Communicative Context Affects Use of Referential Prosody

The current study assessed the extent to which the use of referential prosody varies with communicative demand. Speaker–listener dyads completed a referential communication task during which speakers attempted to indicate one of two color swatches (one bright, one dark) to listeners. Speakers' bright sentences were reliably higher pitched than dark sentences for ambiguous (e.g., bright red versus dark red) but not unambiguous (e.g., bright red versus dark purple) trials, suggesting that speakers produced meaningful acoustic cues to brightness when the accompanying linguistic content was underspecified (e.g., “Can you get the red one?”). Listening partners reliably chose the correct corresponding swatch for ambiguous trials when lexical information was insufficient to identify the target, suggesting that listeners recruited prosody to resolve lexical ambiguity. Prosody can thus be conceptualized as a type of vocal gesture that can be recruited to resolve referential ambiguity when there is communicative demand to do so.     

A small-to-large unit progression in metaphonological awareness and reading?

The paper reports a series of studies of reading and metaphonological processing by children in their second year in primary school(aged 6 years). An earlier study had established that, in the first year of learning, performance was characterized by a small-unit approach in which graphemes and phonemes were emphasized. In the second year, reading became more sensitiveto the frequencies of rime structures in the lexicon. Capacity to generate word analogies for nonwords also showed increasing commitment to rime-based responses, and this trend was strongly linked to reading age. The present results suggest that a small-unit approach to reading is augmented by a large-unit approach as development proceeds. This trend was reflected in performance on a test of explicit phonological awareness. When asked to report the segment of sound shared by two spoken words, Primary 1 children were poor in reporting shared rimes but relatively adept in reporting shared phonemes. During Primary 2 there was an improvement in ability to report shared rimes, and this trend was also related to reading age. These results are discussed in relation to the influence of instruction and the nature of the orthography in determining the course of reading development.     

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN RELATIONAL BOUNDARIES AMONG HETEROSEXUALS, GAY MEN, AND LESBIANS

This study investigated the relative contributions of gender and sexual orientation as factors associated with the formation of boundaries in dyadic intimate relating in both same- and opposite-sex couples. The study examined a relational pattern previously not empirically investigated but widely accepted as an actuality unique to lesbians; specifically, that lesbians tend to remain connected to ex-serious-relationship partners after breakup. The study utilized a research design approach emphasizing the methodological utility and heuristic value of including sexual orientation as an independent variable in studies of gender dynamics. Two general classes of theoretical frameworks, those emphasizing gender role socialization influences and those emphasizing systems influences, were discussed in terms of their relative goodness of fit as conceptual bases for the data. Questionnaires were completed by 60 lesbians, 37 gay men, 45 heterosexual women, and 39 heterosexual men. Lesbians and gay men reported higher levels of connection to ex-serious-relationship partners than heterosexuals. The data reflect how inclusion of sexual orientation can broaden understandings of gender differentiated phenomena beyond more traditional gender-only based accounts.     

Advertising's misinformation effect

This research explores whether post-experience advertising alters information learned in a consumer's direct experience. An advertising misinformation effect was obtained for colour memory of a previously seen candy bar wrapper upon both visual and verbal misinformation. However, the misleading visual information produced more ‘remember’ judgements than misleading verbal information. This advertising misinformation effect did not dissipate when the source was discredited. We found that such memory changes can be directly linked to consumer subjective judgements and choices when the misleading information is particularly salient. Not only do these findings constitute a novel generalizability of the misinformation effect, they also have implications for social policy research on deceptive advertising. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stimulus Parameters Underlying Sound-Symbolic Mapping of Auditory Pseudowords to Visual Shapes

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary mappings between the sounds of words and their meanings and is often studied by pairing auditory pseudowords such as “maluma” and “takete” with rounded and pointed visual shapes, respectively. However, it is unclear what auditory properties of pseudowords contribute to their perception as rounded or pointed. Here, we compared perceptual ratings of the roundedness/pointedness of large sets of pseudowords and shapes to their acoustic and visual properties using a novel application of representational similarity analysis (RSA). Representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) of the auditory and visual ratings of roundedness/pointedness were significantly correlated crossmodally. The auditory perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of spectral tilt, the temporal fast Fourier transform (FFT), and the speech envelope. Conventional correlational analyses showed that ratings of pseudowords transitioned from rounded to pointed as vocal roughness (as measured by the harmonics-to-noise ratio, pulse number, fraction of unvoiced frames, mean autocorrelation, shimmer, and jitter) increased. The visual perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of global indices of visual shape (the simple matching coefficient, image silhouette, image outlines, and Jaccard distance). Crossmodally, the RDMs of the auditory spectral parameters correlated weakly but significantly with those of the global indices of visual shape. Our work establishes the utility of RSA for analysis of large stimulus sets and offers novel insights into the stimulus parameters underlying sound symbolism, showing that sound-to-shape mapping is driven by acoustic properties of pseudowords and suggesting audiovisual cross-modal correspondence as a basis for language users' sensitivity to this type of sound symbolism.     

Side effects of gender‐fair language: How feminine job titles influence the evaluation of female applicants

In many languages, feminization has been used as a strategy to make language more gender‐fair, because masculine terms, even in a generic function, exhibit a male bias. Up to date, little is known about possible side effects of this language use, for example, in personnel selection. In three studies, conducted in Polish, we analyzed how a female applicant was evaluated in a recruitment process, depending on whether she was introduced with a feminine or masculine job title. To avoid influences from existing occupations and terms, we used fictitious job titles in Studies 1 and 2: diarolo?ka (feminine) and diarolog (masculine). In Study 3, we referred to existing occupations that varied in gender stereotypicality. In all studies, female applicants with a feminine job title were evaluated less favorably than both a male applicant (Study 1) and a female applicant with a masculine job title (Studies 1, 2, and 3). This effect was independent of the gender stereotypicality of the occupation (Study 3). Participants' political attitudes, however, moderated the effect: Conservatives devaluated female applicants with a feminine title more than liberals (Studies 2 and 3). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sensory memory of structure-from-motion is shape-specific

Perceptual priming can stabilize the phenomenal appearance of multistable visual displays (Leopold, Wilke, Maier, & Logothetis, Nature Neuroscience, 5, 605–609, 2002). Prior exposure to such displays induces a sensory memory of their appearance, which persists over long intervals and intervening stimulation, and which facilitates renewed perception of the same appearance. Here, we investigated perceptual priming for the apparent rotation in depth of ambiguous structure-from-motion (SFM) displays. Specifically, we generated SFM objects with different three-dimensional shapes and presented them in random order and with intervening blank periods. To assess perceptual priming, we established the probability that a perceived direction of rotation would persist between successive objects. In general, persistence was greatest between identical objects, intermediate between similar objects, and negligible between dissimilar objects. These results demonstrate unequivocally that sensory memory for apparent rotation is specific to three-dimensional shape, contrary to previous reports (e.g., Maier, Wilke, Logothetis, & Leopold, Current Biology, 13, 1076–1085, 2003). Because persistence did not depend on presentation order for any pair of objects, it provides a commutative measure for the similarity of object shapes. However, it is not clear exactly which features or aspects of object shape determine similarity. At least, we did not find simple, low-level features (such as volume overlap, heterogeneity, or rotational symmetry) that could have accounted for all observations. Accordingly, it seems that sensory memory of SFM (which underlies priming of ambiguous rotation) engages higher-level representations of object surface and shape.     

Effects of Different Instructions on Consistency of Personality Inventory Responses

A novel feature of the Edwards Personality Inventory (EPI) is that the S responds to the items as he believes those who know him best would answer if asked to describe him. This study tested Edwards' hypothesis that reliability would be higher for these instructions vs. the more conventional ones to describe yourself directly as you see yourself. 180 Ss were tested with approximately one-third in each of three conditions: Booklet IA (test-retest), Booklet IB (test-retest), and Booklets IA and IB (alternate forms reliability). Within each condition, approximately half responded under Edwards' novel instructions, and half responded under conventional instructions. Directly contrary to Edwards' prediction, it was found that the proportion of conventional instruction correlations which were higher than the corresponding Edwards' instruction correlations was significantly greater than chance (p <.01).