The word grouping hypothesis and eye movements during reading

The distribution of landing positions and durations of first fixations in a region containing a noun preceded by either an article (e.g., the soldiers) or a high-frequency 3-letter word (e.g., all soldiers) were compared. Although there were fewer first fixations on the blank space between the high-frequency 3-letter word and the noun than on the surrounding letters (and the fixations on the blank space were shorter), this pattern did not occur when the noun was preceded by an article. R. Radach (1996) inferred from a similar experiment that did not manipulate the type of short word that 2 words could be processed as a perceptual unit during reading when the first word is a short word. As this different pattern of fixations is restricted to article-noun pairs, it indicates that word grouping does not occur purely on the basis of word length during reading; moreover, as the authors demonstrate, one can explain the observed patterns in both conditions more parsimoniously without adopting a word-grouping mechanism in eye movement control during reading.     

Decline in life satisfaction in old age: longitudinal evidence for links to distance-to-death

Using 12-year longitudinal data from deceased participants of the Berlin Aging Study (N = 414; age 70-103 years, at first occasion; M = 87 years, SD = 8.13), the authors examined whether and how old and very old individuals exhibit terminal decline in reported life satisfaction at the end of life. Relative to age-related decline, mortality-related decline (i.e., distance-to-death) accounted for more variance in interindividual differences in life satisfaction change and revealed steeper average rates of decline, by a factor of 2. By applying change-point growth models, the authors identified a point, about 4 years before death, at which decline showed a two-fold increase in steepness relative to the preterminal phase. For the oldest old (85+ years), a threefold increase was observed. Established mortality predictors, including sex, comorbidities, dementia, and cognition, accounted for only small portions of interindividual differences in mortality-related change in life satisfaction. The authors conclude that late-life changes in subjective well-being are related to mechanisms predicting death and suggest routes for further inquiry.     

Cognitive control of sequential knowledge in 2-year-olds: evidence from an incidental sequence-learning and -generation task

Under incidental instructions, thirty-eight 2-year-olds were trained on a six-element deterministic sequence of spatial locations. Following training, subjects were informed of the presence of a sequence and asked to either reproduce or suppress the learned material. Children's production of the trained sequence was modulated by these instructions. When asked to suppress the trained sequence, the children were able to increase generation of paths that were not from the training sequence. Their performance was thus dependent on active suppression of knowledge, rather than on a random generation strategy. This degree of control in 2-year-olds stands in stark contrast to 3-year-olds' failure to control explicitly instructed rule-based knowledge (as measured by the dimensional-change card-sort task). We suggest that the incidental nature of a learning episode enables the acquisition of a more procedural form of knowledge with which this age group has more experience prior to the onset of fluent language.     

Judgments of voluntary and physical causes in causal chains: probabilistic and social functionalist criteria for attributions

Four experiments investigated judgments about voluntary human actions and physical causes that were embedded in causal chains ending in negative outcomes (e.g., a forest fire). Causes were judged for their explanatory quality, their effect on the probability of the outcome, and the extent to which they could be socially controlled. Results supported legal theorists' claim that voluntary actions are judged better explanations than physical causes. Indices derived from theories of probability change generally failed to predict the preference for voluntary actions. In contrast, this preference was mediated by the perceived extent to which voluntary versus physical causes may be brought under social control. These results suggest that causal explanation, at least within causal chains, is not driven solely by changes in the probability of an outcome when a cause is added, and that observers recognize the potential social function of explanations in drawing attention to socially controllable causes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Detection theory analysis of scaling and discrimination tasks: responses to noxious thermal stimuli

This study's main purpose was to examine the sensitivity estimates obtained from scaling and discrimination approaches for nociception assessment in healthy individuals. This investigation may inform future applications in diagnostic procedures for painful conditions. Models of psychophysical judgment based on those of Durlach and Braida (1969), Laming (1984), and Irwin and Whitehead (1991) were used as the common analytical framework. Noxious thermal contact stimuli were used. The results show that the scaling approach produced lower detection theory sensitivity estimates than did the discrimination approach. The additional judgment variance in scaling tasks could explain this lowered sensitivity. The relative judgmental variance value of 2.18 obtained in this study is lower than variance values found i n previous investigations. This discrepancy i s probably due to the relatively smaller stimulus range employed in this study. The authors propose that the theoretical framework used in this study may be used in future studies to investigate the different dimensions of pain perception.     

An examination of the factor structure of the Social Skills Rating System parent elementary form

Although previous studies have questioned the factor structure of the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), it continues to be one of the most prominent measures used to assess child social skills. Previous examinations of the SSRS have been conducted on samples that differ demographically from the standardization sample. The present study presents a factor analysis of the SSRS parent elementary form, social skills domain, in a sample of 298 non-referred children. Similar to previous research, the factor structure proposed by the authors of the SSRS was not replicated. An alternative 2-factor model based on previous research also did not adequately fit the data. Other psychometric properties, such as the range of inter-item correlations, were evaluated and did not meet suggested guidelines for test construction. Despite its psychometric difficulties, the SSRS was related to history of treatment for peer difficulties.     

Influence of typical size of objects in a categorization task]

This study explores the influence of typical size during a categorization task. The specificity of this experimental work is based on the homogeneity of the graphic stimuli size. We have created a typical size standard of our stimuli, that concerns the real size of the objects represented by the drawings of homogeneous sizes. Then, a priming experiment was performed in which the prime and target drawings had two types of relations: a typical size, and a categorial. The participants are na?ve as to the typical size relation between prime and target. The results show a positive priming effect of the typical size but not of the category. The results are discussed in term of theoretical approach developed by Barsalou and his colleagues (1999, 2003). In this theoretical framework, the typical size can be considered as a perceptual knowledge. In that way, we propose that participants could automatically simulate the typical size as soon as they perceived the drawings of objects with homegenous sizes.