Getting There (Slowly)

The general foundations for a theory of human sentence processing and the basic goals and questions of the 1960s are argued to be solid and still very relevant today, even if the particular processing model of the time (the clausal model) does not hold up. Today there is considerable agreement that sentence processing is both fast and grammatically controlled from the outset, and that minimal structure and recent attachments are favored across a diverse range of languages. Parsing is not purely bottom-up but instead allows phrases to be postulated before all daughters have been parsed; it works similarly for head-initial and head-final languages. The parser takes as input a rich prosodic/intonational representation which influences processing in ways that extend far beyond use of intonational boundaries as local (juncture) cues. It is argued that psycholinguistic evidence disconfirms the use of prepackaged fully articulated X templates for identifying phrase structure, instead supporting the extended projections of Grimshaw (1991). Further, considerable evidence shows that the processor respects grammatical distinctions among types of dependencies, as indicated by differential processing effects for antecedent-government chains versus binding relations, by the processing difficulty of composite dependencies involving more than one grammatical type of dependency, and by distinctions between deep and surface anaphora. The central problem for future theories of sentence processing is claimed to be the development of theories of sentence interpretation. Various possible approaches are discussed, including parallel computation of alternatives with subsequent selection, a task-driven interpretive system, and underspecification. The question is raised whether sentence-level psycholinguistics is in the middle of a paradigm shift from models with symbolic representations and an intrinsically serial (Von Neumann) architecture to constraint-satisfaction/connectionist models with inherently parallel architectures. Reasons are offered for rejecting current constraint-satisfaction models, including lack of supporting evidence discriminating between constraint-satisfaction and conventional models, serious problems with the use of prepackaged X templates for identifying phrase structure (the only proposal to date for handling syntactic structures in constraint-based models) and an inability to deal with cross-language generalizations. Pure connectionist models are unlikely to fare better in the future for two reasons. They are apparently unable to handle restricted universal quantification (Marcus, 1998)which clearly lies within the capacity of the human sentence processor. Further, competition between alternatives lies at the very heart of such models. Maximal competition should occur in processing fully ambiguous sentences and thus they are predicted to take longer to process than biased or temporarily ambiguous ones (Frazier & Clifton, 1997). But the empirical evidence suggests that fully ambiguous sentences are not systematically harder to process than their disambiguated counterparts.     

Space and holding: Beginning pastoral counseling with incest victims

A case study of an adult victim of incest is considered in terms of space and holding, relying especially on the work of D. W. Winnicott. Reference is made to the effects of sexual abuse as reported in the literature. The situation is considered theologically in terms of evil and rage, holding, and character and faithfulness. Reference is made to Scripture and to character ethics. The pastoral counselor's own character is understood to be his/her primary resource in the therapy process.     

Prevalence and effects of life event exposure among undergraduate and community college students

The purposes of this study were to assess lifetime and recent exposure to various life events among undergraduate and community college students and to assess the relation between event exposure and a broad range of outcomes (i.e., mental and physical health, life satisfaction, grade point average). Undergraduate students from a midwestern university (N = 842) and a community college (N = 242) completed online measures of lifetime event exposure and outcomes at Time 1 and recent event exposure at Time 2 two months later. Life events assessed included events that did and did not meet the definition of a traumatic event (i.e., posttraumatic stress disorder Criterion A1) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) as well as directly (e.g., own life-threatening illness) and indirectly (e.g., others' illness) experienced events. Students reported experiencing many lifetime and recent Criterion A1 and non-A1 events, and community college students reported more events than did university students. Generally, individuals who reported more lifetime events also reported poorer outcomes (e.g., poorer health). The number of non-Criterion A1 and directly experienced events tended to be more strongly correlated with negative outcomes than were the number of Criterion A1 and indirectly experienced events reported. These findings suggest that non-A1 events are important to assess and can be significantly related to outcomes for students.     

Reclaiming the Person: Intersectionality and Dynamic Social Categories Through a Psychological Lens

Psychology’s conventionally treatment of individuals’ engagement with and resistance to the societal processes in which they are embedded has come under scrutiny amid the rise of postmodernist and critical feminist perspectives (among many others) in the social sciences. A sample of social psychology’s responses to these critiques is presented in the recently published book, Social Categories in Everyday Experience edited by Shaun Wiley et al. (2011). In this essay, the challenges of seriously addressing the critiques of psychology’s conventional treatment of social categories, which implicate fundamental assumptions of the discipline, are discussed. Further, it is argued that in order to effectively construct psychological accounts of political activism and social change amid theories that are increasingly cognizant of the complexities and contingencies of social embeddiness, the person must be reclaimed and revisioned. Notions of agency that complement an intersectional and systemic vision of the social world are discussed.     

Deficits in volitional oculomotor control align with language status in autism spectrum disorders

Eye‐tracking paradigms are increasingly used to investigate higher‐level social and cognitive processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the integrity of the oculomotor system within ASD is unclear, with contradictory reports of aberrant eye‐movements on basic oculomotor tasks. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether reducing population heterogeneity and distinguishing neurocognitive phenotypes can clarify discrepancies in oculomotor behaviour evident in previous reports. Reflexive and volitional eye‐movement control was assessed in 73 children aged 8–14 years from four distinct groups: Autism Language Normal (ALN), Autism Language Impaired (ALI), non‐autistic Language Impaired (LI) and Typically Developing (TD). Eye‐movement control was measured using pro‐ and antisaccade tasks and a novel ‘search distracter’ task to measure distractibility. Reflexive eye‐movements were equivalent across groups, but deficits in volitional eye‐movement control were found that aligned with language status, and were not specific to ASD. More than 80% of ALI and LI children presented error rates at least 1.5 SDs below the TD mean in an antisaccade task. In the search distracter task, 35.29% of ALI children and 43.75% of LI children had error rates greater than 1.5 SDs compared with 17.64% of ALN children. A significant proportion of children with neurodevelopmental disorders involving language function have pronounced difficulties suppressing reflexive saccades and maintaining fixations in the presence of competing stimuli. We extend the putative link between ALI and LI populations to non‐language tasks, and highlight the need to account for co‐morbidity in understanding the ontogenesis of ASD.     

The Role Of Attributions and Perceived Control In Recovery From Rape

Abstract

It is fitting that a volume on post-traumatic stress includes chapters on sexual assault given both the prevalence of sexual assault and its effects. Specifically, in terms of prevalence, approximately one woman in five in the United States will be raped in her lifetime (Koss, 1993).¹ In terms of the effects of sexual assault, victims experience heightened fear, anxiety, and depression for several months, and sometimes years, following an assault (see Frazier & Borgida, 1997, and Resick, 1993, for reviews). Sexual victimization affects physical health as well and is a more powerful predictor of physician visits and outpatient medical costs than other factors (e.g., age, smoking, alcohol use) known to be related to health problems (Koss, Koss, & Woodruff, 1991). Finally, sexual assault is one of the traumatic events that is most likely to lead to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Breslau, Davis, Andreski, & Peterson, 1991; Norris, 1992; Ullman & Siegel, 1994). In a recent national study of trauma exposure and PTSD by Kessler and his colleagues (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson, 1995), almost half of the women who said that a rape was their worst trauma met lifetime criteria for PTSD. This is in comparison, for example, with a PTSD prevalence rate of 5% for those whose worst event was a natural disaster.     

Channels of Change: Contrasting Network Mechanisms in the Use of Interventions

This study informs community science, and seeks to narrow the research-to-practice gap, by examining how the interpersonal networks within a setting influence individuals' use of interventions. More specifically, it explores the role of two network mechanisms-cohesion and structural similarity-in urban elementary school teachers' use of interventions designed to improve academic and behavioral outcomes for students. Lagged regression models examine how position in advice giving networks influenced weekly use of the daily report card and peer assisted learning by kindergarten through fourth grade teachers in three schools. Results indicate that intervention use spreads among teachers with similar patterns of advice-giving relationships (i.e., via structural similarity), rather than from teachers who are sources of advice (i.e., via cohesion). These results are consistent with findings in other settings, and suggest that researchers wishing to increase the use of an intervention should select change agents based on their patterns of their relationships, rather than on their direct connections.     

A Note on the Voice Mismatch Asymmetry in Ellipsis

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Theories of ellipsis differ in the identity condition claimed to hold between an antecedent and an elided constituent. A syntactic identity condition leads to...