Positional effects in the lexical retuning of speech perception

Listeners use lexical knowledge to adjust to speakers’ idiosyncratic pronunciations. Dutch listeners learn to interpret an ambiguous sound between /s/ and /f/ as /f/ if they hear it word-finally in Dutch words normally ending in /f/, but as /s/ if they hear it in normally /s/-final words. Here, we examined two positional effects in lexically guided retuning. In Experiment 1, ambiguous sounds during exposure always appeared in word-initial position (replacing the first sounds of /f/- or /s/-initial words). No retuning was found. In Experiment 2, the same ambiguous sounds always appeared word-finally during exposure. Here, retuning was found. Lexically guided perceptual learning thus appears to emerge reliably only when lexical knowledge is available as the to-be-tuned segment is initially being processed. Under these conditions, however, lexically guided retuning was position independent: It generalized across syllabic positions. Lexical retuning can thus benefit future recognition of particular sounds wherever they appear in words.     

Does working memory training work? The promise and challenges of enhancing cognition by training working memory

A growing body of literature shows that one's working memory (WM) capacity can be expanded through targeted training. Given the established relationship between WM and higher cognition, these successful training studies have led to speculation that WM training may yield broad cognitive benefits. This review considers the current state of the emerging WM training literature, and details both its successes and limitations. We identify two distinct approaches to WM training, strategy training and core training, and highlight both the theoretical and practical motivations that guide each approach. Training-related increases in WM capacity have been successfully demonstrated across a wide range of subject populations, but different training techniques seem to produce differential impacts upon the broader landscape of cognitive abilities. In particular, core WM training studies seem to produce more far-reaching transfer effects, likely because they target domain-general mechanisms of WM. The results of individual studies encourage optimism regarding the value of WM training as a tool for general cognitive enhancement. However, we discuss several limitations that should be addressed before the field endorses the value of this approach.     

Genetic and environmental influences on personality trait stability and growth during the transition to adulthood: a three-wave longitudinal study

During the transition to adulthood individuals typically settle into adult roles in love and work. This transition also involves significant changes in personality traits that are generally in the direction of greater maturity and increased stability. Competing hypotheses have been offered to account for these personality changes: The intrinsic maturation hypothesis suggests that change trajectories are endogenous, whereas the life-course hypothesis suggests that these changes occur because of transactions with the social environment. This study investigated the patterns and origins of personality trait changes from ages 17 to 29 using 3 waves of Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire data provided by twins. Results suggest that (a) trait changes were more profound in the first relative to the second half of the transition to adulthood; (b) traits tend to become more stable during the second half of this transition, with all the traits yielding retest correlations between .74 and .78; (c) Negative Affectivity declined over time, and Constraint increased over time; minimal change was observed on agentic or communal aspects of Positive Emotionality; and (d) both genetic and nonshared environmental factors accounted for personality changes. Overall, these genetically informed results support a life-course perspective on personality development during the transition to adulthood.     

Perceived sacrifice and few alternatives commitments: The motivational underpinnings of continuance commitment's subdimensions

Using work on self-concepts and Conservation of Resources theory, the present research examined the motivational underpinnings of continuance commitment's subcomponents of perceived sacrifice and few alternatives. Study 1 (N = 208) found job scope to be positively related to perceived sacrifice commitment, and negatively related to few alternatives commitment. Study 2 (N = 147) found empowerment's meaning dimension to be positively related to perceived sacrifice commitment and self-determination to be negatively linked to few alternatives commitment. In Study 3 (N = 301), perceived sacrifice commitment was found to be positively related to feedback seeking, while few alternatives commitment was negatively related to it. Finally, Study 4 (N = 278) found perceived sacrifice commitment to be positively, and few alternatives commitment negatively, related to career success (promotion and pay raise decisions). Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Die verbale Aktivit?t in therapeutischen Dialogen

The discourse in psychotherapeutic treatment is less specific than usually expected so the question arises whether different therapy methods are different in the style of communication. In this study the verbal activity and other characteristics of the discourse of therapist and patient for sessions from two psychoanalytic, two psychodynamic and two cognitive behavior therapies were compared. Psychoanalytic therapists were found to talk the least and behavior therapists the most. Patients talk nearly the same amount in all therapies. As therapists of psychoanalytic treatment talk less than behavior therapists the percentage of patient talking is highest in psychoanalytic therapy. Further formal characteristics: statements are the most frequent form of intervention in behavior therapy (51?%), followed by psychodynamic (36?%) and psychoanalytic therapy (27?%). The most frequent form of intervention in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy is listening, whereas it is only a small part of communication in behavior therapy. Questions are asked most often in behavior therapy. Hence there are significant differences which correspond to the theory of treatment, between the three methods in discourse behavior on a single case level.     

Manipulations of attention enhance self-regulation

Successful goal-directed behavior requires self-regulation to override competing impulses. Emerging evidence suggests that attention may mediate such acts, but little is known about the specific operations through which attention might influence self-regulation. Here we test this often-implicit assumption by manipulating attention mechanisms in two ways: one controlling the inhibition of inappropriate responses; the other controlling the breadth of attention. Participants significantly improved their performance on a self-regulation task after practice on a response inhibition task (Experiment 1) and after the induction of a broad focus of attention in a visual discrimination task (Experiment 2). We propose that such manipulations enhance self-regulation by engaging mechanisms that enhance the salience of goal-related representations and reduce the activation of competing goal-irrelevant neural representations. By more efficiently resolving conflict among the signals vying to drive behavior, pre-engaging attention may also help to conserve resources needed for continued self-regulation.     

Implicit response-irrelevant number information triggers the SNARC effect: Evidence using a neural overlap paradigm

There is evidence from the SNARC (spatial-numerical association of response codes) effect and NDE (numerical distance effect) that number activates spatial representations. Most of this evidence comes from tasks with explicit reference to number, whether through presentation of Arabic digits (SNARC) or through magnitude decisions to nonsymbolic representations (NDE). Here, we report four studies that use the neural overlap paradigm developed by Fias, Lauwereyns, and Lammertyn (2001) to examine whether the presentation of implicit and task-irrelevant numerosity information (nonsymbolic arrays and auditory numbers) is enough to activate a spatial representation of number. Participants were presented with either numerosity arrays (1-9 circles or triangles) to which they made colour (Experiment 1) or orientation (Experiment 2) judgements, or auditory numbers coupled with an on-screen stimulus to which they made a colour (Experiment 3) or orientation (Experiment 4) judgement. SNARC effects were observed only for the orientation tasks. Following the logic of Fias et al., we argue that this SNARC effect occurs as a result of overlap in parietal processing for number and orientation judgements irrespective of modality. Furthermore, we found stronger SNARC effects in the small number range (1-4) than in the larger number range (6-9) for both nonsymbolic displays and auditory numbers. These results suggest that quantity is extracted (and interferes with responses in the orientation task) but this is not exact for the entire number range. We discuss a number of alternative models and mechanisms of numerical processing that may account for such effects.