Training non-native speech contrasts in adults: Acquisition of the English /ð/-/θ/ contrast by francophones

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Speech perception abilities are modified by linguistic experience to maximize sensitivity to acoustic contrasts that are important for one’s...     

Developmental shift in the discrimination of vowel contrasts in bilingual infants: is the distributional account all there is to it?

A shift from language‐general to language‐specific sound discrimination abilities has been largely attested in different populations of infants during the second half of the first year of life; however, data are still scarce regarding bilingual populations. Previous research with 4‐, 8‐ and 12‐month‐old Catalan‐Spanish bilingual infants had offered evidence of a U‐shaped pattern in their ability to discriminate a language‐specific vowel contrast. This research explores monolingual and bilingual 4‐ and 8‐month‐olds’ capacities to discriminate two common vowel contrasts: /o–u/ and /e–u/. All groups succeeded except 8‐month‐old bilinguals tested on the phonetically close /o–u/ contrast. Discrimination was not facilitated when talker and token variability were reduced. A U‐shaped pattern was again found when data from an additional group of 12‐month‐olds were included. These results confirm bilinguals’ specific developmental pattern of perceptual reorganization for acoustically close vowels and challenge an interpretation merely based on a distributional account.     

What information is necessary for speech categorization? Harnessing variability in the speech signal by integrating cues computed relative to expectations

Most theories of categorization emphasize how continuous perceptual information is mapped to categories. However, equally important are the informational assumptions of a model, the type of information subserving this mapping. This is crucial in speech perception where the signal is variable and context dependent. This study assessed the informational assumptions of several models of speech categorization, in particular, the number of cues that are the basis of categorization and whether these cues represent the input veridically or have undergone compensation. We collected a corpus of 2,880 fricative productions (Jongman, Wayland, & Wong, 2000) spanning many talker and vowel contexts and measured 24 cues for each. A subset was also presented to listeners in an 8AFC phoneme categorization task. We then trained a common classification model based on logistic regression to categorize the fricative from the cue values and manipulated the information in the training set to contrast (a) models based on a small number of invariant cues, (b) models using all cues without compensation, and (c) models in which cues underwent compensation for contextual factors. Compensation was modeled by computing cues relative to expectations (C-CuRE), a new approach to compensation that preserves fine-grained detail in the signal. Only the compensation model achieved a similar accuracy to listeners and showed the same effects of context. Thus, even simple categorization metrics can overcome the variability in speech when sufficient information is available and compensation schemes like C-CuRE are employed.     

“They never listen”: towards a grounded theory of the role played by trusted adults in the spiritual lives of children

This qualitative study addresses the lack of research into the role of trusted adults in the spiritual lives of children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine children from a British primary school and the data analysed using a grounded theory approach. Six categories were identified outlining the reciprocal relationship of unavailability and withholding between children and their trusted adults and how children made sense of spirituality in the absence of explicit guidance. It was found that the children had little opportunity for negotiating a shared understanding or experience of spirituality with adults and, as a result, either preserved an isolated and secret sense of spirituality or accepted what they observed to be their trusted adults' stance. The practical and theoretical implications of the children's responses in the absence of trusted adults are discussed and recommendations are made for practice and future research.     

Attempting to avoid false memories in the Deese/Roediger—McDermott paradigm: Assessing the combined influence of practice and warnings in young and old adults

On each of five study-test trials, young and old adults attempted to memorize the same list of 60 words (e.g., bed, rest, awake), which were blocked according to their convergence on four corresponding associates. Half of the participants in each age group were given an explicit warning about the DRM paradigm prior to encoding and were asked to attempt to avoid recalling any associated but nonpresented words (e.g., sleep). Lists were presented auditorily at either a fast (1,250 msec/word) or a slow (2,500 msec/word) rate. Without a warning, the probability of veridical recall across trials increased for both age groups; however, the probability of false recall across trials decreased only for young adults. When a warning about false recall was provided, young adults virtually eliminated false recall by the second trial. Even though old adults also used warnings to reduce false recall on Trial 1, they were still unable to decrease false memories across the remaining four study-test trials. Old adults also reduced false recall more with slow than with fast presentation rates. Taken together, these findings suggest that old adults have a breakdown in spontaneous, self-initiated source monitoring as reflected by little change in false recall across study-test trials but a preserved ability to use experimenter-provided warnings or slow presentation rates to reduce false memories.     

Marital discord and well-being in older adults: is the association confounded by personality?

The associations between marital discord and multiple measures of well-being (depression, anxiety, life satisfaction, and self-esteem) were evaluated in a population-based sample of 416 couples in which the husband was 65 years or older. Results indicated that greater marital discord was associated with greater depression and lower life satisfaction and self-esteem. Furthermore, the associations between marital discord and well-being remained significant when statistically controlling for the rival explanation of the Big Five personality traits. Finally, there was little evidence for gender differences in the magnitude of the associations between marital discord and well-being. Findings suggest that marital discord is an important correlate of multiple measures of well-being in older individuals and that this association is not confounded by the Big Five personality traits.     

Brief historical survey: the need to recognise old wine in new bottles—the structural roots of voluntarism and difference in the English schooling system

The end of the ‘bog standard’ and ‘one size fits all’, as part of the British government's education policy, has been emphatically declared. In its place, diversity and difference in terms of specialisms and sponsors have been stressed. However, such diversity has always been a part of the English schooling system in the form of the voluntary sector. It is only comparatively recently that the role of the voluntary sector has once again come under scrutiny but its influence in terms of organisational structures has been an inherent part of the development of the schools within the dual system of English schooling.     

Decision-making competence in younger and older adults: which cognitive abilities contribute to the application of decision rules?

Older adults perform worse than younger adults when applying decision rules to choose between options that vary along multiple attributes. Although previous studies have shown that general fluid cognitive abilities contribute to the accurate application of decision rules, relatively little is known about which specific cognitive abilities play the most important role. We examined the independent roles of working memory, verbal fluency, semantic knowledge, and components of executive functioning. We found that age-related decline in applying decision rules was statistically mediated by age-related decline in working memory and verbal fluency. Our results have implications for theories of aging and decision-making.     

Takin’ It to the Streets: Approach/Avoidance Motivation in the Lives of At-Risk Youth

An attempt is made in this article to relate creativity to personality in a much more definitive way than has been done previously and to use the known correlates of personality to suggest a theory of creativity that would explain many of the phenomena associated with this concept. A causal chain is suggested reaching from DNA to creative achievement, based largely on experimental findings not usually considered in relation to creativity (e.g., latent inhibition). Inevitably, the model is highly speculative, but it is testable and hence may prove useful in not only accounting for many observations and experimental results but also in suggesting new experiments and observations.     

From Latimer's Fellow-martyr to the ‘English Calvin': Nicholas Ridley's Reputation and the Circulation of A brief declaracion of the Lordes Supper, 1555-1570

Abstract

Nicholas Ridley, the Edwardian Bishop of London, was executed in 1555 during Mary Tudor's reign. An active publicist, he composed in prison a didactic treatise that promoted the Reformed view of the Eucharist and was published in Emden (1555) and in Strasbourg (1556). In 1556, A brief declaracion found its way to Geneva where a community of English exiles had it translated into Latin (Conrad Badius then issued a version in French). Not only did the translation acquire a polemical edge, but certain allusions, scattered in the preface and in the margins of the text, turned Ridley's treatise into a ‘Calvinist’ manifesto at a time when Calvin was ardently defending his views against the Lutheran polemicist, Westphal. Meanwhile, Jean Crespin made use of Badius's version in his martyrologies and reprinted Ridley's treatise in his 1570 edition. Whereas in England, Ridley's works began to be perceived as controversial after Mary's death, Crespin and Beza (Icones, 1580) kept his treatise alive and heralded him as the ‘English Calvin’ in French Reformed circles.     

Older adults’ associative deficit in episodic memory: Assessing the role of decline in attentional resources

In this study, we evaluated an associative deficit hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that the deficit seen in the episodic memory performance of older adults is due, in considerable part, to older adults’ difficulty in binding together unrelated components of an episode into a cohesive entity (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000). The study extended the conditions under which older adults show a differential deficit in tests requiring associations among the episode components to situations in which the item and the associative recognition tests are equated on the response mode used and on the amount of information displayed. In addition, we tested the potential role of a decrease in attentional resources in the associative deficit of older adults by comparing their performance to that of younger adults under conditions of reduced attentional resources. The results of the study, which indicate that younger adults under divided attention do not show an associative deficit, are interpreted as indicating that the associative deficit of older adults is due to factors other than depleted attentional resources.