The development of language as a function of programmed conditioning

This paper is an extension of an earlier article by the authors concerning procedures for conditioning language behavior in linquistically divergent children. Specifically, this paper deals with the role and importance of response generalization in the development of syntax. The results suggest that the conditioning method used was effective in obtaining the necessary generalization.     

Discourse Before Gender: An Event-Related Brain Potential Study on the Interplay of Semantic and Syntactic Information During Spoken Language Understanding

A study is presented on the effects of discourse–semantic and lexical–syntactic information during spoken sentence processing. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were registered while subjects listened to discourses that ended in a sentence with a temporary syntactic ambiguity. The prior discourse–semantic information biased toward one analysis of the temporary ambiguity, whereas the lexical-syntactic information allowed only for the alternative analysis. The ERP results show that discourse–semantic information can momentarily take precedence over syntactic information, even if this violates grammatical gender agreement rules.     

Formal operations, the imaginary audience and the personal fable

One hundred twenty-nine 6th, 8th, 10th/11th, and 12th graders were administered Enright, Lapsley, and Shukla's Adolescent Egocentrism Scale (AES) and How Is Your Logic?, a Piagetian-based, group-administered, written test of cognitive development. A series of ANOVAs on four scales of the AES (imaginary audience, personal fable, self-in-general, nonsocial) provided partial support for Inhelder and Piaget's, and Elkind's views that adolescent egocentrism is a function of beginning formal operations. Discussion focused on the difficulty of assessing the true thoughts/feelings of persons who are worried how they will appear to others.     

A cognitive-behavioral analysis of parental facilitation of children's social-cognitive problem solving

The present study used a case study framework to examine ways in which parental belief systems and parental teaching strategies interact to enhance children's social-cognitive problem solving and school adjustment. The focus of the investigation was to examine the robustness of several postulated typologies of interrelationship among the key variables, as well as antecedents and consequences of means-ends problem solving exhibited by children. Four intact families with second grade children were observed in the home as they participated in discussion and decision making concerning problematic social situations. The data suggested these major points: Parental behavior was generally consistent with their beliefs; parents could most effectively elicit means-ends verbalizations from children through direct questioning; families differed in the extent to which children's inputs into family decision making were valued and the degree of interparental discord concerning beliefs and strategies. The latter points suggest a reconceptualization of how parental variables can be linked to the development of social-cognitive and behavioral competence in children. Specific implications for theory and recommendations for research are discussed.     

A theoretical framework for evaluation and treatment of the victims of child sexual assault by a nonfamily member

Thirty-seven families whose children were victims of sexual abuse by a nonfamily member were evaluated and treated during a nine-month period. The average age of the children was 5.36 years. The youngest children were boys, and all the adolescents were girls. A theoretical framework adapted from Ferreira's and Byng-Hall's work was developed to assess and treat child victims of sexual molestation and their families. The format consists of three concepts. First, the trauma from sexual abuse, being outside the realm of usual human experience, creates a breach in the family's adaptive and protective shield, including its shared values and beliefs. Second, the trauma has a "derailing" effect on the child's and family's predicted passage through their world. And third, issues that arise as a consequence of disclosure are intimately tied to preexisting family myths and beliefs. Evaluation, treatment, and short-term outcomes are discussed.     

To link or not to link? Empirical guidance for the design of nonlinear text systems

We compared the effectiveness of two versions of the NetBook data model for nonlinear text—one with links and one without. Users who accessed information through specifications based on properties and values alone performed better than users who employed such specifications as well as hypertext links. Protocol analysis revealed that hypertext links were useful when a subject’s specifications were unspecific but correct. However, hypertext could rarely compensate for inaccurate specifications. Design recommendations are included.     

Memory as resistance, and the telling of a dream.

Traditional analytic orientation to memory as subject to repression has overshadowed examination of some of the ego's other activities bearing on memory. The author examines the defensive use of memory with the analytic goal of maximum autonomous access for the patient to the ego's previously unconscious management of intrapsychic conflict. A close scrutiny of an example of this in the form of the telling of a dream explores this resistance process and illustrates a technical approach. Some aspects of this perspective are considered in relation to traditional approaches to dream material. Certain technical priorities for differing clinical settings are discussed.     

Empiricism,fideism and the nature of religious belief

Earlier versions of this paper were read to the Departments of Philosophy at the University of New Brunswick and at Saint Francis Xavier University and to the Canadian Societh for the Study of Religion at Queen’s University, Kingston. The authors wish to thank the participants for their comments.     

Death,Myth and Reality in C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis's life and writings were profoundly shaped by his childhood experience of his mother's death. It is significant that the young hero's dying mother is mentioned at the very beginning of the first book of the Narnia sequence (seeThe Magician's Nephew.)., which in more general terms offers a mythopoeic version of the Christian interpretation of death. Lewis had a keen awareness of the power of myth (he would not have denied that the Christian gospel is myth). However, it was in the experience of the death of his wife (recounted inA Grief Observed) that he felt confronted by reality in a way that shook his faith to its foundations. This article will explore the tension between myth and reality in Lewis's attempts to write, as a Christian, of the experience of death.