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.     

CANTAB explicit memory is less impaired in addicted schizophrenia patients

It has been suggested that in order to sustain the lifestyle of substance abuse, addicted schizophrenia patients would have less negative symptoms, better social skills, and less cognitive impairments. Mounting evidence supports the first two assumptions, but data lack regarding cognition in dual diagnosis schizophrenia. Seventy-six schizophrenia outpatients (DSM-IV) were divided into two groups: with (n = 44) and without (n = 32) a substance use disorder. Motor speed and visuo-spatial explicit memory were investigated using CANTAB. As expected, dual diagnosis patients showed a better cognitive performance. Our results suggest either that substance abuse relieves the cognitive deficits of schizophrenia or that the patients with less cognitive deficits are more prone to substance abuse.     

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 -     

The generality of mental addition models: Simple and complex addition in a decision-production task

Recently, Widaman, Geary, Cormier, and Little (in press) offered a general componential model for simple and complex addition. In the present study, the generalizability of this model to very complex addition problems and to production task performance was tested. We investigated addition-production performance using a new research paradigm, the decision-production task. The paradigm was used to assess the reaction times of 16 adults to 100 single-digit addition problems (Experiment 1) and to very complex three-digit addition problems (Experiment 2). Generally, the results give evidence for the basic assumptions of the Widaman et al. model. Some of the results, however, demonstrate that short-term memory load factors and strategy choices also have important effects on complex addition-production performance. Furthermore, the results of both experiments indicate that, in production tasks, the nature of the elementary search/compute process can be characterized as a memory-retrieval process and that the decision-production paradigm is a valuable alternative to the classical verbal production paradigm.     

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.     

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.     

Five-factor model of personality and organizational commitment: The mediating role of positive and negative affective states

Using a one-year longitudinal study of four components of organizational commitment (affective, normative, continuance–sacrifices, and continuance–alternatives) on a sample of employees from multiple organizations (N = 220), we examined the relationships of employee Big-Five personality traits to employee commitment components, and the mediating role of positive and negative affective states. Personality was measured at Time 1 while affective states and commitment components were measured at Time 2, while controlling for Time 1 commitment. Extraversion and agreeableness were positively related to affective, normative, and continuance–sacrifices commitments via enhanced positive affect. Agreeableness was also positively linked to affective commitment and negatively associated with continuance–alternatives commitment through reduced negative affect. Finally, neuroticism was negatively linked to affective commitment, and positively related to continuance–alternatives commitment, through increased negative affect. The implications of these findings for our understanding of personality–commitment linkages are discussed.