Order of strokes writing as a cue for retrieval in reading chinese characters

Abstract

Chinese characters are composed of a number of strokes, varying from 1 to 23. The strokes of each character have to be written in a precise order, which is codified in a number of rules, and which is learned in the process of literacy acquisition. The present study tested the hypothesis that stroke writing order has been coded in memory as an essential component of the orthographic knowledge of a character, and that this specific motor schema is used as a cue in lexical retrieval. In the first experiment reported here, fragments of Chinese characters consisting of “early” or of “late” strokes (namely strokes which are written first or last during writing) were pre-exposed to target characters to be named as fast as possible. The results indicated that “early” strokes were better retrieval cues for character names than “late” strokes. In the second experiment, subjects were requested to make same-different judgements about two characters which had in common either “early” or “late” strokes. Different characters sharing “early” strokes were more frequently erroneously judged as being identical than characters sharing “late” strokes.     

Is there a memory for sentences?

A critical discussion of the model of sentence memory which enjoyed greatest popularity in the psycholinguistic research of the sixties, namely the model based on the deep-structure-plus-tag hypothesis of sentence memory, is presented together with the results of an experiment on prompted recall for sentences with various intervals after presentation and with two types of instructions. This experiment contributed to show that immediate memory for sentences can be affected by appropriate instructions, and that after a short time after presentation only the main semantic information of the sentences is recalled. An alternative model is presented, based on the notion of storage of the meaningful elements of the sentences in a rather abstract form, and of recall as a reconstructive process to produce new sentences. The results of two new experiments on sentence memory, the first a free and prompted recall experiment with children, the second a recognition memory study with adolescents, are then presented and discussed in relation to the model.     

Job-finding club: A group-assisted program for obtaining employment

Although joblessness is a major problem, no method of job-counseling has been demonstrated to be superior to usual job-finding practices. The present study describes a new type of program, which has now been evaluated experimentally in a matched-control design. The new program was conducted in a group and stressed such distinctive techniques as mutual-assistance among job-seekers, a ‘buddy’ system, family support, and sharing of job leads. In addition, the program arranged special ways of using such common practices as searching want-ads, role-playing, telephoning, motivating the job-seeker, constructing a resume and contacting friends. Within 2 months 90 per cent of the counseled job-seekers had obtained employment vs. 55 per cent of the non-counseled job-seekers. All clients who attended the program regularly obtained employment. After 3 months, 40 per cent of the non-counseled job-seekers were still unemployed. The average starting salary was about a third higher for the counseled job-seekers. The present procedure appears to be an effective method of assisting a greater proportion of the unemployed to obtain jobs and more quickly, and at a higher salary than they could obtain when they used the usual job finding procedures.     

Comparison of output order in free recall

Two measures of output order in free recall were examined and shown to vary with characteristics of recall unrelated to output order. The output location of a subset of items in recall, using the standard recall rank measure and the “observed minus expected” score, varied both with number of items in the subset and total number of items recalled. A new measure of output order (the relative index of priority or RIP score) was proposed that is invariant with these characteristics of recall, providing an uncontaminated empirical index of the output location of a subset of items in the recall sequence.     

Young,unassimilated hispanic offenders: Absolutist vs. relativist cultural assumptions

California State Law §288(a) defines any sexual contact between a person 18 or older with someone under the age of 14 as illegal and punishable by incarceration. Data from the State Department of Justice shows that Young, Unassimilated Hispanic Offenders (YUHO) are arrested for these crimes at rates disproportionately greater than their numbers in the population. Through a review of the pertinent literature and clinical archives, we argue that YUHOs have been acculturated into a sexual morality that violates legally codified American sexual standards. While their sexual behavior is deemed morally deviant and illegal in the United States, this same behavior is not considered morally deviant or illegal within their internalized, home culture. This contrasts with the typical §288(a) offender who is motivated by a sexual perversion. Should the criminal justice system regard YUHOs differently from typical §288(a) offenders? “relativists” suggest that cultural considerations should be taken in the adjudication of these cases. Our preliminary work is to inform and articulate this debate at the crossroads of psychology, anthropology and criminal justice, without advocating either of the above perspectives. We suggest that legislatures did not anticipate the population of YUHO sexual offenders when these laws were written, and argue that YUHOs differ significantly from the typical pedophile for which these statutes were intended.     

Essentialist theory of ‘hybrids’: From animal kinds to ethnic categories and race

This article presents a theory of the perception of hybrids, resulting from cross‐breeding natural animals that pertain to different species and of children parented by couples with a mixed ethnic or racial background. The theory states that natural living beings, including humans, are perceived as possessing a deeply ingrained characteristic that is called ‘essence’ or ‘blood’ or ‘genes’ in everyday discourse and that uniquely determines their category membership. If, by whatever means, the genes or essences of two animals of different species are combined in a hybrid, the two incompatible essences collapse, leaving the hybrid in a state of non‐identity and non‐belonging. People despise this state and reject the hybrid (Study 1). This devaluation effect holds with cross‐kind hybrids and with hybrids that arise from genetically combining animals from incompatible habitats across three cultures: Austria, India and Japan (Study 2). In the social world, groups and ethnic or racial categories frequently are essentialized in an analogue way. When people with an essentialist mindset judge ethnically or racially mixed offspring, they perceive a collapse of ethnic or racial essence and, consequently, denigrate these children, as compared to children from ‘pure’ in‐group or out‐group parents (Study 3). The findings are discussed in terms of the widespread ‘yuck factor’ against genetically modified animals, in terms of the cultural concepts of monstrosity and of racism and prejudice.     

Cultural Awareness and Ethnic Loyalty: Dimensions of Cultural Variability Among Mexican American College Students

This study examined the adequacy of Keefe and Padilla's (1987) model of cultural orientation on a sample of Mexican American students enrolled either in a technical college (N= 125) or a state university (N= 239) in southern Texas. Specifically, the goodness of fit of the factor model for the Cultural Awareness and Ethnic Loyalty scales was tested using confirmatory factor analyses. Results indicated an excellent fit for the model, which suggests that cultural variables among Mexican American college students may be described in terms of these two dimensions. Implications of these findings for research and counseling with Mexican American populations are discussed.