Language specific prosodic preferences during the first half year of life: Evidence from German and French infants

There is converging evidence that infants are sensitive to prosodic cues from birth onwards and use this kind of information in their earliest steps into the acquisition of words and syntactic regularities of their target language. Regarding word segmentation, it has been found that English-learning infants segment trochaic words by 7.5 months of age, and iambic words only by 10.5 months of age [Jusczyk, P. W., Houston, D. M., & Newsome, M. (1999). The beginnings of word segmentation in English-learning infants. Cognitive Psychology, 39, 159–207]. The question remains how to interpret this finding in relation to results showing that English-learning infants develop a preference for trochaic over iambic words between 6 and 9 months of age [Jusczyk, P. W., Cutler, A., & Redanz, N. (1993). Preference for the predominant stress patterns of English words. Child Development, 64, 675–687]. In the following, we report the results of four experiments using the headturn preference procedure (HPP) to explore the trochaic bias issue in German- and French-learning infants. For German, a trochaic preference was found at 6 but not at 4 months, suggesting an emergence of this preference between both ages (Experiments 1 and 2). For French, 6-month-old infants did not show a preference for either stress pattern (Experiment 3) while they were found to discriminate between the two stress patterns (Experiment 4). Our findings are the first to demonstrate that the trochaic bias is acquired by 6 months of age, is language specific and can be predicted by the rhythmic properties of the language in acquisition. We discuss the implications of this very early acquisition for our understanding of the emergence of segmentation abilities.     

No evidence for object alternation impairment in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Recent neuroimaging studies have consistently ascribed the orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Cognitive tests presumed sensitive to this region, such as the Object Alternation Task (OAT), are considered important tools to verify this assumption and to investigate the impact of cortical dysfunction on behavior. The aim of the present study was to assess if patients with OCD show enhanced perseveration errors on the OAT relative to healthy controls taking into account several potential moderators, especially comorbid depression and OCD subtype. Thirty-five OCD patients and 18 healthy controls underwent the OAT as well as the Trail-Making Tests (TMT) A and B. In line with prior studies, OCD patients were slowed on both TMT tasks. In contrast, samples performed similarly on the OAT. While the latter finding does not invalidate the assumption that the OFC is affected in OCD, dysfunctions involving this region may be more subtle than often claimed and likely encompass only a small subset of functional domains hosted in the OFC.     

Sexual Consent in Heterosexual Relationships: Development of a New Measure

The extensive research on date rape attitudes and experiences has left sexual consent itself largely unexamined. The objective of this study was to develop a measure to assess women’s and men’s attitudes and behaviors regarding sexual consent. Using both focus groups (N = 18) and a mail survey (N = 514) of undergraduate students at a Canadian university, two scales of sexual consent were developed: (1) a Sexual Consent Attitudes Scale, and (2) a Sexual Consent Behaviors Scale. Preliminary psychometric evidence suggested good reliability and validity. As hypothesized, women, more than men, preferred a more cautious approach to sexual consent by stressing the need to obtain consent more explicitly. Multiple regression analyses supported a reciprocal relationship between sexual consent attitudes and sexual consent behaviors.     

In the Eyes of the Beholder: Personality and the Perception of Leadership1

This series of studies focuses on the extent to which the personality of followers is related to their perception of transformational leadership. Followers from 3 different companies and students from a Dutch university were questioned on their personality characteristics and their perception of a described leader (students) or the perception of their actual leader (employees). Although the results differ for the different samples, we found a relationship between followers' personality and the perception of transformational leadership for all of the different samples. The different relationship that we found may hint to the impact of context on the relationship between personality and the perception of leadership. In the discussion, we explain our results in light of these different contexts.     

The words we work with that work on us: clinical paradigm and cumulative relational trauma

This paper addresses a gap between analytic clinical theory and practice which emerges when examining the words we work with via textual and narrative research of case histories. Both subject matter and methodology fit with the remit of conceptual research in psychoanalysis, currently ranging from inductive to nomothetical approaches. Research of clinical language reveals an implicit account of human nature and the world which undergirds clinical practice. Based in the critical philosophy of the previous century, this is termed clinical paradigm. Such implicit views are induced rather than explicitly taught during analytic training, and need to be spelled out in order to become available to discourse and difference of opinion. Textual research shows these implicit pre‐clinical attitudes to be inherently pessimistic and thus too similar to the views of self and others found in cumulative relational trauma. Moreover, clinical accounts tend to normalize subtly antagonistic forms of relating, recently recognised as micro‐trauma. Importantly, this contravenes the agapic orientation of our theories and ethics. Paradigmatic reflection as a form of professional individuation addresses this gap. This includes a more optimistic outlook which can be traced through the philosophical implications of quantum theory.     

The Role of Simple Semantics in the Process of Artificial Grammar Learning

This study investigated the effect of semantic information on artificial grammar learning (AGL). Recursive grammars of different complexity levels (regular language, mirror language, copy language) were investigated in a series of AGL experiments. In the with-semantics condition, participants acquired semantic information prior to the AGL experiment; in the without-semantics control condition, participants did not receive semantic information. It was hypothesized that semantics would generally facilitate grammar acquisition and that the learning benefit in the with-semantics conditions would increase with increasing grammar complexity. Experiment 1 showed learning effects for all grammars but no performance difference between conditions. Experiment 2 replicated the absence of a semantic benefit for all grammars even though semantic information was more prominent during grammar acquisition as compared to Experiment 1. Thus, we did not find evidence for the idea that semantics facilitates grammar acquisition, which seems to support the view of an independent syntactic processing component.     

Positive schizotypal symptoms predict treatment outcome in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Previous research has suggested that the presence of schizotypal personality disorder may represent a risk factor for treatment failure in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Relying on a dimensional approach, the present study investigated whether the predictive importance of schizotypal personality is shared by all of its features to the same extent or whether it is confined to a subset of symptoms. Fifty-three patients underwent multi-modal cognitive-behavioral therapy with or without adjunctive antidepressive medication. Therapy response was defined as a 35% decline of the Y-BOCS total score. At baseline assessment, patients were asked to fill out the schizotypal personality questionnaire, the perceptual aberration scale and the Beck depression inventory. Stepwise regression analysis and group comparisons conducted with the schizotypal and depression scales revealed that elevated scores in the positive schizotypal scales, especially perceptual aberrations, were highly predictive for treatment failure. Responders to treatment and non-responders did not significantly differ on other variables or on scores in two scales which measured response biases. The study provides evidence that positive schizotypal symptoms are antecendents for treatment failure in OCD. It needs to be evaluated whether these at-risk individuals benefit from additional intervention, such as the adminstration of low-dose atypical neuroleptics and specifically tailored behavorial intervention.     

Contiguity and contingency in action-effect learning

According to the two-stage model of voluntary action, the ability to perform voluntary action is acquired in two sequential steps. Firstly, associations are acquired between representations of movements and of the effects that frequently follow them. Secondly, the anticipation or perception of an acquired action effect primes the movement that has been learnt to produce this effect; the acquired action-effect associations thus mediate the selection of actions that are most appropriate to achieve an intended action goal. If action-effect learning has an associative basis, it should be influenced by factors that are known to affect instrumental learning, such as the temporal contiguity and the probabilistic contingency of movement and effect. In two experiments, the contiguity or the contingency between key presses and subsequent tones was manipulated in various ways. As expected, both factors affected the acquisition of action-effect relations as assessed by the potency of action effects to prime the corresponding action in a later behavioral test. In particular, evidence of action-effect associations was obtained only if the effect of the action was delayed for no more than 1 s, if the effect appeared more often in the presence than in the absence of the action, or if action and effect were entirely uncorrelated but the effect appeared very often. These findings support the assumption that the control of voluntary actions is based on action-effect representations that are acquired by associative learning mechanisms.     

Do I get what you get? Learning about the effects of self-performed and observed actions in infancy

The present study investigated whether infants learn the effects of other persons' actions like they do for their own actions, and whether infants transfer observed action-effect relations to their own actions. Nine-, 12-, 15- and 18-month-olds explored an object that allowed two actions, and that produced a certain salient effect after each action. In a self-exploration group, infants explored the object directly, whereas in two observation groups, infants first watched an adult model acting on the object and obtaining a certain effect with each action before exploring the objects by themselves. In one observation group, the infants' actions were followed by the same effects as the model's actions, but in the other group, the action-effect mapping for the infant was reversed to that of the model. The results showed that the observation of the model had an impact on the infants' exploration behavior from 12 months, but not earlier, and that the specific relations between observed actions and effects were acquired by 15 months. Thus, around their first birthday infants learn the effects of other persons' actions by observation, and they transfer the observed action-effect relations to their own actions in the second year of life.