ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese elementary to middle school textbooks

In this article, we introduce ESCOLEX, the first European Portuguese children’s lexical database with grade-level-adjusted word frequency statistics. Computed from a 3.2-million-word corpus, ESCOLEX provides 48,381 word forms extracted from 171 elementary and middle school textbooks for 6- to 11-year-old children attending the first six grades in the Portuguese educational system. Like other children’s grade-level databases (e.g., Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971; Corral, Ferrero, & Goikoetxea, Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1009–1017, 2009; Lété, Sprenger-Charolles, & Colé, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 156–166, 2004; Zeno, Ivens, Millard, Duvvuri, 1995), ESCOLEX provides four frequency indices for each grade: overall word frequency (F), index of dispersion across the selected textbooks (D), estimated frequency per million words (U), and standard frequency index (SFI). It also provides a new measure, contextual diversity (CD). In addition, the number of letters in the word and its part(s) of speech, number of syllables, syllable structure, and adult frequencies taken from P-PAL (a European Portuguese corpus-based lexical database; Soares, Comesaña, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, …, Machado, 2010; Soares, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, França, …, Comesaña, in press) are provided. ESCOLEX will be a useful tool both for researchers interested in language processing and development and for professionals in need of verbal materials adjusted to children’s developmental stages. ESCOLEX can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.     

THE USE OF A VERBAL REPRIMAND TO DECREASE RUMINATION IN A CHILD WITH AUTISM

After a pre‐treatment screening analysis suggested that rumination exhibited by a boy with autism occurred in the absence of social consequences, we evaluated the effect of a verbal reprimand contingent on the target behavior via a reversal design. The reprimand reduced rumination to near‐zero levels; we then thinned the reprimand schedule and rumination remained infrequent. Follow‐up data collected 6, 12, and 18 months after initial treatment suggested that intervention effects were maintained. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Functional mapping of left parietal areas involved in simple addition and multiplication. A single‐case study of qualitative analysis of errors

All electrostimulation studies on arithmetic have so far solely reported general errors. Nonetheless, a classification of the errors during stimulation can inform us about underlying arithmetic processes. The present electrostimulation study was performed in a case of left parietal glioma. The patient's erroneous responses suggested that calculation was mainly applied for addition and a combination of retrieval and calculation was mainly applied for multiplication. The findings of the present single‐case study encourage follow up with further data collection with the same paradigm.     

An Argument for Compulsory Vaccination: The Taxation Analogy

I argue that there are significant moral reasons in addition to harm prevention for making vaccination against certain common infectious diseases compulsory. My argument is based on an analogy between vaccine refusal and tax evasion. First, I discuss some of the arguments for compulsory vaccination that are based on considerations of the risk of harm that the non-vaccinated would pose on others; I will suggest that the strength of such arguments is contingent upon circumstances and that in order to provide the strongest defence possible of compulsory vaccination, such arguments need to be supplemented by additional arguments. I will then offer my additional argument for compulsory vaccination: I will argue that in both cases of vaccine refusal and of tax evasion individuals fail to make their fair contribution to important social and public goods, regardless of whether each individual contribution ‘makes a difference’. While fairness considerations have sometimes been used to support a moral duty to vaccinate, they have not been appealed to in order to argue for a legal duty to vaccinate. I will suggest that this is due, among other things, to a misapplication of the principle of the least restrictive alternative in public health. Finally, I will address nine possible objections to my argument.     

The Care and Development of Children Living in Contexts of Poverty

Human development is determined by both genetic and environmental factors, especially during early childhood. Recently, research has indicated that the circumstances surrounding poverty can significantly influence children’s development. In this study, we aimed to measure the developmental level of children living in low-income, rural areas in northern Colombia. A total of 629 children (aged 0–5 years) were assessed using the Battelle Developmental Inventory. Results indicated that 17?% of the participants had a general developmental delay for their age group. This was especially true for scores on cognitive development (35.5?%) and communication (21.5?%). Moreover, the number of children with developmental delay increased at 6 months of age and continued to increase after 1 year in the communication and cognitive domains. The findings of this study suggest that impoverished social contexts—such as the one studied herein—offer opportunities that favor the development of the social domain, but restrict the development of the cognitive domain. Therefore, to promote cognitive development, individuals within children’s environment need to actively and intentionally stimulate them. Thus, there is a need for interventions that will improve environmental conditions; especially those that will help parents improve their caregiving practices and train educational staff to recognize and respond to the stimulation needs of children, especially those developmental domains that are affected by the environment.     

Reply to My Critics: (Re-)Defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - In (Re-)Defining Racism, I offer the first comprehensive examination of the philosophical literature on racism and argue for a new methodological approach that I...     

Social attention across borders: A cross-cultural investigation of gaze cueing elicited by same- and other-ethnicity faces

The gaze-cueing effect is a robust phenomenon which illustrates how attention can be shaped by social factors. In four experiments, the present study explored the interaction between the ethnic membership of the participant and that of the face providing the gaze cue. Firstly, we aimed to further investigate the differential impact of White, Black, and Asian faces on the gaze-cueing effect in White individuals. Secondly, we aimed to explore, for the first time, the impact of faces belonging to different ethnicities on gaze cueing in Chinese participants. The results allowed to rule out alternative accounts and showed that White participants exhibit a gaze-cueing effect for White and Asian faces, but not for Black faces, consistent with previous studies. As regards Chinese participants, the overall findings suggested a stronger gaze-cueing effect for White faces than for Asian faces. The results are discussed with reference to differences in the perceived social status of the various groups, pointing to the need of taking into account different cultural contexts.     

A follow-up study on students attending a university counselling service in Northern Italy

The aims of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness of a university counselling service in Northern Italy, to assess the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of students who used counselling service, and to assess the psychological conditions of the students who ended the counselling after a 4 month follow-up period. The study involved 100 students, who filled out the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), the Brief COPE Inventory, and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). The results showed that who received counselling were positively affected by this experience. The areas of benefit were psychological well-being, coping behaviours, ability to positively reframe problems and less sense of guilt. Additional studies are needed to identify which factors influence the outcomes of university counselling services in Italy. These studies would be important to evaluate the services rendered, upgrade the skills of counsellors and visualise priority areas of need.