The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children's and adults' graded judgements of argument-structure overgeneralization errors

Participants (aged 5-6 yrs, 9-10 yrs and adults) rated (using a five-point scale) grammatical (intransitive) and overgeneralized (transitive causative)(1) uses of a high frequency, low frequency and novel intransitive verb from each of three semantic classes [Pinker, S. (1989a). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]: "directed motion" (fall, tumble), "going out of existence" (disappear, vanish) and "semivoluntary expression of emotion" (laugh, giggle). In support of Pinker's semantic verb class hypothesis, participants' preference for grammatical over overgeneralized uses of novel (and English) verbs increased between 5-6 yrs and 9-10 yrs, and was greatest for the latter class, which is associated with the lowest degree of direct external causation (the prototypical meaning of the transitive causative construction). In support of Braine and Brooks's [Braine, M.D.S., & Brooks, P.J. (1995). Verb argument strucure and the problem of avoiding an overgeneral grammar. In M. Tomasello & W. E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (pp. 352-376). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum] entrenchment hypothesis, all participants showed the greatest preference for grammatical over ungrammatical uses of high frequency verbs, with this preference smaller for low frequency verbs, and smaller again for novel verbs. We conclude that both the formation of semantic verb classes and entrenchment play a role in children's retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors.     

Qualitative Research in Marriage and Family Therapy: Who is in the Interview?

Qualitative interviews are a rich means of gathering information from families. The qualitative interviewer has a choice of interviewing individual family members, multiple family members at the same time, or a combination. The configuration of interviewees is a choice guided by the epistemology of the researcher, research aims, and questions. This article reviews the literature on interviewing different configurations of family members. A content analysis was conducted on articles in the marriage and family therapy literature from 1990 to 2005. Over half of the articles were conducted with individual family members separate from their families. This finding is discussed in the context of the decision regarding whom to interview.     

Discussions of Diversity in a Classroom: A Phenomenological Study of Students in an MFT Training Program

Discussions about diversity, particularly race, gender, religion and spirituality, and sexual orientation, in marriage and family therapy courses can generate emotional responses in students and professors that vary from shame to anger. These discussions are necessary to help students understand diverse families as well as how one’s biases can affect his/her clinical work. Our qualitative study consisted of phenomenological interviews, which focused on discussions of diversity by six students from a marriage and family therapy program. Findings revealed that the ability of students to be aware of and discuss their reactions to these discussions is complex and influenced by their families of origin, their perceptions of other students, their views of the professor, and their race. Teaching implications are discussed in light of these findings.     

Family interventions in psychosis: a scale to measure therapist adherence

The efficacy of family interventions in psychosis is well documented. UK and USA schizophrenia treatment guidelines advocate the practice of family interventions within routine clinical services. However, less attention has been paid to the study of treatment fidelity and the tools used in its assessment. This study reports the inter-rater reliability of a new scale: Family Intervention in Psychosis-Adherence Scale (FIPAS). This measure is designed to assess therapist adherence to the Kuipers et al . (2002) family intervention in psychosis treatment manual. Reliability ratings were based on a sample of thirteen audiotapes drawn from a randomized controlled trial of family intervention. The results indicated that the majority of items of the FIPAS had acceptable levels of inter-rater reliability. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the training and monitoring of the effectiveness of practitioners for family interventions in psychosis.     

Induction with uncertain categories: When do people consider the category alternatives?

These three experiments examined how people make property inferences about exemplars whose category membership is uncertain. Participants were shown two categories and a novel exemplar with a feature that indicated that the exemplar was more likely to belong to one category (target) than to the other (nontarget). Participants then made categorization decisions and property inferences about the novel exemplar. In some conditions, property inferences could be made only by considering both target and nontarget categories. In other conditions, predictions could be based on both categories or on the target category alone. Consistent with previous studies (e.g., Murphy & Ross, 1994, 2005), we found that many people made predictions based only on consideration of the target category. However, the prevalence of such single-category reasoning was greatly reduced by highlighting the costs of neglecting nontarget alternatives and by asking for inferences before categorization decisions. The results suggest that previous work may have exaggerated the prevalence of single-category reasoning and that people may be more flexible in their use of multiple categories in property inference than has been previously recognized.     

Discerning the Relations Between Conversation and Cognition

Although hailing from cognate analytical schools, the contributors to Hedwig te Molder and Jonathan Potter’s edited volume Conversation and Cognition hold a remarkable diversity of views on the nature of “mental states” and their import for the purposes of analyzing naturally occurring interaction. I offer a critical analysis of some of the contributors’ discussions of cognition in social interaction in an effort to clarify some obstinate issues with respect to the meanings of words in our cognitive vocabulary (e.g. “thought” and “realization”) and their identification in analyses of conversation.     

Affective atmospheres

In this paper I reflect on the concept of affective atmospheres in the context of the distinction between affect and emotion that has emerged in recent work on emotion, space and society. The concept of atmosphere is interesting because it holds a series of opposites -- presence and absence, materiality and ideality, definite and indefinite, singularity and generality -- in a relation of tension. To develop this account of atmosphere I juxtapose Marx's materialist imagination with a phenomenology attentive to singular affective qualities. By invoking a material imagination based on the movement and lightness of air, we learn from the former about the turbulence of atmospheres and their indeterminate quality. From the latter, we learn that atmospheres are singular affective qualities that emanate from but exceed the assembling of bodies. As such, to attend to affective atmospheres is to learn to be affected by the ambiguities of affect/emotion, by that which is determinate and indeterminate, present and absent, singular and vague.     

The Price of Pain and the Value of Suffering

ABSTRACT— Estimating the financial value of pain informs issues as diverse as the market price of analgesics, the cost-effectiveness of clinical treatments, compensation for injury, and the response to public hazards. Such valuations are assumed to reflect a stable trade-off between relief of discomfort and money. Here, using an auction-based health-market experiment, we show that the price people pay for relief of pain is strongly determined by the local context of the market, that is, by recent intensities of pain or immediately disposable income (but not overall wealth). The absence of a stable valuation metric suggests that the dynamic behavior of health markets is not predictable from the static behavior of individuals. We conclude that the results follow the dynamics of habit-formation models of economic theory, and thus, this study provides the first scientific basis for this type of preference modeling.     

Framing and Editing Interpersonal Arguments

Since argument frames precede most other arguing processes, argument editing among them, one’s frames may well predict one’s preferred editorial standards. This experiment assesses people’s arguing frames, gives them arguments to edit, and tests whether the frames actually do predict editorial preferences. Modest relationships between argument frames and argument editing appear. Other connections among frames, editing, and additional individual differences variables are more substantial. Particularly notable are the informative influences of psychological reactance. A new theoretical contribution is offered, connecting argument frame research to Erving Goffman’s frame analysis.