Young children's comprehension of English SVO word order revisited: Testing the same children in act-out and intermodal preferential looking tasks

Act-out and intermodal preferential looking (IPL) tasks were administered to 67 English children aged 2–0, 2–9 and 3–5 to assess their comprehension of canonical SVO transitive word order with both familiar and novel verbs. Children at 3–5 and at 2–9 showed evidence of comprehending word order in both verb conditions and both tasks, although children at 2–9 performed better with familiar than with novel verbs in the act-out task. Children at 2–0 showed no evidence of comprehending word order in either task with novel verbs; with familiar verbs they showed competence in the IPL task but not in the act-out task. The difference in performance for familiar and novel verbs from the same children at 2–0, on the IPL task, and at 2–9, on the act-out task, is consistent with the hypothesis that early linguistic/cognitive representations are graded in strength, with early representations still weak and very task dependent. However, these representations also become more abstract with development, as indicated by the familiarity effect even in the more sensitive IPL task.     

Are number gestures easier than number words for preschoolers?

Some researchers have argued that children's earliest symbols are based on their sensorimotor experience and that arbitrary symbol-referent mapping poses a challenge for them. If so, exposure to iconic symbols (such as one-finger-for-one-object manual gestures) might help children in a difficult domain such as number. We assessed 44 preschoolers’ processing of number gestures and number words on two tasks: give-a-number and how-many. Children were generally more accurate when mapping number words than number gestures onto a number of toys, suggesting that the iconicity of number gestures does not help children map symbols to numbers. We argue that children learn number gestures as arbitrary symbols and do not take advantage of their iconicity.     

Exploring the Interface Between Religion and Contact with the Dead Among Older Mexican Americans

The purpose of the current study is to examine the relationship between religion and post death contact among older Mexican Americans. Four major themes emerged from 52 in-depth interviews that were conducted with Older Mexican Americans residing in Texas. First, many older study participants told us they had contact with the dead, but others indicated this was not possible. Second, the form in which contact with the dead was made varied greatly. Some older Mexican Americans reported they had visual contact with the dead, while others said they only made contact with the dead through dreams. Third, although some older Mexican American study participants believed that it was in the best interests of the dead to contact the living, others felt the dead should instead be in Heaven with God. Fourth, the participants in our study reported that having contact with the dead provides a number of important social and psychological benefits. In the process of discussing these themes, an emphasis is placed on how beliefs and experiences with the dead interface with religion. In addition, we also explore how post death contact may be associated with health and well-being in late life.     

The Responsible Subject in the Global Age

The first thesis of this article is that the concept of responsibility takes on an unprecedented meaning in the twentieth century resulting from the emergence of a new dimension of the other: to be responsible comes to mean not just to account for oneself in relation to the other, but also to take the other into account, to take care of the other—what I call responsibility towards (the other). The main reason for this change consists in the emergence of global risks and the necessity, as underlined by Hans Jonas, to be responsible for the destiny of the world and future generations. The problem, as explored in the article’s second thesis, is that this implies the existence of a subject who is capable of responsibility. Jonas’s insights on this point are insufficient, since he only recognizes duty as the fundament for his ethics of responsibility and thus neglects the problem of motivation. This is a particularly crucial problem today as we are witnessing the presence of a pathological subject, characterized by a split in his faculties (between doing and imagining, knowing and feeling). To underline this fact, this article makes use of Günther Anders’s reflections, which provide a psycho-anthropological analysis of the subject, showing his pathologies and the necessity, from a moral perspective, to overcome his scission. Finally, this author suggests, as the article’s third thesis, that this overcoming is the necessary fundament for the perception of risk, which in turn reinstates the subject’s perception of his own vulnerability. Responsibility thus finds a motivation, which is neither altruistic nor duty-centred, in the awareness of our own vulnerability and the bond with the destiny of humankind as a whole.     

Understanding Youth Smoking Behavior Through Modeling the Smoking Decision Process: Lessons Learned From a Developing Country1

The prevalence of youth smoking is well reported in the literature. However, most research so far has been conducted in developed countries, leaving the incidence of youth smoking in developing and less developed countries unexplored and to the mercy of the tobacco industry. The present study forms a prototype called the smoking decision process model on youth smoking behavior, which draws from existing literature. Through this model, researchers, health practitioners, and anti‐smoking activist groups in various parts of the developing world can acquire a more holistic view of the factors behind youth smoking behavior in their respective societies and, in turn, focus on the most appropriate means to combat smoking. A case study application of the model is presented in this study, involving Cypriot youth 12 to 18 years of age.     

Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) for HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorders

Neuropsychology Review - This study aims to systematically review the evidence on the accuracy of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test for diagnosing HIV–associated neurocognitive...     

Language experience influences audiovisual speech integration in unimodal and bimodal bilingual infants

Infants as young as 2 months can integrate audio and visual aspects of speech articulation. A shift of attention from the eyes towards the mouth of talking faces occurs around 6 months of age in monolingual infants. However, it is unknown whether this pattern of attention during audiovisual speech processing is influenced by speech and language experience in infancy. The present study investigated this question by analysing audiovisual speech processing in three groups of 4‐ to 8‐month‐old infants who differed in their language experience: monolinguals, unimodal bilinguals (infants exposed to two or more spoken languages) and bimodal bilinguals (hearing infants with Deaf mothers). Eye‐tracking was used to study patterns of face scanning while infants were viewing faces articulating syllables with congruent, incongruent and silent auditory tracks. Monolinguals and unimodal bilinguals increased their attention to the mouth of talking faces between 4 and 8 months, while bimodal bilinguals did not show any age difference in their scanning patterns. Moreover, older (6.6 to 8 months), but not younger, monolinguals (4 to 6.5 months) showed increased visual attention to the mouth of faces articulating audiovisually incongruent rather than congruent faces, indicating surprise or novelty. In contrast, no audiovisual congruency effect was found in unimodal or bimodal bilinguals. Results suggest that speech and language experience influences audiovisual integration in infancy. Specifically, reduced or more variable experience of audiovisual speech from the primary caregiver may lead to less sensitivity to the integration of audio and visual cues of speech articulation.     

Acoustic differences between humorous and sincere communicative intentions

Previous studies indicate that the acoustic features of speech discriminate between positive and negative communicative intentions, such as approval and prohibition. Two studies investigated whether acoustic features of speech can discriminate between two positive communicative intentions: humour and sweet‐sincerity, where sweet‐sincerity involved being sincere in a positive, warm‐hearted way. In Study 1, 22 mothers read a book containing humorous, sweet‐sincere, and neutral‐sincere images to their 19‐ to 24‐month‐olds. In Study 2, 41 mothers read a book containing humorous or sweet‐sincere sentences and images to their 18‐ to 24‐month‐olds. Mothers used a higher mean F0 to communicate visual humour as compared to visual sincerity. Mothers used greater F0 mean, range, and standard deviation; greater intensity mean, range, and standard deviation; and a slower speech rate to communicate verbal humour as compared to verbal sweet‐sincerity. Mothers used a rising linear contour to communicate verbal humour, but used no specific contour to express verbal sweet‐sincerity. We conclude that speakers provide acoustic cues enabling listeners to distinguish between positive communicative intentions.