The role of structural prediction in rapid syntactic analysis

A number of recent electrophysiological studies of sentence processing have shown that a subclass of syntactic violations elicits very rapid ERP responses, occurring within around 200 ms of the onset of the violation. Such findings raise the question of how it is possible to diagnose violations so quickly. This paper suggests that very rapid diagnosis of errors is possible specifically in situations where the diagnosis problem is tightly constrained by specific expectations generated before the critical word is presented. In an event-related potentials (ERP) study of visual sentence reading participants encountered violations of a word order constraint (...Max's of...) that has elicited early ERP responses in previous studies. Across conditions the illicit sequence was held constant, while sentence context was used to manipulate the expectation for a noun following the possessor Max's, by manipulating the possibility of ellipsis of the head noun. Results showed that the anterior negativity elicited by the word category violation was attenuated when the availability of ellipsis reduced the expectation for a noun in the position of the offending preposition of, with divergence between conditions starting around 200 ms after the onset of the violation. This suggests a role for structural expectations in accounting for very fast syntactic diagnosis processes.     

Going home: the complex effects of reunification on internalizing problems among children in foster care

When children in foster care are reunified with their families of origin they encounter changes that may influence their well-being in both positive and negative ways. We examined the effects of reunification among 218 children in foster care to test an integrative model of the effects of reunification using structural equation modeling. We hypothesized that reunification would exert indirect effects on subsequent child adjustment via changes in adverse life events, perceived social isolation, and mental health service utilization. Results indicated no direct effect of reunification on subsequent internalizing problems, but reunification was related to increased adverse life events that, in turn, were related to elevated symptoms. Second, reunification was negatively associated with mental health service use. Finally, reunification was associated with decreased child perceptions of social isolation. In summary, reunification with biological parents is associated with multiple environmental changes, with most but not all effects indicating negative consequences.     

Suicidal ideation and attempts in Norwegian police

Studies on suicide among police show inconsistent results, thereby contributing to considerable speculation regarding why police officers commit suicide. The present paper is the first nationwide study on suicidal ideation and attempts among police. 3,272 Norwegian police completed Paykel's Suicidal Feelings in the General Population questionnaire. Lifetime prevalence of specific questionnaire items ranged from 24% for the feeling that life was not worth living, 6.4% for having seriously considered suicide, and 0.7% for attempted suicide. Independent predictors of serious suicidal ideation were marital status, subjective health complaints, reality weakness, anxiety, and depression. Serious suicidal ideation was mainly attributed to personal and family problems.     

Dieting behavior in Norwegian adolescents

In a sample of Norwegian adolescents (n = 1117) 27, 4% of the girls and 9% of the boys reported that they were dieting. Using multiple regression analyses, we were able to predict 50% of girls dieting behavior and 24% of boys dieting behavior. Psychological concerns relating to weight and eating (WEC) as well as perceptions of feeling fatter than others were the only significant predictors of dieting in girls, whilst dieting in boys could also be predicted by their Body Mass Index. Dieting girls who scored high on the Weight and Eating Concerns Inventory were found to suffer constipation and binge eating attacks more often than other dieting girls. This was taken as an indication that these girls were at risk of developing an eating disorder.     

Toward an Analytical Model of Ethical Decision Making in Plagiarism

Plagiarism by students is a common and worldwide phenomenon with a significant impact on our society. Numerous studies on the pervasive nature of plagiarism among students have focused on the behavioral aspects of plagiarism and how to prevent it. Based on an empirical study of a sample of 463 eighth graders in Hong Kong, this article offers an analytical model to understand the ethical decision-making process in plagiarism among students. Using this model, students' plagiaristic behavior can be analyzed in terms of their moral judgment, moral intensity, and perceived risks.     

An Examination of Stimulus Control in Fluency-Based Strategies: SAFMEDS and Generalization

Fluency-based strategies such as Say All Fast a Minute Each Day Shuffled (SAFMEDS) effectively promote fluent responding (i.e., high rate and accuracy). It is possible, however, that the stimulus control developed through these activities inhibits stimulus generalization. We investigated this concern in a two-part study with college students. Study 1 assessed generalization of rates of responding from training with SAFMEDS to a novel set of equivalent SAFMEDS flashcards. Results indicate that SAFMEDS promoted fluent responding, but rates of responding decreased during generalization probes. Furthermore, higher rates of responding during training were correlated with a greater decrease in rates of responding during generalization probes. This may indicate that students attend to irrelevant stimulus features of SAFMEDS during training. Study 2 examined the effects of embedding multiple-exemplar training within SAFMEDS. Results indicate that multiple-exemplar training can promote generalization of accurate and high-rate responding when incorporated in a SAFMEDS activity.     

Churched Ibiza: Evangelical Christianity and Club Culture

In this article, I trace the shifting theorisation of religious conflict to argue that religious conflict in the USA is shaped by a dialectic of religious and secular movements. Church-sect theory, which was originally a class-based theoretical framework, was appropriated by the rational choice approach in the sociology of religion, which instead privileged competition in a religious marketplace. Ernst Troeltsch described divisions between church and sect, but H. Richard Niebuhr demarcated a denominational divide in the USA based on class, region, ethnicity and race. In the 1980s, Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, Robert Wuthnow and James Davison Hunter observed that the differences in the US were no longer necessarily between denominations but could occur within denominations. For them, what had become known as the Culture Wars were based on a conflict between religious liberals/progressives and religious conservatives/orthodox. This conflict is shaped by a dialectic of secular and religious movements and counter-movements.     

Hesitation in communication: Does minority status delay responses?

Past studies indicated that people in a minority (vs. majority) position are slower to express their public/political opinion, and the larger the difference between the size of the two positions, the slower the response. Bassili termed this the minority‐slowness effect (MSE). In the current study, two experiments were conducted to demonstrate that MSE extends to people's understanding of utterances and explored the cognitive basis for this. Participants were asked to judge if an utterance is a ‘direct’ or an ‘indirect’ expression. The results show that participants in the minority (vs. majority) took longer to respond, and the larger the difference between the size of majority and minority, the longer the response latency (Study 1a). Furthermore, participants were aware of their own minority position (Study 1b). In Study 2, when participants were deprived of cognitive resources, MSE disappeared, presumably because participants lack the cognitive resources required to conform to utterance interpretation as favoured by the majority.     

Resilience is associated with better recovery in Chinese people diagnosed with coronary heart disease

This study investigated the impact of personal resilience (a composite measure of optimism, perceived control and self-esteem) on outcome measures in 67 Chinese coronary heart disease patients in response to an 8-week rehabilitation programme. The effect of personal resilience on posttraumatic growth attributed to the onset of heart disease was also examined. Results indicated that coronary heart disease patients high in personal resilience achieved better outcomes than those low in personal resilience, as indicated by higher physical and mental summary measures in SF-36, lower cholesterol levels and better performance on the 6?min walk test. Moreover, personal resilience was demonstrated to be a significant predictor of the level of posttraumatic growth although the rehabilitation programme exerted a weak mediating effect on the link between personal resilience and posttraumatic growth. Findings were discussed in relation to clinical implications of the construct of personal resilience and the intervention programme.