The Genetic Perspective in Psycholinguistics or Where Do Spoken Words Come From?

The core issue in the 19-century sources of psycholinguistics was the question, “Where does language come from?” This genetic perspective unified the study of the ontogenesis, the phylogenesis, the microgenesis, and to some extent the neurogenesis of language. This paper makes the point that this original perspective is still a valid and attractive one. It is exemplified by a discussion of the genesis of spoken words.     

Back to School in a New Country? The Educational Participation of Adult Immigrants in a Life-Course Perspective

While the education of the children of immigrants is a much-researched theme, we know very little about the participation of adult immigrants in education. And yet, lifelong learning is a common demand in highly industrialized societies. This article provides a first empirical analysis of adult immigrants’ educational participation in Germany. It uses the novel German National Educational Panel Study with unique retrospective life-course data. By adopting a life-course perspective, both transnational continuities in the life-course as well as the ruptures caused by migration are captured. The analysis investigates in what ways participation in education is embedded in immigrants’ transnational life-course. It can be shown that immigrants’ participation in formal and nonformal full-time education is common. Hypotheses predict a central influence of (1) pre-immigration activities and (2) of legal immigration gateways. Sequence and cluster analysis detect two education-related incorporation patterns: one is marked by a dominance of educational activities and the other by phases in education alternate with employment and unemployment. The results of multivariate models underline the predictive power of pre-immigration activity, i.e., transnational continuity in immigrants’ life courses. But we can also observe substantial disruption like the transnational transition from employment to education which can be the enforced response to nonrecognition or devaluation of foreign educational credentials. Institutional opportunities and dispositions linked to legal immigration gateways are even more powerful predictors of educational participation. Altogether, the article illustrates how the interaction of structural opportunities and individual agency plays out in the formation of different incorporation trajectories of adult immigrants.     

Do People Who Believe in God Report More Meaning in Their Lives? The Existential Effects of Belief

I conduct the first large‐N study explicitly exploring the association between belief in God and sense of purpose in life. This relationship, while often discussed informally, has received little empirical attention. Here, I use the General Social Survey to investigate how form of and confidence in belief in God is related to sense of purpose in life, as measured by a Likert item level of agreement with the statement “In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose.” Using logistic regression analysis, I find that those who indicate that they are confident in God's existence report a higher sense of purpose compared to nonbelievers, believers in a higher power, and those who believe but occasionally doubt.     

The development of co-representation effects in a joint task: Do children represent a co-actor?

When two adults jointly perform a task, they often show interference effects whereby the other’s task interferes with their own performance (Sebanz, Knoblich, & Prinz, 2003). The current study investigated whether these co-representation effects can be observed in young children. This phenomenon can be used as a criterion for adult-like joint action in children, which has been under debate in existing literature due to the difficulty in identifying what mechanisms underlie the behaviours observed (Brownell, 2011). In Experiment 1, two children performed an adapted Bear Dragon task (Kochanska, Murray, Jacques, Koenig, & Vandegeest, 1996), where children were required to point to a picture when instructed to do so by one puppet and to inhibit pointing when instructed to by the other. In the Same Task condition, both children in a pair were asked to respond to the same puppet, whereas in the Different Task condition, they were asked to respond to different puppets. Children made more errors in the Different Task condition than the Same Task, suggesting that they were experiencing interference from their partner’s task rule. In Experiment 2 children in Different and Same task conditions began with the same task as in Experiment 1 and then switched which puppet to respond to. Switch costs were lower in the Different task condition, consistent with children having already represented the alternative task rule on behalf of their partner during the pre-switch phase. Experiment 3 replicated the effect of Task in a novel computer-based paradigm with children between 4 and 5 years, but not younger. These data provide the first direct evidence that children as young as 4 years co-represent a partner's task during a joint activity, and that younger children may not be capable of co-representation.     

When Do Employees Speak up for Their Customers? A Model of Voice in a Customer Service Context

We develop a conceptual model of customer‐focused voice and test it in a hospital setting. Drawing from theory and research on voice, we find that customer orientation and job autonomy are positively associated with customer‐focused voice. In addition, consistent with social information processing theory, these relationships are moderated by service climate, such that a high service climate compensates for the less desirable aspects of employees or their jobs. Finally, we provide evidence for a critical but untested assumption of the voice literature by linking hospital‐level customer‐focused voice to hospital‐level service performance. Results based on data from four unique data sources, provided at varying points in time, and at different levels of analysis demonstrate support for our conceptual model.     

Do Young Women Expect Gender Equality in Their Future Lives? An Answer From a Possible Selves Experiment

This study examined young women??s expectations about gender equality in their future careers and marriages. The study implemented a possible selves method in which 114 undergraduate women from a Midwestern university in the United States were randomly assigned to envision themselves as married mothers employed either full-time, part-time, or not at all and possessing either an advanced degree or a bachelor??s degree. Participants indicated their expectations for gender equality by estimating their own and their future husbands?? expected salaries and hours per week of housework and employment. They also evaluated their possible selves and estimated their emotional well-being and likely attainment of several important life goals. Greater employment produced greater expected gender equality, although in all conditions participants expected to have lesser salary and more domestic work than their husbands. With employment, compared with no employment, and with an advanced degree, compared with a bachelor??s degree, participants rated their possible selves more positively and estimated that they would have greater emotional well-being and attainment of life goals related to respect and finances. However, employment negatively affected participants?? anticipated relationships with their children. Thus, our participants?? reactions displayed a tradeoff between satisfying their employment goals and their goals for their relationship with their children.     

Happiness in a Flux? The Instability Problem

In the recent discussion of happiness it has become popular to claim that being happy means having a certain positive attitude towards your life. This attitude involves both a judgement that your life measures up to your standards and a feeling of satisfaction with your life. In this paper, I am going to discuss a serious problem inherent in this account that has important ramifications for the normative question of how we ought to pursue happiness. If happiness is in part determined by your standards, how shall we determine whether you are happier in one life than in another when your standards change across these lives? Perhaps you will judge a life as a parent as better than a childless life, if you were to become a parent, but judge a childless life as better than a parenting life, if you were to remain childless. Which standard should determine the comparative happiness of the two lives? In this paper, I shall argue that some innocent-looking answers to this question will generate inconsistencies. To find an acceptable resolution, we need to make a difficult choice between what on the face of it look like two equally valid principles of happiness.     

Do birds of a feather flock together in China?

Evidence of couple similarity was examined in 2 nationally representative samples (Ns = 536 and 537 couples) from mainland China. Variable‐centered and couple‐centered tests provided convergent results suggesting that husbands and wives were considerably similar on characteristics of 3 broad categories: demographic variables, values, and personality. Additional tests suggest that value and personality similarities were not likely to be due to social homogamy, convergence, response biases, or culture‐unique characteristics. Whereas the couple similarity on demographics and values largely mirrors what has been observed in Western research, Chinese couples' consistent and strong similarity on personality domains presents a striking contrast to Western couples who share little systematic similarity on personality.     

Why Do Some Owners Allow Their Dogs to Foul the Pavement? The Social Psychology of a Minor Rule Infraction1

This study combines observational, attitudinal, and self‐report measures, and compares a group of irresponsible dog owners who allow their dogs to foul with a control group of responsible owners who clean up after their dogs. The owners are compared on a variety of attitudinal and personal orientation measures. We observed 101 instances of dog fouling in both park and pavement, and 87 respondents subsequently returned questionnaires. The majority (59%) of people observed cleaned up after their dogs. The irresponsible owners were significantly more tolerant of fouling (dog feces were seen as natural waste and biodegradable) and were more likely to agree that the laws were illegitimate and restrictive.     

Do Animals Feel Pain in a Morally Relevant Sense?

Philosophia - The thesis that animals feel a morally relevant kind of pain is an incredibly popular one, but explaining the evidence for this belief is surprisingly challenging. Michael Murray has...     

Ruminations and Flow: Why Do People with a More Harmonious Passion Experience Higher Well-Being?

Research shows that harmonious and obsessive passion are positively and negatively linked to well-being respectively (e.g., Vallerand et al. in J Personal 75:505?C534, 2007; Psychol Sport Exerc 9:373?C392, 2008). The present study investigated the psychological mechanisms underlying the different impact of the two types of passion on well-being. A theoretical model involving passion, ruminations, flow experiences, and well-being was tested. Results showed that the more people have a harmonious passion, the more they tend to experience flow in their favorite activity, which in turn predicts higher well-being. Obsessive passion did not seem to be systematically linked to flow in the favorite activity. In contrast, the more people have an obsessive passion, the more they tend to ruminate about their passionate activity while engaging in another activity, which did not seem to be systematically the case for people with a harmonious passion. These ruminations are negatively related to flow experiences in the other activity, which are positively associated with well-being. Flow and ruminations thus seem to contribute to the understanding of the link between passion and well-being.     

Do incompatible alternatives in a testimony affect witness credibility?

The qualitative regulation of grain size allows witnesses to increase the accuracy of their reports by adding alternatives (e.g., “the robber concealed his face with a mask, with a stocking, or with a balaclava”). However, such answers may include incompatible alternatives which may make police officers and juries distrust witnesses. In four preregistered experiments, we tested the effect of information with incompatible alternatives on witness credibility. In Experiments 1a, 1b, and 1c, we presented two short testimonies, one with incompatible alternatives and another without and credibility was lower with incompatible alternatives. In Experiment 2, we told participants that witnesses could report several alternatives and the effect was reduced. We explain the effect of incompatible alternatives on credibility from participants' inferences that a witness producing an answer with incompatible alternatives is not confident in their memory and a failure to fully appreciate the advantages of adding alternatives.     

Do Patients With Psychosis Experience Loss and Grief As a Result of Their Illness?

BACKGROUND: Depression and suicidality are frequently reported in patients with psychosis and schizophrenia, but the grief process that may be associated with this illness has not been systematically studied. In this study, we examined whether patients diagnosed with psychosis identify, grieve, and mourn losses engendered by the illness. METHOD: 24 patients diagnosed with psychosis in the past five years were surveyed to indicate whether their illness led to losses, and to describe their responses to the losses. Psychosis-related perceived losses were surveyed using three subscales of a loss and grief questionnaire (loss of self, self-care, and roles). Their relationship with beliefs about the illness, symptomatology, coping style, and self-efficacy and insight was studied. RESULTS: 23 (96%) patients named specific losses, and 16 patients (67%) reported feelings associated with grief and mourning. More than half reported loss of self-esteem at the onset of illness and only half saw themselves as having improved in the past month. Patients reported more loss within the past month than at the onset of illness. In the past month, patients with an intact sense of self experienced greater self-efficacy (r = .568, p < .004) while those with loss of self reported feelings of shame (r = ?.582, p < .003). Only patients with insight associated the onset of illness with loss. In the past month, most patients saw themselves as experiencing loss. DISCUSSION: The study results suggest that at some distance from diagnosis, patients still experience themselves as having much loss due to their illness. These unresolved feelings may indicate complicated mourning. Insight appears to be associated with the ability to look back at the onset of the illness and recognize that it engendered losses. Further study of the process of and barriers to grief and mourning is recommended. In clinical practice, the assessment of grief as a part of post-psychotic recovery could lead to providing more appropriate treatment and lead to a positive outcome.     

Through a Glass Darkly What Do People Learn in Videoconferences?

Interactive video communication, both in conference rooms and on desktop computers, is becoming an increasingly attractive technology, in large measure for economic reasons. In a longitudinal field study, the authors demonstrate, as have others, positive first-order efficiency effects of this technology. That is, people can achieve the same levels of performance in video interaction as they do in face-to-face interaction. However, the authors also demonstrate some second-order differences between face-to-face and video interaction. They show that the impressions people form of remote others are different from and less positive than the impressions they form of face-to-face others, starting from an equal baseline. The authors also show that people make use of different kinds of information informing their impressions. They frame their results within the context of growing use of interactive video to suggest implications for research and organizational practice.     

Crime in Atlantic City: Do casinos make a difference?

In November, 1976 a constitutional referendum in the state of New Jersey legalized casino gaming. This paper examines the impact of this action on crime in Atlantic City, the only location in the state where gambling is permitted. More specifically, the analysis looks at the incidence of FBI index crimes in that jurisdiction in two basic ways. First, the work examines the raw numbers and rate of crime in the city, both before and after the introduction of casino gambling. Although the analysis establishes that the raw figures show that there has been a significant increase in index crimes, it is argued that using these statistics as a measure of crime in Atlantic City is misleading because they fail to take into account the numerous visitors to the city when calculating the population‐at‐risk and because they do not differentiate between crime that occurs in the community and that which occurs in the casinos. The second phase of the analysis addresses these issues through the use of adjusted populations and data that identify casino‐based versus non‐casino crimes. This analysis leads us to conclude that the legalization of gambling has not resulted in a significant increase in index crimes in Atlantic City.