The moment‐to‐moment pitch dynamics of child‐directed speech shape toddlers’ attention and learning

Young children have an overall preference for child‐directed speech (CDS) over adult‐directed speech (ADS), and its structural features are thought to facilitate language learning. Many studies have supported these findings, but less is known about processing of CDS at short, sub‐second timescales. How do the moment‐to‐moment dynamics of CDS influence young children's attention and learning? In Study 1, we used hierarchical clustering to characterize patterns of pitch variability in a natural CDS corpus, which uncovered four main word‐level contour shapes: ‘fall’, ‘rise’, ‘hill’, and ‘valley’. In Study 2, we adapted a measure from adult attention research—pupil size synchrony—to quantify real‐time attention to speech across participants, and found that toddlers showed higher synchrony to the dynamics of CDS than to ADS. Importantly, there were consistent differences in toddlers’ attention when listening to the four word‐level contour types. In Study 3, we found that pupil size synchrony during exposure to novel words predicted toddlers’ learning at test. This suggests that the dynamics of pitch in CDS not only shape toddlers’ attention but guide their learning of new words. By revealing a physiological response to the real‐time dynamics of CDS, this investigation yields a new sub‐second framework for understanding young children's engagement with one of the most important signals in their environment.     

The Influence of Child-Directed Speech on Word Learning and Comprehension

This paper describes an investigation into the function of child-directed speech (CDS) across development. In the first experiment, 10–21-month-olds were presented with familiar words in CDS and trained on novel words in CDS or adult-directed speech (ADS). All children preferred the matching display for familiar words. However, only older toddlers in the CDS condition preferred the matching display for novel words. In Experiment 2, children 3–6 years of age were presented with a sentence comprehension task in CDS or ADS. Older children performed better overall than younger children with 5- and 6-year-olds performing above chance regardless of speech condition, while 3- and 4-year-olds only performed above chance when the sentences were presented in CDS. These findings provide support for the theory that CDS is most effective at the beginning of acquisition for particular constructions (e.g. vocabulary acquisition, syntactic comprehension) rather than at a particular age or for a particular task.     

Lexically restricted utterances in Russian, german, and english child-directed speech

This study investigates the child-directed speech (CDS) of four Russian-, six German, and six English-speaking mothers to their 2-year-old children. Typologically Russian has considerably less restricted word order than either German or English, with German showing more word-order variants than English. This could lead to the prediction that the lexical restrictiveness previously found in the initial strings of English CDS by Cameron-Faulkner, Lieven, and Tomasello (2003 ) would not be found in Russian or German CDS. However, despite differences between the three corpora that clearly derive from typological differences between the languages, the most significant finding of this study is a high degree of lexical restrictiveness at the beginnings of CDS utterances in all three languages.     

Palliative sedation until death: an approach from Kant’s ethics of virtue

This paper is concerned with the moral justification for palliative sedation until death. Palliative sedation involves the intentional lowering of consciousness for the relief of untreatable symptoms. The paper focuses on the moral problems surrounding the intentional lowering of consciousness until death itself, rather than possible adjacent life-shortening effects. Starting from a Kantian perspective on virtue, it is shown that continuous deep sedation until death (CDS) does not conflict with the perfect duty of moral self-preservation because CDS does not destroy capacities for agency. In addition, it is argued that CDS can frustrate the imperfect duty of self-cultivation by reducing consciousness permanently. Nevertheless, there are cases where CDS is morally acceptable, namely, cases where the agent has already permanently lost the possibility for free action in advance of sedation—for example, due to excruciating and ongoing pain. Because the latter can be difficult to diagnose properly, safeguards may be needed in order to prevent the application of CDS for the wrong reasons.

Content words in Hebrew child-directed speech

The goal of the study was to examine whether the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon, which exists in the lexicon of Hebrew-speaking children, also exists in Hebrew child-directed speech (CDS) as well as in Hebrew adult-directed speech (ADS). In addition, we aimed to describe the use of the different classes of content words in the speech of Hebrew-speaking parents to their children at different ages compared to the speech of parents to adults (ADS). Thirty infants (age range 8:5–33 months) were divided into three stages according to age: pre-lexical, single-word, and early grammar. The ADS corpus included 18 Hebrew-speaking parents of children at the same three stages of language development as in the CDS corpus. The CDS corpus was collected from parent–child dyads during naturalistic activities at home: mealtime, bathing, and play. The ADS corpus was collected from parent–experimenter interactions including the parent watching a video and then being interviewed by the experimenter. 200 utterances of each sample were transcribed, coded for types and tokens and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results show that in CDS, when speaking to infants of all ages, parents’ use of types and tokens of verbs and nouns was similar and significantly higher than their use of adjectives or adverbs. In ADS, however, verbs were the main lexical category used by Hebrew-speaking parents in both types and tokens. It seems that both the properties of the input language (e.g. the pro-drop parameter) and the interactional styles of the caregivers are important factors that may influence the high presence of verbs in Hebrew-speaking parents’ ADS and CDS. The negative correlation between the widespread use of verbs in the speech of parents to their infants and the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon in the Hebrew-child lexicon will be discussed in detail.     

Computer dialogue system (CDS): A system for capturing computer-mediated dialogue

In the process of studying human tutoring sessions as a basis for building an intelligent tutoring system, we developed a computer dialogue system (CDS) that allows two PC users to communicate with each other over a telephone line by typing at a computer keyboard. CDS records the content of dialogue on a disk in a specified, well-formatted way. It also makes available a way to mimic some of the characteristics of face-to-face dialogue such as repair. It was developed in the Smartcom III (Hayes Communication package) environment. Thus, it is fast, portable, and easy to use. In addition, to help us study the recorded dialogues, we have also written a numbering program to label each turn and each sentence within each turn. Although CDS was originally designed for the study of tutorial dialogues between students and teachers, it can be used to conduct and record dialogues of any kind.     

Development and validation of a Coping with Discrimination Scale: factor structure, reliability, and validity

Four studies were conducted to develop and validate the Coping With Discrimination Scale (CDS). In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis (N = 328) identified 5 factors: Education/Advocacy, Internalization, Drug and Alcohol Use, Resistance, and Detachment, with internal consistency reliability estimates ranging from .72 to .90. In Study 2, a confirmatory factor analysis (N = 328) provided cross-validation of the 5-factor model as well as evidence for validity of the scale. The validity evidence was similar across racial groups and for males and females. In Study 3, the estimated 2-week test-retest reliabilities (N = 53) were between .48 and .85 for the 5 factors. Education/Advocacy, Internalization, Drug and Alcohol Use, and Detachment were positively associated with active coping, self-blame, substance use, and behavioral disengagement, respectively, providing further support for validity of the CDS. Finally, incremental validity evidence was obtained in Study 4 (N = 220), where it was shown that the CDS explained variance in outcome variables (i.e., depression, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and ethnic identity) that could not be explained by general coping strategies.     

Predicting children's media use in the USA: Differences in cross‐sectional and longitudinal analysis

The purpose of this paper is to examine the predictors of children's media use in the USA, comparing cross‐sectional and longitudinal analyses. Data come from Waves 1 and 2 of the Child Development Supplement (CDS‐I; CDS‐II), a nationally representative sample of American children aged 0–12 in 1997 and 5–18 in 2002. Twenty‐four hour time use diaries are used to assess children's time spent with media (television, video games, computers, and reading). Predictors examined include socio‐demographics, neighbourhood quality, family factors, and other media use. Ordinary least square (OLS) multiple regressions were performed by three age groups (preschoolers, early school age, and preadolescence). The findings suggest that neighbourhood quality, parental limits and family conflict are significant predictors of children's media use within time or over time, but the significance depends on the type of media and child's developmental stage. In addition, children's television viewing and reading habits are formed early in life and reinforced over time. This study is among the first to provide empirical evidence for the effect of early contextual factors on the life course of children's media use from a developmental perspective.     

The course of depression 10-weeks post-acute coronary syndrome: assessment using the cardiac depression visual analogue scale

This study investigated depressed mood post-acute coronary syndrome in an Australian sample using the Cardiac Depression Visual Analogue Scale (CD-VAS), which was developed to assess the depression-related symptoms of reduced pleasure, memory, activity, future pessimism, increased irritation and sleep problems. The Beck Depression Inventory-II, the Cardiac Depression Scale (CDS) and a demographic medical questionnaire were administered at 2 weeks post-ACS to an initial sample of 13 female and 45 male participants whose mean age was 59.16 (SD=11.13) years (range 38-79). Depressed and non-depressed participants, determined by the CDS, then kept a CD-VAS diary between 2 and 12 weeks. 32 participants kept the diary for the entire 10 weeks. Total CD-VAS scores remained elevated in the depressed group for the entire period. The groups differed on the Pleasure, Memory and Future items for a total of 6, 6 and 5 weeks, respectively, and differed on the Activity item only at 1, 3 and 5 weeks. No group differences were seen in the Irritation or Sleep items. Within the depressed group, the only CD-VAS items that differed from each other across time were Irritation and Activity. Further, the Sleep, Irritation and Activity items had a significant time effect. These results indicate that although overall depression, as measured by the CD-VAS, remained elevated in the depressed group, there were key differences in recovery rates of specific depression-related symptoms. These differences could be useful indicators in the treatment of depression post-ACS.     

Causal Attributions, Depression, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Victims of Crime

The major purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between causal attributions and symptomatology in victims of crime. Fifty-one subjects who had not been crime victims and 120 subjects who had been crime victims participated in the study and were assessed for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Subjects also completed two attributional questionnaires. The potential differences in symptomatology among victims of a single crime, multiple crimes, and nonvictims were investigated. Results did not indicate differences in depression and PTSD based on single vs. multiple victimization, although differences between victims and nonvictims were found. Results using the Causal Dimension Scale (CDS; Peterson et al., 1982) indicated significant differences in the causal attributions of victims and nonvictims. On the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ; Russell, 1982), group comparisons among nonvictims, PTSD victims, depression victims, both depression and PTSD victims, and victims with low symptoms did not yield significant results. However, regression analyses indicated that several subscales of both the CDS and ASQ were found to be moderate predictors of symptomatology. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Disorders associated with burnout and causal attributions of stress among health care professionals in psychiatry

This study, carried out among health care professionals in psychiatry, evaluates burnout (Maslash Burnout Inventory) in relation to other associated disorders: lower levels of self-esteem in different areas (Self-Esteem Inventory); the frequency of stress felt (Nursing Stress Scale); a lesser feeling of general control (Lumpkin); a more negative perception of the general state of health (Diagnostic Interview Schedule); job dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction with numerous aspects of life (Subjective Quality of Life Profile). Moreover, among these professionals, the fact of describing the causes of one's professional burnout as having a “global” impact on one's behavior (using the CDS II), reveals both one's emotional exhaustion and associated disorders (but not the feeling of internal control). This attributional variable appears as a significant mediator between burnout and health (DIS). These results are discussed with the aim of developing the early detection and treatment of burnout and the associated disorders among health care professionals.     

NEW DIMENSIONS IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE INTEREST CHECK LIST (ICL)

This article is an expansion on the research reported by the author in the June 1971 issue of this journal. In that article it was shown that the ICL was biased in certain ways. In this article the author explains how he uses the ICL in such a way as to obviate its operational weaknesses.     

The Million Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI): A Review

This article reviews research conducted to date on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI), a self-report test of psychopathology. The composition of the test and its theoretical basis are described. Data regarding its internal psychometric structure are reviewed. Finally, the article summarizes the research on the validity of the MCMI.     

The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI): a review

This article reviews research conducted to date on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI), a self-report test of psychopathology. The composition of the test and its theoretical basis are described. Data regarding its internal psychometric structure are reviewed. Finally, the article summarizes the research on the validity of the MCMI.     

The Ethical Implications of Considering Neurolaw as a New Power

Caution is one of the orienting principles of neuroscience’s advance in different social spheres. This article shows the importance of maintaining caution in the area of neurolaw because of its risk of becoming a new power that is free from ethical discussion. The article’s objective is to note the principal ethical implications and limitations of neurolaw in light of six cases in which neuroscientific evidence was used in distinct ways. This study seeks to examine the precautions that should be taken in regard to the advance of neurolaw so as not to lose sight of its emancipatory interest.     

Strengths and weaknesses of McNamara's evolutionary psychological model of dreaming

This article includes a brief overview of McNamara's (2004) evolutionary model of dreaming. The strengths and weaknesses of this model are then evaluated in terms of its consonance with measurable neurological and biological properties of dreaming, its fit within the tenets of evolutionary theories of dreams, and its alignment with evolutionary concepts of cooperation and spirituality. McNamara's model focuses primarily on dreaming that occurs during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep; therefore this article also focuses on REM dreaming.     

墨家的领导者心理素质思想

领导者心理素质是管理心理学研究的重要内容,先秦墨家的代表作《墨子》一书包含了丰富了领导者心理素质思想。该文拟从领导者的知识结构、道德品质、语言能力、工作态度、为人原则等方面对墨家的领导者心理素质思想作一整理和阐述,并分析其现代意义。     

Rising in Witness: The Metropolitan Community Church in the Religious Press

This detailed article surveys the literature generated by and about the Metropolitan Community Church from its foundation in 1968 to contemporary times in the mainstream religious press and tracks its use as a research venue.     

The Youth Ministry Mission Trip as Global Tourism: Are we OK with this?

Abstract : This article explores the rise of the short‐term mission trip in youth ministry. It argues that this escalation has much to do with transformations of globalization. This reality requires that the mission trip confront the conundrum of dealing with dichotomies between its service and its tourist activities. By exploring the work of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman we see why we face such dichotomies. The article concludes by providing some theological thoughts connected to Karl Barth's theology of the word that might help us move past these tensions between global service and global tourism.