Whose DAM account? Attentional learning explains Booth and Waxman

Booth and Waxman (Cognition 84 (2002) B11) have recently shown that linguistic cues to animacy affect children's novel name extensions. They argue that this demonstration contradicts two central tenets of our attentional learning account of object naming, which Booth and Waxman characterize as the "dumb attentional mechanism" or "DAM" account. In the present article, we show that the first of these tenets has never been a feature of the attentional learning account, and that the second tenet, which is central to our account, is not addressed by Booth and Waxman's findings. We suggest that the debate about the nature of children's language and cognition would profit from an increased awareness of the different levels of analysis at which different researchers are working.     

Holistic representation in juvenile defense: An evaluation of a multidisciplinary children's defense team

This study describes the results of an evaluation of a holistic defense model for juvenile clients. Longitudinal, retrospective analysis of de‐identified data from clients (N = 308) measured individual variable outcomes, relationships, and project performance. Bivariate and multivariate analyses examined the strength of association and interrelationships among client and defense team variables. Findings indicate that holistic defense was significantly associated with improved outcomes among juvenile clients, including increased mental health assessment resulting in treatment, increased employment and educational attainment, and decreased odds of recidivism. Favorable court or dispositional outcomes, including lower adjudication or early termination from custody, were also reported. Further practice‐level, controlled research is necessary to evaluate these models and offer comparison to other models for holistic defense.     

Development of a cognitive function test using virtual reality technology: examination in healthy participants

We developed a virtual reality test to assess the cognitive function of Japanese people in near-daily-life environment, namely, a virtual shopping test (VST). In this test, participants were asked to execute shopping tasks using touch panel operations in a “virtual shopping mall.” We examined differences in VST performances among healthy participants of different ages and correlations between VST and screening tests, such as the Mini–Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Everyday Memory Checklist (EMC). We included 285 healthy participants between 20 and 86 years of age in seven age groups. Therefore, each VST index tended to decrease with advancing age; differences among age groups were significant. Most VST indices had a significantly negative correlation with MMSE and significantly positive correlation with EMC. VST may be useful for assessing general cognitive decline; effects of age must be considered for proper interpretation of the VST scores.     

Early noun lexicons in English and Japanese.

Previous research suggests that children learning a variety of languages acquire similar early noun vocabularies and do so by similar and universal processes. We report here results from two studies that show differences in the early noun learning of English- and Japanese-speaking children. Experiment 1 examined the relative numbers of animal names and object names in vocabularies of English-speaking and Japanese-speaking children. English-speaking children's vocabularies were heavily lopsided with many more object than animal names whereas Japanese-speaking children's vocabularies were more evenly balanced. Experiment 2 used a novel noun extension task to examine what young children know about the different organizations of animal and artifact categories. The results suggest that early learners of English but not Japanese over-generalize what they know about object categories to animal categories. The role of culture, input and linguistic structure in early noun acquisitions is discussed.     

Co‐occurences of preverbal vocal behavior and motor action in early infancy

This study reports on co‐occurrence of vocal behaviors and motor actions in infants in the prelinguistic stage. Four Japanese infants were studied longitudinally from the age of 6 months to 11 months. For all the infants, a 40 min sample was coded for each monthly period. The vocalizations produced by the infants co‐occurred with their rhythmic actions with high frequency, particularly in the period preceding the onset of canonical babbling. Acoustical analysis was conducted on the vocalizations recorded before and after the period when co‐occurrence took place most frequently. Among the vocalizations recorded in the period when co‐occurrence appeared most frequently, those that co‐occurred with rhythmic action had significantly shorter syllable duration and shorter formant‐frequency transition duration compared with those that did not co‐occur with rhythmic action. The rapid transitions and short syllables were similar to patterns of duration found in mature speech. The acoustic features remained even after co‐occurrence disappeared. These findings suggest that co‐occurrence of rhythmic action and vocal behavior may contribute to the infant’s acquisition of the ability to perform the rapid glottal and articulatory movements that are indispensable for spoken language acquisition.     

The Influence of Time Pressure on Mood‐Congruent Effects: Evaluating Products With Limited Information1

This study tested mood effects on product evaluation, varying information type and time pressure. In this experiment, happy or sad moods were induced in participants, then they were asked to evaluate products. The results showed that in the happy mood/non‐time‐pressure condition, a favorable evaluation was seen when complete information was provided compared to incomplete. However, when time pressure was induced, no such difference was observed. On the other hand, in the sad mood/non‐time‐pressure condition, there was no difference in evaluation between complete and incomplete information, but when time pressure was induced, a less favorable evaluation of products was seen under incomplete relative to complete. The results provide support for the process in which participants depend on their mood as a source of information when inferring about missing information under reduced cognitive capacity.     

Cross-cultural Protective Effects of Neighborhood Collective Efficacy on Antisocial Behaviors: Mediating Role of Social Information Processing

Studies on the prevention of antisocial behavior in neighborhoods through efficacious social control have focused on collective efficacy as the theoretical mechanism by which children at the community level can be successfully socialized to develop an aversion to antisocial behaviors. We hypothesized that the effect of collective efficacy within communities on antisocial behaviors could be mediated by social-information-processing biases and tested the generality of these mediation effects for undergraduates (N = 929) in Japan, China, South Korea, and the United States, countries with widely varying cultures and political systems. Structural equation modeling revealed that the effects of collective efficacy on antisocial behaviors were perfectly mediated by social-information-processing biases. Findings also confirmed the generality of these mediational effects in all four countries investigated.     

The Brief Accessibility,Responsiveness, and Engagement (BARE) Scale: A Tool for Measuring Attachment Behavior in Couple Relationships

This article describes the purpose, reliability, validity, and potential clinical applications of the Brief Accessibility, Responsiveness, and Engagement (BARE) scale. In addition to focusing on the central attachment behaviors of accessibility and responsiveness, this instrument highlights the key role of engagement in couple bonding. The BARE is a short, systemic, self‐report measure of attachment behaviors in couple relationships. Both classical testing theory and Item Response Theory were used to test the psychometric properties of the instrument. The BARE demonstrated appropriate reliability and validity while maintaining its brevity and potential usefulness for clinicians and researchers. The BARE also accurately predicted the key relationship outcomes of stability and satisfaction. The data for this study were collected from the RELATE assessment (see www.relate-institute.org ).