Phonological encoding in the silent speech of persons who stutter

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of phonological encoding in the silent speech of persons who stutter (PWS) and persons who do not stutter (PNS). Participants were 10 PWS (M=30.4 years, S.D.=7.8), matched in age, gender, and handedness with 11 PNS (M=30.1 years, S.D.=7.8). Each participant performed five tasks: a familiarization task, an overt picture naming task, a task of self-monitoring target phonemes during concurrent silent picture naming, a task of monitoring target pure tones in aurally presented tonal sequences, and a simple motor task requiring finger button clicks in response to an auditory tone. Results indicated that PWS were significantly slower in phoneme monitoring compared to PNS. No significant between-group differences were present for response speed during the auditory monitoring, picture naming or simple motor tasks, nor did the two groups differ for percent errors in any of the experimental tasks. The findings were interpreted to suggest a specific deficiency at the level of phonological monitoring, rather than a general monitoring, reaction time or auditory monitoring deficit in PWS. Educational objectives: As a result of this activity, the participant should: (1) identify and assess the literature on phonological encoding skills in PWS, (2) enumerate and evaluate some major psycholinguistic theories of stuttering, and (3) describe the mechanism by which defective phonological encoding can disrupt fluent speech production.     

Why Are You Doing Things for the Environment? The Motivation Toward the Environment Scale (MTES)1

This paper presents 4 studies which were conducted for the purpose of constructing and validating a new measure of people's motivation for environmental behaviors, namely the Motivation Toward the Environment Scale (MTES). The MTES consists of subscales that measure an individual's level of intrinsic, extrinsic, and a motivation for environmental behaviors. These subscales correspond to the different forms of motivation identified by Deci and Ryan in their self-determination theory (SDT, 1985, 1991). Results from the first study supported the factor structure of the scale and revealed a satisfactory level of internal consistency. Consistent with the SDT, the more self-determined forms of motivation were associated with more positive responses on the related variables. Implications for the manner in which the public could be encouraged to do environmental behaviors are discussed.     

Sequential Counterfactuals,Cotenability and Temporal Becoming

Philosophical Studies -     

Rhetoric,reasonableness and ethics: An essay on Perelman

The article deals with an interpretation of the work of Ch. Perelman. The author tries to determine the meaning of reasonableness in a hermeneutical and anthropological perspective. He then places the work of Perelman in the light of the theory of symbolic interactionism of G.H. Mead.     

Strong Completeness Theorems for Weak Logics of Common Belief

We show that several logics of common belief and common knowledge are not only complete, but also strongly complete, hence compact. These logics involve a weakened monotonicity axiom, and no other restriction on individual belief. The semantics is of the ordinary fixed-point type.     

Recipient Design in Communicative Pointing

A long‐standing debate in the study of human communication centers on the degree to which communicators tune their communicative signals (e.g., speech, gestures) for specific addressees, as opposed to taking a neutral or egocentric perspective. This tuning, called recipient design, is known to occur under special conditions (e.g., when errors in communication need to be corrected), but several researchers have argued that it is not an intrinsic feature of human communication, because that would be computationally too demanding. In this study, we contribute to this debate by studying a simple communicative behavior, communicative pointing, under conditions of successful (error‐free) communication. Using an information‐theoretic measure, called legibility, we present evidence of recipient design in communicative pointing. The legibility effect is present early in the movement, suggesting that it is an intrinsic part of the communicative plan. Moreover, it is reliable only from the viewpoint of the addressee, suggesting that the motor plan is tuned to the addressee. These findings suggest that recipient design is an intrinsic feature of human communication.     

Conceptualizing parental autonomy support: adolescent perceptions of promotion of independence versus promotion of volitional functioning

In current research on parenting, 2 ways of conceptualizing perceived parental autonomy support can be distinguished. Parental autonomy support can be defined in terms of promotion of independence (PI) or in terms of promotion of volitional functioning (PVF). This study aimed to establish the empirical distinctiveness of both conceptualizations and to examine their relative contribution to the prediction of adolescents' adjustment. The authors conducted 3 studies, 2 which sampled late adolescents (N=396, mean age=18.70 years, 79% female; and N=495, mean age=19.30 years, 74% female, respectively) and 1 which sampled middle adolescents (N=153, mean age=15.12 years, 70% female). Factor analyses pointed to the distinction between perceived PVF and PI. Structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that whereas perceived PVF uniquely predicted adjustment (ps<.01), perceived PI did not (ps>.05). SEM also demonstrated that adolescents' self-determined functioning significantly mediates the relationship between perceived parental PVF and adjustment (ps<.001). Results are discussed in terms of the type of autonomy that parents might want to facilitate among their adolescents to foster well-being.