Gender differences in leg stiffness and stiffness recruitment strategy during two-legged hopping

The authors compared leg stiffness (K(VERT)), muscle activation, and joint movement patterns between 11 men and 10 women during hopping. Physically active and healthy men and women performed continuous 2-legged hopping at their preferred rate and at 3.0 Hz. Compared with men, women demonstrated decreased K(VERT); however, after the authors normalized for body mass, gender differences in K(VERT) were eliminated. In comparison with men, women also demonstrated increased quadriceps and soleus activity, as well as greater quadriceps-to-hamstrings coactivation ratios. There were no significant gender differences for joint movement patterns (p>.05). The relationship between the observed gender differences in muscle recruitment and the increased risk of anterior cruciate ligament injury in women requires further study.     

Parental Discipline and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Early Childhood: The Roles of Moral Regulation and Child Gender

We tested whether individual differences in a component of early conscience mediated relations between parental discipline and externalizing behavior problems in 238 3.5-year-olds. Parents contributed assessments of discipline practices and child moral regulation. Observations of children's behavioral restraint supplemented parental reports. Parents and teachers reported on child externalizing symptoms. Parental induction, warm responsiveness, and less frequent use of physical punishment generally were associated with higher levels of moral regulation and fewer externalizing problems. Moreover, moral regulation partially mediated relationships between discipline and externalizing symptoms, with the clearest case of mediation involving induction. However, relationships were found for boys only. Results support a mediation model wherein inductive and physical discipline may influence the expression of boys' externalizing behavior through effects on conscience. Finally, results suggest that different developmental processes may be associated with early externalizing problems in boys and girls, and confirm that fathers' reports contribute to our understanding of the origins of child externalizing problems.     

The old and thee, uh, new: disfluency and reference resolution

Most research on the rapid mental processes of on-line language processing has been limited to the study of idealized, fluent utterances. Yet speakers are often disfluent, for example, saying "thee, uh, candle" instead of "the candle." By monitoring listeners' eye movements to objects in a display, we demonstrated that the fluency of an article ("thee uh" vs. "the") affects how listeners interpret the following noun. With a fluent article, listeners were biased toward an object that had been mentioned previously, but with a disfluent article, they were biased toward an object that had not been mentioned. These biases were apparent as early as lexical information became available, showing that disfluency affects the basic processes of decoding linguistic input.     

Grammatical intuitions about irregular verb inflections

If people possess a rule that the root of a verb plus -ed produces the past tense, why does this rule produce an unacceptable form when applied to an irregular verb (e.g., comed)? One possibility is that the unacceptability of comed is the result of lexical priming. That is, comed primes the correct form came, and the awareness of came causes comed to be perceived as unacceptable. If so, then the acceptability of a misinflected form should be determined by the factors that influence the priming of its correct form, such as the frequency and hence speed of retrieval of its correct form. Three experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, subjects were faster to reject misinflected irregular verbs when the correct irregular form had a higher frequency than when it had a lower frequency. Furthermore, the higher the frequency of the correct form, the more unacceptable the misinflected form seemed. Experiment 2 used the naming task to confirm that the presentation of a misinflected form facilitated the naming of its correct form. In Experiment 3, subjects were faster to accept an irregular verb when it was primed by a misinflected irregular verb than with a correct regular verb. This was taken as evidence that the misinflected irregular verb accesses the correct form.     

Issues of Power, Control, and Status in Group Interaction: From Ferenczi to Foucault

Examination of the issues of power, control, and status in human interaction is made from the works of Kafka, Ferenczi, and Foucault. Ferenczi's confusion of tongues theory as a model is used to describe the dynamics of charismatic group leadership in training group for analyst group candidates.     

Ferenczi's Rise and Fall from “Analytic Grace”: The Ferenczi Renaissance Revisited

In the last 20 years a Ferenczi Renaissance has been slowly building. There has been a rediscovery of the significance of Sándor Ferenczi, who can be considered the clinical genius of psychoanalysis. The politics of psychoanalysis led to the suppression of Ferenczi's ideas, removing his influence from psychoanalysis for about 50 years. Ferenczi's ideas and methods significantly deviated from his mentor, Sigmund Freud; he offered an alternative theory, The Confusion of Tongues and a new method, Relaxation Therapy. Ferenczi's pioneering contributions to analytic therapy include: the introduction of empathy into the analytic relationship; the curative function of the relationship in the analytic encounter; the role of activity in analytic therapy; the importance of non-interpretative behavior by the analyst; the function of the experiential and emotional dimensions in analytic therapy; analyst self-disclosure; and mutual analysis.