Age of acquisition, ageing, and verb production: Normative and experimental data

Young and old adults were shown pictured or written verbs and asked to name them as quickly as possible. Simultaneous multiple regression was used to investigate which of a set of potential variables predicted naming speed. Age of acquisition was found to be an important predictor of naming speed in both young and old adults, and for both word and picture naming. Word frequency predicted picture-naming speed only in older adults and failed to make any significant contribution to word-naming speeds for either group of participants. The respective loci and roles of age of acquisition and frequency in lexical processing are discussed in the light of these findings.     

Analysis of the learned irrelevance effect in appetitive Pavlovian conditioning

In Experiments 1 and 2 rats received uncorrelated presentations of a light conditioned stimulus (CS) and a food unconditioned stimulus (US) on each day of a preexposure phase. Control subjects received the same number of USs during the first half of preexposure and the same number of CSs during the second. Uncorrelated preexposure retarded inhibitory conditioning. Experiment 3 showed, however, that the different patterns of US preexposure experienced by the two groups could in itself influence the course of subsequent inhibitory conditioning. When this factor was equated by restricting the uncorrelated treatment to the first half of the pre-exposure phase (Experiment 2) or by extending the control treatment throughout the phase (Experiment 4) it was found that uncorrelated preexposure retarded excitatory conditioning, but facilitated inhibitory conditioning. This outcome challenges an interpretation in terms of the concept of learned irrelevance, which predicts that uncorrelated preexposure should retard both forms of conditioning.     

Surveying Environmental Perspectives among Faculty at an Institution of Christian Higher Education

Abstract

Environmental degradation and climate change are frequently in the news, but the Christian perspective is often absent or varied. In this study, faculty at an institution of Christian higher education were surveyed to better understand their perspective and to assess if any particular factor (e.g., gender, school affiliation, or political party) can be linked to a particular environmental worldview. Although faculty held neutral positions on half of the questions, they also reported strong agreement to both pro-environment and pro-human statements. Tensions between prioritizing loving ones’ neighbor (anthropocentrism) and embracing Creation stewardship (ecocentrism) can be resolved with a God-centered theocentric worldview.     

Group size and satisfaction in shop stewards' meetings and management/union consultative committees

Current Psychology - The investigation examined a number of variables previously observed in laboratory studies. Two kinds of groups were studied: shop stewards' meetings, and joint...