Early metalinguistic competence: speech monitoring and repair behavior.

This article examines 2-3-year-olds' responses to specific (e.g., "Where did he go?") and neutral (e.g., "What?") requests for clarification. The focus is on children's ability to locate the linguistic errors that provoked neutral questions of clarification and their success in providing appropriate repair. It is argued that this behavior provides evidence for a speech monitor that detects errors and enables repair. Contrary to A. Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) claim, control over the production and comprehension of specific structures does not necessarily precede monitoring. Rather, metalinguistic abilities that are implicated in speech monitoring develop simultaneously with the acquisition of primary linguistic behavior and do not require awareness. It is claimed that such metaprocesses are fundamental to the use of language as a vehicle for the expression of intentional content.     

Translating the ICAP Theory of Cognitive Engagement Into Practice

ICAP is a theory of active learning that differentiates students’ engagement based on their behaviors. ICAP postulates that I nteractive engagement, demonstrated by co‐generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning to C onstructive engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement exceed the benefits of A ctive or P assive engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively. This paper discusses a 5‐year project that attempted to translate ICAP into a theory of instruction using five successive measures: (a) teachers’ understanding of ICAP after completing an online module, (b) their success at designing lesson plans using different ICAP modes, (c) fidelity of teachers’ classroom implementation, (d) modes of students’ enacted behaviors, and (e) students’ learning outcomes. Although teachers had minimal success in designing Constructive and Interactive activities, students nevertheless learned significantly more in the context of Constructive than Active activities. We discuss reasons for teachers’ overall difficulty in designing and eliciting Interactive engagement.     

Distress tolerance but not impulsivity predicts outcome in concurrent treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorder (SUD) commonly co-occur. Emerging research suggests that both distress tolerance and impulsivity may underlie this comorbidity. However, to our knowledge no studies have examined whether these 2 constructs predict outcome in PTSD-SUD treatment. The current study investigated whether pretreatment distress tolerance and impulsivity predicted posttreatment PTSD and cravings severity in a sample of 70 Veterans receiving concurrent treatment for PTSD and SUD in a residential day treatment program. Veterans completed measures of symptom severity before and after treatment. Results demonstrated that pretreatment distress tolerance predicted posttreatment PTSD severity while controlling for pretreatment PTSD. By contrast, pretreatment impulsivity was not predictive of posttreatment PTSD while controlling for pretreatment values. Neither distress tolerance nor impulsivity predicted posttreatment cravings severity. The findings support the notion that distress tolerance may help to explain the co-occurrence of PTSD and SUD and suggest that targeting this construct in PTSD-SUD treatment may be important for successful outcomes.     

Factor structure of the primary scales of the Inventory of Personality Organization in a nonclinical sample using exploratory structural equation modeling

Using exploratory structural equation modeling and multiple regression, we examined the factor structure and criterion relations of the primary scales of the Inventory of Personality Organization (IPO; Kernberg & Clarkin, 1995) in a nonclinical sample. Participants (N = 1,260) completed the IPO and measures of self-concept clarity, defenses, affect and emotion regulation, and risky and self-injurious behavior. In contrast to that of Lenzenweger, Clarkin, Kernberg, and Foelsch (2001), a 4-factor measurement model was derived with factors representing instability of sense of self and other, instability of goals, instability of behaviors, and psychosis. The 1st of these factors related most strongly to external measures of self-concept clarity, defenses, and affect, whereas the 3rd factor related most strongly to measures of risky behavior and self-injury. These results suggest that the IPO's factor structure does not conform to the hypothesized 3-factor model, although it does capture important elements of Kernberg's (1996) theory of personality organization, especially the central construct of representations of self and others. The results point to several areas in which the IPO might be refined to provide a more comprehensive and theoretically appropriate measure of the borderline personality organization construct.     

Peer pressure against prejudice: A high school field experiment examining social network change

Individuals often conform to the intergroup attitudes and behaviors modeled by their peers in a given situation. To what extent does peer influence on intergroup prejudice 1) diffuse across a social network of peers and 2) affect attitudes and behavior across time? Student leaders (“Peer Trainers”) were trained to confront expressions of intergroup prejudice in five randomly assigned high schools across a period of five months; students recruited to be Peer Trainers in five control schools waited to be trained. Independent surveys of Peer Trainers' social networks reveal that treatment Peer Trainers were significantly more likely than control Trainers to be nominated by peers as students who confront prejudice. Treatment Peer Trainers' tolerant behavior spread to close friends and to acquaintances in their social network; their attitudes spread inconsistently, and only to close friends. Studying peer influence within social networks can improve understanding of social influence, prejudice reduction, and social change.     

Illness Perception Differences Between Russian- and Hebrew-Speaking Israeli Oncology Patients

Illness perception influences health and illness behaviors. This study was designed to estimate illness perception differences between Russian-speaking and Hebrew-speaking Israeli oncology patients. Changes in illness perception associated with time spent in Israel among Russian-speaking patients were also evaluated. Additionally, we evaluated differences in illness perception of patients exposed to Chernobyl’s consequences. A total of 144 oncology patients (77 Hebrew-speaking, 67 Russian-speaking) completed personal data questionnaires and The illness perception questionnaire revised, translated into Russian for this study. Significantly more Russian-speaking oncology patients perceived their illness as chronic and having negative consequences on life (p < .01). Russian-speaking oncology patients tend to have a more negative perception of cancer compared to Hebrew-speaking patients. Time spent in Israel may create more positive perceptions of cancer among these patients. No illness perception differences were found concerning Chernobyl consequences.     

Is Neurolaw Conceptually Confused?

In Minds, Brains, and Law, Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson argue that current attempts to use neuroscience to inform the theory and practice of law founder because they are built on confused conceptual foundations. Proponents of neurolaw attribute to the brain or to its parts psychological properties that belong only to people; this mistake vitiates many of the claims they make. Once neurolaw is placed on a sounder conceptual footing, Pardo and Patterson claim, we will see that its more dramatic claims are false or meaningless, though it might be able to provide inductive evidence for particular less dramatic claims (that a defendant may be lying, or lacks control over their behavior, for instance). In response, I argue that the central conceptual confusions identified by Pardo and Patterson are not confusions at all. Though some of the claims made by its proponents are hasty and sometimes they are confused, there are no conceptual barriers to attributing psychological properties to brain states. Neuroscience can play a role in producing evidence that is more reliable than subjective report or behavior; it therefore holds out the possibility of dramatically altering our self-conception as agents and thereby the law.     

Task effects reveal cognitive flexibility responding to frequency and predictability: Evidence from eye movements in reading and proofreading

It is well-known that word frequency and predictability affect processing time. These effects change magnitude across tasks, but studies testing this use tasks with different response types (e.g., lexical decision, naming, and fixation time during reading; Schilling, Rayner, & Chumbley, 1998), preventing direct comparison. Recently, Kaakinen and Hyönä (2010) overcame this problem, comparing fixation times in reading for comprehension and proofreading, showing that the frequency effect was larger in proofreading than in reading. This result could be explained by readers exhibiting substantial cognitive flexibility, and qualitatively changing how they process words in the proofreading task in a way that magnifies effects of word frequency. Alternatively, readers may not change word processing so dramatically, and instead may perform more careful identification generally, increasing the magnitude of many word processing effects (e.g., both frequency and predictability). We tested these possibilities with two experiments: subjects read for comprehension and then proofread for spelling errors (letter transpositions) that produce nonwords (e.g., trcak for track as in Kaakinen & Hyönä) or that produce real but unintended words (e.g., trial for trail) to compare how the task changes these effects. Replicating Kaakinen and Hyönä, frequency effects increased during proofreading. However, predictability effects only increased when integration with the sentence context was necessary to detect errors (i.e., when spelling errors produced words that were inappropriate in the sentence; trial for trail). The results suggest that readers adopt sophisticated word processing strategies to accommodate task demands.