Listeners' uses ofum anduh in speech comprehension

Despite their frequency in conversational talk, little is known about how ums and uhs affect listeners' on-line processing of spontaneous speech. Two studies of ums and uhs in English and Dutch reveal that hearing an uh has a beneficial effect on listeners' ability to recognize words in upcoming speech, but that hearing an um has neither a beneficial nor a detrimental effect. The results suggest that um and uh are different from one another and support the hypothesis that uh is a signal of short upcoming delay and um is a signal of a long upcoming delay.     

Strength of evidence, judged probability, and choice under uncertainty

This paper traces, within subjects, the relationship between assessed strength of evidence, judgments of probability, and decisions under uncertainty. The investigation relies on the theoretical framework provided by support theory (Tversky & Koehler, 1994; Rottenstreich & Tversky, 1997), a nonextensional model of judgment under uncertainty. Fans of professional basketball (N = 50) judged the probability that each of eight teams, four divisions, and two conferences would win the National Basketball Association championship. Additionally, participants rated the relative strength of each team, judged the probability that a given team would win the championship assuming a particular pairing in the finals, priced prospects contingent on the winner of the championship, and made choices between chance prospects. The data conformed to the major tenets of support theory, and the predicted relationships between assessed strength of evidence, hypothetical support, judged probabilities, and choices under uncertainty also held quite well.     

The relations between temperament and empathy in 2-year-olds.

The role of infant and toddler temperament in the prediction of empathy in 2-year-old children was examined. Assessments of temperament included reactivity and affect observed at 4 months of age, as well as inhibition at Age 2. Empathy was measured in 2-year-old children's responses to simulations of distress performed by their mothers and by an unfamiliar person. Children showed relatively more concern for the mother's distress, but they were also responsive to unfamiliar victims. Infants who were unreactive and showed little affect also showed less empathy toward the unfamiliar adult almost 2 years later. Inhibition toward an unfamiliar adult (but not toward the mother) at 2 years of age was negatively related to empathy. Inhibited temperament may thus have a major impact on young children's empathy in unfamiliar contexts. Findings also highlight the need to consider early underarousal as another dimension of temperament that may dampen expressions of empathic concern.     

Building Syntactic Structure in Speaking

We investigated how people produce simple and complex phrases in speaking using a newly developed immediate recall task. People read and tried to memorize a target sentence, then read a prime sentence, then did a distractor task involving the prime sentence. Despite the delay and activity between memory and recall, people could still recall the target sentence although the syntactic form of the recalled sentence was influenced by the syntactic form of the prime sentence. This result replicates the syntactic priming effect found with other experimental paradigms. Using this task, we tested how people used abstract syntactic plans to produce simple and complex noun phrases. We found syntactic priming both when targets and prime sentences matched in complexity and when they did not match, suggesting that simple and complex noun phrases are built by the same syntactic routines during speech production.     

Empathic-Cognitive Development in Students of Counseling

Empathy is both crucial to counseling and a desired outcome in higher education. Since the 1960s, many studies have examined the relationship between stages of adult cognitive development and level of empathy, particularly in counselors. Though positive, findings related to this critical research focus have been grounded in small, local samples, leading several investigators to call for a replication using a large, national sample. In response, this study surveyed 340 graduate student members of a large professional counseling association across the United States. Results indicated that more mature forms of thought (according to the Perry scheme) are associated with higher empathy levels (Hogan scale). Implications are drawn for adult development theory, education of counselors, and higher education reform.     

Confidentiality and the counsellor in general practice

The privacy of patients and their need for protection from harm are values respected by all professions. But words are open to interpretation. When counsellors join a multi-disciplinary Team, the variety of attitudes to confidentiality is often not made explicit, but is held within a broad corporate ideology. How then do counsellors protect the patient, and themselves, within the team approach to medical care? What are the consequences if they do not adhere to team norms? It is contended that corporate ideology is the main variable affecting the integration of a confidential counselling service within a medical setting.     

Does infancy matter? predicting social behavior from infant temperament

In this essay we argue that infant temperament, defined as behavioral styles that appear early in life as a direct result of neurobiological factors, plays a significant role in the development and expression of social behavior. Temperament may be studied using a typological or dimensional approach and the relations between early temperament and later behavior can be examined in terms of homotypic or heterotypic continuity. The implication of each of these approaches for understanding the influence of infant temperament on social development is examined. As well, utilizing data from our laboratory, we suggest that under certain circumstances one can predict social behavior by identifying two temperament types in infancy. These types are high reactive/high negative infants and high reactive/high positive infants. A significant proportion of the high reactive/high negative infants display behavioral inhibition and social reticence through the preschool years, whereas a significant proportion of the high reactive/high positive infants display exuberance and positive social interaction through the preschool period.     

Maze learning in Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and normal elderly controls performed a block of 10 trials on a finger maze, followed by a 45-min period during which verbal learning measures were administered. Subjects then performed an additional 10 trials on the original maze, followed by 10 trials on a new maze. The AD patients and a subset of control subjects decreased mean completion time across Blocks 1 and 2, suggesting skill acquisition. Mean time on Block 3 was significantly less than mean time on Block 1, suggesting skill generalization. A subset of controls did not show the above pattern. The results of this study suggest that AD patients are able to acquire and generalize a cognitively mediated perceptual-motor skill.     

Contingencies of Superstition: Self-Generated Rules and Responding During Second-Order Response-Independent Schedules

The Psychological Record - Experimental conditions explored the development of fallacious rules and assessed the rates and durations of superstitious responding by children under the influence of...