Constructions as categories of language

What causes children to categorize distinct utterances they hear into a constructional generalization? That is, what makes subjects create a constructional category instead of treating each utterance as a distinct unrelated idiom? One simple factor that encourages the learning of abstract categories is shared concrete similarity. When instances share concrete attributes, learners are more likely to categorize them together, and moreover are more likely to attend to their abstract commonalities [Gentner, D., & Medina, J. (1998). Similarity and the development rules. Cognition, 66, 236-297; Markman, A.B., & Gentner D. (1993). Splitting the difference: A structural alignment view of similarity. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 517-535]. This paper reports results that confirm the prediction that presentation of items with concrete shared similarity early in training enhances language learning in adults.     

What Happens When Therapists Feel Bored or Anxious? A Qualitative Study of Distracting Self-Awareness and Therapists' Management Strategies

Using a qualitative methodology, we investigated novice and experienced therapists' experiences of and strategies for managing distracting self-awareness. We found that novice therapists were most aware of anxiety and critical self-talk, whereas experienced therapists were most aware of boredom and outside distracters. In addition, although therapists tended to manage distracting self-awareness through self-coaching and refocusing on the client, novice therapists specifically mentioned managing problematic self-awareness through self-disclosure. In contrast, experienced therapists tended to manage problematic self-awareness by using thought stopping techniques. The results provide new avenues for examining therapists' in-session experiences and for investigating the effectiveness of different management strategies.     

Altering the rhythm of target and background talkers differentially affects speech understanding

Three experiments investigated listeners’ ability to use speech rhythm to attend selectively to a single target talker presented in multi-talker babble (Experiments 1 and 2) and in speech-shaped noise (Experiment 3). Participants listened to spoken sentences of the form “Ready [Call sign] go to [Color] [Number] now” and reported the Color and Number spoken by a target talker (cued by the Call sign “Baron”). Experiment 1 altered the natural rhythm of the target talker and background talkers for two-talker and six-talker backgrounds. Experiment 2 considered parametric rhythm alterations over a wider range, altering the rhythm of either the target or the background talkers. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that altering the rhythm of the target talker, while keeping the rhythm of the background intact, reduced listeners’ ability to report the Color and Number spoken by the target talker. Conversely, altering the rhythm of the background talkers, while keeping the target rhythm intact, improved listeners ability to report the Color and Number spoken by the target talker. Experiment 3, which embedded the target talker in speech-shaped noise rather than multi-talker babble, similarly reduced recognition of the target sentence with increased alteration of the target rhythm. This pattern of results favors a dynamic-attending theory-based selective-entrainment hypothesis over a disparity-based segregation hypothesis and an increased salience hypothesis.