Receptive vocabulary and semantic knowledge in children with SLI and children with Down syndrome

Receptive vocabulary and associated semantic knowledge were compared within and between groups of children with specific language impairment (SLI), children with Down syndrome (DS), and typically developing children. To overcome the potential confounding effects of speech or language difficulties on verbal tests of semantic knowledge, a novel task was devised based on picture-based semantic association tests used to assess adult patients with semantic dementia. Receptive vocabulary, measured by word-picture matching, of children with SLI was weak relative to chronological age and to nonverbal mental age but their semantic knowledge, probed across the same lexical items, did not differ significantly from that of vocabulary-matched typically developing children. By contrast, although receptive vocabulary of children with DS was a relative strength compared to nonverbal cognitive abilities (p < .0001), DS was associated with a significant deficit in semantic knowledge (p < .0001) indicative of dissociation between word-picture matching vocabulary and depth of semantic knowledge. Overall, these data challenge the integrity of semantic-conceptual development in DS and imply that contemporary theories of semantic cognition should also seek to incorporate evidence from atypical conceptual development.     

Conscious Vision in Action

It is natural to assume that the fine‐grained and highly accurate spatial information present in visual experience is often used to guide our bodily actions. Yet this assumption has been challenged by proponents of the Two Visual Systems Hypothesis (TVSH), according to which visuomotor programming is the responsibility of a “zombie” processing stream whose sources of bottom‐up spatial information are entirely non‐conscious (Clark, 2007, 2009; Goodale & Milner, 1992, 2004a; Milner & Goodale, 1995/2006, 2008). In many formulations of TVSH, the role of conscious vision in action is limited to “recognizing objects, selecting targets for action, and determining what kinds of action, broadly speaking, to perform” (Clark, 2007, p. 570). Our aim in this study is to show that the available evidence not only fails to support this dichotomous view but actually reveals a significant role for conscious vision in motor programming, especially for actions that require deliberate attention.     

Conceptual complexity and the bias/variance tradeoff

In this paper we propose that the conventional dichotomy between exemplar-based and prototype-based models of concept learning is helpfully viewed as an instance of what is known in the statistical learning literature as the bias/variance tradeoff. The bias/variance tradeoff can be thought of as a sliding scale that modulates how closely any learning procedure adheres to its training data. At one end of the scale (high variance), models can entertain very complex hypotheses, allowing them to fit a wide variety of data very closely—but as a result can generalize poorly, a phenomenon called overfitting. At the other end of the scale (high bias), models make relatively simple and inflexible assumptions, and as a result may fit the data poorly, called underfitting. Exemplar and prototype models of category formation are at opposite ends of this scale: prototype models are highly biased, in that they assume a simple, standard conceptual form (the prototype), while exemplar models have very little bias but high variance, allowing them to fit virtually any combination of training data. We investigated human learners’ position on this spectrum by confronting them with category structures at variable levels of intrinsic complexity, ranging from simple prototype-like categories to much more complex multimodal ones. The results show that human learners adopt an intermediate point on the bias/variance continuum, inconsistent with either of the poles occupied by most conventional approaches. We present a simple model that adjusts (regularizes) the complexity of its hypotheses in order to suit the training data, which fits the experimental data better than representative exemplar and prototype models.     

Protean and boundaryless careers: An empirical exploration

While the constructs of protean and boundaryless careers have informed career theory for years, rigorous empirical examinations of these career models have lagged behind. This study seeks to redress this situation by constructing and developing four new scales to measure protean and boundaryless career attitudes. The scales related to protean career attitudes measure self-directed career management and values-driven predispositions. The scales related to boundaryless career attitudes measure boundaryless mindset and organizational mobility preference. The initial validation of these scales, consisting of three studies, demonstrates their reliability and validity.     

Bodily awareness and novel multisensory features

According to the decomposition thesis, perceptual experiences resolve without remainder into their different modality-specific components. Contrary to this view, I argue that certain cases of multisensory integration give rise to experiences representing features of a novel type. Through the coordinated use of bodily awareness—understood here as encompassing both proprioception and kinaesthesis—and the exteroceptive sensory modalities, one becomes perceptually responsive to spatial features whose instances couldn’t be represented by any of the contributing modalities functioning in isolation. I develop an argument for this conclusion focusing on two cases: 3D shape perception in haptic touch and experiencing an object’s egocentric location in crossmodally accessible, environmental space.

     

Protean career attitudes during unemployment and reemployment: A longitudinal perspective

This 3-wave, 12-month longitudinal study investigated how protean career orientation (PCO) influences unemployed people's self-esteem, job search activity, employment perceived job improvement and perceived career growth over time. Panel data analysis with a sample of 186 people revealed that PCO was significantly associated with increased self-esteem, job search activity and reemployment. The effect of self-esteem on job search activity was mediated by PCO. PCO was significantly associated with job improvement and career growth once reemployed and the relationship between PCO and career growth was mediated by job improvement. PCO declined once participants become reemployed. Implications for how career counselors can develop career transitions programs that facilitate a PCO are presented.     

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY1

Etude interculturelle de la notion de responsabilité. — Le but de cette recherche est de comparer quel est le degré de responsabilité attribué à une personne par des enfants de trois nationalités différentes : Cuba, Porto Rico, USA. Dans chaque pays, quatre échantillons ont été constitués selon l'âge : 7–8, 9–10, 11–13 et 16–18 ans. Les enfants répondent à un questionnaire composé de 40 courtes histoires dans lesquelles on a fait varier : 1) la part prise par la personne dans la causalité des événements (5 degrés : simple association, implication directe, prévision, intention, justification); 2) la nature, bonne ou mauvaise, des conséquences; 3) l'importance, grande ou faible, des conséquences. Les résultats montrent que les degrés de causalité, la nature et l'importance des conséquences affectent grandement le niveau de responsabilité attribué, à tous les âges et dans les trois pays; on observe également des interactions significatives entre ces variables. Conformément à l'hypothèse, le degré de responsabilité attribué croît avec l'intentionalité et décroît avec la justification; il est généralement plus élevé lorsque les conséquences sont plus importantes et, de même, lorsque les conséquences sont néfastes. Cependant, les interactions significatives qu'on peut observer indiquent que Peffet de chacune des variables est, à quelque degré, influencé par les deux autres. La nationalité entraîne un effet global significatif pour un seul âge; mais elle est en interaction avec les variables liées à la causalité et aux conséquences dans tous les groupes. En général, les sujets latins (Cubains et Portoricains) font des distinctions plus fines que les Américains entre les degrés de causalité lorsque les conséquences sont bénéfiques; ceci est particulierement apparent pour les sujets les plus jeunes. II est difficile d'interpréter les différences entre nationalités : la meilleure explication reléve sans doute des différences dans les relations familiales et dans la maniere d'élever les enfants.     

Career transitions and their causes: A country‐comparative perspective

This empirical paper investigates how individuals conceptualize causes of career transitions, focusing on the three European countries of Austria, Serbia, and Spain in comparison to the USA and China. Collectively, these countries represent four separate cultural regions according to Schwartz. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with members of three occupational groups: business people, nurses, and blue‐collar workers. Analysis of the data generates greater insight about the existence of both region‐specific patterns as well as potentially universalistic tendencies regarding perceived causes of career transitions. Perceptions of internal (to the person) drivers of career transitions as activating forces are evident in all five countries. The overall results support contemporary notions of occupational careers that are highly individualized, a characterization strongly emphasized in the current career literature. In the European culture clusters, causes of career transitions are attributed internally and externally. China, representing the Confucian cultural region, stresses external causes for career transitions. By contrast, in the USA only internal attributions of causes are reported.