The production and recognition of typological argumentative text markers

A series of experiments on children and adults were conducted to define the features and workings of argumentative discourse. Oral and written arguments were analyzed for the complexity of the argument support structure and the presence of typological argumentation markers (certainty modals, value judgments, etc.). Subjects were asked to assess the argumentativity of texts that did or did not contain typical argumentation markers. At about age ten, children can produce and recognize a ‘minimal argumentative structure,’ in which the speaker takes a stance and supports it with text that derives its argumentativity from the presence of this stance). However, full mastery of the negotiation process, that involves acknowledgment of the opponent's stance (generally through the use of counterarguments) is not present before the ages of 15 to 16. The minimal argumentative structure continues to develop with age and gain complexity. Certain situations are more conductive to the production of elaborate argumentative discourse, such as a genuinely controversial topic with an unfamiliar adult addressee whose stance is not known and whose reaction is thus unpredictable. Here speakers produce complex arguments while still leaving room for negotiation. Overall, certain argumentation markers can be identified in all argumentative text. these markers can be used to characterize stages of development of argumentative discourse. A number of issues remain unexplored, including: What other (implicit...) devices do speakers use to convince their audience? Why is the capacity to put argumentation in writing acquired at such a late stage of development?     

Contemporary British Quakerism: The relevance of structure and reference to the supernatural for its validity

Contemporary British Quakerism illustrates that the absence of the systématisation of its claims accounts for the reasons why Quakers’ reference to the supernatural is effective in protecting the validity of their beliefs. Examples taken from investigations of other beliefs substantiate the suggestion that examination of the structure of a given religious faith is crucial to our understanding of the processes of its validation. This analysis suggests refinements to existing explanations of processes by which religious beliefs protect their validity.     

Reading isolated words: No evidence for automatic incorporation of the phonetic code

Summary Backward masking with a homophonic mask induces better target recognition than backward masking with a graphemic mask that shares the same letters with the target as the homophonic mask. From this, the existence of automatic prelexical phonological recoding in silent word reading has been inferred. The present experiments, however, show that the advantage of homophonic masks in a backward-masking task only arises if a considerable proportion of the masks are phonologically related to the targets (at least for Dutch). The results are in line with findings of lexical-decision tasks and number-processing tasks, and constitute a further argument for the dominance of the orthographic route over the phonological route in processing isolated written words.     

Chinese participation in the church of Jesus Christ of latter‐day saints (Mormons) in Hong Kong

This paper shows how both intellectual and social factors motivate and sustain Chinese participation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (Mormons) in Hong Kong. The data was collected from February 1996 to November 1997. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding how Chinese Mormons experience their church membership. My results show a positive relation between sustained church participation and pre‐Mormon religious involvement that has points of crucial similarity.     

Metaphysics in Gaston Bachelard's “Reverie”

This paper aims to trace the evolution of Bachelard's thought as he gropes toward a concrete formulation of a philosophy of the imagination. Reverie, the creative daydream, occupies the central position in Bachelard's emerging metaphysic, which becomes increasingly phenomenological in a manner reminiscent of Husserl. This means that although Bachelard does not use Husserlian terms, he appropriates the following features of (Husserlian) phenomenology: 1. a desire to embracket the initial (rationalistic) impulse; and 2. an aspiration to apprehend in its entirety, the creative epiphany of an image. Ultimately, this paper aims to show that there is a sense in which Bachelard's metaphysical concerns in his poetics are an outgrowth of (rather than radical break from) his earlier scientific and epistemological concerns. What results in reverie is an aesthetic intentionality providing a metaphysic of the imagination: the aesthetic object, such as fire or water, is an object only insofar as it enables/calls forth a subject to enter into a receptive, self-aware and cosmic state of being; subject-ness and object-ness are intimately and archetypally intertwined. Bachelard's new poetics results from his transplantation/cross-fertilization of the general epistemology of the new scientific spirit on to/across his aesthetics.     

Associations Among Perceived Autonomy Support,Forms of Self-Regulation,and Persistence: A Prospective Study

According to self-determination theory, when the social context is autonomy supportive, people are motivated to internalize the regulation of important activities, and whereas when the context is controlling, self-determined motivation is undermined. A model that incorporates perceptions of coaches' interpersonal behaviors (autonomy support vs. control), 5 forms of regulation (intrinsic motivation, identified, introjected and external regulation, and amotivation), and persistence was tested with competitive swimmers (N = 369) using a prospective 3-wave design. Analyses using structural equation modeling revealed that experiencing relationships as controlling fostered non–self-determined forms of regulation (external regulation and amotivation). Greater levels of self-determined motivation occurred when relationships were experienced as autonomy supportive. Individuals who exhibited self-determined types of regulation at Time 1 showed more persistence at both Time 2 (10 months later) and Time 3 (22 months later). Individuals who were amotivated at Time 1 had the highest rate of attrition at both Time 2 and Time 3. Introjected regulation was a significant predictor of persistence at Time 2 but became nonsignificant at Time 3. External regulation was not a significant predictor of behavior at Time 2, but became negatively associated with persistence at Time 3. The findings are discussed in light of the determinants of the internalization process and the consequences of different forms of self-regulation for psychological functioning.     

Anxiety sensitivity: the role of conscious awareness and selective attentional bias to physical threat

Selective attentional biases were examined amongst individuals varying in levels of physical anxiety sensitivity. The dot-probe paradigm was used to examine attention towards anxiety symptomatology, social threat and positive words. Stimuli were presented above (unmasked) and below (masked) the level of conscious awareness. High physical anxiety sensitivity was associated with attentional vigilance for anxiety symptomatology words in both unmasked and masked conditions. For positive words, however, those high in anxiety sensitivity were found to avoid such stimuli when they were masked, whereas they exhibited a relative vigilance when unmasked. If the differences between awareness conditions are reliable, then the impact of the automatic vigilance for threat might be modified by conscious attempts to direct attention towards other types of stimuli.     

Repetition priming in music

The authors explore priming effects of pitch repetition in music in 3 experiments. Musically untrained participants heard a short melody and sang the last pitch of the melody as quickly as possible. Each experiment manipulated (a) whether or not the tone to be sung (target) was heard earlier in the melody (primed) and (b) the prime-target distance (measured in events). Experiment 1 used variable-length melodies, whereas Experiments 2 and 3 used fixed-length melodies. Experiment 3 changed the timbre of the target tone. In all experiments, fast-responding participants produced repeated tones faster than nonrepeated tones, and this repetition benefit decreased as prime-target distances increased. All participants produced expected tonic endings faster than less expected nontonic endings. Repetition and tonal priming effects are compared with harmonic priming effects in music and with repetition priming effects in language.     

Sociocultural factors, resilience, and coping: Support for a culturally sensitive measure of resilience

This investigation presents 1) a literature review concerning how adversity and resilience influence the development of youth from diverse cultural backgrounds; 2) an examination of measures of resilience with regard to cultural factors that relate to the nature of coping and resilience among young adults from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds; and 3) the exploration of aspects of cultural resilience: childhood stressors, global coping, adaptive coping, maladaptive coping, and sociocultural support. Results for 305 college age women indicated that cultural factors were related to measures of these five aspects of resilience. Childhood stressors were experienced differentially by individuals from different racial/ethnic and social class status backgrounds, supporting proposals that ecological aspects, notably cultural background and experiences, influence the development of resilience. A conceptual framework illustrating how culture contributes to resilience and coping is presented. Implications for the development of a measure of cultural resilience and its usefulness for developmental community interventions are discussed.