Exploring noun bias in Filipino-English bilingual children

Researchers have suggested that there is a noun bias in children's early vocabularies brought about by features of adults' child-directed utterances, which may vary across languages (E. V. Bates et al., 1994; D. Gentner, 1982). In the present study, the authors explored noun bias in 60 Filipino-English bilingual children whose 2 languages differed in how they emphasized nouns and verbs in typical syntactic forms. The results revealed a noun bias, but only in the bilingual children's English vocabulary. The noun bias in English was associated with the frequency of nouns in the caregivers' utterances and the proportion of nouns in the initial positions of the caregivers' utterances. The authors also found different associations between salient positions in the adult utterances and children's vocabularies in English and Filipino.     

A Speeded Item Response Model with Gradual Process Change

An item response theory model for dealing with test speededness is proposed. The model consists of two random processes, a problem solving process and a random guessing process, with the random guessing gradually taking over from the problem solving process. The involved change point and change rate are considered random parameters in order to model examinee differences in both respects. The proposed model is evaluated on simulated data and in a case study. The research reported in this paper was supported by IAP P5/24 and GOA/2005/04, both awarded to Paul De Boeck and Iven Van Mechelen, and by IAP P6/03, awarded to Iven Van Mechelen. Yuri Goegebeur’s research was supported by a grant of the Danish Natural Science Research Council.     

College women’s value orientations toward family, career, and graduate school

This study was designed to examine how college women’s valuing of graduate education predicted their intentions to attend graduate school, using a new measure of the valuing of graduate school. A second purpose was to assess relations of college women’s perceptions of the relative importance of family and career to their valuing of graduate education. Two hundred and sixteen college women completed a newly developed survey that assessed these constructs. The items assessing task values were designed to assess components of task value defined by Eccles et al. (1983). Reliability and factor analyses demonstrated that the instrument adequately measured different components of task value. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that components of task value predicted intentions to attend graduate school. The women were strongly career-oriented, and their orientations to career related positively to their valuing of graduate education.     

Choosing to Suffer: Reflections on an Enigma

Most people pursue pleasure and seek to avoid pain. Some individuals, however, choose a life characterized by pain and suffering. The author describes the most common varieties of such behavior patterns: asceticism, martyrdom, penance and masochism. Critical psychodynamics are discussed and the author proposes a synthesis of the motivation underlying pain/suffering seeking behavior.     

Experience and Theory

N. R. Hanson's discussion of experience is criticized. Experience, though necessary for knowing, is insufficient as a basis for understanding in either science or religion. Experience alone can be misleading. We may begin with experience, but we cannot claim to understand until experience has been mediated by theory. The article is excerpted from Metaphoric Process: The Creation of Scientific and Religious Understanding (Gerhart and Russell 1984), Chapter 2.     

Extensions of the Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968) norms.

The Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968) norms for 925 nouns were extended in two ways. The first extension involved the collecting of a much more extensive and diverse set of properties from original ratings and other sources. Factor analysis of 32 properties identified 9 orthogonal factors and demonstrated both the redundancy among various measures and the tendency for some attributes (e.g., age of acquisition) to load on multiple factors. The second extension collected basic ratings of imagery, familiarity, and a new age of acquisition measure for a larger pool of 2,311 words, including parts of speech other than nouns. The analysis of these ratings and supplementary statistics computed for the words (e.g., number of syllables, Kucera-Francis frequency) demonstrated again the relative independence of various measures and the importance of obtaining diverse properties for such norms. Implications and directions for future research are considered. The full set of new norms may be downloaded from www. psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Thinking Clearly about Violence

Philosophical Studies -     

Distress Over the Infidelity of a Child’s Spouse: A Crucial Test of Evolutionary and Socialization Hypotheses

Parents of undergraduates were asked whether they would be more distressed by the sexual or the emotional infidelity of their child’s partner. Comparing the responses of mothers and fathers may offer a rare, “crucial” instance in which evolutionary and socialization perspectives offer different predictions. Socialization theory, broadly conceived, predicts an effect for the gender of the parent: Consistent with their differing gender socialization histories, mothers should be more distressed by the emotional infidelity of their child’s partner, and fathers by the sexual infidelity of their child’s partner. In contrast, an evolutionary psychology approach predicts little or no effect for the sex of the parents: Both mothers and fathers should be more distressed by infidelities that pose a greater threat to their genetic interests. Results were largely consistent with the predictions derived from evolutionary psychology: Both mothers and fathers regarded sexual infidelity as more distressing when committed by a daughter–in–law than by a son–in–law, and emotional infidelity as more distressing when it involved a son–in–law rather than a daughter–in–law. Discussion centered on the theoretical implications of research that examines the behavior of those who are, genetically, one step removed from the sexual behavior of others, but still affected by the reproductive consequences of that behavior.     

The locus of semantic priming effects in person recognition

Semantic priming in person recognition has been studied extensively. In a typical experiment, participants are asked to make a familiarity decision to target items that have been immediately preceded by related or unrelated primes. Facilitation is usually observed from related primes, and this priming is equivalent across stimulus domains (i.e., faces and names prime one another equally). Structural models of face recognition (e.g., IAC: Burton, Bruce, & Johnston, 1990) accommodate these effects by proposing a level of person identity nodes (PINs) at which recognition routes converge, and which allow access to a common pool of semantics. We present three experiments that examine semantic priming for different decisions. Priming for a semantic decision (e.g., British/American?) shows exactly the same pattern that is normally observed for a familiarity decision. The pattern is equivalent for name and face recognition. However, no semantic priming is observed when participants are asked to make a sex decision. These results constrain future models of face processing and are discussed with reference to current theories of semantic priming.     

USING PERCENTILE SCHEDULES TO INCREASE EYE CONTACT IN CHILDREN WITH FRAGILE X SYNDROME

Aversion to eye contact is a common behavior of individuals diagnosed with Fragile X syndrome (FXS); however, no studies to date have attempted to increase eye‐contact duration in these individuals. In this study, we employed a percentile reinforcement schedule with and without overcorrection to shape eye‐contact duration of 6 boys with FXS. Results showed that although aversion to eye contact is often thought to be unamenable to change in FXS, it can be shaped in some individuals using percentile schedules either alone or in combination with overcorrection.