Psychology Commons^™

The Sound Of Social Cognition: Toddlers’ Understanding Of How Sound Influences Others, Rebecca Williamson, Rechele Brooks, Andrew N. Meltzoff

Psychology Faculty Publications

Understanding others’ perceptions is a fundamental aspect of social cognition. Children’s construal of visual perception is well investigated, but there is little work on children’s understanding of others’ auditory perception. The current study assesses toddlers’ recognition that producing different sounds can affect others differentially—auditory perspective taking. Two- and three-year-olds were familiarized with two objects, one loud and one quiet. The adult then introduced a doll, and children were randomly assigned to one of two goals: either to wake the doll or to let her sleep. Children’s object choice and the sound intensity they produced significantly varied in the predicted direction …

Learning The Rules: Observation And Imitation Of A Sorting Strategy By 36-Month-Old Children, Rebecca Williamson, Vikram K. Jaswal, Andrew N. Meltzoff

Psychology Faculty Publications

Two experiments investigate the scope of imitation by testing whether 36-month-olds can learn to produce a categorization strategy through observation. After witnessing an adult sort a set of objects by a visible property (their color, Experiment 1) or a non-visible property (the particular sounds produced when the objects were shaken, Experiment 2), children showed significantly more sorting by those dimensions relative to children in control groups, including a control in which children saw the sorted endstate but not the intentional sorting demonstration. The results show that 36-month-olds can do more than imitate the literal behaviors they see; they also abstract …

A Randomized Clinical Trial Of Vapocoolant For Pediatric Immunization Pain Relief, Lindsey L. Cohen, Jill E. Maclaren, Melissa Demore, Beverly Fortson, Abby Friedman, Crystal S. Lim, Balram Gangaram

Psychology Faculty Publications

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of vapocoolant for preschoolers’ immunization injection pain relief.

STUDY DESIGN: 57 4- to 6-year-old children were randomized to vapocoolant alone or typical care conditions. Pain was measured at baseline and at injection via self-report, caregiver-report, nurse-report, and an observational scale.

RESULTS: Self-report suggested that children in the vapocoolant alone condition demonstrated stronger increases in pain from baseline to injection than typical care. All other measures showed significant increases in pain from baseline to injection, but none indicted treatment effects.

CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with prior studies, vapocoolant might not be …

Recognition Of Facial Emotions Among Maltreated Children With High Rates Of Post–Traumatic Stress Disorder, Carrie L. Masten, Amanda E. Guyer, Hilary B. Hodgdon, Erin B. Mcclure, Dennis S. Charney, Monique Ernst, Joan Kaufman, Daniel S. Pine, Christopher S. Monk

Psychology Faculty Publications

Objective. The purpose of this study is to examine processing of facial emotions in a sample of maltreated children showing high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Maltreatment during childhood has been associated independently with both atypical processing of emotion and the development of PTSD. However, research has provided little evidence indicating how high rates of PTSD might relate to maltreated children’s processing of emotions. Method. Participants’ reaction time and labeling of emotions were measured using a morphed facial emotion identification task. Participants included a diverse sample of maltreated children with and without PTSD and controls ranging in age from …

Attention Bias Towards Threat In Pediatric Anxiety Disorders, Amy K. Roy, Roma A. Vasa, Maggie Bruck, Karin Mogg, Brendan P. Bradley, Michael Sweeney, Lindsey Bergman, Erin B. Mcclure-Tone, Daniel S. Pine

Psychology Faculty Publications

Objective: To examine attention bias towards threat faces in a large sample of anxiety disordered youths using a well-established visual probe task.

Method: Study participants included 101 children and adolescents (ages 7- 18 years) with generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia and/or separation anxiety disorder enrolled in a multi-site anxiety treatment study. Non-anxious youths (n = 51; ages 9 – 18 years) were recruited separately. Participants were administered a computerized visual probe task that presents pairs of faces portraying threat (angry), positive (happy) and neutral expressions. They pressed a response-key to indicate the spatial location of a probe that replaced one …