EsPal: One-stop shopping for Spanish word properties

This article introduces EsPal: a Web-accessible repository containing a comprehensive set of properties of Spanish words. EsPal is based on an extensible set of data sources, beginning with a 300 million token written database and a 460 million token subtitle database. Properties available include word frequency, orthographic structure and neighborhoods, phonological structure and neighborhoods, and subjective ratings such as imageability. Subword structure properties are also available in terms of bigrams and trigrams, biphones, and bisyllables. Lemma and part-of-speech information and their corresponding frequencies are also indexed. The website enables users either to upload a set of words to receive their properties or to receive a set of words matching constraints on the properties. The properties themselves are easily extensible and will be added over time as they become available. It is freely available from the following website: http://www.bcbl.eu/databases/espal/.     

The roles of impulsivity,self-regulation,and emotion regulation in the experience of self-disgust

Self-disgust is a distinct self-conscious emotion schema that is characterized by disgust appraisals directed towards the self. Recent studies have demonstrated the negative effects of self-disgust on physical and mental health, but little is known about the psychological characteristics that are associated with self-disgust experiences. The present study assessed the direct and indirect effects of impulsivity, self-regulation, and emotion regulation on self-disgust. Overall, 294 participants (M age?=?21.84 years, SD?=?4.56) completed structured and anonymous measures of trait impulsivity, self-regulation, emotion regulation strategies, and self-disgust. Path analysis showed that non-planning impulsivity and expressive suppression (positively) and cognitive reappraisal and self-regulation (negatively) predicted self-disgust. Intervening variable analysis showed that attentional and non-planning impulsivity had significant indirect effects on self-disgust via emotional regulation strategies and self-regulation. Our findings provide, for the first time, evidence about the association between self-disgust and individual differences in impulsivity, self-regulation, and emotion regulation, and have implications for the psychological phenomena that may lead to self-disgust experiences in non-clinical populations.

     

A curvilinear relationship between maternal vocal stimulation and three-month-olds' cognitive processing: A cross-cultural phenomenon

This article presents data from four independent studies on the relationship between quantity of maternal vocal stimulation during naturalistic conditions and 3-month-old infants' cognitive processing, as assessed by the infants' differential vocal responsiveness (DVR) to their mother versus a female stranger. In two of the studies, the subjects were full-term American infants whose parents came from a wide socio-educational and ethnic background. In the third study, the subjects were low-risk preterm infants of White American parents. In the fourth study the subjects were full-term infants in Greece. The results from all four studies showed a curvilinear relationship between DVR and maternal vocal stimulation during naturalistic conditions. High DVR was associated with a mid-level amount of maternal vocal stimulation, whereas low DVR was associated with both least and most maternal vocal stimulation. These studies raise the question of possible adverse effects of social overstimulation on infant development.     

Teaching and Learning Logic in a Virtual Learning Environment

Teaching and learning in a virtual learning environment (VLE)poses some difficulties, but also challenges and opportunitiesto rethink the whole learning process, particularly in abstractsubjects like logic or high level mathematics. On the otherhand, resources and ways to work, now available in VLEs, mightsoon extend to all kinds of environments. In this paper, wewill present experiences at the Open University of Catalonia(UOC), a particular VLE, concerning the whole process of teachinglogic and mathematics. In addition, we will discuss some challengesand we will present some innovation projects allowed by thepresent and near future technologies.     

Differences Between and Within Genders in Gender Role Orientation According to Age and Level of Education

This study analyses the masculinity and femininity in a Spanish sample made up of 164 adult workers (88 men and 76 women). To be specific, the objective was to demonstrate whether age and level of education were related to differences in masculinity and femininity, both when comparing between the two genders and when the comparisons are made within the same gender. The results indicated that the two variables predicted differences in women, but not in men. There were only differences between genders in masculinity and femininity between the ages of 20 and 39, and when the level of education is low. The results appear to support Hofstede’s hypothesis that there are fewer differences between genders in gender role orientation in feminine countries.     

Emulation and mimicry for social interaction: a theoretical approach to imitation in autism

The "broken-mirror" theory of autism argues that dysfunction of the "mirror neuron system" is a root cause of social disability in autism. The present paper aims to scrutinize this theory and, when it breaks down, to provide an alternative. Current evidence suggests that children with autism are able to understand and emulate goal-directed actions, but may have specific impairments in automatic mimicry of actions without goals. These data are not compatible with the broken-mirror theory, but can be accounted for by a new model called EP-M. The EP-M model segments the mirror neuron system into an indirect, parietal route for goal emulation and planning (EP) and a direct occipital-frontal route for mimicry (M). This fractionation is consistent with neuroimaging and behavioural studies of the mirror neuron system in typical children and adults. I suggest that top-down modulation of the direct M route may be dysfunctional in individuals with autism, leading to abnormal behaviours on mimicry tasks as well as other social disabilities.     

Living with Gratitude: Spouse’s Gratitude on One’s Depression

Research has shown that gratitude makes people happier (McCullough and Tsang in Psychol Gratitude, Oxford University Press, pp 123–141, 2004; Wood et al. in Clin Psychol Rev 30(7):890–905, 2010), healthier (McCullough et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol, 86(2):295–309, 2004), more considerate (Bartlett and DeSteno in Psychol Sci 17(4):319–325, 2006), and better evaluated (Gordon et al. in Pers Individ Differ 50(3):339–343, 2011), enabling more stable relationships (Algoe et al. in Pers Relationsh 17(2):217–233, 2010; Algoe et al. in Emotion 8(3):425–429, 2008; Lambert et al. in Psychol Sci 21(4):574–580, 2010). However, no study has extended research beyond individual persons to investigate the impact of one’s gratitude on the mental well-being of those who surround her or him. Thus, we tested this possibility and found in Study 1 that within marriage, husbands’ depositional gratitude negatively correlated with their wives’ depressive emotion. The results of Study 2 validated Study 1 by showing that a wife’s depression would be relatively palliated if her husband was assigned to express appreciation to her and not share daily hassles. While a causal relationship was demonstrated as hypothesized, a difference between genders also emerged. We discuss in particular the latter in terms of its mechanism, limitations, and practical implications for marriage.     

Seeing double: levels of processing can cause false memory.

Ordinarily, deeper levels of processing in a study session increase the accuracy of later remembering. We modified the standard levels-of-processing procedure by presenting items either once or twice in the study phase, each item being the subject of a semantic, phonemic, or graphemic question. At test, the subjects judged the frequency with which each word had occurred in the study phase. Deeper processing during encoding increased accuracy in judging twice-presented items. However, it also caused an illusion of repetition for items presented only once. The result underlines the importance of thinking of remembering as a process of evaluation and inference, rather than simple retrieval.