Effects of language experience on the perception of American Sign Language

Perception of American Sign Language (ASL) handshape and place of articulation parameters was investigated in three groups of signers: deaf native signers, deaf non-native signers who acquired ASL between the ages of 10 and 18, and hearing non-native signers who acquired ASL as a second language between the ages of 10 and 26. Participants were asked to identify and discriminate dynamic synthetic signs on forced choice identification and similarity judgement tasks. No differences were found in identification performance, but there were effects of language experience on discrimination of the handshape stimuli. Participants were significantly less likely to discriminate handshape stimuli drawn from the region of the category prototype than stimuli that were peripheral to the category or that straddled a category boundary. This pattern was significant for both groups of deaf signers, but was more pronounced for the native signers. The hearing L2 signers exhibited a similar pattern of discrimination, but results did not reach significance. An effect of category structure on the discrimination of place of articulation stimuli was also found, but it did not interact with language background. We conclude that early experience with a signed language magnifies the influence of category prototypes on the perceptual processing of handshape primes, leading to differences in the distribution of attentional resources between native and non-native signers during language comprehension.     

Long‐term immigrant adaptation: Eight‐year follow‐up study among immigrants from Russia and Estonia living in Finland

This study was a longitudinal investigation of the three different dimensions of long‐term immigrant adaptation (i.e., psychological, sociocultural, and socioeconomic adaptation) and the relationships between them in an 8‐year follow‐up with panel data. The 282 respondents were immigrants in Finland, born between 1961 and 1976, coming from the former Soviet Union. The results suggest that the adaptation of these immigrants has developed favourably. In 8 years, the respondents had improved their Finnish language skills and their position in the labour market. No differences were observed in their levels of psychological well‐being between the two assessments. Of the three adaptation dimensions assessed, sociocultural adaptation, measured as proficiency in understanding, speaking, reading, and writing Finnish, turned out to be the most significant predictor of the two other long‐term outcomes of immigrant adaptation (i.e., socioeconomic and psychological). In particular, the better the initial command of the Finnish language, the better were their socioeconomic and psychological adaptation outcomes after 8 years of residence. These results demonstrate the importance of parallel and longitudinal assessments of the different outcomes of immigrant adaptation in order to address which particular dimensions of adaptation are most critical in the beginning of acculturation in terms of determining positive development and long‐term immigrant adaptation.     

Picture recognition without picture identification: a method for assessing the role of perceptual information in familiarity-based picture recognition

The present study examined the claim that unidentifiable test-pictures are processed and recognized on a perceptual, as opposed to a conceptual, level. Using an extension of the recognition without identification paradigm (e.g., Cleary, A. M. & Greene, R. L. (2000). Recognition without identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1063-1069; Peynircioglu, Z. F. (1990). A feeling-of-recognition without identification. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 493-500), it was observed that when test-pictures were unidentifiable during a masked perceptual identification task, old-new discrimination occurred when the study-list consisted of pictures (Experiments 1-3), but not when the study-list consisted of picture names (Experiment 2) or when picture exemplars served as test-cues (Experiment 3). Results provide converging evidence that a study-test perceptual match is needed for the episodic recognition of unidentified test-pictures. Implications for the present paradigm as a tool for examining the role of perceptual information in recognition-familiarity are discussed.     

Associative symmetry of the memory for object-location associations as revealed by the testing effect

The nature of episodic associations has been subject to a long standing debate, where the two opposing positions postulate associations as either a holistic representation of the constituent elements or as independently modifiable pointers between them. In spite of a history of inconsistent findings, evidence in favour of the theory of symmetric associations has accumulated, yet only for verbal memory [Caplan, J. B., Glaholt, M. G., & McIntosh, A. R. (2006). Linking associative and serial list memory: Pairs versus triples. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(6), 1244-1265; Kahana, M. J. (2002). Associative symmetry and memory theory. Memory and Cognition, 30(6), 823-840]. Although object-location associations differ in several fundamental characteristics from verbal paired-associates, we recently found associative symmetry in the memory for this class of associations as well [Sommer, T., Rose, M., & Büchel, C. (2007). Associative symmetry vs. independent associations in the memory for object-location associations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(1), 90-106]. Due to the inconsistencies in the verbal literature, we felt it to be pertinent to confirm this finding using another experimental approach. Based on recent advances in understanding the effects of successive testing, we were able to make use of this knowledge and introduce this effect as an experimental manipulation in the study of associative symmetry. In particular, we investigated whether the influence of a prior memory test on a subsequent memory test differs when the same or opposite constituent element of an object-location paired-associate cues the retrieval on each test. We observed an identical testing effect for both conditions, which was exclusively driven by reminiscence, the recovery of previously inaccessible information. This finding lends strong support in favour of holistically or symmetrically represented object-location associations and suggests, given the verbal memory literature, a general principle of associative symmetry [Asch, S. E., & Ebenholtz, S. M. (1962). The principle of associative symmetry. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106, 135-163].     

Influence analysis for the factor analysis model with ranking data

Influence analysis is an important component of data analysis, and the local influence approach has been widely applied to many statistical models to identify influential observations and assess minor model perturbations since the pioneering work of Cook (1986) . The approach is often adopted to develop influence analysis procedures for factor analysis models with ranking data. However, as this well‐known approach is based on the observed data likelihood, which involves multidimensional integrals, directly applying it to develop influence analysis procedures for the factor analysis models with ranking data is difficult. To address this difficulty, a Monte Carlo expectation and maximization algorithm (MCEM) is used to obtain the maximum‐likelihood estimate of the model parameters, and measures for influence analysis on the basis of the conditional expectation of the complete data log likelihood at the E‐step of the MCEM algorithm are then obtained. Very little additional computation is needed to compute the influence measures, because it is possible to make use of the by‐products of the estimation procedure. Influence measures that are based on several typical perturbation schemes are discussed in detail, and the proposed method is illustrated with two real examples and an artificial example.     

Parent Characteristics as Antecedents of Maternal Gatekeeping and Fathering Behavior

The present study examined the role of prebirth parent characteristics as predictors of maternal gatekeeping (mothers' attempts to encourage or discourage fathers' interaction with their infant) and fathering behavior. Parents' idealization of their relationships within their families of origin, beliefs about the roles of fathers, and personality attributes (negative emotionality and communion) were assessed before their infant's birth. At 3.5 months postpartum, maternal gatekeeping behaviors (negative control, facilitation) and fathers' involvement and competence with their infants were assessed during observation of triadic play and child care. Results suggest reciprocal relations between maternal gatekeeping and fathering behavior. Furthermore, greater paternal communion was associated with greater paternal competence during play, whereas greater maternal communion was associated with lower paternal competence during child care. Greater maternal communion and greater maternal idealization related to fathers' lower relative involvement during play. As for maternal gatekeeping behavior, high negative emotionality in 1 parent was only accompanied by high levels of inhibitory maternal gatekeeping when the other parent had less progressive beliefs about the father's role. The implications of these findings for clinicians and practitioners are discussed.