Agonistic and sociable behaviors in the mound‐building mice,Mus spicilegus: A comparative study with Mus musculus domesticus

Present social organization and mating systems result from selective pressures and ecological conditions but also from proximate interactions between individuals. Many studies report on a polygynous mating system with a social group territoriality in commensal populations of Mus musculus domesticus. However, little is known about the social organization of other Mus species living in outdoor conditions, such as the mound‐building mouse Mus spicilegus. Comparative studies between M. m. domesticus and M. spicilegus have already shown behavioral differences in female sexual preferences and paternal care. To study agonistic and sociable interactions and gain insight into the social organization and the mating system of M. spicilegus, the present study compared intraspecific dyadic encounters between unfamiliar adults in these two species. Results demonstrated less tolerance between females and between the sexes in M. spicilegus than in M. m. domesticus unfamiliar mice. The consequences of those differences between M. spicilegus and M. m. domesticus on social organization and mating system are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 28:75–84, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Age and Education Differences in Marriages and their Effects on Life Satisfaction

Within marriages husbands typically tend to be older and higher educated than their wife. This paper tries to explain this by analyzing whether age and education differences between spouses have an effect on happiness. Two alternative hypotheses are tested on the relation between age and education gaps between partners and life satisfaction. It is found that a positive age gap between husband and wife increases both male and female life satisfaction, while female life satisfaction increases if the education gap is smaller.     

Prosodic structure and syntactic acquisition: the case of the head‐direction parameter

We propose that infants may learn about the relative order of heads and complements in their language before they know many words, on the basis of prosodic information (relative prominence within phonological phrases). We present experimental evidence that 6–12‐week‐old infants can discriminate two languages that differ in their head direction and its prosodic correlate, but have otherwise similar phonological properties (i.e. French and Turkish). This result supports the hypothesis that infants may use this kind of prosodic information to bootstrap their acquisition of word order.     

Learned associability and associative change in human causal learning.

The Mackintosh (1975) model of associative learning specifies that processing of both the cues presented on a trial and the outcome of that trial will interact to determine the amount of associative change undergone by a given cue. Experiments looking at the distribution of associative change among the elements of a reinforced compound in animal conditioning studies indicate that processing of the outcome of a trial does indeed influence associative change. The work reported here investigates the distribution of associative change among the elements of a reinforced compound in a human causal judgement paradigm, and it indicates that processing of the cues presented on a trial also plays a role in determining associative change (in terms of changes in the associability of cues as a result of experience). Taken in combination, these results provide good support for Mackintosh (1975) and the characterizations of both cue and outcome processing that it offers.     

Can we disregard the whole model? Omnibus non-inferiority testing for R2 in multi-variable linear regression and in ANOVA

Determining a lack of association between an outcome variable and a number of different explanatory variables is frequently necessary in order to disregard a proposed model (i.e., to confirm the lack of a meaningful association between an outcome and predictors). Despite this, the literature rarely offers information about, or technical recommendations concerning, the appropriate statistical methodology to be used to accomplish this task. This paper introduces non-inferiority tests for ANOVA and linear regression analyses, which correspond to the standard widely used F test for and R², respectively. A simulation study is conducted to examine the Type I error rates and statistical power of the tests, and a comparison is made with an alternative Bayesian testing approach. The results indicate that the proposed non-inferiority test is a potentially useful tool for ‘testing the null’.     

Perceptual adjustment to time-compressed speech: A cross-linguistic study

Previous research has shown that, when hearers listen to artificially speeded speech, their performance improves over the course of 10–15 sentences, as if their perceptual system was “adapting” to these fast rates of speech. In this paper, we further investigate the mechanisms that are responsible for such effects. In Experiment 1, we report that, for bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish, exposure to compressed sentences in either language improves performance on sentences in the other language. Experiment 2 reports that Catalan/Spanish transfer of performance occurs even in monolingual speakers of Spanish who do not understand Catalan. In Experiment 3, we study another pair of languages— namely, English and French—and report no transfer of adaptation between these two languages for English—French bilinguals. Experiment 4, with monolingual English speakers, assesses transfer of adaptation from French, Dutch, and English toward English. Here we find that there is no adaptation from French and intermediate adaptation from Dutch. We discuss the locus of the adaptation to compressed speech and relate our findings to other cross-linguistic studies in speech perception.     

A methodological study in a space flight simulation context]

To study the effects of isolation and confinement on small groups during long space flights, it is habitual to use closed hyperbaric ground chambers. For the first time, the European Space Agency made use of a nautral environment taking advantage of an Antarctic winter-over at the French Dumont d'Urville Station. The main objective of that study ("International Antarctic Psychological Programme"), was to compare different Russian tests used for training cosmonauts to a W. European approach validated during previous winter studies and European ground chamber simulations. Russian techniques appeared to be oriented to a narrow range of phenomena and unsuited to discern the adjustment to stress conditions.