Songs to syntax: the linguistics of birdsong

Unlike our primate cousins, many species of bird share with humans a capacity for vocal learning, a crucial factor in speech acquisition. There are striking behavioural, neural and genetic similarities between auditory-vocal learning in birds and human infants. Recently, the linguistic parallels between birdsong and spoken language have begun to be investigated. Although both birdsong and human language are hierarchically organized according to particular syntactic constraints, birdsong structure is best characterized as 'phonological syntax', resembling aspects of human sound structure. Crucially, birdsong lacks semantics and words. Formal language and linguistic analysis remains essential for the proper characterization of birdsong as a model system for human speech and language, and for the study of the brain and cognition evolution.     

Exploring consumer adoption of a high involvement eco‐innovation using value‐belief‐norm theory

Environmental problems are increasingly becoming everyday issues of international organizations, national governments, and individual consumers. In consumer behavior research considerable effort has been focused on understanding environmentally significant behaviors. One such research stream uses the value‐belief‐norm theory (VBN) to explain and predict a number of relatively low involvement proenvironmental consumer behaviors such as household energy use. However, many consumer behaviors with significant impact on the environment are categorized as high involvement behaviors where VBN theory has not yet been employed. The aim of this paper is to arrive at a better understanding of consumer adoption of a high involvement eco‐innovation using VBN theory. As an example of a high involvement eco‐innovation the alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) which runs on fossil oil‐alternative fuels such as electricity and biofuels is used. A representative sample of adopters and non‐adopters of these vehicles in Sweden were surveyed. Differences between adopters and non‐adopters on sociodemographic and VBN factors were analyzed and the explanatory ability of the different factors on adoption was analyzed using logistic regression. The results showed that early adopters had a higher level of education and were much more likely to live in multi‐person households compared to non‐adopters. In terms of attitudinal factors, adopters exhibited higher levels of proenvironmental values, beliefs, and personal norms (PNs). Furthermore the results established that VBN factors were successful in explaining the early adoption of a high involvement eco‐innovation such as the AFV. The implications for consumer research, public policymakers, and for marketers of eco‐innovations are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spiritual care as eHealth: a systematic review

A systematic review was undertaken of the literature on the use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT's) in the provision and support of religious and spiritual care in healthcare. Indexes such as Medline, PsychoINFO and Proquest Religion were searched. The review found little systematic study of the effectiveness of the Internet and other ICT's in religious and spiritual care. It is believed that the results of this review provide a basis for promise spiri care in the further explora of the potential and of ICT's for tual healthcare.     

Revisiting preview search at isoluminance: new onsets are not necessary for the preview advantage

It has been argued that search performance under preview conditions relies on automatic capture by luminance onsets (Donk & Theeuwes, 2001). We present three experiments in which preview search was examined with both isoluminant and nonisoluminant items (e.g., as defined by luminance onsets). Experiment 1 provided evidence against the automatic capture of attention by onsets. Search benefited when onset previews were followed by new onset stimuli, as compared with a full-set baseline matched for the number of new onsets but in which half the distractors appeared simultaneously at isoluminance. Furthermore, both Experiments 1 and 2 established a preview advantage when isoluminant targets followed onset previews, when compared with appropriate full-set baselines. Experiment 3 replicated this result, while showing that the preview benefit was disrupted by dual-task interference. The data indicate that new onsets are not necessary to generate a preview advantage in search. We discuss the data in terms of search's benefiting from active inhibition of old onset-defined stimuli.     

Treatment of panic disorder: live therapy vs. self-help via the Internet

A randomized trial was conducted comparing 10 individual weekly sessions of cognitive behaviour therapy for panic disorder (PD) with or without agoraphobia with a 10-module self-help program on the Internet. After confirming the PD diagnosis with an in-person structured clinical interview (SCID) 49 participants were randomized. Overall, the results suggest that Internet-administered self-help plus minimal therapist contact via e-mail can be equally effective as traditional individual cognitive behaviour therapy. Composite within-group effect sizes were high in both groups, while the between-group effect size was small (Cohen's d=16). One-year follow-up confirmed the results, with a within-group effect size of Cohen's d=0.80 for the Internet group and d=0.93 for the live group. The results from this study generally provide evidence to support the continued use and development of Internet-distributed self-help programs.     

Concurrent validity of the DSM-IV scales Affective Problems and Anxiety Problems of the Youth Self-Report

This study investigated the concurrent validity of the DSM-IV scales Anxiety Problems and Affective Problems of the Youth Self-Report (YSR) in a community sample of Dutch young adolescents aged 10-12 years. We first examined the extent to which the YSR/DSM-IV scales reflect symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety disorders and DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder, assessed with the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS). Second, we examined whether the association between the YSR/DSM-IV scales and the RCADS scales was stronger than the association between the empirically derived YSR narrow-band scales Anxious/Depressed and Withdrawn and the same RCADS scales. Results showed that the YSR/DSM-IV scale Affective Problems had a stronger association with symptoms of DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder than the YSR narrow-band scales Withdrawn and Anxious/Depressed. However, the YSR/DSM-IV scale Anxiety Problems had a weaker association with symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety disorders, compared to the YSR narrow-band scale Anxious/Depressed. It was concluded that the construction of the DSM-IV scales improved the correspondence with DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder, but not with DSM-IV anxiety disorders.     

Is there an assignment of top and bottom during symmetry perception?

We report data from a discrimination task in which participants had to decide whether a single-item display was either vertically symmetric or asymmetric. This decision was found to be easier when items with a top bottom polarity were placed in an orientation where the wide end was the base of the stimulus and the narrow end was the top. The difference in reaction times between this orientation and its inversion was about 10 ms. We suggest that top and bottom labels are assigned to stimuli during the detection of bilateral symmetry.     

The normative development of child and adolescent problem behavior

The aim of this study was to identify normative developmental trajectories of parent-reported problems assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; T. M. Achenbach, 1991) in a representative sample of 2,076 children aged 4 to 18 years from the general population. The trajectories were determined by multilevel growth curve analyses on the CBCL syndromes in a Longitudinal multiple birth-cohort sample that was assessed 5 times with 2-year intervals. Most syndromes showed a linear increase or decrease with age or a curvilinear trajectory, except for thought problems. Trajectories for most syndromes differed for boys versus girls, except those for withdrawn, social problems, and thought problems. These normative developmental trajectories provide information against which developmental deviance in childhood and adolescence can be detected.     

Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: tests from 52 nations, 6 continents,and 13 islands

Evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that men and women possess both long-term and short-term mating strategies, with men's short-term strategy differentially rooted in the desire for sexual variety. In this article, findings from a cross-cultural survey of 16,288 people across 10 major world regions (including North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia) demonstrate that sex differences in the desire for sexual variety are culturally universal throughout these world regions. Sex differences were evident regardless of whether mean, median, distributional, or categorical indexes of sexual differentiation were evaluated. Sex differences were evident regardless of the measures used to evaluate them. Among contemporary theories of human mating, pluralistic approaches that hypothesize sex differences in the evolved design of short-term mating provide the most compelling account of these robust empirical findings.