The development of color categories in two languages: a longitudinal study

This study unites investigations into the linguistic relativity of color categories with research on children's category acquisition. Naming, comprehension, and memory for colors were tracked in 2 populations over a 3-year period. Children from a seminomadic equatorial African culture, whose language contains 5 color terms, were compared with a group of English children. Despite differences in visual environment, language, and education, they showed similar patterns of term acquisition. Both groups acquired color vocabulary slowly and with great individual variation. Those knowing no color terms made recognition errors based on perceptual distance, and the influence of naming on memory increased with age. An initial perceptually driven color continuum appears to be progressively organized into sets appropriate to each culture and language.     

Beliefs in personality disorders: a test with the personality disorder belief questionnaire

The hypothesis that each personality disorder (PD) is characterized by a specific set of beliefs was tested in a sample of 643 subjects, including non-patient controls, axis-I and axis-II patients, diagnosed with SCID-I and -II interviews. Beliefs of six PDs (avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, histrionic, borderline) were assessed with the Personality Disorder Belief Questionnaire (PDBQ). Factor analyses supported the existence of six hypothesized sets of beliefs. Structural equation modeling (SEM) supported the hypothesis that each PD is characterized by a specific set of beliefs. Path coefficients were however in the medium range, suggesting that PDs are not solely determined by beliefs. Nevertheless, empirically derived cutoff scores of the six belief subscales were reasonably successful in classifying subjects, percentages ranging form 51% to 83%. It appeared that there was a monotonical increase in scores on each belief subscale from non-patient controls, to patients without any PD, to patients with PDs (other than the pertinent PD), to patients with the pertinent PD. This suggests that PD-related beliefs are at least partly associated with (personality) psychopathology in general. Another explanation is that many patients' position on the underlying dimensions is not high enough to lead to a DSM PD diagnosis, but high enough to lead to an elevated belief score.     

Emotional security and cognitive appraisals mediate the relationship between parents' marital conflict and adjustment in older adolescents

In this study, the authors evaluated a model of the effects of parental conflict witnessed in childhood on psychosocial adjustment in 175 college students. Using this model, which integrated the cognitive-contextual framework (J. H. Grych & F. D. Fincham, 1990) and the emotional-security hypothesis (P. T. Davies & E. M. Cummings, 1994), the authors proposed that both cognitive appraisal of parents' conflict and emotional security mediate the conflict-adjustment link in late adolescence. Furthermore, the authors proposed that cognitive appraisals are associated with emotional security. The results suggested that appraisals and security were both important mediators in the model but that they were not related to each other. Instead, there appeared to be parallel, yet separate, cognitive and emotional channels through which exposure to parental conflict in childhood can have detrimental effects on later adjustment.     

Directed forgetting of related words: evidence for the inefficient inhibition hypothesis

Fifth-grade children and college students were asked to remember some words and to forget others in an item-cued-directed-forgetting task. Taxonomically related pairs of words and control pairs that were unrelated in meaning were used as stimuli. Children found it more difficult than did adults to ignore forget-cued words that followed associatively related words that were remember-cued. The results provide support for D. F. Bjorklund and K. K. Harnishfeger's (1990) inefficient inhibition hypothesis (i.e., that the efficiency of inhibitory mechanisms improves as children develop). The results also suggest that the inhibition is occurring primarily in the early stages of processing.     

Instrumental and Pavlovian incentive processes have dissociable effects on components of a heterogeneous instrumental chain

Two experiments compared the effects of Pavlovian stimuli and incentive learning on the performance of a heterogeneous chain of instrumental actions. Using a Pavlovian-instrumental transfer design, the authors found that only a stimulus paired with the same outcome as that earned by performance of the chain produced positive transfer, an effect that was restricted to the action in the chain most proximal to reward delivery. In contrast, after a shift to a nondeprived state, only animals that had previously consumed the instrumental outcome when they were nondeprived decreased instrumental performance. Furthermore, this effect of the incentive learning treatment was limited to performance of the distal action. Together these data suggest that Pavlovian and instrumental incentive manipulations have dissociable effects on instrumental performance.     

Evaluation of bizarre-idiosyncratic thinking scale as a measure of thought disorder in children and adolescents with severe psychiatric disorders

To investigate the prevalence of thought disorder and the possible appropriateness of the Bizarre-Idiosyncratic Thinking Scale for children and adolescents with severe psychiatric disorders, 96 child and adolescent inpatients and day hospital patients, ages 6 to 18 years, at a state psychiatric hospital were rated by review of retrospective records using Marengo and Harrow's 1986 Evaluation of Bizarre-Idiosyncratic Thinking Scale for the presence of thought disorder in the Thematic Apperception Test and Rorschach Inkblot Test responses. Although the Evaluation of Bizarre-Idiosyncratic Thinking Scale had not been previously used with children and adolescents, the analysis suggested possible indications of thought disorder in several diagnostic groups. No significant differences were found on the Rorschach between patients with Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Not Otherwise Specified and those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Major Depression, and Conduct Disorder. On the basis of the Thinking Scale ratings, the Thematic Apperception Test responses showed significantly higher ratings of thought disorder for patients with Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Not Otherwise Specified. There was no general relation between thought disorder and age or IQ, but schizophrenic patients, aged 13 and older, had more thought disorder than schizophrenic patients who were younger than 13.     

Event-related brain potential markers of high-language proficiency in adults

The central issue addressed is whether there are electrophysiological markers for high-language proficiency in adults. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 19 young adults who demonstrated either "normal" or "high" language proficiency. ERPs were obtained during a sentence-processing task and analyzed for specific response components elicited by different word types. The ERPs in the normal and high-language proficiency groups were similar for early sensory related processing but differed in the later components thought to be more closely related to lexical access and post-lexical processing. The findings for the ERP waveforms suggest that adults with high-language proficiency show slightly faster lexical access over left anterior brain regions for closed class items, and a reduced reliance on contextual information contained in sentences.     

Semantic processing of words, cognitive resources and N400: an event-related potentials study

The specificity of the right hemisphere (RH) contribution to the semantic processing of words is still debated. Indeed, the semantic impairments of right hemisphere damaged (RHD) subjects may be the expression of limited general cognitive resources rather than a specific impairment of semantic processing ([Monetta et al., 2001]; [Murray, 2000]). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the possibility that the N400 reflect the availability of cognitive resources through an analysis of its different amplitudes according to different semantic complexity level. Ten young adults without any history of neurological damage participated in a semantic categorization task with two different levels of difficulty based on prototypicality. Event related potential (ERP) signals from 64 electrodes were recorded. An N400 was observed during the processing of difficult words and distractors. The results show that the greatest N400 activation was observed during the processing of difficult words, thus reflecting a possible increase in the amount of required cognitive resources.     

Juror decision-making in a mock sexually violent predator trial: gender differences in the impact of divergent types of expert testimony

Despite widespread use of mental health testimony in cases where violence risk is at issue, relatively little is known about the impact of such information on juror decision-making. This study addressed the effects of testimony based on three types of risk assessment instrument or method (clinical opinion, actuarial assessment, and ratings of psychopathy) to examine whether they would have differential impact on jurors' perceptions of the defendant. In a mock sexually violent predator civil commitment trial, 172 undergraduates were presented a case summary that included prosecution and defense expert testimony related to violence risk based on one of the three methods noted above. Consistent with earlier research, the hypothesis that a defendant described as a "high risk psychopath" by the prosecution would be judged more severely than a defendant judged as "high risk" based on other evaluation procedures was supported, but only among female jurors. Unlike prior studies, little support was found for the hypothesis that clinical opinion testimony would be more influential than actuarially based testimony for either gender. Mechanisms that may underlie the observed gender differences are discussed, as are the potential implications of these findings for civil commitment proceedings.