Interpersonal attraction as a joint function of primacy and recency effects

Memory & Cognition - Empirical primacy-recency inconsistencies between Byrne’s reinforcement affect model of attraction and Anderson’s information integration model of personality...     

An image is worth a thousand words: why nouns tend to dominate verbs in early word learning

Nouns are generally easier to learn than verbs (e.g., Bornstein, 2005; Bornstein et al., 2004; Gentner, 1982; Maguire, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2006). Yet, verbs appear in children's earliest vocabularies, creating a seeming paradox. This paper examines one hypothesis about the difference between noun and verb acquisition. Perhaps the advantage nouns have is not a function of grammatical form class but rather related to a word's imageability. Here, word imageability ratings and form class (nouns and verbs) were correlated with age of acquisition according to the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) (Fenson et al., 1994). CDI age of acquisition was negatively correlated with words' imageability ratings. Further, a word's imageability contributes to the variance of the word's age of acquisition above and beyond form class, suggesting that at the beginning of word learning, imageability might be a driving factor.     

Preference and resistance to change in concurrent variable-interval schedules

Pigeons were trained on a multiple schedule in which separate concurrent schedules were presented in the two components of the schedule. During one component, concurrent variable-interval 40-sec variable-interval 80-sec schedules operated. In the second component, concurrent variable-interval 40-sec variable-interval 20-sec schedules operated. After stable baseline performance was obtained in both components, extinction probe choice tests were presented to assess preference between the variable-interval 40-sec schedules from the two components. The variable-interval 40-sec schedule paired with the variable-interval 80-sec schedule was preferred over the variable-interval 40-sec schedule paired with the variable-interval 20-sec schedule. The subjects were also exposed to several resistance-to-change manipulations: (1) prefeeding prior to the experimental session, (2) a free-food schedule added to timeout periods separating components, and (3) extinction. The results indicated that preference and resistance to change do not necessarily covary.     

Reduced or increased influence of non-pertinent information in patients with schizophrenia?

We tested the ability of 18 patients with schizophrenia and 18 matched controls to filter non-pertinent information in orientation matching tasks. The non-pertinent information consisted of pictures conveying semantic information. The pertinent information consisted of oriented line-segments drawn inside pictures or was represented by the overall orientation of the picture itself. The results showed that non-pertinent information interfered with performance of control subjects in all tasks. In contrast, non-pertinent information interfered with the performance of patients with schizophrenia to the same extent as that of matched controls only when non-pertinent and pertinent information was physically mingled, but not when they were separated. Yet, patients processed non-pertinent information in all experiments, as shown by reversed interference effects when non-pertinent and pertinent information was physically separated. These results suggest a deficit at linking physically distinct visual information in patients with schizophrenia. Additionally, performance was more impaired in patients with schizophrenia than in control subjects when the amount of displayed information increased. The results suggest the coexistence, and a possible relationship between attentional deficits and impairments at linking distinct visual information in patients with schizophrenia.     

Is the acquisition of basic-colour terms in young children constrained?

We investigated whether the learning of colour terms in childhood is constrained by a developmental order of acquisition as predicted by Berlin and Kay [1969 Basic Color Terms (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press)]. Forty-three children, aged between 2 and 5 years and grouped according to language ability, were given two tasks testing colour conceptualisation. Colour comprehension was assessed in a spoken-word-to-colour-matching task in which a target colour was presented in conjunction with two distractor colours. Colour naming was measured in an explicit naming task in which colours were presented individually for oral naming. Results showed that children's knowledge of basic-colour terms varied across tasks and language age, providing little support for a systematic developmental order. In addition, we found only limited support for an advantage for the conceptualisation of primary (red, green, blue, yellow, black, white) compared to non-primary colour terms across tasks and language age. Instead, our data suggest that children acquire reliable knowledge of nine basic colours within a 3-month period (35.6 to 39.5 months) after which there is a considerable lag of up to 9 months before accurate knowledge of the final two colours (brown and grey) is acquired. We propose that children acquire colour term knowledge in two distinct time frames that reflect the establishment of, first, the exterior (yellow, blue, black, green, white, pink, orange, red, and purple) and, second, the interior structure (brown and grey) of conceptual colour space. These results fail to provide significant support for the order predicted by Berlin and Kay, and suggest, instead, that the development of colour term knowledge is largely unconstrained.     

Toward a more pragmatic approach to morality: a critical evaluation of Kohlberg's model

In this article, the authors evaluate L. Kohlberg's (1984) cognitive- developmental approach to morality, find it wanting, and introduce a more pragmatic approach. They review research designed to evaluate Kohlberg's model, describe how they revised the model to accommodate discrepant findings, and explain why they concluded that it is poorly equipped to account for the ways in which people make moral decisions in their everyday lives. The authors outline in 11 propositions a framework for a new approach that is more attentive to the purposes that people use morality to achieve. People make moral judgments and engage in moral behaviors to induce themselves and others to uphold systems of cooperative exchange that help them achieve their goals and advance their interests.     

Patterns of brain-electrical activity during declarative memory performance in 10-month-old infants

This study of infant declarative memory concurrently examined brain-electrical activity and deferred imitation performance in 10-month-old infants. Continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) measures were collected throughout the activity-matched baseline, encoding (modeling) and retrieval (delayed test) phases of a within-subjects deferred imitation task. Infants were divided into two memory performance groups based on the exhibition of ordered-recall after a 24-h delay. Whereas no group differences were found in EEG collected during encoding, performance-group differences in EEG were present during retrieval. Infants who successfully displayed ordered-recall showed a pattern of increasing EEG from baseline to task at anterior temporal scalp locations, whereas infants showing no ordered-recall displayed no changes in EEG from baseline to task. These findings are discussed with respect to the biobehavioral developments underlying declarative memory abilities.     

Who do you look like? Evidence of facial stereotypes for male names

The present research provides evidence that people use facial prototypes when they encounter different names. In Experiment 1, participants created face exemplars for fifteen common male names, subsets of which were endorsed as good examples by a second set of participants. These most typical faces were morphed to create face-name prototypes. In Experiment 2, participants matched one of the names to each of the prototype faces from Experiment 1. Participants’ matching choices showed convergence in naming the prototypes for many of the names. Experiment 3 utilized these same prototypes in a learning task designed to investigate if the face-name associations revealed in Experiment 2 impacted the learnability of the names. Participants learned face-name pairings that had a higher association (based on frequencies from Experiment 2) faster than pairings with a low association. Results suggest a more direct relationship between faces and names than has been previously proposed.