Disentangling Context Availability and Concreteness in Lexical Decision and W ord Translation

This study examines contrasting predictions of the dual coding theory and the context availability hypothesis regarding concreteness effects in monolingual and bilingual lexical processing. In three experiments, concreteness was controlled for or confounded with rated context availability. In the first experiment, bilingual subjects performed lexical decision in their native language (Dutch, L1). In the second experiment, lexical decision performance of bilinguals in their second language (English, L2) was examined. In the third experiment, bilinguals translated words 'forwards' (from L1 to L2) or 'backwards' (from L2 to L1). Both monolingual and bilingual tasks showed a concreteness effect when concreteness was confounded with context availability. However, concreteness effects disappeared when abstract and concrete words were matched on context availability, and even occasionally reversed. Implications of these results for theories that account for concreteness effects, particulary in bilingual processing, are discussed.     

Has the World Changed? My Neighbor Might Know: Effects of Social Context on Routine Deviation

Routines help individuals save decision effort and protect them from overreacting to volatile environments. Yet routines become dysfunctional if the environment changes fundamentally. Whether the environment has truly changed is often not easy to tell. We experimentally study adaptation to a change in a previously stable environment. Participants have to choose between one of the four decks of cards. Each deck represents a lottery, with a distribution of gains and losses initially unknown to participants. In the learning phase of the experiment, participants acquire the routine to choose the most attractive deck. Unbeknownst to participants, after an interruption, the lotteries represented by the competing decks are changed. We study how participants react to this change. We manipulate whether participants have access to choices by a confederate who most of the time makes the normative choice. In baseline condition, they never do. In the treatments, access is provided either during the learning phase, during the test phase, or during both phases. Participants are most likely to realize that the world has changed if they had access to the confederate's choices in both phases. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adrian Stokes and the portrait of Melanie Klein

This paper focuses on the offer by the art writer Adrian Stokes to commission and pay for a portrait of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein by the artist William Coldstream. It details some of the precursors of this offer in Stokes's preceding involvement first with Klein and then with Coldstream; her response to this offer; and its outcome and aftermath in Stokes's subsequent writing about Klein and Coldstream.     

Effective responder communication,perceived responder legitimacy,and group identification predict public cooperation and compliance in a mass decontamination visualization experiment

This article describes a visualization experiment that tests hypotheses based on the social identity approach about effectiveness of communication strategies during mass decontamination. Specifically, the mediating role of social identity processes between effective responder communication and relevant outcome variables (e.g., public compliance), is examined. After visualizing that they had been involved in a hypothetical incident involving decontamination, participants (N = 129) received one of three different communication strategies: (1) health‐focused information about decontamination, sufficient practical information; (2) no health‐focused information, sufficient practical information; and (3) no health‐focused information, low practical information. The communication strategy perceived as most effective included health‐focused information and practical information; this resulted in the highest levels of expected compliance, mediated by social identity variables. Implications for management of mass decontamination are discussed.     

Greater Intermanual Transfer in the Elderly Suggests Age-Related Bilateral Motor Cortex Activation Is Compensatory

ABSTRACT. Hemispheric lateralization of movement control diminishes with age; whether this is compensatory or maladaptive is debated. The authors hypothesized that if compensatory, bilateral activation would lead to greater intermanual transfer in older subjects learning tasks that activate the cortex unilaterally in young adults. They studied 10 young and 14 older subjects, learning a unimanual visuomotor task comprising a feedforward phase, where there is unilateral cortical activation in young adults, and a feedback phase, which activates the cortex bilaterally in both age groups. Increased intermanual transfer was demonstrated in older subjects during feedforward learning, with no difference between groups during feedback learning. This finding is consistent with bilateral cortical activation being compensatory to maintain performance despite declining computational efficiency in neural networks.     

Targeted Prevention of Childhood Anxiety: Engaging Parents in an Underserved Community

Selective prevention programs hold the promise of alleviating child anxiety symptoms, decreasing the risk for emotional problems across the lifespan. Such programs have particular public health import for young children of poor, underserved communities. Identifying factors related to parent engagement, and methods to improve engagement, are paramount in the effort to develop anxiety‐focused, community prevention programs. This feasibility study investigated the effect of an enhanced recruitment strategy to maximize parent engagement, as well as factors related to attendance in a single session focused on anxiety prevention. Participants were poor, ethnic minority parents of children aged 11–71 months (n = 256) who completed a survey that assessed anxiety risk according to trauma exposure, child anxiety, or parent anxiety, as well as preferences for preventive services (phase 1). Those meeting risk criteria (n = 101) were invited to a preventive group session (phase 2). Half of parents received enhanced recruitment (ER), which included personalized outreach, matching parent preferences, and community endorsement. Other parents were invited by mail. Chi square analyses indicated that ER was associated with planning to attend (49 vs. 6 % of control). Parents receiving ER were 3.5 times more likely to attend. Higher sociodemographic risk was correlated with higher child anxiety symptoms but not attendance. Results highlight the need for improved strategies for engaging parents in preventive, community‐based interventions.