Disfluency data of German preschool children who stutter and comparison children

This study compared the disfluencies of German-speaking preschool children who stutter (CWS, N = 24) with those produced by age- and sex-matched comparison children who do not stutter (CWNS, N = 24). In accordance with Yairi and Ambrose's [Yairi, E., & Ambrose, N. (1992). A longitudinal study of stuttering in children: A preliminary report. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35, 755-760] guidelines the CWS group had a narrow age range (2-5 years) and were seen close to the reported time of their stuttering onset (average of 8 months). Furthermore, over 95% of the CWS group had not received any type of speech therapy intervention. Consistent with previous findings for English-speaking preschool children, 'stuttering-like' disfluencies (prolongations, blocks, part- and one-syllable word repetitions) were significantly more frequent in CWS (mean = 9.2%) than in CWNS (mean = 1.2%), whereas no significant group differences occurred with respect to 'normal' disfluencies. The number of iterations in stuttering-like disfluencies was also significantly higher in CWS (mean = 1.28 iterations) than in CWNS (mean = 1.09 iterations). In contrast to previous findings, a sub-group of children who have been stuttering for a shorter time (1-5 months) did not differ from a sub-group who had stuttered for a longer period (8-22 months). EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will be able to: (1) describe how German-speaking preschool children who stutter and who do not stutter display stuttering-like and normal disfluencies including number of iterations; (2) explain how powerful classification measures for the diagnosis of stuttering are for German-speaking preschool children; (3) discuss how disfluency patterns of native English- and German-speaking children close to onset of stuttering differ.     

Evidence for an implicit influence of memory on future thinking

The capacity to think about specific events that one might encounter in the future—episodic future thought— involves the flexible (re)organization of memory. The present study demonstrates that implicit processes play an important role here. In two experiments (N = 180), participants were asked to generate a personal event that they expected to plausibly occur in the following week. The content of the participants’ responses was biased (i.e., primed) by recent thoughts about a specific category of experiences. For instance, participants who had recently been induced to think about social experiences, in the context of an ostensibly unrelated task, were more likely than nonprimed participants to generate similar events occurring in their immediate future. Importantly, the participants were unaware of this unintentional influence of memory. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings for understanding episodic future thought and its relation to memory are discussed.     

Transposition asymmetry in immediate serial recall

When participants confuse the position of items in immediate serial recall, they tend to recall transposed items too early rather than too late. This asymmetry of transposition errors was observed in four experiments. It increased as a function of list length, but was independent of report order, output position, cueing condition, and recall mode. The transposition asymmetry is consistent with error patterns in free recall and in regular speech production where transpositions are usually forward‐looking. The asymmetry of transposition errors is discussed in terms of models of serial memory.     

Creativity,Schizotypicality, and Mystical Experience: An Empirical Study

This study examined the commonalities and the differences between creativity and the schizophrenia spectrum. The variables measured were creativity, schizotypy, absorption, mystical experiences, spatial ability, balance, positive and negative presence, and neuroticism. Three community groups were recruited: 31 artists, 10 people with schizophrenia, and 31 comparisons matched for gender and age with the artists. A larger student group, consisting of 102 students, was also recruited to examine the correlations among the same variables within a larger, more normative, group. The largest commonality between the artist and the schizophrenic groups was the propensity to mystical experiences. The greatest differences between them were that the artists were higher in creativity, had better spatial ability, had better balance, had more positive states of presence, and were lower in neuroticism. In the student group, creativity was positively correlated with positive schizotypy, impulsive nonconformity, spatial ability, positive presence, absorption, and mystical experiences, although in the student group, the relation between creativity and mystical experiences was completely mediated by absorption.     

Different Types of Religious/Spiritual Well-Being in Relation to Personality and Subjective Well-Being

In this study the authors attempt to present different types of Religious/Spiritual Well-Being (RSWB) and discuss their relation to personality and psychological well-being. The Multidimensional Inventory for Religious/Spiritual Well-Being 48 is employed for this study, which consists of 6 subscales. To find different types of RSWB, an agglomerative cluster analysis on these subscales was performed based on the responses obtained in a nonclinical adult sample (n = 463). A 4-cluster solution was accepted. The clusters were labeled as Religious/Spiritual High, Religiously Oriented, Existentially Oriented, and Religious/Spiritual Low, and were found to be substantially related to Sense of Coherence (n = 263) and Six Factors of Personality (n = 200) in two different subsamples. By presenting a first empirical model for a 4-field typology of RSWB, we hope to further contribute to the ongoing discussion on how to deal with religious/spiritual issues in personality research.     

Overall Freedom and Constraint

McDowell's contributions to epistemology and philosophy of mind turn centrally on his defense of the Aristotelian concept of a “rational animal”. I argue here that a clarification of how McDowell uses this concept can make more explicit his distance from Davidson regarding the nature of the minds of non-rational animals. Close examination of his responses to Davidson and to Dennett shows that McDowell is implicitly committed to avoiding the following “false trichotomy”: that animals are not bearers of semantic content at all, that they are bearers of content in the same sense we are, and that they are bearer of “as if” content. Avoiding the false trichotomy requires that we understand non-rational animals as having concepts but not as making judgments. Furthermore, we need to supplement McDowell's distinction between the logical spaces of reasons and of the realm of law with what Finkelstein calls “the logical space of animate life”. Though McDowell has taken some recent steps to embrace a view like this, I urge a more demanding conception than what McDowell has thus far suggested.     

II. Mathematical modelling of election predictions: Comments to Simon's reply

Herbert A. Simon's reply (Inquiry, Vol. 25, No. 3) to my criticism of his 1954 paper is not to the point. He fails to respond to some of my arguments and misconceives others. One of his misconceptions is that any mathematical deduction from empirical premises which are formulated mathematically will necessarily lead to empirically valid conclusions. This claim is particularly unwarrantable in Simon's case since his mathematical premise, the continuity of the reaction function, is empirically meaningless.