Toddlers' language-mediated visual search: they need not have the words for it

Eye movements made by listeners during language-mediated visual search reveal a strong link between visual processing and conceptual processing. For example, upon hearing the word for a missing referent with a characteristic colour (e.g., "strawberry"), listeners tend to fixate a colour-matched distractor (e.g., a red plane) more than a colour-mismatched distractor (e.g., a yellow plane). We ask whether these shifts in visual attention are mediated by the retrieval of lexically stored colour labels. Do children who do not yet possess verbal labels for the colour attribute that spoken and viewed objects have in common exhibit language-mediated eye movements like those made by older children and adults? That is, do toddlers look at a red plane when hearing "strawberry"? We observed that 24-month-olds lacking colour term knowledge nonetheless recognized the perceptual-conceptual commonality between named and seen objects. This indicates that language-mediated visual search need not depend on stored labels for concepts.     

Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of neuromotor behaviour in children with a specific speech and language disorder

Several studies have described problems in a wide area of motor functions in language impaired children. The purpose of this study was to identify the nature of the motor deficits in two subgroups of language impaired children. A standard neurological examination was performed on 18 children with an expressive language disorder and 21 children with a receptive language disorder. The motor performance of the language disordered children was compared with the motor performance of 23 normal children. The standard neurological examination allowed for a qualitative and quantitative assessment of five specific neurological subsystems. Handedness was determined for all children. The language impaired children had more motor problems than the control children on most neurological subsystems. There were few statistically significant differences between the two groups of language impaired children. An excess in left‐handedness was established in the group of children with a receptive language disorder. There was a co‐occurrence of verbal and non‐verbal deficits in language impaired children. As these motor problems put an additional burden on the development of language impaired children, they should be diagnosed as early as possible. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sexism Versus Partisanship: A New Look at the Question of Whether America is Ready for a Woman President

We question the validity of traditional polling about the likelihood of respondents to vote for a woman president and argue that the use of such polls may overestimate sexism and underestimate the role that party identification and individual characteristics play in deciding about whether to vote for a woman president. Our analysis of data collected in May–June 2004 show that many people who say they will not vote for a woman for president would do so if given realistic, specific, political scenarios via head-to-head match-ups with potential candidates. Although survey respondents preferred George W. Bush to Hillary Clinton, the margin between these candidates was close especially considering that Bush had been actively campaigning for months, whereas Clinton had not.     

Looking, language, and memory: Bridging research from the visual world and visual search paradigms

In the visual world paradigm as used in psycholinguistics, eye gaze (i.e. visual orienting) is measured in order to draw conclusions about linguistic processing. However, current theories are underspecified with respect to how visual attention is guided on the basis of linguistic representations. In the visual search paradigm as used within the area of visual attention research, investigators have become more and more interested in how visual orienting is affected by higher order representations, such as those involved in memory and language. Within this area more specific models of orienting on the basis of visual information exist, but they need to be extended with mechanisms that allow for language-mediated orienting. In the present paper we review the evidence from these two different – but highly related – research areas. We arrive at a model in which working memory serves as the nexus in which long-term visual as well as linguistic representations (i.e. types) are bound to specific locations (i.e. tokens or indices). The model predicts that the interaction between language and visual attention is subject to a number of conditions, such as the presence of the guiding representation in working memory, capacity limitations, and cognitive control mechanisms.     

Prelinguistic evolution in early hominins: whence motherese?

In order to formulate hypotheses about the evolutionary underpinnings that preceded the first glimmerings of language, mother-infant gestural and vocal interactions are compared in chimpanzees and humans and used to model those of early hominins. These data, along with paleoanthropological evidence, suggest that prelinguistic vocal substrates for protolanguage that had prosodic features similar to contemporary motherese evolved as the trend for enlarging brains in late australopithecines/early Homo progressively increased the difficulty of parturition, thus causing a selective shift toward females that gave birth to relatively undeveloped neonates. It is hypothesized that hominin mothers adopted new foraging strategies that entailed maternal silencing, reassuring, and controlling of the behaviors of physically removed infants (i.e., that shared human babies' inability to cling to their mothers' bodies). As mothers increasingly used prosodic and gestural markings to encourage juveniles to behave and to follow, the meanings of certain utterances (words) became conventionalized. This hypothesis is based on the premises that hominin mothers that attended vigilantly to infants were strongly selected for, and that such mothers had genetically based potentials for consciously modifying vocalizations and gestures to control infants, both of which receive support from the literature.     

Cultural influence on COVID-19 cognitions and growth speed: The role of collectivism

Major challenges faced by humans often require large-scale cooperation for communal benefits. We examined what motivates such cooperation in the context of social distancing and mask wearing to reduce the transmission intensity of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). We hypothesized that collectivism, a cultural variable characterizing the extent that individuals see themselves in relation to others, contributes to people's willingness to engage in these behaviors. Consistent with preregistered predictions, across three studies (n = 2864), including a U.S. nationally representative sample, collectivist orientation was positively associated with intentions, positive beliefs, norm perceptions, and policy support for the preventive behaviors. Further, at a country level, more collectivist countries showed lower growth rates in both COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths. Together, these studies demonstrate the role of collectivism in reducing COVID-19 transmission, and highlight the value of considering culture in public health policies and communications.     

Evidenz für psychodynamische Langzeittherapie

Despite continually increasing evidence for the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy in general, the empirical status of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (LTPP) remains controversial. Convincing outcome studies of LTPP were lacking for a long time. This article gives an overview of available systematic reviews addressing the evidence for LTPP. The findings suggest that LTPP can yield large and stable effects across a variety of diagnoses and particularly in complex mental disorders, which even tend to increase after termination of treatment. In comparison to other shorter or less intensive methods of psychotherapy, LTPP has proven to be significantly superior with respect to most outcome domains. First economic analyses suggest that LTPP may be cost-effective in the long run. The comparison of randomized controlled with observational studies revealed no significant differences in outcome; however, the evidence for LTPP is frequently challenged by proponents of other therapeutic approaches or scientific orientations. The criticisms were repeatedly answered and none of the concerns raised by critics identified an issue that would have affected the overall conclusions of the available reviews. Nevertheless, further studies are urgently required to broaden the evidence base for LTPP in order to allow more refined analyses addressing the effects of specific forms of LTPP both in specific disorders and in comparison to specific forms of alternative therapies.     

Materialism in late Enlightenment Germany: a neglected tradition reconsidered

ABSTRACT

Late Enlightenment German materialism has hardly attracted any scholarly attention in the past, in spite of the fact that there were quite a few exponents of it. In this paper, I identify the philosophically most important ones and examine to what extent they were connected with each other. In fact, there are local concentrations of materialists at universities and academic circles in Göttingen, Halle, and Gießen. I then discuss the spectrum of materialist positions held by them, from empiricist naturalism in the case of Michael Hißmann to emergentism and Spinozism in the case of Karl von Knoblauch. Finally, I examine how German materialists conceived of the nature of soul and its immortality. It turns out that most of them were mortalists, with the exception of August Wilhelm Hupel, and some of them also endorsed Socinianism.     

Identity and name changes.

The theoretical literature as well as case material presented point to the intimate relationship of name changes to identity struggles. Names have strong affective value and symbolize an important part of a person's identity. The cultural and social value of a name may be secondary to the personal meaning of that name to the individual who in changing it will reveal an inner change in his sense of identity or an inability to integrate a diffuse sense of identity. The answer to "what's in a name?" may be "Identity's in a name."     

IMPROVING THE PEER INTERACTIONS OF STUDENTS WITH EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS THROUGH SELF-EVALUATION PROCEDURES: A COMPONENT ANALYSIS AND GROUP APPLICATION

We conducted two experiments examining the effects of a self-evaluation package on the peer interactions of students described as emotionally or behaviorally disordered. Experiment 1 assessed the additive effects of various components of a self-evaluation package on the frequency of inappropriate and appropriate peer interactions. The components assessed were rewards alone, rewards plus discussion, and self-evaluation plus rewards. Results showed limited effectiveness when rewards alone and rewards plus discussion were implemented. However, substantial improvements in peer interactions were observed when the self-evaluation component was added. Experiment 2 examined the efficacy and feasibility of the procedures when implemented in a group setting. Students in three classrooms served as participants. Direct observation data collected for 8 of the participants showed the procedures to be effective in improving peer interactions when implemented in a group context.