Neighborhood effects in reading aloud: new findings and new challenges for computational models

A word from a dense neighborhood is often read aloud faster than a word from a sparse neighborhood. This advantage is usually attributed to orthography, but orthographic and phonological neighbors are typically confounded. Two experiments investigated the effect of neighborhood density on reading aloud when phonological density was varied while orthographic density was held constant, and vice versa. A phonological neighborhood effect was observed, but not an orthographic one. These results are inconsistent with the predominant role ascribed to orthographic neighbors in accounts of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Consistent with this interpretation, 6 different computational models of reading aloud failed to simulate this pattern of results. The results of the present experiments thus provide a new understanding of some of the processes underlying reading aloud, and new challenges for computational models.     

Spontaneous trait inferences are bound to actors' faces: evidence from a false recognition paradigm

A false recognition paradigm showed that spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) are bound to the person performing a trait-implying behavior. In 6 experiments, participants memorized faces and behavioral sentences. When faces were paired with implied traits in a recognition test, participants falsely recognized these traits more often than unrelated traits paired with the same faces or the same traits paired with familiar faces. The effect was obtained for a large set of behaviors (120). each presented for 5 s, and for behaviors that participants did not subsequently recognize or recall. Antonyms of the implied traits were falsely recognized less often than unrelated traits, suggesting that STIs have extended implications. Explicit person-trait judgments predicted both false recognition and response times for implied traits.     

Statistical power in randomized intervention studies with noncompliance

This study examined various factors that affect statistical power in randomized intervention studies with noncompliance. On the basis of Monte Carlo simulations, this study demonstrates how statistical power changes depending on compliance rate, study design, outcome distributions, and covariate information. It also examines how these factors influence power in different methods of estimating intervention effects. Intent-to-treat analysis and complier average causal effect estimation are compared as 2 alternative ways of estimating intervention effects under noncompliance. The results of this investigation provide practical implications in designing and evaluating intervention studies taking into account noncompliance.     

Mechanisms of predictive and diagnostic causal induction

In predictive causal inference, people reason from causes to effects, whereas in diagnostic inference, they reason from effects to causes. Independently of the causal structure of the events, the temporal structure of the information provided to a reasoner may vary (e.g., multiple events followed by a single event vs. a single event followed by multiple events). The authors report 5 experiments in which causal structure and temporal information were varied independently. Inferences were influenced by temporal structure but not by causal structure. The results are relevant to the evaluation of 2 current accounts of causal induction, the Rescorla-Wagner (R. A. Rescorla & A. R. Wagner, 1972) and causal model theories (M. R. Waldmann & K. J. Holyoak, 1992).     

Verb-noun double dissociation in aphasic lexical impairments: the role of word frequency and imageability

Neurolinguistic studies have provided important evidence regarding the organization of lexical representations and the structure of underlying conceptual knowledge; in particular, it has been shown that the retrieval of verbs and nouns can be damaged selectively. Dissociated lexical damage is proof of an independent mental organization of lexical representations and/or of the underlying processes. The aim of the present study is to estimate the rate of dissociated impairments for nouns and verbs on a large sample of mild to moderate aphasic patients and to investigate the mechanisms underlying such phenomena. In addition, the authors wished to verify to what degree the impairment for nouns and verbs is related to a specific type of language disorder. A confrontation naming task for verbs and nouns was administered to 58 aphasic patients. The major lexical (word frequency and age of acquisition) and semantic variables (familiarity and imageability of the underlying concept) were considered for each noun and verb used in the task. Verbs were distinguished by major functional classes (transitive, intransitive, and ergative verbs). The data collected from this task were analyzed twice: (i) as a group study comparison of major aphasic subgroups and (ii) as a multiple single case study to evaluate the differences on the naming of verbs and nouns and the effect of the lexical semantic variables on each individual patient. The results confirm the existence of dissociated naming impairments of verbs and nouns. Selective impairment of verbs is more frequent (34%) than that of nouns (10%). In many cases, the dissociated pattern of naming impairment disappeared when the effect of the concomitant variables (word frequency and imageability) was removed, but in approximately one-fifth of the cases the noun or verb superiority was preserved. Noun superiority emerged in five of six agrammatic patients. Both the naming of verbs (n = 9) or of nouns (n = 6) could be impaired selectively in fluent aphasic patients. The results lend support to the hypothesis of an independent mental organization of nouns and verbs, but a substantial effect of imageability and word frequency suggests an interaction of the naming impairment with underlying lexical and semantic aspects.     

Evaluation of an inference-based approach to treating obsessive-compulsive disorder

This study evaluated an inference-based approach (IBA) to the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by comparing its efficacy with a treatment based on the cognitive appraisal model (CAM) and exposure and response prevention (ERP). IBA considers initial intrusions in OCD (e.g. "Maybe the door is open", "My hands could be dirty") as idiosyncratic inferences about possible states of affairs arrived at through inductive reasoning. In IBA such primary inferences represent the starting point of obsessional doubt, and the reasoning maintaining the doubt forms the focus for therapy. This is unlike CAM, which regards appraisals of intrusions as the maintaining factors in OCD. Fifty-four OCD participants, of whom 44 completed, were randomly allocated to CAM, ERP or IBA. After 20 weeks of treatment all groups showed a significant reduction in scores on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) and the Padua Inventory. Participants with high levels of obsessional conviction showed greater benefit from IBA than CAM. Appraisals of intrusions changed in all treatment conditions. Strength of primary inference was not correlated with symptom measures except in the case of strong obsessional conviction. Strength of primary inference correlated significantly with the Y-BOCS insight item. Treatment matching for high and low conviction levels to IBA and CAM, respectively, may optimize therapy outcome.     

Facing guilt: Role of negative affectivity,need for reparation,and fear of punishment in leading to prosocial behaviour and aggression

The present study aims to further corroborate and to extend the scope of previous findings regarding the path of influence between negative affectivity, need for reparation and fear of punishment when examining the determinants and the motivational components of guilt. Data were collected from three different European countries (i.e. Italy, Hungary, and the Czech Republic). About 1100 young adolescents were involved in the research. The generalizability of a nomological network linking individual differences in Negative Affectivity to Need for Reparation, Fear of Punishment, Prosocial Behaviour, and Aggression has been investigated across countries and gender, by means of structural equation modelling. Need for Reparation turns out to be positively related to Prosocial Behaviour and negatively related to Aggression. Fear for Punishment turns out to be positively related to Aggression and negatively related to Prosocial Behaviour, with the exception of Hungary. Alternative paths of influence among considered variables have been examined. Practical implications for prevention and education are underlined. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When Likeness Goes with Liking: The Case of Political Preference

Three studies show that people tend to vote for politicians (i.e., either Romano Prodi or Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or George W. Bush or John Kerry in the United States) whose traits they rate as being most similar to their own. People perceived higher similarity between themselves and political figures with respect to traits that were most distinctive of each platform and their respective leaders. These findings, while corroborating the similarity-attraction relationship, further attest to the role that personal characteristics of both voters and candidates play in orienting political preference.     

Modulation of stress consequences by hippocampal monoaminergic, glutamatergic and nitrergic neurotransmitter systems

Several findings relate the hippocampal formation to the behavioural consequences of stress. It contains a high concentration of corticoid receptors and undergoes plastic modifications, including decreased neurogenesis and cellular remodelling, following stress exposure. Various major neurotransmitter systems in the hippocampus are involved in these effects. Serotonin (5-HT) seems to exert a protective role in the hippocampus and attenuates the behavioural consequences of stress by activating 5-HT1A receptors in this structure. These effects may mediate the therapeutic actions of several antidepressants. The role of noradrenaline is less clear and possibly depends on the specific hippocampal region (dorsal vs. ventral). The deleterious modifications induced in the hippocampus by stress might involve a decrease in neurotrophic factors such as brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) following glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor activation. In addition to glutamate, nitric oxide (NO) could also be related to these effects. Systemic and intra-hippocampal administration of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitors attenuates stress-induced behavioural consequences. The challenge for the future will be to integrate results related to these different neurotransmitter systems in a unifying theory about the role of the hippocampus in mood regulation, depressive disorder and antidepressant effects.     

Does remembering emotional items impair recall of same-emotion items?

In the part-set cuing effect, cuing a subset of previously studied items impairs recall of the remaining noncued items. This experiment reveals that cuing participants with previously-studied emotional pictures (e.g., fearevoking pictures of people) can impair recall of pictures involving the same emotion but different content (e.g., fear-evoking pictures of animals). This indicates that new events can be organized in memory using emotion as a grouping function to create associations. However, whether new information is organized in memory along emotional or nonemotional lines appears to be a flexible process that depends on people’s current focus. Mentioning in the instructions that the pictures were either amusement- or fear-related led to memory impairment for pictures with the same emotion as cued pictures, whereas mentioning that the pictures depicted either animals or people led to memory impairment for pictures with the same type of actor.