Communication Styles and Marital Satisfaction in Israeli and American Couples

This study examined the conflict-related communication styles of American and Israeli couples and how these communication styles related to marital satisfaction in the two groups. An Israeli sample was recruited from Israeli couples currently living in New York City; the American sample was selected from the friendship circles of the Israeli couples. In spite of the close social ties of the two groups, we predicted that the conflict-related communication styles of the Israelis would be less calm and rational than those of the Americans and that such rational modes of communication would be positively associated with marital satisfaction for the Americans but not for the Israelis. The principle instruments were Straus' Conflict Tactics Scale, Ryder's Imagined Situation Inventory, and Spanier's Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Results largely confirmed the hypotheses. Israeli couples were more apt to be verbally aggressive (but less physically violent) and less apt to behave calmly during marital conflict, but these communication styles did not relate to marital satisfaction as strongly for the Israelis as for the Americans. These findings are discussed as a demonstration of the importance of considering cultural context when treating families.     

Pi ka pu: The perception of speech sounds by prelinguistic infants

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Experimentation with 14–18-week-old infants indicates that they are capable of grouping together syllables of English depending on whether the...     

Sex differences in the neural underpinnings of social and monetary incentive processing during adolescence

The brain’s reward system undergoes major changes during adolescence, and an increased reactivity to social and nonsocial incentives has been described as a typical feature during this transitional period. Little is known whether there are sex differences in the brain’s responsiveness to social or monetary incentives during adolescence. The aim of this event-related potential (ERP) study was to compare the neurophysiological underpinnings of monetary and social incentive processing in adolescent boys versus girls. During ERP recording, 38 adolescents (21 females, 17 males; 13–18 years) completed an incentive delay task comprising (a) a reward versus punishment condition and (b) social versus monetary incentives. The stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) was recorded during anticipation of reward and punishment, and the feedback P3 (fP3) along with the feedback-related negativity (FRN) after reward/punishment delivery. During anticipation of social punishment, adolescent boys compared with girls exhibited a reduced SPN. After delivery, male adolescents exhibited higher fP3 amplitudes to monetary compared with social incentives, whereas fP3 amplitudes in girls were comparable across incentive types. Moreover, whereas in boys fP3 responses were higher in rewards than in punishment trials, no such difference was evident in girls. The results indicate that adolescent boys show a reduced neural responsivity in the prospect of social punishment. Moreover, the findings imply that, once the incentive is obtained, adolescent boys attribute a relatively enhanced motivational significance to monetary incentives and show a relative hyposensitivity to punishment. The findings might contribute to our understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities to problem behaviors related to incentive processing during adolescence.     

Pushing dualism to an extreme: On the philosophical impetus of a new materialism

This article discusses the way in which a group of contemporary cultural theorists in whose work we see a “new materialism” (a term coined by Braidotti and DeLanda) at work constitutes a philosophy of difference by traversing the dualisms that form the backbone of modernist thought. Continuing the ideas of Lyotard and Deleuze they have set themselves to a rewriting of all possible forms of emancipation that are to be found. This rewriting exercise involves a movement in thought that, in the words of Bergson, can be termed “pushing dualism to an extreme.” By this movement, Deleuze has stated, “difference is pushed to the limit,” that is, using Colebrook’s words, “difference is shown differing.” The article addresses the ways in which modernity’s dualisms (structured by a negative relation between terms) are traversed, and how a new conceptualization, and ontology, of difference (structured by an affirmative relation) comes to be constituted along the way. New materialism leaves behind all prioritizations (implicitly) involved in modern dualist thinking since a difference structured by affirmation does not work with predetermined relations (e.g., between mind and body) nor does it involve a (counter-)hierarchy between terms. The article makes explicit the methodology of the current-day rise of non-dualist thought, both in terms of its non-classificatory mode of (Deleuzian) thinking and in terms of the theory of the time of thought thus effectuated (Lyotard’s notion of ‘rewriting modernity’ is not a post-modernism). Throughout the article we will engage with an example in order to demonstrate the ontology that is being practiced following this methodology: How does a new (feminist) materialism traverse the sexual dualisms that structure modernist (feminist) thinking? This example also shows how a feminist post-modernism (found in the canonical work of Butler) has remained dualist, and what makes new materialism “new.” Freed from a dualist methodology, the modernist emancipatory project comes to full fruition in new materialism.     

Syntactic Features in Reanalysis: Positive and Negative Symptoms

Meng and Bader have presented evidence that a Case conflict is a more effective cue for garden-path reanalysis than a number conflict is, for German wh-sentences with subject–object ambiguities. The preferred first-pass analysis has the wh-trace in subject position, although object position is correct. In a speeded grammaticality judgment task, perceivers accepted Case-disambiguated examples more often and more rapidly than number-disambiguated examples, although comprehension questions indicated that both were eventually understood correctly. For ungrammatical sentences, a Case mismatch error resulted in more false positive grammaticality judgments than a number mismatch error. We offer an explanation for why Case and number features differ in these two ways in their effects on sentence processing. We propose, within the Diagnosis Model of garden-path processing, that reanalysis triggered by a Case mismatch guides the parser more effectively toward the correct structure. Case is a positive symptom, which carries information about the new structure that must be built. By contrast, a number mismatch is a negative symptom; it invalidates the incorrect structure without showing how to rebuild it. This difference in the transparency of garden-path repair can also account for the greater overacceptance of Case-disambiguated ungrammatical sentences. The speeded grammaticality judgment task is designed to encourage hasty responses. Usually, these are hasty rejections of garden path sentences that, on calmer reflection, the parser would find acceptable. Conversely, over-hasty acceptance could occur if some initial progress is made in resolving a grammatical problem. Thus, a higher rate of false positives on ungrammaticals is to be expected where reanalysis proceeds successfully for a while before blocking.     

Instructional cues modify performance on the Iowa Gambling Task

The current study investigated whether acute alcohol intoxication produces impaired decision-making on tasks assessing ventromedial prefrontal (VMF) cortex functioning and impulsive responding. Participants completed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a decision-making test targeting the VMF, and the Newman Perseveration Task (NT), a measure of impulsivity. Personality measures of impulsivity were assessed using the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS). To encourage natural responding on both tasks, participants were falsely informed that the study was examining the effects of alcohol on memory; the impulsivity tasks were presented as 'distractor' tasks. Advantageous performance on the IGT was related to specific instructional cues as well as to knowledge about the experimental purpose. Performance of intoxicated and sober participants did not differ. A subsequent study in which the true purpose of the experiment was revealed confirmed that alcohol does not affect IGT performance. Most importantly, the instruction-sensitivity of the IGT emphasizes the importance of salient cues for decision-making.     

Geometric determinants of human spatial memory

Geometric alterations to the boundaries of a virtual environment were used to investigate the representations underlying human spatial memory. Subjects encountered a cue object in a simple rectangular enclosure, with distant landmarks for orientation. After a brief delay, during which they were removed from the arena, subjects were returned to it at a new location and orientation and asked to mark the place where the cue had been. On some trials the geometry (size, aspect ratio) of the arena was varied between presentation and testing. Responses tended to lie somewhere between a location that maintained fixed distances from nearby walls and a location that maintained fixed ratios of the distances between opposing walls. The former were more common after expansions and for cued locations nearer to the edge while the latter were more common after contractions and for locations nearer to the center. The spatial distributions of responses predicted by various simple geometric models were compared to the data. The best fitting model was one derived from the response properties of 'place cells' in the rat hippocampus, which matches the 'proximities' 1/(d+c) of the cue to the four walls of the arena, where d is the distance to a wall and c is a global constant. Subjects also tended to adopt the same orientation at presentation and testing, although this was not due to using a view matching strategy, which could be ruled out in 50% of responses. Disoriented responses were most often seen where the cued location was near the center of the arena or where the long axis of a rectangular arena was changed between presentation and testing, suggesting that the geometry of the arena acts as a weak cue to orientation. Overall, the results suggest a process of visual landmark matching to determine orientation, combined with an abstract representation of the proximity of the cued location to the walls of the arena consistent with the neural representation of location in the hippocampus.