Prosody is the fundamental organizing principle of spoken language, carrying lexical, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic information. It, therefore, provides highly relevant input for language development. Are infants sensitive to this important aspect of spoken language early on? In this study, we asked whether infants are able to discriminate well-formed utterance-level prosodic contours from ill-formed, backward prosodic contours at birth. This deviant prosodic contour was obtained by time-reversing the original one, and super-imposing it on the otherwise intact segmental information. The resulting backward prosodic contour was thus unfamiliar to the infants and ill-formed in French. We used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in 1-3-day-old French newborns (n = 25) to measure their brain responses to well-formed contours as standards and their backward prosody counterparts as deviants in the frontal, temporal, and parietal areas bilaterally. A cluster-based permutation test revealed greater responses to the Deviant than to the Standard condition in right temporal areas. These results suggest that newborns are already capable of detecting utterance-level prosodic violations at birth, a key ability for breaking into the native language, and that this ability is supported by brain areas similar to those in adults.
Research Highlights
At birth, infants have sophisticated speech perception abilities.
Prosody may be particularly important for early language development.
We show that newborns are already capable of discriminating utterance-level prosodic contours.
This discrimination can be localized to the right hemisphere of the neonate brain.
Background: Academic procrastination is common among university students and its effect on their achievement is worrisome. Although procrastination is often depicted as self-regulation failure, research still needs to examine the self-regulatory mechanisms involved in the relationship between procrastination and achievement.
Objectives: In this prospective study, we sought to (a) unravel the unique effect of academic procrastination on university grades, (b) examine the mediating role of task-oriented and disengagement-oriented coping as a self-regulatory pathway toward achievement, (c) control for the potential confounding influence of past achievement and working memory capacity.
Methods: A sample of 258 university students completed self-report measures of academic procrastination and coping, and performed tests of working memory. Their semester grade point average was collected at the end of the semester.
Results: Results of structural equation modeling showed that academic procrastination negatively predicted subsequent academic achievement, even after controlling for high school achievement and working memory capacity. Furthermore, indirect effects revealed that task- and disengagement-oriented coping explained 70% of the total effect.
Conclusion: These findings outline that the effect of academic procrastination cannot be reduced to a history of academic difficulties or limited cognitive ability and that coping plays an important role in the procrastination – achievement relationship. 相似文献
This research seeks to identify employees’ profiles characterised by distinct perceptions of three sources of social support at work (i.e., organisation, supervisor, and colleagues), and the extent to which these profiles generalise across two samples of workers (N = 185 and 387). This research also investigates the associations between the profiles and a series of outcomes. Latent profile analysis revealed five identical profiles in both samples: (1) moderately supported; (2) isolated; (3) supervisor supported; (4) weakly supported; and (5) highly supported. The most desirable outcomes (job satisfaction, performance, and affective commitment) were associated with Profile 5 (highly supported), while the highest levels of emotional exhaustion were observed in Profile 2 (isolated). 相似文献
The purpose of the present four-wave longitudinal study was to examine the differentiation and reciprocal associations between burnout and depression, and their associations with a series of correlates related to employees’ physical and psychological health (sleep disturbances, somatic symptoms, self-rated subjective health, and life satisfaction). A total of 542 early career Finnish workers filled out questionnaires four times over a period of 8 years. First, our results supported the superiority of a bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling (bifactor-ESEM) representation of employees’ burnout ratings, and the empirical differentiation between burnout and depression ratings over each measurement occasion. These results further revealed moderate cross-sectional associations between burnout and depression, supporting their inter-related character but also their empirical distinctiveness. Second, autoregressive cross-lagged analyses revealed that both constructs presented a moderate level of stability over time and reciprocal associations that generalized to all time intervals considered. Finally, relations between depression and all correlates measures during the last wave of the study were in the expected direction, whereas burnout was found to be more weakly related to only a subset of these correlates. Taken together, these results thus support the distinctiveness of burnout and depression, and the presence of mutually reinforcing relations between them. 相似文献
While cognitive changes in aging and neurodegenerative disease have been widely studied, language changes in these populations are less well understood. Inflecting novel words in a language with complex inflectional paradigms provides a good opportunity to observe how language processes change in normal and abnormal aging. Studies of language acquisition suggest that children inflect novel words based on their phonological similarity to real words they already know. It is unclear whether speakers continue to use the same strategy when encountering novel words throughout the lifespan or whether adult speakers apply symbolic rules. We administered a simple speech elicitation task involving Finnish-conforming pseudo-words and real Finnish words to healthy older adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) to investigate inflectional choices in these groups and how linguistic variables and disease severity predict inflection patterns. Phonological resemblance of novel words to both a regular and an irregular inflectional type, as well as bigram frequency of the novel words, significantly influenced participants' inflectional choices for novel words among the healthy elderly group and people with AD. The results support theories of inflection by phonological analogy (single-route models) and contradict theories advocating for formal symbolic rules (dual-route models). 相似文献
Some media have suggested that many youths who have previously completed a gender transition are “detransitioning”. Their experience is often framed around the idea of regrets but rare are the articles that provide a nuanced examination of their journey. This article presents the perspectives of youths who have detransitioned or discontinued a transition regarding their experiences and feelings on their journey from transition to detransition. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 youths between the age of 16 and 25 years who were recruited on social media and who transitioned and detransitioned or discontinued their transition. Data were analysed according to thematic analysis. Regrets and feelings of satisfaction can both coexist. The processes of transition and discontinuation or detransition appear to be non-linear and participants do not necessarily return to a cisgender identity. Ambiguous loss theory is applied to frame youth experiences and feelings and to suggest way forward for intervention.
Highlights
This paper examines the experiences and feelings of youth on their journey from transition to detransition.
Their journey is experienced as non-linear, and often comprised mixed feelings and experiences about transition and detransition steps.
Ambiguous loss theory allows a nuanced understanding of feelings and experiences of their journey from transition to detransition.