The Resilience of Structure Built Around the Predicate: Homesign Gesture Systems in Turkish and American Deaf Children

Deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from accessing spoken language and whose hearing parents have not exposed them to sign language develop gesture systems, called homesigns, which have many of the properties of natural language—the so-called resilient properties of language. We explored the resilience of structure built around the predicate—in particular, how manner and path are mapped onto the verb—in homesign systems developed by deaf children in Turkey and the United States. We also asked whether the Turkish homesigners exhibit sentence-level structures previously identified as resilient in American and Chinese homesigners. We found that the Turkish and American deaf children used not only the same production probability and ordering patterns to indicate who does what to whom, but also used the same segmentation and conflation patterns to package manner and path. The gestures that the hearing parents produced did not, for the most part, display the patterns found in the children's gestures. Although cospeech gesture may provide the building blocks for homesign, it does not provide the blueprint for these resilient properties of language.     

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Adults with Sleep Apnea

AAttention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common childhood illness. In some patients, this illness may persist into adulthood and an association between ADHD and Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) has been found in childhood. However, it is unclear how OSA and ADHD coincide in adulthood. Therefore, to explore the relationship between OSA and adult ADHD the current investigation utilized a clinically-based cross-sectional survey. Subjects consisted of 81 treatment-naïve OSA patients and 32 controls. Measures included each patient completed a questionnaire regarding sleep, Adult ADHD scale. Clinical information, body mass index, 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and polysomnography.The subjects with Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI) ≥ 5 events/h were defined as patients with OSA. The control group was accepted as individuals with AHI > 0 events/h. The prevalence of adult ADHD was not different between the patients with OSA and the control group [(7.4 % (6/75) vs. 6.3 % (2/30), p = 0.8, respectively]. OSA patients with ADHD, as compared with those without, had higher anxiety scores and poorer physical component scores of quality of life and higher ESS scores. ADHD scores in patients with OSA were associated with anxiety and depression scores and SF36 physical and mental component scores in bivariate analyses. Thus, in our sample ADHD was not a frequent illness in adult patients with OSA. However, in patients with OSA and ADHD higher levels of anxiety and daytime sleepiness and poorer quality of life was found.     

Some problems of counter‐inductive policy as opposed to inductive

The article is concerned with the practicalist attempt to ‘solve’ the problem of induction. The point of departure is the concept of counter‐induction introduced by Max Black and his refutation of practicalism. If we arc not to beg the question whether induction yields knowledge of the future, Max Black asserts, there is a symmetry between induction and counter‐induction as methods. The main point of the article is to show that this assertion is false, at least when induction and counter‐induction are compared as regards their relations to hypo‐thetico‐deductive method. As regards these relations, there is a striking asymmetry. The author tries to establish the following conclusion: A theory can agree with all future data and yet be false because it does not agree with all past data. If we are not to be in a position where our theories are necessarily falsified either by past or future data, we must use induction rather than counter‐induction.     

Social representation of events in world history: Crosscultural consensus or Western discourse? How Turkish students view events in world history

The perceptions of historical events are considered to be an important cultural, political, and social psychological variable. Earlier studies have shown a crosscultural consensus on historical events that are considered to be important. It has been indicated that a strong Western–Christian European template dominates the view of which events are considered to be important events in history, by many samples across the world. It was the aim of this study to test this finding with a Turkish sample, which would represent some unique characteristics in that it is Muslim, comes from an Empire background, and has undergone a recent nation‐building process. College students (n = 372) responded to a questionnaire that was utilized in seven other countries. It was shown that Turkish students were not Eurocentric as expected by the literature: They were highly sociocentric; they gave importance to events related to Turkish history. They were similar to their European counterparts in that war and violence were given primary importance when selecting events as important in history. However, they did not behave as predicted by earlier literature: They did not see Western European events as having a primary importance in history but gave at least equal importance to events that originated from Ottoman Empire roots. The results were discussed in terms of the unique cultural and historical variables that contribute to the identity and social psychological attributions of Turkish students. Further research should focus on not only which events are considered as important historical events but also the reasons behind these.     

Cyber victimization and adolescent self‐esteem: The role of communication with parents

Internet use has increased rapidly in recent years, and has inevitably led to some negative outcomes, notably cyber bullying and cyber victimization. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of cyber victimization and parent–adolescent communication on self‐esteem, and the moderating role of parent–adolescent communication in the relationship between cyber victimization and self‐esteem among Turkish adolescents. The participants were 337 adolescents with a mean age of 16.37, (SD = 0.89). The results of hierarchical regression analysis reveal that self‐esteem was predicted negatively by cyber victimization, but positively by mother–adolescent communication. Results also indicate the moderating roles of parent–adolescent communication in the links between cyber victimization and self‐esteem. The findings indicate a need to consider the parent–adolescent relationship while working with victimized youth, and the implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Do Ramadan Fasting Restrictions Alter Eating Behaviours in Obese Women?

Ramadan fasting can be considered as a kind of dietary restriction. Eating restriction is a risk factor for later development of eating disorders. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether Ramadan fasting changes the eating behaviours of obese women. Our sample consisted of 34 obese women who fasted during the Ramadan month. The data were collected by using Questionnaire Form, Eating Attitude Test (EAT) and Bulimic Investigatory Test, Edinburgh (BITE). No statistically significant differences were found between the scores of EAT, BITE, BMI, which were administered within the weeks before and after Ramadan. According to our results, Ramadan fasting restrictions do not seem to change the eating behaviours of obese women.     

Higher Order Structure of Personality and Mental Health: Does General Affectivity Matter?

The higher order personality model, namely the Big Two, was tested in 2 studies (Ns = 878 and 467, respectively) by controlling for the effects of both general affectivity and common method variance. Study 2 also examined the associations of the metatraits with different mental health indicators through regression analyses. The results consistently provided support for the validity of the Big Two model in the latent space, with and without the effects of general affectivity and the common method variance. Moreover, in both studies, the high correlation between stability and plasticity decreased when these 2 method effects were controlled statistically. The regression analyses also showed that the associations of plasticity and stability with the indicators of both subjective and psychological well-being, as well as psychopathology, were consistent with the theoretical arguments behind the Big Two.     

Memory factors in Rey AVLT: Implications for early staging of cognitive decline

Supraspan verbal list learning is widely used to assess dementia and related cognitive disorders where declarative memory deficits are a major clinical sign. While the overall learning rate is important for diagnosis, serial position patterns may give insight into more specific memory processes in patients with cognitive impairment. This study explored these patterns in a memory clinic clientele. One hundred eighty three participants took the Rey Auditory‐Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT). The major groups were patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Vascular Dementia (VD), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and Subjective Cognitive Impairment (SCI) as well as healthy controls (HC). Raw scores for the five trials and five serial partitions were factor analysed. Three memory factors were found and interpreted as Primacy, Recency, and Resistance to Interference. AD and MCI patients had impaired scores in all factors. SCI patients were significantly impaired in the Resistance to Interference factor, and in the Recency factor at the first trial. The main conclusion is that serial position data from word list testing reflect specific memory capacities which vary with levels of cognitive impairment.