Building higher-order units in tachistoscopic identification: A test of two models

Summary Subjects were shown eight-letter pseudowords tachistoscopically and were asked to report as many letters as possible. The pseudowords, examples of either first- or fourth-order approximation to English, were printed in normal or reversed spelling and were presented in either normal of mirror-imaged letters. Finally subjects were either free to report in any order they wished, or they were instructed to report from left to right or from right to left. With normal letters, the familiarity effect was controlled by the spelling direction, not by the direction of report or the match between direction of report and spelling direction. With mirrored letters, however, order of approximation to English had no effect. The results contradict two existing theories: Mewhort's theory claims that the familiarity of fourth-order materials aids processing at a postcategorical level; it has trouble explaining why the familiarity effect disappeared with mirrored letters and normal spelling. Wolff's theory claims that familiarity aids processing at the feature level; it has trouble explaining why the familiarity effect disappeared with mirrored letters and reversed spelling.     

Rate variables and automatized naming in developmental dyslexia

The rate variable in rapid automatized naming (RAN) was investigated in 50 adolescent and 40 adult students with developmental dyslexia, in matched normal controls, and in learning-disabled students without reading difficulties. Visual stimuli depicting familiar colors and common objects were presented in isolation at three film speeds and three exposure times. Film speed and exposure time contributed as independent variables to error rate; and dyslexic subjects of both age groups made significantly more naming errors than controls. Dyslexic subjects also responded with longer naming latencies than controls when the same RAN stimuli were presented in a continuous sequential mode as a matrix of rows and columns. Naming latencies in the sequential presentation were highly correlated with naming errors in the film version. The implications of reduced naming rates for nongraphological stimuli in developmental dyslexia are discussed.     

Selective migration— Still a viable hypothesis

Kamin (1980) has contended that arguments presented in Wolff (1979) are too weak to justify “resuscitating the selective migration debate.” Although Kamin's (1980) critique points up the need for closer scrutiny of the cumulative-deficit phenomenon, it fails to refute Wolff's (1979) conclusion that selective migration is partly responsible for the North-South black IQ differential.     

Correction to: Suicidal Mental Imagery in Psychiatrically Hospitalized Adolescents

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00827-8     

What is agentic about the Spatial Agency Bias? How pragmatic relevance contributes to the spatial representations of actions

The mental imagination of (social) actions has been shown to follow a left‐to‐right trajectory, with the thematic agent associated with the left position (Spatial Agency Bias, Suitner & Maass in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 53, 2016, p. 245–301). For example, individuals asked to choose a picture that visualizes the sentence “Tom kicks George” tend to choose an image where the agent, Tom, is positioned on the left‐hand side rather than on the right‐hand side. However, as an alternative to the thematic role of the agent, such findings may reflect a mental representation following pragmatic relevance. Specifically, a pragmatic perspective holds that word order and syntactic functions are strategic devices to communicate that the element is important for the sentence. Thus, positioning in the described picture‐matching task may actually reflect the agent's pragmatic relevance instead of agency per se. As a test, we vary whether sentences are written in the active versus the passive voice. Results from five studies indicate that the passive voice results in the tendency to place the agent on the right‐hand side rather than on the left‐hand side of a picture. Instead, the acted‐upon person is positioned on the left‐hand side of a picture. A sixth experiment reveals that for the passive voice, the agent is still seen as more agentic than the receiver, but is considered less relevant. The findings are congruent with the proposed pragmatic relevance account. Implications for the Spatial Agency Bias as well as for building mental representations in general are discussed.     

Individual and Dyadic Coping and Fear of Progression in Mothers and Fathers of Children with Hematologic Cancer

This study investigated the association of individual and dyadic coping strategies with fear of progression (FoP) in mothers and fathers of children with hematologic cancer. Parental couples (N = 44) whose children had been diagnosed with hematologic cancer were recruited at a university hospital and a rehabilitation clinic in Germany between 03/2017 and 08/2017. Data included parents' self-report on FoP (Fear of Progression Questionnaire—parent version, FoP-Q-SF/PR), individual coping (Coping Health Inventory for Parents, CHIP-D), and dyadic coping (Dyadic Coping Inventory, DCI). Statistical analyses were carried out for mothers and fathers individually as well as for parental couples using dyadic data analyses (e.g., actor-partner interdependence model, APIM). Individual and dyadic coping strategies were significantly correlated with FoP in mothers, but not in fathers. Fathers' evaluation of the couple's dyadic coping significantly predicted mothers' FoP. The more frequent use of familial integration (CHIP-D FAM) and maintaining social support (CHIP-D SUP) as well as a better evaluation of their partners' dyadic coping was significantly associated with lower FoP in mothers. Differences in individual and dyadic coping in parental couples were not associated with FoP. Individual and dyadic coping strategies should be addressed in the psychosocial care of mothers and fathers of children with hematologic cancer. Study results support the benefits of involving fathers in psychosocial interventions, for example, in couple-based interventions that acknowledge interpersonal effects of coping on FoP. Future research should further explore coping strategies applied by fathers of children with hematologic cancer for the regulation of FoP.