Patterns of acquisition in the emerging mental lexicon: the case of to and for in English.

A corpus analysis of 32 English-speaking children's first usages of the prepositions to and for (which have similar properties semantically and grammatically) was undertaken for the purpose of tracking intralexemic sense acquisition and lexical organization in an often neglected word class. The earliest senses used by these children do not reflect historical patterns of semantic extension. Diachronically, concrete, spatial, and semantically transparent usages emerged before more abstract, nonspatial, and opaque usages. Developmentally, frequency of use in the child's linguistic environment and co-occurrence in collocations with favored verbs or other useful expressions proved to be the major determinant of early production, suggesting that external rather than internal/cognitive factors play the major role in lexical development.     

A longitudinal study of processes predicting the specificity of autobiographical memory in the adolescent offspring of depressed parents

Deficits in specific autobiographical memory retrieval are closely associated with depression. The ability to retrieve specific autobiographical memories develops throughout childhood and adolescence and is associated with adolescent depression within and across time. Studying young samples before they first experience depression provides an approach for testing processes that underlie reduced autobiographical memory specificity. This study is the first to examine the longitudinal association of rumination and executive function with autobiographical memory specificity in a sample of adolescents at elevated risk for future depression. A total of 259 adolescents (aged between 10 and 18 years) completed the Autobiographical Memory Test at baseline and 1-year follow-up. Measures of rumination, executive function, and depressive symptoms were obtained at baseline. The interaction between rumination and executive function predicted autobiographical memory specificity over time. Whereas rumination in the context of low executive function predicted reduced specificity, this was not the case in the context of high executive function. The interaction between rumination and executive function was independent of the effects of age, gender, IQ, baseline levels of memory specificity, and depressive symptoms.     

An investigation of the accuracy of standardized path coefficients

Given the popular and ever-increasing use of path analytic research paradigms in the social sciences, it is desirable to conduct an investigation into the accuracy of the standardized path coefficients that are often the end-product of these paradigms. In pursuit of this goal, population parameters were preset concerning the correlations between all of the variables and their reliability coefficients. Based on these parameters, thousands of experiments were generated with varying numbers of cases (n). For each experiment, at each level of n, standard path analyses were conducted, and standardized path coefficients were obtained. These standardized path coefficients were then compared against the population path coefficients on which the simulations were based to determine their accuracy. The findings indicate mixed evidence for the accuracy of path analysis research paradigms.     

Using a sharp instrument to parse apart strategy and consistency: an evaluation of PPT and its assumptions

Potential Performance Theory (PPT) is a general theory for parsing observed performance into the underlying strategy and the consistency with which it is used. Although empirical research has supported that PPT is useful, it is desirable to have more information about the bias and standard errors of PPT findings. It also is beneficial to know the effects of violations of PPT assumptions. The authors present computer simulations that evaluate bias and standard errors at varying levels of strategy, consistency, and number of trials per participant. The simulations show that, when the assumptions are true, there is very little bias and the standard errors are low when there are moderate or large numbers of trials per participant (e.g., N=50 or N=100). But when the independence assumption is violated, PPT provides biased findings, although the bias is quite small unless the violations are large.     

It's a just world no matter which way you look at it

According to the confluence theory (D. Trafimow, 2009), there is a general tendency of associated mental elements to become compatible with each other. It is possible to derive a reversibility principle from this theory; effects that have been shown to go in 1 direction also can be shown to go in the other direction. Two experiments applied these ideas to just-world phenomena. In Experiment 1, the authors replicated traditional just-world effects but also demonstrated that they occur in the reverse direction. In Experiment 2, the authors extend the notion of compatibility by showing that the value participants assigned to luck is influenced by the assumed goodness or badness of the person involved. The authors also obtained a "contagion" effect whereby a person associated with the target person was tainted by the target person's goodness or badness.     

The Identifiable Victim Effect: Using an Experimental-Causal-Chain Design to Test for Mediation

The identifiable victim effect (IVE) refers to individuals’ tendency to offer greater aid to identifiable victims than to statistical victims. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether emotional reactions work to mediate IVE. In two experiments based on the experimental-causal-chain design proposed by Spencer et al. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 845–851, 2005), it was shown that an identifiable victim evokes stronger emotional reactions than does a statistical victim (Study 1). It was also demonstrated that the identifiable victim shown or described with a specific expression or information to evoke stronger emotional reactions elicited greater willingness to donate money in participants (Study 2). The results of two studies based on the experimental-causal-chain approach demonstrated that the underlying causal mechanism for the IVE is participants’ emotional reactions to identified victims. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Development and psychometric evaluation of a rapid intimate partner violence perpetration screening tool

Current methods of identifying intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration rely upon lengthy screening instruments, partner injury, and legal involvement. There exist no viable, brief screening tools to facilitate the rapid and early identification of IPV perpetration. The development of a brief IPV screening tool would reduce participant burden and compensation in research as well as aid in self‐identification and appropriate consultation for treatment. Three samples were recruited and administered an IPV assessment measure. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analyses were used to determine a critical subset of items that could be rapidly administered and used to accurately detect physical IPV perpetrators. A set of four items emerged that were capable of differentiating between partner violent and nonviolent participants in Samples 1 (the Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) = .95, SE = .02), 2 (AUC = .98, SE =.01), and 3 (AUC = .94, SE = .04). Internal consistency of the screening items was acceptable across samples and the scores on the screening tool were significantly associated in the expected direction with all assessed risk factors for IPV. Initial evaluation of the rapid IPV perpetration screening tool suggests that it may help satisfy the growing need to quickly determine research eligibility and to help college students self‐identify risk, offering objective data upon which to base the decision for follow‐up consultation.