Morphological awareness: development trends and patterns of evolution in kindergarten and primary education

We present a study that investigates changes in the acquisition and development of morphological awareness in children from 5 to 7 years old. This investigation was carried out on three separate occasions over two academic years, in which morphological awareness was assessed according to two levels. The data indicate an increase in the morphological awareness development from the kindergarten to primary education, verifying the acquisition in the first instance of the morphological judgment level and secondly, of morphological production level. It also generates a pattern of acquisition of the various parameters that make up morphology.     

Life Satisfaction and Positive Adjustment as Predictors of Emotional Distress in Men With Coronary Heart Disease

This two-wave longitudinal study examines the ability of life satisfaction and adjustment strategies to predict anxious and depressive symptoms in coronary heart disease male patients. Studies have shown that most heart attack survivors report these symptoms, which may worsen the prognosis of the disease. At Time 1, immediately after the first cardiac episode, eighty-eight men reported their life satisfaction levels, adjustment strategies used, and anxious and depressive symptoms experienced. At Time 2, six months later, sixty-three of those patients reported only their anxious and depressive symptoms again. The results showed that, after controlling for demographic variables, anxious and depressive symptoms at Time 1 were predicted by positive adjustment and life satisfaction. At Time 2, after controlling for both demographic variables and Time 1-emotional symptoms, none of the psychological variables predicted anxious symptoms, while depressive symptoms were only predicted by life satisfaction. It is concluded that an adequate level of life satisfaction may help to decrease emotional distress, both short and long term, while the use of positive adjustment strategies is especially important immediately after diagnosis.     

Christfried Jakob’s 1921 Theory of the Gnoses and Praxes as Fundamental Factors in Cerebral Cortical Dynamics

This study aims at reviving an important contribution by the pioneer neurobiologist and neurophilosopher Christfried Jakob (1866–1956) to the understanding of higher cortical functions. Jakob studied cortical dynamics at multiple levels by comparing gnoses and praxes and their corresponding pathological states, i.e. the agnosias and the apraxias. We herein provide a complete English translation of Jakob’s original Spanish article dating to 1921, and further consider some key points under the scope of the neuropsychological knowledge available then, and the research evidence available 90 years later.     

Experts in Dialogue: An Introduction

Different approaches to expertise and argumentation are discussed. After introducing the problem of expertise and its present day significance in a historical context, various connections with the study of arguments are highlighted. The need for and potential of argumentation analysis to contribute to existing research in social epistemology, science studies, and cognitive science, is discussed, touching on the problems of reasoning and argumentation, embodiment, tacit knowledge, expert context versus public context, expert disagreement, persuasion versus justification, and argument analysis as meta-expertise. As the arguments used by experts constitute a boundary object, we presume that a dialogue format is suitable to address central problems of the special issue “Rethinking Arguments from Experts”.     

Amodal completion, depth stratification, and illusory figures: a test of Kanizsa's explanation.

Subjective contours have been explained by Kanizsa as being a consequence of amodal completion of incomplete figures. According to the theory of amodal completion, figural incompleteness triggers the emergence of an illusory object superimposed on the gaps in the inducers, which in turn hide parts of the pattern, thus suggesting that the plane of the illusory object must always be seen to be above the plane of the inducers. A figure was created in which subjective contours are seen despite the fact that the perceived depth relationships run counter to that required by the theory of amodal completion. In four experiments, this depth relationship is confirmed by using direct and indirect measures which assess both registered and apprehended depth. By emphasizing a logical inconsistency in the explanation based on amodal completion, the results show that amodal completion, at least in Kanizsa-like patterns, cannot be considered as a causal factor for subjective contour figures.     

Changing Patterns of Gender Portrayals in Portuguese Television Advertisements1

The purpose of this study was to identify patterns in Portuguese television advertisements and interpret changes in the portrayal of gender roles using data collected 7 years apart: 1996 and 2003. We grouped 11 attributes of the central figure displayed in 623 evening commercials using a k‐means cluster procedure. There were 4 distinct groups of advertisements that emerged, 2 of them characterizing a predominantly male central figure and the other 2 a female central figure. The overall increase in women portrayed in advertisements from 1996 (32.9%) to 2003 (40.8%) is reflected in a shift toward an increase of advertisements with a female central figure in the typically male “narrator” cluster. Practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Modal Logics of Reactive Frames

A reactive graph generalizes the concept of a graph by making it dynamic, in the sense that the arrows coming out from a point depend on how we got there. This idea was first applied to Kripke semantics of modal logic in [2]. In this paper we strengthen that unimodal language by adding a second operator. One operator corresponds to the dynamics relation and the other one relates paths with the same endpoint. We explore the expressivity of this interpretation by axiomatizing some natural subclasses of reactive frames. The main objective of this paper is to present a methodology to study reactive logics using the existent classic techniques.     

Executive disorders and perceived socio‐emotional changes after traumatic brain injury

Although socio‐emotional changes are very frequently encountered after traumatic brain injury (TBI), the psychological mechanisms underlying these disorders are still poorly understood. This study aimed to explore the relationships between dysexecutive syndrome (assessed with the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome [BADS]) and socio‐emotional changes assessed by the Iowa scales of personality change (ISPC) in patients with TBI. The BADS was thus administered to 25 patients with TBI and to 25 healthy controls. Simultaneously, a close relative of each patient was given the ISPC in order to assess socio‐emotional changes. Results indicated that patients displayed significantly lower executive performances than controls and experimented significant socio‐emotional changes. The Modified Six Elements Test was the only subtask of the BADS to be significantly related to behavioural changes, and more specifically to externalizing disorders. It is concluded that executive functions, and especially multitasking, encompass processes whereby one can consciously control one's emotional reactions and behaviours.