Fast automatic translation and morphological decomposition in Chinese-English bilinguals

In this study, we investigated automatic translation from English to Chinese and subsequent morphological decomposition of translated Chinese compounds. In two lexical decision tasks, Chinese-English bilinguals responded to English target words that were preceded by masked unrelated primes presented for 59 ms. Unbeknownst to participants, the Chinese translations of the words in each critical pair consisted of a fully opaque compound word (i.e., a compound with two constituent morphemes that were semantically unrelated to the compound) and a monomorphemic word that was either the first or the second morpheme of the compound. The data revealed that bilinguals responded faster to English word pairs whose Chinese translations repeated the first morpheme than to English word pairs whose Chinese translations did not repeat the first morpheme, but no effect of hidden second-morpheme repetition was found. This effect of hidden first-morpheme repetition suggests that participants translated English words to Chinese and decomposed the translated compounds into their constituent morphemes. Because the primes were presented for only 59 ms, translation and morphological decomposition must be fast and automatic.     

Sorrow: A Therapist's Reflection on the Inevitable and the Unknowable

People who live with a painful gap between who they have been and who they are now, of who they dreamt themselves to be and who they still long to be, are living with chronic sorrow. Chronic sorrow is a normal, nonpathological state of pervasive, continuing, periodic, and resurgent sadness related to the ongoing losses associated with illness and disability, in this case not loss of an other, but loss of self (Roos, 2002). Focusing on the lives of four women, one of whom committed suicide, I explore the macroprocesses that invade the experience of even so personal an experience as self‐loss. The role of the therapist is made transparent through anecdotes and by discussing implications for clinical practice.     

Your love lifts me higher! The energizing quality of secure relationships

Three studies tested and confirmed the hypothesis that secure attachment relationships lead to feelings of security and energy, as well as willingness to explore. In Study 1, priming a secure attachment relationship increased felt security and energy. In Studies 2 and 3, felt energy mediated the effect of (primed) secure attachment relationships on willingness to explore. In Study 3, the effect of (primed) secure attachment relationships on felt energy and willingness to explore was independent of general positive affect. Secure attachments energize partners, thus enabling exploration.     

Coping strategies and psychological distress: Prospective analyses of early and middle adolescents

Administered measures of coping, life events, and anxiety and depression to junior high and senior high school samples on two occasions, separated by a 5-month interval. Factor analyses supported the creation of coping subscales for problem solving, cognitive coping, social entertainment, physical exercise, and peer support. A one-item index of parental support was also included in the analyses. The coping subscales showed moderate temporal stability. Mothers' reports of their children's coping provided only marginal support for the validity of the adolescents' self-reports. Prospective regression analyses of the early adolescent data revealed that problem-solving coping was negatively related to depression, and that social entertainment coping was negatively related to anxiety. The prospective effects for the middle adolescents' coping were nonsignificant. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the measurement of adolescent coping strategies and research on the relation between these strategies and psychological functioning.     

Cortical evoked responses to synonyms and antonyms

The brain’s processing of synonymity and antonymy was explored by examining the cortical evoked responses to correct judgments that a test word was a synonym or an antonym of a standard word presented 1 sec previously. Each of five subjects judged 256 pairs of words in each of two sessions. The evoked response to the second word was averaged separately for synonym and antonym pairs. Presentation of each test word as a synonym or an antonym, the order of presentation of each pair, and the side of the “synonym” response key were counter-balanced within subjects. The difference between the averaged response to antonym test words and that to synonym test words differed biphasically over the interval 250-650 msec after the stimulus. The demonstration of an evoked response difference between synonyms and antnyms extends the applicability of evoked potentials from attributes of individual word meaning to the semantic relationships between words.     

New uses for the on-line computer medium in mental health care

A number of research projects related to new uses for computers in mental health service delivery are presented. These projects include work on software psychology, new computer applications in mental health care, and studies relating to the successful implementation of technology in mental health settings. Emphasis is placed on developing a better understanding of appropriate uses of technology rather than merely describing new applications.     

Polydipsia induced by intermittent delivery of salted liquid foods

Food-deprived rats given constant access to water were exposed to fixed-time presentations of soybean milk and diluted sweetened condensed cows' milk. In some conditions these liquid foods were adulterated with varying amounts of sodium chloride. Under a fixed-time 30-sec schedule of food delivery, little water was consumed when the food was soybean milk alone, or soybean milk with sodium chloride added in concentrations of .9, 1.8, or 3.6%. However, schedule-induced polydipsia appeared when soybean milk adulterated with 7.2 or 14.4% sodium chloride was delivered under this schedule. When soybean milk containing 7.2% sodium chloride was presented under fixed-time 15-, 30-, 60-, 120-, and 240-sec schedules, schedule-induced drinking increased with the fixed-time value from 15 to 120 seconds, and decreased at 240 seconds. Like soybean milk, diluted sweetened condensed milk delivered under fixed-time schedules of 30, 60, and 120 seconds failed to evoke schedule-induced polydipsia, but did so when adulterated with 7.2% sodium chloride. Drinking induced by salted liquid foods resembled the polydipsia engendered by spaced dry-food presentations in several ways, including temporal relation to food delivery, persistence within and across sections, sensitivity to interfood interval, and magnitude relative to intake evoked by bulk-food presentation.