Structural integration in language and music: Evidence for a shared system

In this study, we investigate whether language and music share cognitive resources for structural processing. We report an experiment that used sung materials and manipulated linguistic complexity (subject-extracted relative clauses, object-extracted relative clauses) and musical complexity (in-key critical note, out-of-key critical note, auditory anomaly on the critical note involving a loudness increase). The auditory-anomaly manipulation was included in order to test whether the difference between in-key and out-of-key conditions might be due to any salient, unexpected acoustic event. The critical dependent measure involved comprehension accuracies to questions about the propositional content of the sentences asked at the end of each trial. The results revealed an interaction between linguistic and musical complexity such that the difference between the subject- and object-extracted relative clause conditions was larger in the out-of-key condition than in the in-key and auditory-anomaly conditions. These results provide evidence for an overlap in structural processing between language and music.     

Youth Action Research for Prevention: A Multi-level Intervention Designed to Increase Efficacy and Empowerment Among Urban Youth

Youth Action Research for Prevention (YARP), a federally funded research and demonstration intervention, utilizes youth empowerment as the cornerstone of a multi-level intervention designed to reduce and/or delay onset of drug and sex risk, while increasing individual and collective efficacy and educational expectations. The intervention, located in Hartford Connecticut, served 114 African-Caribbean and Latino high school youth in a community education setting and a matched comparison group of 202 youth from 2001 to 2004. The strategy used in YARP begins with individuals, forges group identity and cohesion, trains youth as a group to use research to understand their community better (formative community ethnography), and then engages them in using the research for social action at multiple levels in community settings (policy, school-based, parental etc.) Engagement in community activism has, in turn, an effect on individual and collective efficacy and individual behavioral change. This approach is unique insofar as it differs from multilevel interventions that create approaches to attack multiple levels simultaneously. We describe the YARP intervention and employ qualitative and quantitative data from the quasi-experimental evaluation study design to assess the way in which the YARP approach empowered individual youth and groups of youth (youth networks) to engage in social action in their schools, communities and at the policy level, which in turn affected their attitudes and behaviors.     

Comments on “Getting scarred and winning lotteries: Effects of exemplar cuing and statistical format on imagining low‐probability events,” By Newell,Mitchell, and Hayes (2008)

Newell, Mitchell, and Hayes (NMH) conduct three experiments designed to test whether exemplar cuing (EC) theory or a statistical format theory provides a more accurate account for how people make judgments about low‐probability events. They report finding support for the statistical format theory and little or no support for EC. However, NMH misstate the requirements for the production of exemplars in EC theory. As a result, they confuse non‐exemplar conditions with exemplar conditions in their experiments, and find results that are virtually irrelevant to EC theory. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On Being Rejected: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Research on Rejection

ABSTRACT— This article presents the first meta-analysis of experimental research on rejection, sampling 88 studies. The results are consistent with a needs account, which states that rejection frustrates basic psychological needs, but not with a numbness account, which states that rejection causes physical and emotional numbness. Rejection moderately lowers mood ( d =−0.50) and self-esteem ( d =−0.70), but does not decrease arousal or flatten affect. Both belonging ( d = 0.69) and control ( d = 1.16) are frustrated by rejection. Aggressive responses to rejection, considered paradoxical by some, appear to be due to attempts to gain control; measures that contrast belonging and control ( d =−1.17) cause antisocial responding, whereas measures that do not allow for control to be restored cause prosocial responding ( d = 1.21). These findings suggest that rejection makes individuals feel bad—ready to act to restore control or belonging—and that they will prioritize restoring control even if it requires being antisocial.     

The nucleus premammillaris ventralis (pmv) and aggressive behavior in the rat

Small bilateral electrolytic lesions placed just posterior of the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus cause a strong increase in offensive behavior. The histology suggests that damage to the ventral premammillary nucleus is responsible for this effect. A summary of the neuroanatomical literature shows that this structure is connected to most other brain structures reported to be involved in offensive behavior.     

Some steps towards a general theory of relevance

The classical analysis of relevance in probabilistic terms does not fit legal, moral or conversational relevance, and, though analysis in terms of a psychological model may fit conversational relevance, it certainly does not fit legal, moral or evidential relevance. It is important to notice here that some sentences are ambiguous between conversational and non-conversational relevance. But, if and only ifR is relevant to a questionQ, R is a reason, though not necessarily a complete or conclusive reason, for accepting or rejecting something as an answer toQ. Reasons of this kind are governed by appropriate covering laws or principled probabilities and a number of questions thus arise about the relationship between relevance and certain formal-logical properties.