Understanding Disorders in Agrammatic Patients: Capacity or Structural Deficits?

Several hypotheses have been advanced in recent years to understand difficulties in agrammatic patients. Some of them are of a structural kind, as the deficiency is said to lie in some of the linguistic system components. Others are of a functional type, as it is stated that the problem of these patients lies in the loss of processing capacity.Using the existence of a syntactic type of structure in Spanish, that active sentences do not follow the canonical S-V-O order, we will try to prove in this article whether agrammatic patients' problems are due to memory span loss or to one of the syntactic process mechanisms. To this end, the performances of three groups of patients are contrasted. Agrammatic, anomic, and normal Spanish speakers are given several tasks of sentence–picture matching and tests of memory span.Results show that agrammatic patients have specific difficulties processing certain syntactical structures; however, their memory deficiencies are not more pronounced than in other patients. It can be concluded, therefore, that the deficiencies of agrammatic patients are of a structural character rather than due to memory span loss.     

Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action in the United States and Canada

Attitudes toward affirmative action programs were investigated using a U.S. sample, an English speaking Canadian sample, and a French speaking Canadian sample. Results indicate that cultural influences in the form of individualism-collectivism were small but that ethnic and linguistic memberships were major influences on attitudes toward those programs.     

The nature of cross-modal color-word interference effects

Cowan and Barron (1987) and Cowan (1989b) reported that color-naming performance was slowed by spoken color names drawn from the same set but presented in an order unrelated to the printed colors. Although Miles, Madden, and Jones (1989) and Miles and Jones (1989) were unable to replicate this cross-modal effect, it is replicated here in two experiments with much better experimental control than before. However, the effect is shown to depend upon the relative timing of the color and word in a way that conflicts with the theoretical account that Cowan and Barron offered. While Cowan and Barron suggested that an irrelevant color word would contaminate the response set if this word occupied short-term memory when the color was about to be named, it appears that interference actually occurs only if the memory representation was formed very recently and had not been inhibited. Further implications for processing are discussed.     

LEX I and II: Two databases of surface word forms for psycholinguistic research in Spanish

Two databases of Spanish surface word forms are presented. Surface word forms are words considered as orthographically or phonologically specified without reference to their meaning or syntactic category. The databases are based on the productive written vocabulary of children between the ages of 6 and 10 years. Statistical and structural information is presented concerning surface word-form frequency, consonant-vowel (CV) structure, number of syllables, syllables, syllable CV structure, and subsyllabic units. LEX I was intended to aid in the study of reading processes. Entries were orthographic surface word forms; words were divided in their components following orthographic criteria. LEX II was designed for spoken language research. Accordingly, words were transcribed phonologically and phonological criteria were applied in extracting the internal units. Information about stress location was also provided. Together, LEX I and LEX II represent a useful tool for psycholinguists interested in the study of people acquiring Spanish as a first or foreign language and of Spanish-speaking populations in general.     

Gender Differences in Leadership Styles as a Function of Leader and Subordinates' Sex and Type of Organization

The main purpose of this study is to investigate gender differences in leadership styles and in organizational outcome variables, together with the influence of organizational/contextual variables on leadership styles in female and male participants in Spain. The sample comprised 226 participants (35 leaders and 191 subordinates) belonging to 35 work teams. The general findings show that only 2 of the 10 tested leadership styles are different for female and male leaders. Specifically, subordinates rate female leaders as more autocratic and negotiating than men, and this evaluation varies according to the subordinates' sex. We also found that some differences in the rating of female and male leaders depend on whether the organization is stereotypically feminine or masculine.     

Maternal attachment representations and the development of very low birth weight premature infants at two years of age

There is a consensus that prematurity could increase the risk of attachment impairment. We studied 90 premature children with very low birth weights (<1,500 g) and 96 healthy children born at term with similar age and sociodemographic characteristics. Our objective was to assess maternal stress and attachment representations, and compare development indices on both groups at 2 years of age. Premature infants had a medium‐to‐severe degree of immaturity and biological risk (M gestational age = 29.98 weeks; birth weight = 1,159.76 g), with 57% staying in the ICU ≥1 week. These children born prematurely had lower scores on the development indices within the normal range. Mothers of premature infants (n = 74) reported higher levels of stress during their first year of life (59%) than did controls (41%), but no significant differences were detected in maternal attachment discourse between the two groups. The findings confirm that premature birth has a great influence on maternal emotional responses and the health and development of children in the first years of life, and indicate that stress responses in parents and warning signs for attachment problems should be assessed as early as possible.     

Opioid mechanisms are involved in the disruption of arcaine-induced amnesia by context pre-exposure

Previous exposure to the training context disrupts glutamatergic N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAr) antagonist-induced amnesia, indicating that novelty is necessary for such an amnestic effect. While there are reports that novelty-related release of opioids cause amnesia, no study has addressed whether the amnestic effect of NMDAr antagonists involve opioid mechanisms. In this study we investigated whether pharmacological manipulation of the opioid system immediately after context pre-exposure alters the amnestic effect of arcaine, a NMDAr antagonist. Adult male Wistar rats were habituated (pre-exposed) to a fear conditioning training apparatus or to a different context (open field). Immediately after pre-exposure, animals were injected with saline or naloxone (0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) or anti-beta-endorphin antibody (1:500, i.c.v.). Forty eight hours after pre-exposure session, all animals were subjected to fear conditioning acquisition protocol and saline or arcaine (30 mg/kg, i.p.) was administered immediately after training. Testing was carried out 24 h later, and freezing responses due to re-exposure to the training apparatus were recorded. Pre-exposure to the training apparatus prevented the impairment of memory induced by post-training arcaine. Administration of naloxone or anti-beta-endorphin antibody, immediately after pre-exposure to the training apparatus, reinstated the amnesic effect of post-training arcaine. The results suggest that endogenous opioid mechanisms are involved in the pre-exposure-induced loss of the amnestic effect of arcaine.     

A fresh look at the predictors of naming accuracy and errors in Alzheimer's disease

In recent years, a considerable number of studies have tried to establish which characteristics of objects and their names predict the responses of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the picture-naming task. The frequency of use of words and their age of acquisition (AoA) have been implicated as two of the most influential variables, with naming being best preserved for objects with high-frequency, early-acquired names. The present study takes a fresh look at the predictors of naming success in Spanish and English AD patients using a range of measures of word frequency and AoA along with visual complexity, imageability, and word length as predictors. Analyses using generalized linear mixed modelling found that naming accuracy was better predicted by AoA ratings taken from older adults than conventional ratings from young adults. Older frequency measures based on written language samples predicted accuracy better than more modern measures based on the frequencies of words in film subtitles. Replacing adult frequency with an estimate of cumulative (lifespan) frequency did not reduce the impact of AoA. Semantic error rates were predicted by both written word frequency and senior AoA while null response errors were only predicted by frequency. Visual complexity, imageability, and word length did not predict naming accuracy or errors.     

The culture of gift giving: What do consumers expect from commercial and personal contexts?

Gift giving forms part of a symbolic exchange ritual that is common to all cultures and all periods of history. The goal of the present study is to explore such acts as exchange processes that seek reciprocity aimed at perpetuating relations. From the standpoint of the recipient, we posit the existence of a pattern of behaviour based on the sequence of perceived value–satisfaction–reciprocity. Findings obtained from a sample of 797 individuals indicate that how this sequence works is shaped by the occasion on which the gift is given, whether on commercial occasions—dates marked out by retailers on which everybody gives gifts—or personal occasions—dates marked by private celebrations. If we bear in mind that the ultimate goal of giving gifts is reciprocity or the intention to give in return, choosing an appropriate value may prove to be of particular interest in commercial terms for givers (buyers), recipients (users) and firms (influencers). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The activation of representative emotional verbal contexts interacts with vertical spatial axis

Several experimental studies have shown that there exists an association between emotion words and the vertical spatial axis. However, the specific conditions under which this conceptual–physical interaction emerges are still unknown, and no study has been devised to test whether longer linguistic units than words can lead to a mapping of emotions on vertical space. In Experiment 1, Spanish and Colombian participants performed a representative verbal emotional contexts production task (RVEC task) requiring participants to produce RVEC for the emotions of joy, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, and disgust. The results showed gender and cultural differences regarding the average number of RVEC produced. The most representative contexts of joy and sadness obtained in Experiment 1 were used in Experiment 2 in a novel spatial–emotional congruency verification task (SECV task). After reading a sentence, the participants had to judge whether a probe word, displayed in either a high or low position on the screen, was congruent or incongruent with the previous sentence. The question was whether the emotion induced by the sentence could modulate the responses to the probes as a function of their position in a vertical axis by means of a metaphorical conceptual–spatial association. Overall, the results indicate that a mapping of emotions on vertical space can occur for linguistic units larger than words, but only when the task demands an explicit affective evaluation of the target.