The consequences of language proficiency and difficulty of lexical access for translation performance and priming

Repetition priming was used to assess how proficiency and the ease or difficulty of lexical access influence bilingual translation. Two experiments, conducted at different universities with different Spanish–English bilingual populations and materials, showed repetition priming in word translation for same-direction and different-direction repetitions. Experiment 1, conducted in an English-dominant environment, revealed an effect of translation direction but not of direction match, whereas Experiment 2, conducted in a more balanced bilingual environment, showed an effect of direction match but not of translation direction. A combined analysis on the items common to both studies revealed that bilingual proficiency was negatively associated with response time (RT), priming, and the degree of translation asymmetry in RTs and priming. An item analysis showed that item difficulty was positively associated with RTs, priming, and the benefit of same-direction over different-direction repetition. Thus, although both participant accuracy and item accuracy are indices of learning, they have distinct effects on translation RTs and on the learning that is captured by the repetition-priming paradigm.     

A Sociobiological Analysis of Namesaking Patterns in 322 American Families1

A study of the naming patterns used for 648 children in 322 American families provided mixed support for a number of hypotheses that are derived from the propositions that namesaking (the naming of a child after another person) functions as advertisement of genetic kinship when it may be in doubt and as a strategy to procure future investment of resources from the father and other relatives. Males and second-born children with older sisters were more likely to be namesaked, and birth order was a significant predictor of the probability of being namesaked for males. First-borns were more likely to be named after a patrilineal relative, but there was no tendency for children born early in a marriage to be namesaked more frequently than children born after many years of marriage. Parents who themselves were namesaked were more likely to namesake their own children.     

Changes in research on Judaism in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods

This article offers an overview of what every theologian and scholar of religion should know about changes in biblical studies that have taken place concerning the past depreciation of Second Temple Judaism, the use of newly discovered sources and their implications, as well as integrative approaches to top-down (reflected beliefs, prescribed practices, textual sources) and bottom-up (intuitive beliefs, lived practices, material culture) processes. Changes in the field lead to the re-writing of the history of the Bible and of Judaean society in the Greco-Roman context. By means of this co-authored research article, we wish to demonstrate the benefit of, as well as the need for, interdisciplinary work in the study of antiquity.     

Modeling Nonstationary Emotion Dynamics in Dyads using a Time-Varying Vector-Autoregressive Model

Emotion dynamics are likely to arise in an interpersonal context. Standard methods to study emotions in interpersonal interaction are limited because stationarity is assumed. This means that the dynamics, for example, time-lagged relations, are invariant across time periods. However, this is generally an unrealistic assumption. Whether caused by an external (e.g., divorce) or an internal (e.g., rumination) event, emotion dynamics are prone to change. The semi-parametric time-varying vector-autoregressive (TV-VAR) model is based on well-studied generalized additive models, implemented in the software R. The TV-VAR can explicitly model changes in temporal dependency without pre-existing knowledge about the nature of change. A simulation study is presented, showing that the TV-VAR model is superior to the standard time-invariant VAR model when the dynamics change over time. The TV-VAR model is applied to empirical data on daily feelings of positive affect (PA) from a single couple. Our analyses indicate reliable changes in the male’s emotion dynamics over time, but not in the female’s—which were not predicted by her own affect or that of her partner. This application illustrates the usefulness of using a TV-VAR model to detect changes in the dynamics in a system.     

Keeping It Going: Evidence of Long-Term Improvements After Implementation of the 1-2-3 Magic Parenting Program

This study builds upon a pilot evaluation of the 1-2-3 Magic Program (Bailey, van der Zwan, Phelan, &; Brooks, 2012 Bailey, E. L., van der Zwan, R., Phelan, T. W., &; Brooks, A. (2012). The 1–2-3 Magic Program: Implementation outcomes of an Australian pilot evaluation with school-aged children. Child &; Family Behavior Therapy, 34(1), 53–69. doi:10.1080/07317107.2012.654455[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), by investigating its long-term efficacy as a brief parenting intervention for families with a school-aged child. Twelve Australian families participated in a randomized controlled trial, assigned either to a wait-listed control group or to one that received immediate training. Consistent with the pilot evaluation, only families who had received training reported significant improvement in child and parenting behavior at an 8-week follow-up assessment. These improvements were maintained for 12-month posttraining, supporting the long-term efficacy of the 1-2-3 Magic Program for Australian families.