The Roles of Semantic and Phonological Information in Word Production: Evidence from Spanish–English Bilinguals

The research investigated the roles of semantic and phonological processing in word production. Spanish–English bilingual individuals produced English target words when cued with definitions that were also written in English. When the correct word was not produced, a secondary task was performed in which participants rated the ease of pronunciation of a Spanish prime word. We varied the relatedness between target and prime words. In related conditions, the target and prime words were cognates (i.e., similar in meaning and sound), false cognates (i.e., similar in sound, but different in meaning), or noncognates (i.e., similar in meaning, but different in sound). In unrelated conditions, target and primes were dissimilar in sound and meaning. The results showed that participants’ performance was influenced by semantic as well as phonological information. These results provided evidence that semantic as well as phonological information can influence word production, as is predicted by memory models in which representations for semantic and phonological levels of representation are interconnected.     

Power,empowerment and surrender in the context of paediatric spiritual care

The dynamics of ‘surrender’ is here put in dialectic with the dynamics of ‘power’ observed in situation involving children and their caregivers in a paediatric hospital setting. Following a qualitative research method used in practical theology, three case studies are presented and then interpreted in the light of both social sciences and Christian theology/spirituality. In the power/surrender paradox, there will always be a need for discernment for each situation and each encounter if the caregiver wants to better care for the children and continue to acknowledge their contribution to the life experience and wisdom of adults. Power and surrender both need to be embraced in order to grow in a fruitful spiritual life.     

UTILIZATION OF VIDEO MODELING COMBINED WITH SELF‐MONITORING TO INCREASE RATES OF ON‐TASK BEHAVIOR

The study investigated the effectiveness of an intervention package consisting of self‐monitoring and video modeling to increase on‐task behavior during independent seatwork time in math. Four students in either the second or third grade, identified as displaying high rates of off‐task behavior by their classroom teacher, were included in the study. Results showed immediate, large, and durable changes in on‐task behavior for each of the four participants. At baseline, on‐task behavior of the participants while working on independent math assignments was displayed in 47% of the intervals observed. During the intervention, the participants' average rate of on‐task behavior increased to 85% of the intervals observed. Mean Busk and Serlin (1994) effect size for all four participants was 5.60, with a percentage of non‐overlapping data points effect size of 100%. Observations of the participants 3 weeks following the termination of the study showed that the gains in on‐task behavior were maintained. Both teacher and participant feedbacks concerning the use and effectiveness of the intervention package were positive. Results of the investigation suggest that the intervention package may be an effective and socially valid method for addressing off‐task behaviors of students within the classroom. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Let's kōrero (talk): The practice and functions of reminiscing among mothers and children in Māori families

Māori adults recall earlier memories than New Zealand European or Chinese adults, highlighting the importance of memory in Māori culture. In this study, Māori preschool children and their mothers (N = 41) reminisced about a diverse range of past events, including everyday events, the child's birth, cultural rituals and the child's misbehaviour. Mothers also reported how frequently they discussed past events with their children, as well as their level of affiliation with Māori culture. Mothers who reported higher levels of cultural affiliation also reported reminiscing more frequently about a diverse range of past events. Mothers reminisced in more elaborative ways about everyday events with their children compared to birth stories, cultural rituals and misbehaviours. Maternal reminiscing about cultural rituals and misbehaviours, however, along with maternal reminiscing about everyday events and birth stories, were significantly correlated with children's memory across conversations. These results underscore the continued importance of reminiscing about culturally relevant events in Māori culture, and the newfound importance for Māori families of reminiscing about everyday events.     

Experience and Life as Ever‐Present Constraints on Knowledge

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind‐independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others.     

Attentional Bias for Threat: Evidence for Delayed Disengagement from Emotional Faces

The present paper reports three new experiments suggesting that the valence of a face cue can influence attentional effects in a cueing paradigm. Moreover, heightened trait anxiety resulted in increased attentional dwell-time on emotional facial stimuli, relative to neutral faces. Experiment 1 presented a cueing task, in which the cue was either an "angry", "happy", or "neutral" facial expression. Targets could appear either in the same location as the face (valid trials) or in a different location to the face (invalid trials). Participants did not show significant variations across the different cue types (angry, happy, neutral) in responding to a target on valid trials. However, the valence of the face did affect response times on invalid trials. Specifically, participants took longer to respond to a target when the face cue was "angry" or "happy" relative to neutral. In Experiment 2, the cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was increased and an overall inhibition of return (IOR) effect was found (i.e., slower responses on valid trials). However, the "angry" face cue eliminated the IOR effect for both high and low trait anxious groups. In Experiment 3, threat-related and jumbled facial stimuli reduced the magnitude of IOR for high, but not for low, trait-anxious participants.These results suggest that: (i) attentional bias in anxiety may reflect a difficulty in disengaging from threat-related and emotional stimuli, and (ii) threat-related and ambiguous cues can influence the magnitude of the IOR effect.     

Working memory and behavioral inhibition in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): an examination of varied central executive demands,construct overlap,and task impurity

The stop-signal paradigm is the premier metric of behavioral inhibition in contemporary attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) research. The stop-signal paradigm’s choice-reaction time component, however, arguably places greater demands on working memory processes (e.g., controlled-focused attention) relative to alternative inhibition metrics (i.e., go/no-go (GNG) tasks), and consequently obscures conclusions about inhibition and working memory deficits in affected children. The current study, therefore, aimed to determine whether shared variance between stop-signal behavioral inhibition and working memory performance in children with ADHD reflects overlap between the working memory and inhibition constructs or insufficient specificity of the stop-signal paradigm. Fifty-five children (8–12 years) with and without ADHD were administered established phonological (PH) and visuospatial (VS) working memory measures, as well as stop-signal and GNG tasks that vary with respect to demands on controlled-focused attention. Although working memory and GNG performance each uniquely predicted children’s inattention, stop-signal task performance was not a significant predictor of unique variance in inattention, above and beyond variance associated with working memory. Collectively, these findings suggest that performance on the stop-signal task, compared to the GNG task, is confounded by greater demands associated with working memory and consequently reflects an impure estimate of the inhibition construct.     

Diversifying the Social Scientific Study of Religion: The Next 70 Years

Here I argue that we need to diversify the social scientific study of religion and chart a plan for how we are already and will continue to do so. At the time of the 70th anniversary of our association, I reflect on where—as an association—we have come from and where we are going. Our origin story points to an expansive vision for what would become the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), but unfortunately our past has also been marked by an overrepresentation of white male leadership. It was only in 1982 that the society elected its first woman president, Mary Augusta Neal, and only in 2015 that it elected its first person of color, Fenggang Yang. Here, I discuss our hope for a more diverse future: attending to diversity in studies of religion, diversity in the groups of people who are encouraged to study religion, and efforts to translate religion research well to diverse groups of listeners. I share with you pieces of the new SSSR strategic plan, spearheaded in 2018 by Korie Edwards, the first black and woman of color President of the SSSR: particularly the pieces that are most attentive to diversity. I also highlight insights from my own scholarly story about diversity that I have learned through my work with the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University.     

Testing the subtractive pattern of cultural identification

Identity integration, and more specifically, the subtractive pattern of cultural identification, is investigated in this article. This pattern is hypothesized to occur when individuals integrate a new group identity of higher and legitimate status than their original identity, resulting in lower identification with the original group. The first study examined how relative status predicts the subtractive pattern of identification in immigrants living in Canada. Studies 2 and 3—conducted among Kyrgyz and Canadian participants—extended these results by measuring the impact of legitimacy on the subtractive pattern of identification. Results support the hypothesis that the subtractive pattern of identification takes place when the new identity has a higher and legitimate status compared with the original one, highlighting the possible different patterns of identity integration.