The On-line Study of Sentence Comprehension: An Examination of Dual Task Paradigms

This paper presents three studies which examine the susceptibility of sentence comprehension to intrusion by extra-sentential probe words in two on-line dual-task techniques commonly used to study sentence processing: the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm and the unimodal all-visual lexical priming paradigm. It provides both a general review and a direct empirical examination of the effects of task-demand in the on-line study of sentence comprehension. In all three studies, sentential materials were presented to participants together with a target probe word which constituted either a better or a worse continuation of the sentence at a point at which it was presented. Materials were identical for all three studies. The manner of presentation of the sentence materials was, however, manipulated; presentation was either visual, auditory (normal rate) or auditory (slow rate). The results demonstrate that a technique in which a visual target probe interrupts ongoing sentence processing (such as occurs in unimodal visual presentation and in very slow auditory sentence presentation) encourages the integration of the probe word into the on-going sentence. Thus, when using such ‘sentence interrupting’ techniques, additional care to equate probes is necessary. Importantly, however, the results provide strong evidence that the standard use of fluent cross-modality sentence investigation methods are immune from such external probe word intrusions into ongoing sentence processing and are thus accurately reflect underlying comprehension processes.     

Am I doing better than you? That depends on whether you ask me in English or Chinese: Self-enhancement effects of language as a cultural mindset prime

Westerners tend to judge themselves positively unless their failure relative to others is obvious, in which case they tend to distance themselves from outperforming others. Whether this tendency to self-enhance in social-comparison situations is universal or culture-bound is hotly debated. Rather than construe self-enhancement as either universal or culture-bound, we propose that its effects depend on the cultural mindset that is salient at the moment of self-reflection. A cultural mindset is a mental representation containing culture-congruent content, procedures, and goals. We focused on individual and collective mindsets, using language as an unobtrusive mindset prime and predicting that people would be more self-enhancing when an individual mindset was made salient by using English than when a collective mindset was made salient by using Chinese. Three studies supported this hypothesis. Chinese students self-enhanced (rating themselves as better than others and distancing themselves from outperforming others) more when primed with an individual mindset.     

Rational Natural Law and German Sociology: Hobbes,Locke and Tönnies

While the roots of modern German sociology are often traced back to historicism, the importance of rational natural law in the inception of the founding work of German sociology, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft by Ferdinand Tönnies, intended as a ‘creative synthesis’ between rational natural law and romantic historicism, should not be overlooked. We show how in his earliest scholarly work on Thomas Hobbes and John Locke the shift in the meaning of the two concepts ‘Gemeinschaft’ and ‘Gesellschaft’ represents a departure from early liberal enlightenment to a Weltanschauung marked by romantic authors such as Fichte, Novalis and Haller, by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spencer and Marx, notwithstanding Tönnies' adherence to the political and social values of a liberal civil society.     

Overlooking the Obvious: Incentives to Lie

Over the years, people have searched for deception cues in the liar's behavior. However, the sender's incentives to lie might be more revealing than behavior. In Experiment 1, an incentive was developed that was predictive of lying. Judges with access to incentive information in addition to behavior achieved almost perfect lie/truth detection. This was not a result of the speakers' behavior being transparent (Experiment 2) but because incentive information was useful to separate lies from truths (Experiments 2 and 3). Experiment 3 revealed that people may forego perfectly diagnostic contextual cues to base their judgments on illusory behavioral cues.     

Person–Job Fit and Work-Related Attitudes Among Chinese Employees: Need for Cognitive Closure as Moderator

The current research examined the moderating role of employees' need for cognitive closure in the relationship between their perceived person–job fit and their work-related attitudes. In Study 1, a survey was conducted among 176 Chinese employees from various organizations, and the results confirmed that both demand–ability fit and need–supply fit were positively related to employees' job satisfaction; moreover, these relations were stronger among people with higher need for closure than those scoring lower in need for closure. In Study 2, a survey was conducted among 242 employees from a Chinese city government, and the results replicated the findings of Study 1, but also found that need for closure moderated the relation between demand–ability fit and turnover intention. These results have important implications for research in organizational psychology and human resource management.     

Maternal Psychopathology and Early Child Temperament Predict Young Children’s Salivary Cortisol 3 Years Later

Neuroendocrine dysfunction is hypothesized to be an early emerging vulnerability marker for depression. We tested whether the main and interactive effects of maternal psychopathology and early child temperamental vulnerability for depression assessed at age three predicted offspring’s basal cortisol function at age 6 years. 228 (122 males) children participated in the baseline and follow-up assessments. At age three, maternal lifetime psychopathology was assessed with a diagnostic clinical interview, and child temperamental positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) were assessed using laboratory observations. At age six, children’s waking and evening cortisol were assessed on 2 days. Maternal lifetime anxiety predicted offspring’s higher morning cortisol at age six. Child temperamental NA at age three predicted higher evening cortisol at age six. There was a significant interaction between maternal lifetime depression and child temperamental PA at age three in predicting offspring’s morning cortisol at age six. For the offspring of mothers with lifetime depression, higher PA at age 3 predicted lower morning cortisol at age 6. These findings highlight the importance of examining the main and interactive effects of maternal psychopathology and early child temperamental vulnerability in predicting the development of offspring’s stress physiology. Findings hold significance in identifying etiological mechanisms of risk and delineating the complex developmental pathways to psychopathology.     

Anxiety, Sensory Over-Responsivity, and Gastrointestinal Problems in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience high rates of anxiety, sensory processing problems, and gastrointestinal (GI) problems; however, the associations among these symptoms in children with ASD have not been previously examined. The current study examined bivariate and multivariate relations among anxiety, sensory over-responsivity, and chronic GI problems in a sample of 2,973 children with ASD enrolled in the Autism Treatment Network (ages 2–17 years, 81.6 % male). Twenty-four percent of the sample experienced at least one type of chronic GI problem (constipation, abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, and/or nausea lasting three or more months). Children with each type of GI problem had significantly higher rates of both anxiety and sensory over-responsivity. Sensory over-responsivity and anxiety were highly associated, and each provided unique contributions to the prediction of chronic GI problems in logistic regression analyses. The results indicate that anxiety, sensory over-responsivity and GI problems are possibly interrelated phenomenon for children with ASD, and may have common underlying mechanisms.     

The Role of Probability and Intentionality in Preschoolers' Causal Generalizations

Three experiments examined whether preschoolers recognize that the causal properties of objects generalize to new members of the same set given either deterministic or probabilistic data. Experiment 1 found that 3- and 4-year-olds were able to make such a generalization given deterministic data but were at chance when they observed probabilistic information. Five-year-olds reliably generalized in both situations. Experiment 2 found that 4-year-olds could make some probabilistic inferences, particularly when comparing sets that had no efficacy with sets in which some members had efficacy. Children had some difficulty discriminating between completely effective sets and stochastic ones. Experiment 3 examined whether 3- and 4-year-olds could reason about probabilistic data when provided with information about the experimenter's beliefs about causal outcomes. Children who were more successful on standard false-belief measures were more likely to respond as if the data were deterministic. These data suggest that children's probabilistic inferences develop into early elementary school, but preschoolers might have some understanding of probability when reasoning about causal generalization.     

Does the Chinese construct of guan export to the West?

This study reverses the usual process of assessing universality by examining whether a construct originating in non‐western cultures has functional relevance in the West. The construct of guan or “training” was proposed by Chao (1994) as reflecting important Chinese parenting practices also shared by other Confucian cultures. She proposed that this construct is more relevant to the understanding of outcomes among Asian‐American youth than constructs that have been developed in the West, such as “authoritative” parenting. The association among the behaviours incorporated in this construct and other “universal” parenting styles such as parental warmth has not been previously reported. Nor has there been a previous report of the prevalence and perceived desirability of guan behaviours from Western individuals. Participants in the present study were US (N = 118), Hong Kong (N = 171) and Pakistani (N = 98) nursing students. In all three cultures, guan items had adequate internal consistency (Cronbach's alphas ranging from .69 to .76), associated positively with parental warmth (Pearsons' r ranging from .37 to .52), and were seen as attributes of ideal parents. Mothers in all three cultures were perceived as showing more guan than fathers show. The associations between parental guan and the outcomes of perceived health, relationship harmony and life satisfaction were significant for the Asian participants. Tests of guan's functional relevance in the West had equivocal results with weak associations to positive outcomes in the West compared to Asia. However, the differences between cultures did not reach statistical significance. When the cultures were merged, parental training perceptions predicted a significant proportion of the variance in outcomes. Mothers' guan predicted self‐esteem in their children, whereas fathers' guan predicted life satisfaction. Although guan may have emerged from a Chinese cultural context, it appears to function similarly in many cultural systems, and may represent the Asian face of authoritative parenting.     

Interpersonal behaviors and friendship in a Chinese culture

This research is designed to assess the links between interpersonal behaviors and relationship development. A measure of friendship, labeled 'communion', was developed that focused exclusively on the characteristics of the relationship itself. It was hypothesized that greater use by both parties of behaviors promoting the interests of the other, 'beneficence', and of behaviors respecting the rights of the other, 'restraint', would result in greater communion between the roommates by the end of their first 6 months together. Both dimensions of behavior proved to be related to communion, although beneficence by both parties was relatively stronger than restraint. These findings were discussed in terms of other types of relationships where there is less freedom of involvement and greater hierarchy.