Early Verb Learning: How Do Children Learn How to Compare Events?

An important problem verb learners must solve is how to extend verbs. Children could use cross-situational information to guide their extensions; however, comparing events is difficult. In 2 studies, researchers tested whether children benefit from initially seeing a pair of similar events (“progressive alignment”) while learning new verbs and whether this influence changes with age. In Study 1, 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children participated in an interactive task. Children who saw a pair of similar events and then varied events were able to extend verbs at test and differed from a control group; children who saw 2 pairs of varied events did not differ from the control group. In Study 2, events were presented on a monitor. Following the initial pair of events that varied by condition, a Tobii x120 eye tracker recorded 2.5-, 3.5-, and 4.5-year-olds’ fixations to specific elements of events (areas of interest) during the 2nd pair of events, which were the same across conditions. After seeing the pair of events that were highly similar, 2.5-year-olds showed significantly longer fixation durations to agents and to affected objects as compared with the all-varied condition. At test, 3.5-year-olds were able to extend the verb, but only in the progressive alignment condition. These results are important because they show children’s visual attention to relevant elements in dynamic events is influenced by their prior comparison experience, and they show that young children benefit from seeing similar events as they learn to compare events to each other.     

Bilingualism,executive control,and age at diagnosis among people with early‐stage Alzheimer's disease in Wales

The observation of a bilingual advantage in executive control tasks involving inhibition and management of response conflict suggests that being bilingual might contribute to increased cognitive reserve. In support of this, recent evidence indicates that bilinguals develop Alzheimer's disease (AD) later than monolinguals, and may retain an advantage in performance on executive control tasks. We compared age at the time of receiving an AD diagnosis in bilingual Welsh/English speakers (n = 37) and monolingual English speakers (n = 49), and assessed the performance of bilinguals (n = 24) and monolinguals (n = 49) on a range of executive control tasks. There was a non‐significant difference in age at the time of diagnosis, with bilinguals being on average 3 years older than monolinguals, but bilinguals were also significantly more cognitively impaired at the time of diagnosis. There were no significant differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in performance on executive function tests, but bilinguals appeared to show relative strengths in the domain of inhibition and response conflict. Bilingual Welsh/English speakers with AD do not show a clear advantage in executive function over monolingual English speakers, but may retain some benefits in inhibition and management of response conflict. There may be a delay in onset of AD in Welsh/English bilinguals, but if so, it is smaller than that found in some other clinical populations. In this Welsh sample, bilinguals with AD came to the attention of services later than monolinguals, and reasons for this pattern could be explored further.     

Standardization of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory: The prototype standardization method and its rationale

Methods and techniques for the standardization of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI) are reviewed and discussed. Based on the idea of the UT transformation (Tellegen & Ben-Porath, 1992), a general method called prototype standardization is applied to the clinical scales as well as the personality scales of the CPAI. The rationale of the prototype standardization method is explained. Some variations of the basic methodology are suggested and applied to the CPAI. It is demonstrated that the prototype standardization of the CPAI yields desirable psychometric properties such as percentile comparability across scales and preservation of the correlation structures of the scales, even for the personality scales of the CPAI that do not have a homogeneous distributional shape. We conclude that prototype standardization is a useful method for standardizing all kinds of personality inventories consisting of a large number of scales.     

In search of subtypes of Chinese developmental dyslexia

The dual-route model offers a popular way to classify developmental dyslexia into phonological and surface subtypes. The current study examined whether this dual-route model could provide a framework for understanding the varieties of Chinese developmental dyslexia. Three groups of Chinese children (dyslexics, chronological-age controls, and reading-level controls) were tested on Chinese exception character reading, pseudocharacter reading (analogous to English nonword reading), novel word learning, and some phonological and orthographic skills. It was found that Chinese exception character reading and pseudocharacter reading were highly correlated and that orthographic skills was a better predictor of both Chinese exception character and pseudocharacter reading than was phonological skills. More than half (62%) of the children in the dyslexia sample were classified as belonging to the surface subtype, but no children were classified as belonging to the phonological subtype. These results suggested that the lexical and sublexical routes in Chinese are highly interdependent or that there may be only one route from print to speech as suggested by the connectionist models. Chinese dyslexic children generally are characterized as having delays in various phonological and orthographic skills, but some, such as those identified as surface dyslexics in the current study, are more severely impaired.     

A cluster analysis of the circumstances of death in suicides in Hong Kong

Classification of suicides is essential for clinicians to better identify self-harm patients with future suicidal risks. This study examined potential subtypes of suicide in a psychological autopsy sample (N = 148) in Hong Kong. Hierarchical cluster analysis extracted two subgroups of subjects in terms of expressed deliberation assessed by the Beck Suicide Intent Scale (SIS). The first group was associated with charcoal burning suicide, no psychiatric illness, indebtedness, better problem-solving ability, chronic stress, and higher overall SIS scores. The second group was associated with jumping from a height, psychotic disorders, psychiatric treatment, acute stress, and lower overall SIS score. The existence of a substantial cluster of subjects with lower expressed intent and preparation has important implications for the performance of the SIS as a predictive tool. Suicide prevention strategy may have to target potential subgroups with specific approaches.     

Political Conservatism and Anthropomorphism: An Investigation

In the current research, we explore the possibility that politically conservative consumers may anthropomorphize consumer products more than their liberal counterparts. This is possibly because conservatives need to manage uncertainty in the marketplace. One way to do so might be by assigning more human‐like attributes to inanimate products. We test this hypothesis in three studies by measuring (Studies 1 and 2) and manipulating political ideology (Study 3). We find that avoidance of uncertainty (Study 1) and need for order (Study 2) can explain conservatives’ greater anthropomorphism. The effect is stronger for unpredictable than predictable products as the former are associated with greater uncertainty, which conservatives need to manage (Study 3). Also, we report that greater anthropomorphism of products can increase the perceived functionality of the products (Studies 2 and 3), offering implications for marketers. In all, the results offer support for our key hypothesis that conservatives anthropomorphize more; they also provide preliminary support for the role of uncertainty management in conservatives’ greater anthropomorphism of products. In our General Discussion, we discuss alternate explanations for the key effect and present some directions for further research in this area.     

Children living with violence within the family and its sequel: A meta-analysis from 1995–2006

Based on 37 articles published in international refereed journals between 1995 and 2006, this meta-analytical review attempted to study the sequel of children living with family violence. It specifically attempted to identify the overall effect size of family violence on children's adjustment outcomes. Moderators that exerted their effects on the relationship were also studied. The overall effect size generated from the 353 study-level effect sizes was rather small (Z_r = .201). Moderating analysis on study designs, sample sources, child developmental stages and gender did not show significant heterogeneity in effect sizes, while there was significant dispersion in effect sizes among different types of child adjustment outcomes. Results of this study are basically resonant with the meta-analyses of Kitzmann et al. [Kitzmann, K. M., Gaylord, N. K., Holt, A. R., & Kenny, E. D., (2003). Child witnesses to domestic violence: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71, 339–352] and Wolfe et al. [Wolfe, D. A., Crooks, C. V., Lee, V., McIntyre-Smith, A., & Jaffe, P. G., (2003). The effects of children's exposure to domestic violence: A meta-analysis and critique. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 6, 171–187], but add new information in that the report source of family violence was not a significant moderator, while that of child adjustment outcomes was.     

Sensitivity to attachment, alignment, and contrast polarity variation in local perceptual grouping

A number of leading theories (e.g., Grossberg & Mingolla, 1985; Kellman & Shipley, 1991; Rensink & Enns, 1995) commonly assume that perceptual grouping by contour alignment occurs preattentively across reversing contrast polarity elements. We examined this notion in seven visual search experiments. We found that only grouping by attachment supported preattentive visual search and that grouping by contour alignment required attention in order to operate. Both attachment grouping and grouping by contour alignment were sensitive to contrast reversals. Further results showed that contour alignment was a strong grouping cue only among elements with the same contrast sign but that it did not facilitate grouping across reversing contrast. These results suggest that grouping by contour alignment operates only on inputs of consistent contrast polarity.