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Background Dominant explanations of reading fluency indicate automatic phonological decoding frees mental resources for processing meaning. However, decoding automaticity does not guarantee attention to meaning. Recent neurocognitive work suggests executive functioning (EF) may contribute to fluency beyond decoding automaticity. Aims Two studies examined contributions of an understudied EF, cognitive flexibility, to fluent reading and tested a teacher-administered EF intervention to improve fluency in teacher-identified low-achieving (LA) readers. Methods and procedures Study 1 assessed word reading fluency, automatic decoding, reading comprehension, verbal and nonverbal ability, and reading-specific and domain-general cognitive flexibility in 50 1st and 2nd grade typically-developing (TD) readers. Study 2 compared TD and LA readers’ cognitive flexibility and examined effectiveness of cognitive flexibility intervention for improving fluency in 33 LA 2nd and 3rd graders. Outcomes and results Reading-specific flexibility contributed to fluency beyond automatic decoding and all other control variables in TD readers who had significantly higher cognitive flexibility than LA readers. Teacher-administered EF intervention improved reading fluency for LA readers. Conclusions and implications These findings expand understanding of the neurocognitive basis of reading fluency and add to the growing body of evidence that EF underlies learning differences and serves as a useful target of intervention for LA students.

Substantial research indicates decoding difficulties are a primary contributor to reading comprehension problems. Yet, far less is known about sources of reading comprehension problems when readers' decoding abilities are appropriate for grade level (i.e., specific reading comprehension difficulties; RCD). Executive functioning contributes uniquely to RCD beyond traditional predictors, such as decoding ability and vocabulary. However, of the three core executive functions, working memory and inhibition have received relatively more research attention than cognitive flexibility, even though readers with RCD typically focus inflexibly on decoding processes without attention to meaning. Two studies assessed the contribution of cognitive flexibility to RCD. Study 1 employed a matched sampling approach to examine general and reading-specific cognitive flexibility in 24 readers with RCD and 24 typically developing readers (from a pool of 140 students) at the end of 1st and 2nd grades. Readers with RCD were significantly lower in reading-specific cognitive flexibility than typically developing peers, even when decoding, verbal ability, nonverbal matrix reasoning ability, and vocabulary were controlled; a similar, though not significant, difference emerged for general, color-shape cognitive flexibility. Study 2 revealed a teacher-delivered cognitive flexibility intervention produced significant improvements in reading comprehension for students with RCD (n = 18) who had not shown significant growth prior to intervention; after intervention, their reading comprehension growth was comparable to typically developing controls (n = 21).

The fading affect bias (FAB) occurs when unpleasant affect fades faster than pleasant affect. To detect mechanisms that influence the FAB in the context of death, we measured neuroticism, depression, anxiety, negative religious coping, death attitudes, and complicated grief as potential predictors of FAB for unpleasant/death and pleasant events at 2 points in time. The FAB was robust across older and newer events, which supported the mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Unexpectedly, complicated grief positively predicted FAB, and death avoidant attitudes moderated this relation, such that the Initial Event Affect by Grief interaction was only significant at the highest 3 quintiles of death avoidant attitudes. These results were likely due to moderate grief ratings, which were, along with avoidant death attitudes, related to healthy outcomes in past research. These results implicate complicated grief and death avoidant attitudes as resiliency mechanisms that are mobilized during bereavement to minimize its unpleasant effects.

The authors examined effects of feedback and explanation on false belief performance. Thirty-three children (42–54 months; 15 girls, 18 boys) were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions: explanation, feedback, feedback researcher explains, and feedback child explains. Children completed false belief tasks during pretraining, 8 training sessions, and posttraining across 6 weeks. Language comprehension was assessed at pretraining. The authors hypothesized that children would improve most when training involved feedback and explanation. Generalized estimating equations modeling was used to analyze the data. Children who received feedback and generated explanations for characters’ false beliefs improved across training sessions more so than children in other conditions. Children's explanations for false beliefs also were explored. Implications of the findings are discussed.

This research examined how job pursuit and application decisions of male and female job applicants are impacted by beliefs about the organization’s culture. Participants responded to questions regarding job pursuit intentions, organizational preference, and organizational choice for two hypothetical organizations, depicted in recruitment brochures as having either a competitive (“masculine”) or supportive (“feminine”) organizational culture in a 2 × 2 repeated measures design. Choosing the supportive culture required the trade-off of lower salary. The results indicate that organizational culture interacts with gender to influence applicant attraction. Men were more likely than women to intend to pursue a job with the competitive organization; however, the majority of both men and women reported stronger interest in working for the supportive organization, even though salary would be lower. This provides an empirical basis for organizational decision makers to integrate more supportive “feminine” values into the organizational culture and to highlight these values in recruitment literature. Perceived organizational culture plays a significant role in applicant decision making and both male and female applicants indicated a willingness to accept a lower salary in return for a supportive organizational culture. This has significance for organizations that seek to attract high quality applicants but whose direct compensation is lower than that offered by competitors. This is the first study to use an experimental design to manipulate organizational culture and salary trade-offs depicted in recruitment literature to examine the impact on applicant attraction.

Reading-specific and general color-shape cognitive flexibility were assessed in 68 first and second graders to examine: 1) the development of graphophonological-semantic cognitive flexibility (the ability to process concurrently phonological and semantic aspects of print) in comparison to color-shape cognitive flexibility, 2) the contribution of reading experience to graphophonological-semantic flexibility, and 3) the unique contribution of graphophonological-semantic flexibility to reading comprehension. Second graders scored significantly higher than first graders on both cognitive flexibility tasks; the general flexibility task was easier for all children than the graphophonological-semantic flexibility task; reading experience contributed uniquely to children's graphophonological-semantic flexibility; and graphophonological-semantic flexibility contributed significant, unique variance to children's reading comprehension, consistent with Cartwright's (2002) work with second- to fourth-grade students an...

Studied the autonomic regulation of 37 infants with a typical cry threshold and 17 infants with a high cry threshold (typical of problems in nervous system function). Infants with a high cry threshold had a longer latency to cry, a shorter first cry sound, and a shorter overall bout of crying. Spectrum analysis of 2 hours of heart rate variability showed that a high cry threshold was predictive of fewer reliable rhythms and a lower power of the basic 40-min rhythm in heart rate. High cry threshold infants also showed fewer startles and changes in behavioral state. Results suggest a high cry threshold predicts disrupted autonomic regulation and poor coordination among rhythmic systems affecting cardiac activity.

The purpose of this study was to examine experimentally the effects of the temporal structure of infant crying on mothers' perceptions. Eighteen mothers of young infants rated variations of a 10-sec cry in which durations of all expiratory sounds and pauses were digitally lengthened and shortened by 50%. Results showed a general monotonic effect in which cries with increasingly shorter pauses were perceived to be more arousing, aversive, informative, and rough. Similarly, cries with short expirations were perceived to be more rhythmic and rough than cries with long expirations. The strength of the monotonic effect for pause duration on ratings of urgency interacted with the duration of expiratory sounds such that the combination of short pauses and short expirations created the greatest perceived urgency. This study replicates and extends previous findings which show that gradations in acoustic features of crying are associated with gradations in the intensity of adults' perceptions.

Durations of all pauses and expiratory sounds in a 10-s bout of infant crying were digitally increased and decreased by 50% to create cries that varied in the duration of pauses and expiratory sounds. Ratings by 40 men and women showed a general monotonic effect of pause duration so that cries with increasingly shorter pauses were perceived to be more arousing, informative, and aversive. The monotonic effect for pause duration was enhanced in an interaction with expiration duration for perceptions of urgency. Results provide the first known experimental evidence of how variations in the temporal structure of infant crying differentially affect adults' perceptions and support views of the cry of the young infant as a graded signal

Heart rates and behavioural states of 14 breast-fed and 14 bottlefed newborn infants were assessed every 30 seconds for 2 continuous hours. The 240 observations of heart rate were treated as time-series data and spectrum-analysed for behavioural rhythmicities. Of the 28 infants, 25 showed reliable cycles in heart rate; 22 of the 25 infants showed a dominant frequency with a 30–60 min periodicity, one that approximates the basic-rest activity cycle (BRAC). In addition to this basic cycle, additional higher frequency cycles in long-term heart rate variability were evident in the spectra of many infants. Breast-fed newborns had greater numbers of reliable cycles in heart rate than bottle-fed newborns. Further, breast-fed newborns had lower overall mean heart rates and lower mean heart rates in Quiet and Active Sleep states than bottle-fed newborns. Bottle-fed newborns were observed more often in Quiet Sleep than breast-fed newborns. Without knowledge of the specific mechanisms causing these behavioural differences, the results of this study suggest that the context in which breast-feeding occurs results in a more complex and energy-efficient pattern of behavioural organization than the context of bottle-feeding.

The rhythmic organization underlying long-term heart rate variability was examined in 36 newborn infants. Heart rate was registered every 30 s for 2 continuous hr while infants rested in a temperature-controlled isolette. Spectrum analysis of the time-series of the 240 observations detected rhythmically organized changes in the heart rates of 33 of the 36 infants. Thirty of the 33 infants showed a basic rhythm at 1.5 +/- .5 cycles per hr (one cycle every 30 to 60 min). While 9 infants showed this single cycle in behavioral activity, 24 infants showed additional cycles at a wide range of faster frequencies. Infants with signs of atypical fetal growth less often showed evidence of these multiple cycles, had reliably fewer cycles in heart rate, and had a marginally lower power in their basic cycle than infants with typical patterns of fetal growth. Infants with multiple cycles in the power spectra, independent of fetal growth group, were more often observed in Alert and Active Alert behavioral states and less often in Active Sleep than comparison infants. Results indicate that 1) heart rates of newborn infants show evidence of the 30- to 60-min cycle characteristic of the Basic Rest-Activity Cycle found in other behaviors, and 2) the complexity of behavioral rhythms may be affected by prenatal malnutrition. Viewed within a dynamical systems approach to development, results suggest that the complexity of rhythms in behavior may reflect the complexity of behavioral organization.

This study evaluated the effects of differential rearing conditions on a rat protocol for various human syndromes. Subjects were 26 male Sprague-Dawley rats, 24 days old at the start of the experiment, matched according to weight, and randomly assigned to an isolation- or group-reared (4 rats/cage) condition. At 60 days of age (273 ± 13 g), subjects were individually housed in cages allowing access to running wheels. Weight loss was produced through voluntary exercis and restricted food access. Animals in the isolationreared condition lost weight at a faster rate and had heavier relative thymus weights than those in the groupreared condition. Animals in both conditions ran equivalent distances and ate equivalent amounts of food. The data show that postweaning rearing conditions impact the interpretation of behavioral and physiological outcomes of animal models. The results implicate a shift from maternal regulation of pup physiological and behavioral systems to the broader social niche. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

4-month-old infants were specifically selected for patterns of affective and motoric reactivity that were hypothesized to be associated with later inhibited and uninhibited behavior. Infants were classified as high on motor activity and negative affect, high on motor activity and positive affect, or low on motor activity and affect. Brain electrical activity was assessed in these infants at 9 months of age, and behavior toward novelty was observed at 14 months of age. Infants who were high on motor activity and negative affect exhibited greater right frontal EEG activation at 9 months of age and inhibited behavior at 14 months of age. Infants classified as high motor/high positive at 4 months of age exhibited uninhibited behavior at 14 months of age. No relations were found between frontal asymmetry at 9 months of age and inhibited behavior at 14 months of age. However, greater activation in both the left and right frontal hemispheres was associated with higher inhibition scores at 14 months of age. These findings are discussed in terms of the role that affective and physiological reactivity may play in the development of social behavior during toddlerhood.

Rapid and effective methods for enumerating microorganisms in petroleum land treatment soils would allow timely adjustment of waste loading, soil water content, plowing frequency, and other environmental conditions to optimize degradation rates. Experiments were performed to compare enumeration procedures on soil samples from an operating system. Plate counts were made with four media: brain-heart infusion agar, brain-heart agar enriched with motor oil, brain-heart agar enriched with acetate, and brain-heart agar enriched with the waste being applied at the site. The tests also employed incubation periods of 48, 72, and 96 hours. Best results were obtained with acetate-enriched media incubated for 96 hours.

Microbial populations, microbial activity and environmental conditions in an operating petroleum waste land treatment facility were monitored for eighteen months. Seasonal influences are apparent for both bacterial and fungal populations. During the cooler, wetter seasons, microbe populations were smaller, less variable and inhibited by the adverse environmental conditions. The hotter, drier months supported large, active populations which experienced large swings in numbers and respiratory output. Microenvironments within aggregates were investigated. Analysis of various aggregate sizes revealed differences in population, activity and distribution of microorganisms. Optimization of waste biodegradation in treatment soils requires monitoring the factors affecting the microbial community at the system level and an awareness of the microenvironmental influences.