Level-ordering does not constrain children's ungrammatical compounds

English-speaking children typically avoid using regular plurals in novel grammatical deverbal compounds as in rat eater but allow irregular plurals as in mice eater (Gordon, 19985). To explain these data, it has been argued that level-ordering model constrains the production of morphologically complex words, including those with which children have had little to no experience. If level-ordering can be supported, children should avoid regular plurals in their ungrammatical deverbal compounds like a breaker-bottle. Seventy-two English-speaking children were included in the present study, 36 from Britain and 36 from Canada. The results showed that 50% of the children who produced ungrammatical compounds included regular plurals in the compounds they produced. Conversely, none of the children who produced grammatical compounds included regular plurals. These results indicate that level-ordering does not constrain children's production of ungrammatical compounds. These results raise the possibility that level-ordering may not be a valid constraint of children's compounding in general.     

How mediation (and other) approaches may improve ethics consultants' outcomes

Articles in this issue of JCE recommend a number of approaches to clinical ethics consultation. Given these various approaches, how should ethics consultants proceed?     

How (not) to think about mental action

I examine Galen Strawson's recent work on mental action in his paper, ‘Mental Ballistics or The Involuntariness of Spontaneity’. I argue that his account of mental action is too restrictive. I offer a means of testing tokens of mental activity types to determine if they are actional. The upshot is that a good deal more mental activity than Strawson admits is actional.     

Knowledge of word length does not constrain word identification

Use of word length for word identification was examined in three naming experiments and one sentence reading experiment in which a foveally presented cue either matched or mismatched the length of a subsequently presented target word. Properties of the target were also manipulated so that it was either a high- or low-frequency word or so that its exterior letters were either consistent with a large or small pool of candidate words. The experiments converged in showing that effects of prior word length cuing were either negligible or absent. The word frequency of the target influenced its recognition but not the lexical constraint of its exterior letters. Importantly, effects of target word properties did not interact with effects of prior target length cuing. Together, these results indicate that knowledge of a word's spatial properties does not constrain its lexical processing.     

Level-ordering does not constrain children’s ungrammatical compounds

English-speaking children typically avoid using regular plurals in novel grammatical deverbal compounds as in rat eater but allow irregular plurals as in mice eater (Gordon, 1985). To explain these data, it has been argued that Kiparsky’s (1983) level-ordering model constrains the production of morphologically complex words, including those with which children have had little to no experience. If level-ordering can be supported, children should avoid regular plurals in their ungrammatical deverbal compounds like a breaker-bottle. Seventy-two English-speaking children were included in the present study, 36 from Britain and 36 from Canada. The results showed that 50% of the children who produced ungrammatical compounds included regular plurals in the compounds they produced. Conversely, none of the children who produced grammatical compounds included regular plurals. These results indicate that level-ordering does not constrain children’s production of ungrammatical compounds. These results raise the possibility that level-ordering may not be a valid constraint of children’s compounding in general.     

How (not) to specify normal conditions for response-dependent concepts

The extensions of response-dependent concepts are a priori connected with the subjective responses that competent users of that concept have in normal conditions. There are two strategies for specifying normal conditions for response-dependent concepts: topic-specific and topic-neutral. On a topic-specific specification, a characterization of normal conditions would be given separately for each response-dependent concept (or a non-trivial subset of response-dependent concepts, such as our colour concepts), whereas a topic-neutral specification would be given in a uniform way for all response-dependent concepts. In this paper I argue, using a thought experiment, that only topic-neutral specifications will deliver the a priori knowledge constitutive of response-dependence.     

Word order does not constrain phonological activation in single word production

It has recently been claimed that the canonical word order of a given language constrains phonological activation processes even in single word production (Janssen, Alario, & Caramazza, 2008). This hypothesis predicts for languages with canonical adjective–noun word order that naming an object (i.e., noun production) is facilitated if the task-irrelevant colour of the object (i.e., adjective) is phonologically similar to the object name (e.g., blue–boat as compared to red–boat). By contrast, there should be no corresponding effect in naming the colour of the object (i.e., adjective production). In an experiment with native speakers of German, however, we observed exactly the opposite pattern. Phonological congruency facilitated colour naming but had no effect on object naming. Together with extant data from other languages our results suggest that object colour naming is affected by the phonology of the object name but not vice versa, regardless of the canonical word order in the given language.     

Age effects may be global, not local: comment on Fisk and Rogers (1991)

A series of analyses of variance on target search times allowed Fisk and Rogers (1991) to reject the null hypothesis that age had a uniform, additive effect across search conditions. It does not, however, follow that age affected some conditions in an exceptional way, as Fisk and Rogers concluded. Age may have had a uniform but nonadditive effect across conditions. In this article, it is shown that age had a uniform linear, or perhaps slightly curvilinear, effect on search times. This "null hypothesis" adequately accounted for the age effects in all 27 search conditions. Indeed, it accounted for the age effects in 107 conditions abstracted from other visual search studied and for the age effects in 154 conditions abstracted from a miscellaneous collection of nonsearch processing-time studies. The only variation in age outcomes across studies was consistent with sampling error, given the known variance in response times. It is concluded that age is experienced as a generalized slowing of the central nervous system uniformly affecting all information processes.     

How expected evaluation influences creativity: Regulatory focus as moderator

Two studies investigated the effect of expected evaluation and regulatory focus on individuals’ creative performance. In both studies, first, the type of evaluation (informational versus controlling) was manipulated, and then regulatory focus was measured as an individual difference (in Study 1) or induced as a state using a pencil-and-paper maze task (in Study 2). Results provided evidence that participants who expect an informational evaluation were more likely to adopt an eager strategy; whereas participants who expected a controlling evaluation were more likely to adopt a vigilant strategy. Furthermore, participants in promotion-informational and prevention-controlling groups (regulatory fit conditions) performed more creatively than those in promotion-controlling and prevention-informational groups (regulatory non-fit conditions). In sum, the present findings contribute to a better understanding of how external evaluations and basic motivational orientations influence creative performance.     

Psychoticism and creativity

Eysenck and Eysenck (1976) cited a number of studies showing that creativity and originality are associated with high scores on their Psychoticism factor, P. In this study, we examined the generality of this claim by using a different set of creativity measures, scales from the Comprehensive Ability Battery (Hakstian & Cattell, 1976) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975), with a sample of 173 students. No appreciable overlap was found between the creativity scales and P. A number of possible explanations for this result are discussed, and we concluded that this finding may cast doubt on the generality of the link between creativity and P.     

Personality and creativity

Previous research has provided conflicting accounts of the effects of personality on creative behaviour. This study examines the issue by means of factor analysis and multivariate analysis of variance. Different measures of creative behaviour and cognitive abilities are correlated with personal characteristics such as psychoticism, extraversion and other measures of personality. The results are consistent with the idea that different forms of creative behaviour are related to distinct characteristics of personality.     

How a supportive partner may increase relationship satisfaction

The way in which satisfaction with a romantic relationship may be affected by how supportive a partner is and how constructively they deal with conflict in that relationship was examined in young adults. Both greater support and less conflict were found to be independently associated with relationship satisfaction, implying that both are necessary for a satisfactory relationship. While support did not mitigate the possible effects of conflict on satisfaction, it may lead to more constructive conflict which in turn may enhance satisfaction. Support seen as being available as well as support that was received were independently associated with relationship satisfaction. Of the different forms of available support measured, only support reflecting being cared for was independently associated with relationship satisfaction. These results suggest that encouraging couples to be emotionally supportive to each other may improve the effectiveness of relationship counselling as well as relationship enhancement and problem prevention programmes.     

易之"生"意与理学的生生之学

"生生之谓易"既是哲学家对宇宙相状的揭示,也是"易"本身的性质。从"天地之大德日生"到"易简"之善和"复其见天地之心",贯穿的都是同一个"生"意。理学继承前人又广加扩展,天地生物之心既是静与动的综合集成,又是天地生物与仁德流行的统一。从静体到动用,从"动之端"到"动之机",现象存在虽有生死显微,"生"之理却通贯不息。