Temporal coordination of phonation and articulation in a case of verbal apraxia: A voice onset time study

A study of voice onset time (VOT) in stop production was undertaken in order to investigate the hypothesis that the voicing feature errors in the speech of an apraxic patient (Sands, E. S., Freeman, F. J., & Harris, K. S. 1978. Brain and Language, 6, 97–105) were related to deficits in temporal coordination of phonation and articulation. Results demonstrated that the VOTs of the apraxic subject differed markedly from those of normal subjects. The apraxic productions did not include voicing lead for voiced stops. Lag times for voiced stops were longer than normal, while those for voiceless stops were shorter than normal, yielding a compression of the two categories and a marked overlap.     

Attitudes of secondary school teachers towards prospective school counsellors

A test of attitudes to the place of counsellors in schools was administered to 100 teachers at secondary schools in Manchester. The attitudes were generally favourable, though there was evidence of considerable ignorance about the counsellor's role and also of doubts about confidentiality. More favourable attitudes tended to be held by arts teachers, teachers without children of their own, and teachers who had a degree but no further qualifications.     

Sequence redundancy,rating dimensions,and the exposure effect

Two experiments investigated Zajone’s (1968) hypothesis that mere repeated exposure to stimuli is a sufficient condition to enhance individuals’ attitudes toward those stimuli. In the first experiment, no significant differences in preference were obtained following exposure to high- and low-redundancy sequences of nonsense syllables. In the second study, the effects of repeated exposure were measured along several rating dimensions, revealing significant differences between dimensions. These results were discussed in terms of the limiting conditions of the exposure effect.     

COMBINING STIMULUS FADING,REINFORCEMENT, AND EXTINCTION TO TREAT FOOD REFUSAL

The food refusal of a 6-year-old girl with destructive behavior was treated using stimulus fading, reinforcement, and escape extinction. Intake increased and compliance with prompting procedures remained relatively stable despite the increased consumption requirement.     

Epistemic justification and premise acceptability

In this paper, we want to explore the connection between premises' being acceptable and their being in some sense justified. The equivalence of premise acceptability and justification seems intuitively correct. But to argue for such a connection, we need to analyze the concepts of acceptability and justification. Such an analysis also seems necessary if this equivalence is to advance our understanding of premise acceptability. Following L. J. Cohen, we may say S believes that p when S is disposed to feel it true that p, while S accepts that p when S takes that p as a premise for further deliberation or action. Reasons for belief are reasons for acceptance, and epistemological (as opposed to pragmatic) reasons for acceptance are reason for belief. Following William P. Alston, we may explicate being a justifying reason for belief through the notion of an adequate ground on which the belief is based. In turn, adequacy of ground means that the mechanism grounding the belief is reliable. Given these notions, we may define a concept of justification in terms of presumptive adequacy.     

Directed movements and the body-proportion effect in preschool children's human figure drawing

Drawing a human figure involves mastery over complex planning problems. The variant forms which young children produce may be an index of these. The most common variant is the “tadpole figure” with arms seemingly on the head. It is known that children who spontaneously draw this variant will attach arms correctly to the trunk of an incomplete pre-drawn figure if the head is small, but will attach them to the head if that exceeds the trunk in size. The present study shows that this body-proportion effect cannot be reliably modified by directing the pen to the head or trunk for the purpose of drawing body-parts other than arms; and that the arms are much more subject to the effect than the legs, nose, navel or ears. Experimental analysis of drawing based on completion-tasks can in principle help to bring out, and put under stimulus-control, performance characteristics which cannot reliably be inferred from post-hoc inspection of spontaneous finished products.     

Representation of the cardinality principle: early conception of error in a counterfactual test

There is debate over how the integration of non-verbal quantifying and verbal counting relates to the representation of number principles. A stringent representational test would be one in which a child obeyed a number principle where it ran counter to a characteristic procedure. We devised a test relying on the uniqueness principle for using evidence from a miscount in inferring a counterfactual cardinal number. All the 5-year-olds passed, as did half the preschoolers. Subtests probed associated number-skills. We suggest that a crucial preschool step is to start conceptualising error by categorising relations between counting and miscounting. That step is taken at a similar age to passing a representational theory of mind test but the two were uncorrelated.