The relation of childhood personality types, or configurations of personality traits, to adolescent development was examined. Three personality types were identified in an inverse factor analysis of California Child Q-Sort data on 128 Icelandic 7-year-olds: resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled. Growth curve analyses demonstrated that in comparison to children of the other 2 types, children of the resilient personality type had higher levels of academic achievement and lower levels of concentration problems throughout adolescence; resilient children also developed sophisticated friendship reasoning and an internal locus of control more quickly. Children of the overcontrolled type were found to be more prone to social withdrawal and low levels of self-esteem during adolescence than children of the other 2 types. In contrast to the other 2 types, children classified as undercontrolled showed an increase in aggressive behavior in adolescence. Implications of the findings for research on personality development are discussed.

A longitudinal study examined children's (N = 108) attachment representations in relation to behavior and academic competency at school during middle childhood and adolescence. Attachment representations were assessed from children's responses to a separation story at age 7 years. At ages 9, 12, and 15, teachers rated children on four dimensions of school behavior: attention-participation, extroversion, disruptive behavior, and insecurity about self. Children's grade point average (GPA) in school was also examined. Children's attachment representations (secure vs. insecure) did not predict either disruptive behavior or extroversion, but they were significantly linked to attentionparticipation, insecurity about self, and GPA, with secure representations being associated with more favorable outcomes. The study controlled for social class, gender, 1Q, perspective-taking ability, and prior competency.According to Bowlby (1987), internal representations that children build up of (heir caregivers during the first years of life are a principal means by which early experiences influence later development and outcome. A child who has experienced supportive parents is likely to develop an internal representation of others as helpful and responsive, as well as a model of the self as worthy of respect and care. Children with secure representations are thus more prone to approach new experiences with confidence and trust. Children who have had experiences of rejection or neglect, in contrast, are likely to develop insecure attachment representations. These children are more vulnerable in approaching new people and situations, because they lack confidence that they will be responded to in a sensitive manner.Longitudinal studies that have examined mother-child attachment quality in the Strange Situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) support the hypothesis that children's attachment patterns are related to later personal and interpersonal competencies. For instance, infants with a secure attachment to their mothers are more curious and persistent in toddlerhood (Arend, Gove, & Sroufe, 1979), are more empathic with peers, and show better self-esteem (Kestenbaum, Earber, & Sroufe, 1989) than children with insecure attachment. At age 6, they also engage in more favorable interactions with peers at school (Colin, 1990). Less is known about the relation between attachment qualityWe contributed equally to the article. Listing of authorship was determined by coin toss. We thank Lisa Brinnand, Nancy Kaplan, and Judith Solomon, as well as Wolfgang Edelstein and his research team at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education for continuing support and advice.

Neural representations of behaviorally relevant stimulus features displaying invariance with respect to different contexts are essential for perception. However, the mechanisms mediating their emergence and subsequent refinement remain poorly understood in general. Here, we demonstrate that correlated neural activity allows for the emergence of an invariant representation of natural communication stimuli that is further refined across successive stages of processing in the weakly electric fish Apteronotus leptorhynchus. Importantly, different patterns of input resulting from the same natural communication stimulus occurring in different contexts all gave rise to similar behavioral responses. Our results thus reveal how a generic neural circuit performs an elegant computation that mediates the emergence and refinement of an invariant neural representation of natural stimuli that most likely constitutes a neural correlate of perception.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12993.001

SummaryGoal-directed behavior in most cases is composed of a sequential order of elementary motor patterns shaped by sensorimotor contingencies. The sensory information acquired thus is structured in both space and time. Here we review the role of motion during the generation of sensory flow focusing on how animals actively shape information by behavioral strategies. We use the well-studied examples of vision in insects and echolocation in bats to describe commonalities of sensory-related behavioral strategies across sensory systems, and evaluate what is currently known about comparable active sensing strategies in electroreception of electric fish. In this sensory system the sensors are dispersed across the animalʼs body and the carrier source emitting energy used for sensing, the electric organ, is moved while the animal moves. Thus ego-motions strongly influence sensory dynamics. We present, for the first time, data of electric flow during natural probing behavior in Gnathonemus petersii (Mormyridae), which provide evidence for this influence. These data reveal a complex interdependency between the physical input to the receptors and the animalʼs movements, posture and objects in its environment. Although research on spatiotemporal dynamics in electrolocation is still in its infancy, the emerging field of dynamical sensory systems analysis in electric fish is a promising approach to the study of the link between movement and acquisition of sensory information.

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