The QWERTY Effect: How typing shapes the meanings of words.

The QWERTY keyboard mediates communication for millions of language users. Here, we investigated whether differences in the way words are typed correspond to differences in their meanings. Some words are spelled with more letters on the right side of the keyboard and others with more letters on the left. In three experiments, we tested whether asymmetries in the way people interact with keys on the right and left of the keyboard influence their evaluations of the emotional valence of the words. We found the predicted relationship between emotional valence and QWERTY key position across three languages (English, Spanish, and Dutch). Words with more right-side letters were rated as more positive in valence, on average, than words with more left-side letters: the QWERTY effect. This effect was strongest in new words coined after QWERTY was invented and was also found in pseudowords. Although these data are correlational, the discovery of a similar pattern across languages, which was strongest in neologisms, suggests that the QWERTY keyboard is shaping the meanings of words as people filter language through their fingers. Widespread typing introduces a new mechanism by which semantic changes in language can arise.     

Personal memories for remote historical events: accuracy and clarity of flashbulb memories related to World War II

One hundred forty-five Danes between 72 and 89 years of age were asked for their memories of their reception of the news of the Danish occupation (April 1940) and liberation (May 1945) and for their most negative and most positive personal memories from World War II. Almost all reported memories for the invasion and liberation. Their answers to factual questions (e.g., the weather) were corroborated against objective records and compared with answers from a younger control group. The older participants were far more accurate than what could be predicted on the basis of results from test-retest studies using short delays. The "permastore" metaphor (Bahrick, 1984) provides a possible interpretation of this discrepancy. Participants with reported ties to the resistance movement had more vivid, detailed, and accurate memories than did participants without such ties. Ratings of surprise and consequentiality were unrelated to the accuracy and clarity of the memories.     

Infants learn phonotactic regularities from brief auditory experience

Two experiments investigated whether novel phonotactic regularities, not present in English, could be acquired by 16.5-month-old infants from brief auditory experience. Subjects listened to consonant-vowel-consonant syllables in which particular consonants were artificially restricted to either initial or final position (e.g. /baep/ not /paeb/). In a later head-turn preference test, infants listened longer to new syllables that violated the experimental phonotactic constraints than to new syllables that honored them. Thus, infants rapidly learned phonotactic regularities from brief auditory experience and extended them to unstudied syllables, documenting the sensitivity of the infant's language processing system to abstractions over linguistic experience.     

Measuring transactive memory systems in the field: scale development and validation

This study describes the development and validity testing of a field measure of transactive memory systems. Transactive memory systems are especially important for teams designed to leverage members' expertise, but field research has lagged because there are no adequate measures of the construct. The author developed and tested a 15-item scale in a laboratory sample of 124 teams, a field sample of 64 Master of Business Administration consulting teams, and a field sample of 27 teams from technology companies. Results from the present study demonstrate that the scale is internally consistent, related to alternative measures and hypothesized causes and effects, and unrelated to theoretically distinct constructs, providing evidence of convergent, criterion-related, and discriminant validity. Suggestions for improving the scale, future validity testing, and possible boundary conditions are discussed.     

Ecological Factors Impacting Provider Attitudes Towards Human Service Delivery Reform

Although reform efforts are substantially altering the structural operations and guiding ideological framework of the human service delivery system, little empirical work has been done to systematically examine these transformations. This study examines providers' attitudes regarding two reform elements that are being widely implemented: an increased emphasis on inter-agency collaboration and a shift from a medical model service delivery philosophy, that focuses on client deficits, to one that emphasizes consumer strengths. Through survey data collected from 186 providers from 32 human service agencies in one county, the relationship between providers' perceptions of contextual support for human service delivery reform and providers' attitudes towards these initiatives is explored. The findings from this study support the importance of attending to the ecology in which we initiate system reform efforts. For both reform elements, working within contexts that are perceived as providing ideological and functional support for change was associated with positive provider attitudes towards those changes. Staffs' perceptions of the external environment played the most critical role in shaping staff attitudes. Interestingly, unique aspects of providers' work environments were related to positive attitudes towards the two different reforms. The implications of these findings for the success of human service delivery reform are discussed.     

Empathy, Expectations, and Situational Preferences: Personality Influences on the Decision to Participate in Volunteer Helping Behaviors

Although considerable evidence indicates that dispositional empathy is associated with the degree of help that observers will offer needy targets, little is known about the effect of empathy on one's initial willingness to enter situations in which such needy targets might be found. Three studies were conducted to evaluate two related propositions: (1) that dispositional empathy influences such situational preferences, and (2) that this influence is mediated by the expectancies one holds regarding the emotions likely to occur in those situations. Using hypothetical judgments, Study 1 found support for both propositions. Study 2, in which participants believed that their responses actually committed them to encountering needy targets, provided further support for the model, as did Study 3, which examined the experiences of actual community volunteers. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Different Training Procedures Recruit Either One or Two Critical Periods for Contextual Memory Consolidation, Each of Which Requires Protein Synthesis and PKA

We have used a combined genetic and pharmacological approach to define the time course of the requirement for protein kinase A (PKA) and protein synthesis in long-term memory for contextual fear conditioning in mice. The time course of amnesia in transgenic mice that express R(AB) and have genetically reduced PKA activity in the hippocampus parallels that observed both in mice treated with inhibitors of PKA and mice treated with inhibitors of protein synthesis. This PKA- and protein synthesis-dependent memory develops between 1 hr and 3 hr after training. By injecting the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin or the PKA inhibitor Rp-cAMPs at various times after training, we find that depending on the nature of training, contextual memory has either one or two brief consolidation periods requiring synthesis of new proteins, and each of these also requires PKA. Weak training shows two time periods of sensitivity to inhibitors of protein synthesis and PKA, whereas stronger training exhibits only one. These studies underscore the parallel dependence of long-term contextual memory on protein synthesis and PKA and suggest that different training protocols may recruit a common signaling pathway in distinct ways.     

Should physics students take a course in ethics?—Physicists respond

A survey was conducted of a subset of the physics community in order to gain insight into attitudes towards integrating ethics into the physics curriculum. The results indicated significant support among some groups for such an integration yet also revealed significant barriers to this process. Respondents were also asked to suggest topics which should be covered under the heading of ethical issues in physics. The great variety of results indicates both that there are many issues worth investigating and that many in the physics community have given a great deal of thought to these issues.