill in development and begins at quite an early age."

"Generally, when we look at faces, we look at the eyes and the mouth, but with a definite bias towards the eyes."

"We wanted to investigate if there was a correlation between which parts of the face the children looked at and their ability to correctly pick up on the emotional state of the person in the image."

During the study nine-year-old children were shown images which conveyed varying levels of intensity of emotional expressions, from a small smile to a big grin, and asked to match it with the correct emotion. If they answered incorrectly, they were alerted by a tone.

Children and adults were not given any instructions about eye-movements, but over the four sessions learned that focusing more on the eyes offered the crucial clues they needed.

The images used in the study were digitally manipulated and showed happy, sad or fearful expressions.

An adult's ability to recognise emotions was also assessed and compared with children's, and in both cases, special eye tracking equipment was used to monitor their gaze pattern and determine which features of the face, such as the eyes, nose or mouth, they focused on most.

Children looked less often and for a shorter duration at the eyes, and more often and for longer at the mouth compared with adults.

Training for both adults and children increased the amount of time spent looking at the eyes, although for adults this was only for faces which showed a sad expression.

Children, however, showed a significant increase in the amount of time spent focused on the eyes of all three expressions after training, leading to more correct answers.

The images used in the final session were also replaced by new faces, meaning their abilities translated to different people, researchers said.

Dr Pollux added: "It's really useful to know that the way a child scans a face plays an important role in recognising emotions. This research could be used to develop mobile phone apps which turn this kind of training into a game."

Researches now hope that the findings will inform training programmes for people in need of a better understanding of recognising facial expressions, such as those with autism or other cognitive development problems.

More information: Pollux PML, Hall S, Guo K (2014) "Facial Expression Training Optimised Viewing Strategy in Children and Adults." PLOS ONE 9(8): e105418. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105418

Self-esteem: Research reveals the cultural origins

What gives you self-worth? University of Sussex research shows our self-esteem is based on the prevailing values of our culture.

Whatever our personal values, we largely base our self-worth on living up to the prevailing values of our culture, new University of Sussex-led research reveals.

Vivian Vignoles

Sussex social psychologists Dr Vivian Vignoles and Dr Maja Becker collaborated with a global team of researchers to address a long-standing debate about what influences our self-esteem.

Their findings are published online this month (12th February, 2014) in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

More than 5,000 adolescents and young people in 19 countries spanning Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America, Africa and Asia took part in the research.

Participants were found to base their self-worth on living up to the prevailing values of others in their cultural contexts, but—surprisingly—their own personal values appeared to have little or no influence on self-esteem.

Dr Vignoles explains: "We can all think of different things that make us see ourselves positively, whether it is succeeding at work or school, our relationships with friends and family, behaving morally towards others, or having the right possessions—as well as other aspects of ourselves that we may feel less good about. But what gives these things their importance?

"An intuitive answer would be that every individual bases their self-esteem on living up to the values that they personally see as most important—and this has been the dominant view in psychology for over 100 years. But firm evidence for this idea has been surprisingly elusive.

"Our new findings paint a very different picture, suggesting that it is the value priorities of others in the surrounding context, not the individual's own value priorities, that predict which aspects of ourselves will give us the greatest sense of self-worth."

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the research was conducted by the Culture and Identity Research Network, directed by Dr Vignoles.

Research participants were initially asked to list ten aspects of themselves in answer to the question "Who are you?".

Their answers were very wide ranging, including descriptions of their personality characteristics, important relationships, social roles and group memberships.

Participants were subsequently asked: "How much does each of these things make you see yourself positively?"

The researchers used further data from the questionnaires to predict which aspects of themselves each participant would see as providing the greatest sense of self-esteem.

The results showed that participants derived the most self-esteem from aspects of their identities that best fulfilled the values of their surrounding culture.

For example, participants in cultural contexts where people most emphasized values such as self-direction and having a stimulating life (e.g., the UK, Western Europe, and some parts of South America) were more likely to derive self-esteem from controlling their own lives, whereas those in cultures where there was relatively more emphasis on values such as conformity, tradition, and security (e.g., parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia) were relatively more likely to derive self-esteem from doing their duty.

Dr Vignoles comments: "Popular psychology and self-help books often seem to imply that people can build self-esteem on their own. These findings should remind us that no-one is an island. Building self-esteem is mostly a collaborative enterprise."

"Our research suggests that the self-esteem system is an important way in which individuals internalise the values of their culture on an implicit level, even if they do not profess to believe in these values when they are asked explicitly."

"These subtle processes may encourage people to act in ways that are desirable in their society, and thus help to maintain social solidarity."

More information: "Cultural bases for Self-Evaluation: Seeing Oneself Positively in Different Cultural Contexts", lead authors Dr Maja Becker and Dr Vivian Vignoles, is published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167214522836

A New Look Inside Children's Brains

Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that children have a limit to what they can see and remember at a given time, known as visual working memory. 

In tests, the researchers found that 3-year-olds can hold a maximum of 1.3 objects in visual working memory, while 4-year-olds reach capacity at 1.8 objects. 

Adults hit the ceiling at 3 to 4 objects. 

Credit: Sondra Cue, University of Iowa

When young children gaze intently at something or furrow their brows in concentration, you know their minds are busily at work but you're never entirely sure what they're thinking.

Now you can get an inside look. Psychologists led by the University of Iowa for the first time have peered inside the brain with optical neuroimaging to quantify how much 3- and 4-year-old children are grasping when they survey what's around them and to learn what areas of the brain are in play.

The study looks at "visual working memory," a core cognitive function in which we stitch together what we see at any given point in time to help focus attention.

In a series of object-matching tests, the researchers found that 3-year-olds can hold a maximum of 1.3 objects in visual working memory, while 4-year-olds reach capacity at 1.8 objects. By comparison, adults max out at 3 to 4 objects, according to prior studies.

"This is literally the first look into a 3 and 4-year-old's brain in action in this particular working memory task," says John Spencer, psychology professor at the UI and corresponding author of the paper, which appears in the journal NeuroImage.

The research is important, because visual working memory performance has been linked to a variety of childhood disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, developmental coordination disorder as well as affecting children born prematurely.

The goal is to use the new brain imaging technique to detect these disorders before they manifest themselves in children's behaviour later on.

"At a young age, children may behave the same," notes Spencer, who's also affiliated with the Delta Center and whose department is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, "but if you can distinguish these problems in the brain, then it's possible to intervene early and get children on a more standard trajectory."

Plenty of research has gone into better understanding visual working memory in children and adults. Those prior studies divined neural networks in action using function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

That worked great for adults, but not so much with children,­ especially young ones, whose jerky movements threw the machine's readings off kilter.

So, Spencer and his team turned to functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which has been around since the 1960s but has never been used to look at working memory in children as young as three years of age.

"It's not a scary environment," says Spencer of the fNIRS. "No tube, no loud noises. You just have to wear a cap."

Like fMRI, fNIRS records neural activity by measuring the difference in oxygenated blood concentrations anywhere in the brain.

You've likely seen similar technology when a nurse puts your finger in a clip to check your circulation. In the brain, when a region is activated, neurons fire like mad, gobbling up oxygen provided in the blood.

Those neurons need another shipment of oxygen-rich blood to arrive to keep going. The fNIRS measures the contrast between oxygen-rich and oxygen-deprived blood to gauge which area of the brain is going full tilt at a point in time.

The researchers outfitted the youngsters with colorful, comfortable ski hats in which fiber optic wires had been woven.

The children played a computer game in which they were shown a card with one to three objects of different shapes for two seconds.

After a pause of a second, the children were shown a card with either the same or different shapes. They responded whether they had seen a match.

The tests revealed novel insights. First, neural activity in the right frontal cortex was an important barometer of higher visual working memory capacity in both age groups.

This could help clinicians evaluate children's visual working memory at a younger age than before, and work with those whose capacity falls below the norm, the researchers say.

Secondly, 4-year olds showed a greater use than 3-year olds of the parietal cortex, located in both hemispheres below the crown of the head and which is believed to guide spatial attention.

"This suggests that improvements in performance are accompanied by increases in the neural response," adds Aaron Buss, a UI graduate student in psychology and the first author on the paper.

"Further work will be needed to explain exactly how the neural response increases—either through changes in local tuning, or through changes in long range connectivity, or some combination."

Canadian Researchers reveal Toddlers value helpful people

Even very young children value people that help them and they are motivated to return the favour, according to a new study in the journal Plos One, out of Queen's University, Ontario.

The study revealed that those children, when asked to pick one person to help, most often choose the person who was helpful to them.

Valerie Kuhlmeier

"Children can identify helpful individuals and will be helpful toward those people," says study author Valerie Kuhlmeier (Psychology).

"As early as the age of three, children already appear to be engaging in a variant of the golden rule: 'do unto others as they have done unto you."

In the study, children were presented with a puzzle that consisted of a picture covered in such a way as to allow only a small section to be seen.

The children could not see what was in the picture but could interact with two puppets. Puppets are used in studies like this one because children treat them as peers.

One puppet announced that it knew what the picture was and proceeded to tell the child. The second puppet said that it also knew the picture, but was not going to tell.

Both puppets spoke in happy, friendly tones, and looked alike; they only differed in their willingness to provide information.

Children were able to determine which puppet was helpful and, when the one puppet needed help reaching a far-way toy or solving a puzzle of their own, the children were quick to identify which puppet had helped them and returned the favour.

"There is a growing body of research demonstrating that toddlers spontaneously help others in many situations," says Dr. Kuhlmeier, director of the Infant Cognition Group at Queen's.

"What we are also finding is that they pick out the helpers around them, even when the helpful act is as simple as teaching them something new about their world, and they return the favour with their own helpful acts."

Bilingual children outperform their peers - Creativity

Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to new research.

The University of Strathclyde studied primary school pupils who spoke English or Italian – half of whom also spoke Gaelic or Sardinian – and found that bilingual children were significantly more successful in the tasks set for them.

Gaelic-speaking children were, in turn, more successful than the Sardinian speakers.

The differences were linked to the mental alertness required to switch between languages, which could develop skills useful in other types of thinking.

The further advantage for Gaelic-speaking children may have been due to the formal teaching of the language and its extensive literature.

Dr Fraser Lauchlan, an honorary lecturer at the University of Strathclyde's School of Psychological Sciences and Health, led the research which was conducted with colleagues at University of Cagliari in Sardinia.

He said: "Bilingualism is now largely seen as being beneficial to children but there remains a view that it can be confusing, and so potentially detrimental to them.

"Our study has found it can have benefits, not only in language but in arithmetic, problem solving and enabling children to think creatively."

Spatial skills may be improved through scientific-based training.

The research published this month in Psychological Bulletin, the journal of the American Psychological Association, is the first comprehensive analysis of credible studies on such interventions.

Improving spatial skills is important because children who do well at spatial tasks such as putting together puzzles are likely to achieve highly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

David Uttal and fellow researchers at Northwestern University with Nora Newcombe, professor of psychology at Temple and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation's Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, reviewed 217 research studies on educational interventions to improve spatial thinking.

"There are limitations involved with looking at individual studies one by one. What we found when we brought together this large body of literature on training effects and analyzed it was a very powerful message, said Newcombe.

"People of all ages can improve at all types of spatial skills through training, period." Although recent research confirms that spatial abilities uniquely predict STEM achievement, there has been some debate about whether spatial skills can be improved — and whether such improvement lasts or transfers to new tasks.

The new meta-analysis answers all those questions in the affirmative. The researchers found that spatial skills are indeed malleable and that spatial training transfers to other fields.

"Our findings have significant real world implications by showing that training can have an impact on a technological workforce.

With the right training more high school students will be able to consider engineering and other scientific fields as a career option," said Newcombe.

One example of the type of training that can increase spatial abilities is having physics students use three-dimensional representations. Video game playing also increases spatial skills.

"Perhaps the most important finding from this meta-analysis is that several different forms of training can be highly successful," the authors say.

"Our hope is that our findings on how to train spatial skills will ultimately lead to highly effective ways to improve STEM performance," said Uttal, the lead author on the study.

The study looked at gender and age differences in relation to spatial thinking and found that in males and females, adults and children, even a small amount of training can improve spatial reasoning and have long-lasting impact.

Journal reference: Psychological Bulletin website
Provided by Temple University website

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-spatial-skills.html#jCp

Children in Foster Care develop Resilience through Compassion CBCT - Mindfulness

Negi with HH Dalai Lama

A new study shows that a therapeutic intervention called Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) appears to improve the mental and physical health of adolescents in foster care.

Mindfulness and CBCT

CBCT is a tool that provides strategies for people to develop more compassionate attitudes toward themselves and others.

It is well documented that children in foster care have a high prevalence of trauma in their lives.

For many, the circumstances that bring them into the foster care system are formidable; sexual abuse, parental neglect, family violence, homelessness, and exposure to drugs.

In addition, they are separated from biological family and some are regularly moved around from one place to another.

Emory researchers conducted the study in collaboration with the Georgia Department of Human Services (DHS) and the Division of Family and Child Services (DFCS).

The study was recently published online in the journals Psychoneuroendocrinology and Child and Family Studies.

Thaddeus Pace

“Children with early life adversity tend to have elevated levels of inflammation across their lifespan,” explains Thaddeus Pace, PhD, lead author on the paper in Psychoneuroendocrinology, and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory.  

Check out his Website: The Emory Mind-Body Program

“Inflammation is known to play a fundamental role in the development of a number of chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia, cancer and depression.”

The study finds that adolescents who practiced CBCT showed reductions in the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein (CRP), reduced anxiety and increased feelings of hopefulness. The more the study participants practiced, the greater the improvement observed in these measures.

Charles Raison

“The beneficial effects of CBCT on anxiety and feelings of hopelessness suggest that this intervention may provide immediate benefit to foster children,” says Charles Raison, MD, corresponding author of the study in Neuroendocrinology, now at the McClelland Institute, University of Arizona.

“We are even more encouraged by the finding that CBCT reduced levels of inflammation. Our hope is that CBCT may help contribute to the long-term health and well being of foster care children, not only during childhood, but also as they move into their adult years.”

Additionally, an article recently published in the journal Pediatrics reported that a high proportion of children in foster care programs across the United States are on psychiatric medications, many inappropriately e.g. AntiPsychotic Treatment

Linda Craighead

“In light of the increasing concern that we may be over-medicating children in state custody, our findings that CBCT can help with behavioural and physical health issues may be especially timely,” says Linda Craighead, PhD, senior author for the paper published in Child and Family Studies, and professor of psychology at Emory.

The Study

CBCT is a multi-week program developed by the Psychology dept. at Emory University by Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, one of the study’s co-authors. Although derived from Tibetan Buddhist teachings on compassion, the CBCT program has been designed to be completely secular in nature.

Geshe Negi

The Georgia Department of Human Services (DHS) and the Division of Family and Child Services (DFCS) identified 71 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 19 as eligible for study participation.

All of the children lived in the greater metropolitan Atlanta area, and were in state custody (i.e. foster care) at the time of the study.

The participants were randomised to six weeks of Cognitvely-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), or to a wait list control group. Before and after these interventions the adolescents were assessed on various measures of anxiety and hope about the future. They also provided saliva samples for the measurement of C-reactive protein.

The researchers found that within the CBCT group, participation in practice sessions during the study correlated with reduced CRP from baseline to the six-week assessment.

The researchers are careful to emphasize that further studies will be needed to determine if there are long-term benefits with CBCT.

Humanising Computer Aids affects trust and dependence

Computerized aids that include person-like characteristics can influence trust and dependence among adults, according to a Clemson University researcher.

A recently published study by Clemson University psychology associate professor Richard Pak examined how decision-making would be affected by a human-like aid.

Human Factor's Blog

The study focused on adults' trust, dependence, and performance while using a computerized decision-making aid for persons with diabetes.

The study is one of the first to examine how the design of decision-support aids on consumer devices can influence the level of trust that users place in that system and how much they use it.

Richard Pak

The design and look of an aid are important elements for designers because of the potential dangers associated when users trust unreliable decision aids or lack trust for reliable aids simply because of the their appearance.

"Just as trust is an important factor in how humans deal with other humans, it also can determine how users interact with computerized systems," Pak said. "Trust can be influenced by the aid's reliability and level of computerization as well as the user's experience and age."

Many people interact with computerized decision aids or automation on a daily basis, whether they're using smart phones, digital cameras or global positioning systems. When automation is only reliable sometimes, a person's level of trust becomes an important factor that determines how often the aid will be used.

"Figuring out how trust is affected by the design of computerized aids is important because we want people to trust and use only reliable aids," said Pak.

Pak's research findings have revealed that the inclusion of an image of a person can significantly alter perceptions of a computerized aid when there is no difference in the aid's reliability or presentation of information.

"Humanlike computer aids provide a reduced decision-making reaction time for adults," said Pak. "A plausible explanation is that the increase in trust led to an increased dependence on the aid, which led to faster performance."

Pak's future research will examine the specific aspects of the aid that affect trust in different age groups and gender.

He also is studying the affects of the aids on users when faced with decisions that have either a high consequence, such as making health decisions, or a low consequence, such as deciding what type of computer to buy.

Pak's study was published Tuesday in the journal Ergonomics. The journal article was co-authored by Clemson researchers Nicole Fink, Margaux Price, Brock Bass and Lindsay Sturre.

International Experts Resign From flawed DSM-5 Working group

Roel Verheul

Roel Verheul (Amsterdam) and John Livesley (Canada) both felt compelled to resign from the DSM-5 Personality Disorders Work Group. Here is an email from them describing what went wrong in the preparation of this section:

"We resigned from the DSM-5 Personality and Personality Disorder Work Group in April 2012 with a mixture of sadness and regret.

We believed that the construction of DSM-5 afforded an important opportunity to advance the study of personality disorder by developing an evidence-based classification with greater clinical utility than DSM-IV.

John Livesley

The data and conceptual tools for such an undertaking have been available for some time and the field seemed to recognize the need for change.

Regrettably, the Work Group has been unable to capitalize on the opportunity and has advanced a proposal that is seriously flawed.

It has also demonstrated an inability to respond to constructive feedback both from within the Work Group and from the many experts in the field who have communicated their concerns directly and indirectly.

We also regret the need to resign because we were the only International members of the Work Group which is now without representation from outside the US."

Read the full article here: Two Who Resigned From DSM-5 Explain Why

Chartered Occupational Psychologist Provides Skills Rocket

Skills Rocket, a Community Interest Company, is a free e-learning website, developed by a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.

It contains free resources made up of:  Tutorials, Support & Help Tips for an Adult with Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, AD(H)D or Neuro Differences.

Find easy to understand tutorial videos and articles from the experts that help you improve:

• Reading, Writing, Typing, Spelling, Memory, Note Taking,
  Speaking, Time Management, Listening, Concentration, Emails, Working Environment & Confidence.

How to access these great tools? Simply register for free and watch your Skills Rocket!

Their Vision
To use the Psychological knowledge and skills gained over many years of working with Adults who have Dyslexia, and other Neuro-Differences, and to share this learning with everyone, regardless of income level.

Mission Statement
At Skills Rocket, they believe that Dyslexia and other Neuro-Differences should not be a barrier to success.

Their mission is to equip Adults with the tools they need to get the best out of themselves, and empower them to make their skills rocket!!

Alison Gopnik at TED Edinburgh: What do babies Think?

"Babies and young children are like the R&D division of the human species," says psychologist Alison Gopnik. Her research explores the sophisticated intelligence-gathering and decision-making that babies are really doing when they play.

Alison Gopnik takes us into the fascinating minds of babies and children, and shows us how much we understand before we even realize we do. Full bio »

Children with callous, unemotional (CU) traits - Neurological study

A Recent study reveals that a small number of children with a 'callous' attitude towards other children and adults may be suffering from a neurological condition that pre-determines their nature.

If this is diagnosed and proven to be the case, then it will dictate the way that parents, teachers and medical practitioners deal with the child's behaviour and will determine a more focussed solution.

Background: Children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits may have a particularly malevolent view of social conflicts and a pervasive insensitivity to others’ distress.

The current study examined whether children with CU traits have unique expectations and values regarding the consequences of aggressive conflicts and a ubiquitous lack of concern for others’ feelings independent of co-occurring aggression.

Methods:  Participants were 96 (46 males, 50 females) children recruited from elementary schools within an urban city.

Associations between CU traits and child reports of outcome expectancies/values following aggressive conflicts and facets of empathy were examined after controlling for aggression, academic abilities, and demographic covariates.

Results:  Children with higher CU traits were less likely to expect that aggression would result in victim suffering and feelings of remorse.

After controlling for co-occurring aggression, children with higher CU traits were more likely to expect that aggression would result in peer dominance, while children with higher levels of aggression were more likely to expect that attacking others would reduce their aversive behaviour.

Children with higher CU traits were less concerned that aggressive behavior would result in punishment, victim suffering, and feelings of remorse.

Moreover, children with higher CU traits reported lower levels of empathetic concern and sadness in response to others’ distress outside of aggressive conflicts.

Conclusions:  Children with CU traits tend to minimize the extent to which aggression causes victim suffering and openly acknowledge caring less about distress and suffering in others.

They are less intimidated by the possibility of being punished for aggressive behavior and tend to view aggression as an effective means for dominating others.

In summary, children with CU traits have a particularly malicious social schema that may be difficult to change using conventional treatment methods.

To read the paper published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry follow this link: Perceptions of aggressive conflicts and others’ distress in children with callous-unemotional traits: ‘I’ll show you who’s boss, even if you suffer and I get in trouble’

Introducing: Amanda Kirby - Understand the difference

Professor Amanda Kirby MBBS MRCGP PhD

Professor Kirby founded The Dyscovery Centre in Cardiff in 1997.

Since that time The Centre has become internationally recognised for its work in Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD) and related specific learning difficulties.

In 2006, the Dyscovery Centre became part of the School of Education at the University of Wales, Newport. In April 2007 Amanda gained a Chair in Developmental Disorders in Education at the University.

Amanda previously worked as a General Practitioner and has worked in Community Paediatrics and Psychiatry.

She has many books published in the field of specific learning difficulties, and has published Mapping SEN – a CD-based programme for schools - and '100 Ideas for Supporting Pupils with Dyspraxia and DCD' as well as academic texts.

She is very interested in the ability to transfer evidence-based research into everyday practice and has recently developed several different websites including www.adhdtraining.co.uk, www.boxofideas.org and www.spldtransitions.co.uk.

Amanda is currently the patron of the Dyspraxia Association in New Zealand and medical advisor to the Dyspraxia Foundation in the UK and Ireland.

She is also a medical advisor to a developmental disorders clinic in Singapore, the UK Neurofibromatosis Association and is on the Royal College of General Practitioners Learning Disability Working Party.

She also works with the Welsh Assembly on specific projects including a benchmarking exercise on Dyslexia and specific learning difficulties provision.

She has provided consultancy to the RAF and Football Association.

Amanda has both a professional and personal interest in DCD (Dyspraxia) and related specific learning difficulties as her middle child, her 25-year old son, has co-ordination and some attentional difficulties, and trying to address his difficulties and finding answers to problems first sparked her interest in the area.

Her research interests include the effects of nutrition on learning and behaviour, outcomes for students in further and higher education with Dyspraxia and DCD, and executive functioning in school and college students.

Recent work has continued to look at the effect of specific learning difficulties in gaining employment.

Check her for a comprehensive presentation on Supporting Learning Difficulties in Adulthood by Prof. Kirby: this presentation was given at the Understand the Difference conf. 2011

Contact Details: Amanda.kirby@newport.ac.uk - www.dyscovery.org 

Infants learn to transfer knowledge by 16 months

Researchers have identified when an important milestone in infants’ development occurs: the ability to transfer knowledge to new situations.

In a series of studies, the researchers found that 8-month-olds had trouble using newly acquired knowledge in a different circumstance, but 16-month-olds could do so.

“Some time between 8 and 16 months, infants begin learning how to learn,” said Julie Hupp, lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Newark campus.

“They begin to transfer their new knowledge and use it in a totally different situation, which is a very important step in development.”

While many scientists had assumed that the ability to transfer knowledge was a product of infant development, no research had tested when that might occur, except for the case of word learning, Hupp said.

Hupp conducted the study with Vladimir Sloutsky, professor of psychology and human development and the director of the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State.

Their work appears online in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology and will be published in a future print edition.

Read more of this article here Infants learn to transfer knowledge by 16 months | Science Blog

Born Liars Podcast: Why we can't live without deceit?

Listen to a 15 min BBC Podcast. Extracts from the book on children and lies, narrated by Tim McInnerny : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011zm18

Ian Leslie traces the line from the great apes - who are no mean liars themselves - to humans and documents studies which suggest that becoming human wasn't a simple evolutionary process of the best forager and builder surviving, but the building blocks came from our social contacts and our understanding of deceit.

'Consistently startling and fascinating. Most popular psychology books follow a depressingly familiar path: there's some dodgy theorising at the beginning, then a raft of dubious statistics with a few anecdotes to back them up.

Born Liars, however, is in quite a different league. It's erudite yet wears its learning lightly and is full of terrific stories. It will also make you see yourself, and the world around you, in a new light.' - 'Book of the Week', in the Daily Mail (not necessarily a good thing)

Ian Leslie was born in 1972 and lives in London. He combines careers in advertising and writing. His first book, To be President (Politicos, 2008), an account of the 2008 US presidential election, was described by Adam Boulton as 'brilliantly capturing the drama and emotion of Obama's successful run for the White House' and was extracted by Granta.

He regularly appears as an analyst of American politics on Sky and the BBC. He has written about politics, culture, marketing and psychology for Prospect, the Guardian, the Times and the BBC.

He also blogs about all these things at Marbury, named one of the fifty 'Most Powerful' blogs in the world by the Observer.


Written by Ian Leslie
Abridged by Pete Nichols
Reader: Tim McInnerny
Producer: Rosalynd Ward
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.


The book Born Liars by Ian Leslie, is available from Amazon: www.amazon.co.uk/Born-Liars-Cant-without-Deceit/

New Diagnostic Guidelines for DSM: The Manual for Mental Disorders

New Diagnostic Guidelines for Mental Illnesses Proposed - BusinessWeek

For the first time in more than a decade, the American Psychiatric Association has announced proposed changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), long considered the "Bible" of psychiatry.

Unlike its predecessor, DSM-4, the new DSM-5 would not formally recognize sex and Internet addictions; would create a new category for "risk" disorders for people possibly heading towards developing full psychosis or dementia; and would create a new disorder, "temper dysregulation with dysphoria" (TDD) to incorporate both mood and behavioral disturbances, partly a response to current overdiagnosis of juvenile bipolar disorder.

Other issues were also addressed, including creating an overarching category known as "autism spectrum disorders" to encompass autism, Asperger's syndrome and other similar conditions. This term is already widely used. And "mental retardation" would become "intellectually challenged."

DSM is the tome used by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to diagnose different conditions and to guide research.

The proposed draft will be available for public comment until April 20. The final document, which has already been 10 years in the making, is expected to be released in 2013. The DSM-4 was published in 1994.

One of the major changes in the proposed volume will be a move toward "dimensional assessments" for mental disorders, meaning that strict, immutable categories will be replaced by a reliance on continuums and that "cross-cutting" symptoms -- those that span several different disorders -- will be included in the criteria.

"There's no measure in the [DSM-4] to account for the severity of the disorder and therefore no way to measure if a patient, on quantitative measures, is improving with treatment," Dr. Darrel Regier, vice chair of the DSM-5 Task Force and director of research for the American Psychiatric Association, said during a Tuesday teleconference announcing the proposed changes. "We're trying to address this with more quantitative measures on a continuum with a cut-off to decide mild, severe, very severe."

This time around, experts say they are giving "careful consideration" to how mental health disorders might vary according to race, gender and ethnicity.

Meta-cognitive Therapy (MCT) for Adult ADHD

Meta-cognitive Therapy (MCT) for Adult ADHD | Psych Central News

A new study suggests meta-cognitive therapy (MCT), a method of skills teaching that uses cognitive-behavioral principles, improves outcomes among adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Mary Solanto, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Center at The Mount Sinai Medical Center examined the effectiveness of a 12-week meta-cognitive therapy group.

The intervention was intended to enhance time management, organisational, and planning skills and abilities in adults with ADHD.

“We observed adults with ADHD who were assigned randomly to receive either meta-cognitive therapy or a support group,” said Dr. Solanto.

“This is the first time we have demonstrated efficacy of a non-medication treatment for adult ADHD in a study that compared the active treatment against a control group that was equivalent in therapist time, attention, and support.”

The study observed 88 adults with rigorously diagnosed ADHD, who were selected following structured diagnostic interviews and standardized questionnaires.

Pronouns Aid Brain Function

New research suggests that pronouns may play a far greater role than simply replacing a proper name in a sentence. A University of South Carolina study suggests that pronouns help keep the brain’s complex circuitry and limited memory system from being overloaded.

Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), psychology researcher Dr. Amit Almor and colleagues studied the brain activity of 21 adults, ages 19 - 34, who were asked to read sequences of sentences to compare the brain’s response to pronouns versus proper names.

Almor’s findings are featured in the cover article in the current issue of the NeuroReport, a scientific journal.

“The brain lit up with activity when proper names were used, including areas that are not associated with language,” Almor said. “We saw considerable activity in areas of the parietal lobe that involve spatial processing that was absent when pronouns were used.”

Almor is the first researcher to use brain imaging to explore the neurological underpinnings of humans’ preference for pronouns. He conducted his research at the university’s McCausland Center for Brain Imaging.

The brain responds to proper names by creating a representation of the person in the mind, drawing from various parts of the brain to construct complex visual, sound and other information associated with that person. Every time the name is repeated, the brain responds by activating a process that creates a new representation of the person.

The brain initially holds each created representation in memory. The integration of these multiple representations requires effort that can disrupt the brain’s ongoing processing of what it hears during spoken conversation.

Pronouns, while faulty for their potential ambiguity, don’t cause the same disruptions in the brain that proper names do when used in the right context. In fact, they allow the brain to move easily from one thought or sentence to another. This seamless transition allows a person to digest more fully the meaning or intent of the thought being conveyed without the neural circuitry interference that proper names cause, said Almor.

“We are at the mercy of our memory system, which is limited,” Almor said. “The more items or representations we hold, the more effort we need to spend so as not to lose information. Pronouns let us avoid that juggle in our brains. I expected to find activity in classic language areas of the brain. I was surprised to see activity in the spatial areas, but it makes perfect sense.”

To read the full article click here on the link

Primary symptoms of psychosis may be evident in 12-year-olds

Children normally experience flights of fancy, including imaginary friends and conversations with stuffed animals, but some of them are also having hallucinations and delusions which might be the early signs of psychosis.

A study of British 12-year-olds that asked whether they had ever seen things or heard voices that weren't really there, and then asked careful follow-up questions, has found that nearly 6 percent may be showing at least one definite symptom of psychosis.

The children who exhibited these symptoms had many of the same risk factors that are known to correlate with adult schizophrenia, including genetic, social, neurodevelopmental, home-rearing and behavioral risks.

"We don't want to be unduly alarmist, but this is also not something to dismiss," said co-author Terrie Moffitt, the Knut Schmidt Nielsen professor of psychology and neuroscience and psychiatry & behavioral sciences at Duke University. The study appears in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

The children were participants in the long-term Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study in Britain, which includes 2,232 children who have been tracked since age 5 and reassessed at 7, 10 and 12.

The British study is an outgrowth of research that the same group did earlier with a long-term cohort in Dunedin, New Zealand. At age 11, those children were asked about psychotic symptoms, but the researchers waited 15 years to see how, as adults, their symptoms matched what they reported at 11. By age 26, half of the people who self-reported symptoms at age 11 were found to be psychotic as adults.

"It looks like a non-trivial minority of children report these symptoms," said co-author Avshalom Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett professor of psychology and neuroscience and psychiatry & behavioral sciences at Duke.

The findings provide more clues to the development of schizophrenia, but don't solve any questions by themselves, said co-author Richard Keefe, director of the schizophrenia research group in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke.

Schizophrenia often goes undetected until adolescence, when the first overt symptoms -- antisocial behavior, self-harm, delusions -- begin to manifest in an obvious way. But nobody knows whether the disease is triggered by the process of adolescence itself, or brain development or hormone changes. "It's my impression that all of those things interact," Keefe said.

Psychotic symptoms in childhood also can be a marker of impaired developmental processes, and are something caregivers should look for, Moffitt said. "There is not much you can do except monitoring and surveillance," Moffitt said. "But we feel we should be alerting clinicians that there's a minority to pay attention to."

While the incidence of psychotic symptoms in this study was around 5 or 6 percent, the adult incidence of schizophrenia is believed to be about 1 percent, Keefe added. There are some recent findings however, that many more people experience hallucinations and delusions without being diagnosed as psychotic, he said.

The research was supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, UK Medical Research Council, The National Alliance of Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Health Research Board of Ireland and the William T. Grant Foundation.

Etiological and Clinical Features of Childhood Psychotic Symptoms, Guilherme Polanczyk et al, Archives of General Psychiatry, April 2010 http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/67/4/328

Link: http://www.duke.edu/

Improving Motor Skills: Helping Kids Take Care of Their Healthy Smiles

Sometims children with reduced motor skills struggle a little more with daily activities. Fine motor issues can get in the way of easily accomplishing basic tasks, like dressing, bathing and brushing teeth.

Physical and occupational therapies are a big help when it comes to helping children with these problems. They can also learn how to accomplish some of the harder tasks, like buttons, catches and zippers. Sometimes these therapies also help children become more independent or consistent with their personal hygiene.

Is Brushing Teeth the Exception?
Brushing teeth involves a lot of motor skills. Children need to have good proprioceptive awareness, meaning they need to know where their bodies are in space, in order to comfortably aim the toothbrush into the mouth.

It also involves a skill called “ crossing the midline,” meaning kids need to be able to comfortably and confidently reach a hand from one side of the body to the other and use brush with accuracy.

Because of the difficulty in brushing, parents of children with motor skills deficits often end up brushing their childrens’ teeth for them, and for much longer than they might for other children.