Can Infinitival to Omissions and Provisions Be Primed? An Experimental Investigation Into the Role of Constructional Competition in Infinitival to Omission Errors

An experimental study was conducted on children aged 2;6–3;0 and 3;6–4;0 investigating the priming effect of two WANT‐constructions to establish whether constructional competition contributes to English‐speaking children's infinitival to omission errors (e.g., *I want ___ jump now). In two between‐participant groups, children either just heard or heard and repeated WANT‐to, WANT‐X, and control prime sentences after which to‐infinitival constructions were elicited. We found that both age groups were primed, but in different ways. In the 2;6–3;0 year olds, WANT‐to primes facilitated the provision of to in target utterances relative to the control contexts, but no significant effect was found for WANT‐X primes. In the 3;6–4;0 year olds, both WANT‐to and WANT‐X primes showed a priming effect, namely WANT‐to primes facilitated and WANT‐X primes inhibited provision of to. We argue that these effects reflect developmental differences in the level of proficiency in and preference for the two constructions, and they are broadly consistent with “priming as implicit learning” accounts. The current study shows that (a) children as young as 2;6–3;0 years of age can be primed when they have only heard (not repeated) particular constructions, (b) children are acquiring at least two constructions for the matrix verb WANT, and (c) that these two WANT‐constructions compete for production.     

Body language and metaphors revealed through applications of Movement Psychotherapy in a hospice: A clinical case of refractory pruritis

Movement psychotherapy (MP), and dance/movement therapy (DMT), are body-orientated psychotherapy approaches that use movement for the integration of emotional, cognitive, physical, social and spiritual aspects of self (European Association Dance Movement Therapy, 2010). It is distinctively a combination of moving and sensing the body with verbal self-reflection (Bloom, 2006). Several papers have presented DMT as a treatment in general medical care and cancer care, but there is still a paucity of evidence-based studies. The authors describe a clinical case illustrative of many of the situations in which facing death was particularly tormenting. The emotional pressure can produce a barrier of communication with the risk of rupturing the therapeutic relationship. The movement therapist’s function is to clarify the elements of body language and this has important implications for clinical practice because the end-of-life decisions are difficult, like palliative sedation therapy (PST). Even if procedural guidelines for PST help physicians and care teams through the decision-making process and make them more comfortable when responding to physical suffering, physicians more frequently report an emotional pressure when their patients experience psychological symptoms, with the risk that PST could become a potential “counterphobic defence to treat”.     

Paternal absence and international migration: stressors and compensators associated with the mental health of Mexican teenagers of rural origin

Mexico-U.S. migration creates situations that may cause psychological distress. The purpose of this research project was to study the impact of father's physical absence due to international migration (FPAIM) on adolescent offspring of rural immigrants from Zacatecas, Mexico. Stressors and compensators were studied from the adolescent's perspective and were analyzed using a stress-mediator-consequences theoretical framework. Qualitative (n = 24) and quantitative (n = 310) methodologies were used with a nonrandom sample of adolescents. Results show that the FPAIM is an ambivalent experience for adolescents that has positive and negative elements. Though migrants' children seem to be more vulnerable to psychosocial stress than are the offspring of nonmigrants, gender, not father's absence, appears to be the most important risk factor for psychological distress.     

Macaque monkeys discriminate pitch relationships

This study demonstrates that non-human primates can categorize the direction of the pitch change of tones in a sequence. Two Macaca fascicularis were trained in a positive-reinforcement behavioral paradigm in which they listened to sequences of a variable number of different acoustic items. The training of discriminating pitch direction was divided into three phases with increasing task complexity. In the first two phases, subjects learned to employ a same/different rule. In phase 1, they discriminated acoustic items of different sound quality. Subjects had to respond when there was a change from repeating noise bursts to repeating click trains or vice versa. In phase II, acoustic items differed along one physical dimension only. Subjects had to respond to a change of the frequency of a repeating series of pure tones. In phase III, sequences consisted of three series of repeating tones of different frequency. Subjects were required to respond when the frequency of the tones changed in a downward direction and to refrain from responding when the frequency remained constant or increased. After several ten thousand trials, subjects categorized pitch direction well above chance level. The discrimination was performed over a 4.5-octave range of frequencies and was largely independent of the temporal and ordinal position of the downward pitch direction within the sequence. These results demonstrate that monkeys can recognize pitch relationships and thus that monkeys have the concept of ordinal relations between acoustic items.     

Gender and lexical access in Bulgarian

Two procedures were used to explore the effects of semantic and grammatical gender on the recognition and processing of Bulgarian nouns, in relation to other factors that are known to affect lexical access. This study in a three-gender language was modeled on previous work in Italian, a two-gender language (Bates, Devescovi, Pizzamiglio, D'Amico, & Hernandez, 1995). Words were presented auditorily in randomized lists in two tasks: (1) repeat the word as quickly as possible and (2) determine the grammatical gender of the noun as soon as possible and indicate the decision by pressing a button. Reaction times in both tasks were influenced by phonological factors, word frequency, and irregularity of gender marking, but semantic and grammatical gender affected only gender monitoring. The significant contribution of semantic gender to processing in Bulgarian contrasts with previous findings for Italian. Also, we obtained an interaction between sex of the subject and noun gender, reflecting a bias toward one's own grammatical gender "counterpart" (especially for females). Reanalysis of the prior study in Italian showed a similar interaction but confirmed no effects of the semantic gender of the noun, suggesting that these two natural gender effects can dissociate. Possible reasons for cross-linguistic differences are discussed, with implications for comparative studies of gender and lexical access.     

Prosodic processing by children: an fMRI study

Prosodic information in the speech signal carries information about linguistic structure as well as emotional content. Although children are known to use prosodic information from infancy onward to assist linguistic decoding, the brain correlates of this skill in childhood have not yet been the subject of study. Brain activation associated with processing of linguistic prosody was examined in a study of 284 normally developing children between the ages of 5 and 18 years. Children listened to low-pass filtered sentences and were asked to detect those that matched a target sentence. fMRI scanning revealed multiple regions of activation that predicted behavioral performance, independent of age-related changes in activation. Likewise, age-related changes in task activation were found that were independent of differences in task accuracy. The overall pattern of activation is interpreted in light of task demands and factors that may underlie age-related changes in task performance.     

Babies' logic activity: a differential study

From a neuroconstructivist point of view based on infant cognitive development, the aim of this study is to get to know and compare the logical organization and content of the spontaneous activity of babies with alternative developmental courses (typical babies and Down's Syndrome ones). A fundamental form of logic is observed since the beginning of babies' interaction with their environment. This protologic is constructed through their organised and significative activity with the environment and it results in the elaboration of logico-mathematical and physical knowledge. Using Systematic Observation, we recorded the spontaneous activity of n=20 babies, (n=10 typical babies, n=10 Down Syndrome babies), with a cognitive developmental level of 1; 3 years (15 months). Microgenetical and statistical analyses were applied and the results obtained showed a reduced logical content and organization of the activity of Down's Syndrome babies, which corroborates and amplifies the results of previous research works. These results make evident the need to plan early educational intervention in order to optimize babies' developmental resources.     

Diabetes mellitus as a model of psychosomatic and somatopsychic interrelationships

The article reviews research on the problem of interrelationship between different physical and psychosocial factors in type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1). The authors consider methodological principles of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) assessment in DM1 patients and stress the need for an integrated biopsychosocial approach to the management of the disease. DM1 is a chronic metabolic disease with an absolute requirement for insulin replacement therapy. The stress-inducing nature of DM1 is associated with its unexpected and dramatic manifestation in juvenile years, life-threatening nature of severe hypo-/hyperglycaemias and long-term complications, with the burden of diabetes self-management, threat of work disability, employment and career problems etc. These features of DM1 increase the likelihood of the development of anxiety and depressive disorders, which, in turn, may negatively influence the course of diabetes and in particular, diabetes self-care. This necessitates early diagnosis of emotional and behavioral disturbances in DM1 using self-report instruments as well as clinical assessment. Evidence suggests that active problem-focused coping behavior and adequate social support promote adherence to diabetes regimes and may act as a buffer against negative effects of the disease on HRQoL in DM1 patients. The core element in the HRQoL structure is personal disease picture (as opposed by objective clinical picture)--the cognitive-affective-behavioral complex reflecting the patient's personal perception of the disease. Examination of the personal disease picture and attitude towards the ailment in DM1 patients may help to improve understanding of the mechanisms of poor adjustment. Problems in disease adjustment can be detected also by diabetes-specific HRQoL assessment. The measures of HRQoL can be applied as screening instruments useful in increasing the effectiveness of patient-provider interactions and diabetes care.     

Using the short mood and feelings questionnaire to detect depression in detained adolescents

The Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) is examined for its utility in screening youth in juvenile justice settings for depression. In a cross-sectional study conducted at King County Juvenile Detention Center, a representative sample of 228 detained adolescents complete structured assessments, including the MFQ and the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument. Fifty youth also complete the Voice-Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. Internal reliability coefficient for the MFQ short form (SMFQ) is = .87. Factor analysis produces a unifactorial scale with item loadings of .43 to .78. At SMFQ cutoff > or = 10, sensitivity and specificity are optimized at 1.00/0.79. Prevalence of major depressive disorder is estimated at 32.1% (95% Confidence Interval = 25.3% to 39.2%). The SMFQ shows potential for depression screening of detained adolescents.