The quest for generalizations over consonants: Asymmetries between consonants and vowels are not the by-product of acoustic differences

Consonants and vowels may play different roles during language processing, consonants being preferentially involved in lexical processing, and vowels tending to mark syntactic constituency through prosodic cues. In support of this view, artificial language learning studies have demonstrated that consonants (C) support statistical computations, whereas vowels (V) allow certain structural generalizations. Nevertheless, these asymmetries could be mere by-products of lower level acoustic differences between Cs and Vs, in particular the energy they carry, and thus their relative salience. Here we address this issue and show that vowels remain the preferred targets for generalizations, even when consonants are made highly salient or vowels barely audible. Participants listened to speech streams of nonsense CVCVCV words, in which consonants followed a simple ABA structure. Participants failed to generalize this structure over sonorant consonants (Experiment 1), even when vowel duration was reduced to one third of that of consonants (Experiment 2). When vowels were eliminated from the stream, participants showed only a marginal evidence of generalizations (Experiment 4). In contrast, participants readily generalized the structure over barely audible vowels (Experiment 3). These results show that different roles of consonants and vowels cannot be readily reduced to acoustical and perceptual differences between these phonetic categories.     

Developing symbolic capacity one step at a time

The present research examines the ability of children as young as 4 years to use models in tasks that require scaling of distance along a single dimension. In Experiment 1, we found that tasks involving models are similar in difficulty to those involving maps that we studied earlier (Huttenlocher, J., Newcombe, N., & Vasilyeva, M. (1999). Spatial scaling in young children. Psychological Science, 10, 393-398). In Experiment 2, we found that retrieval tasks, where children indicate the location of a hidden object in an actual space are substantially more difficult than placement tasks, where children put a visible object in a particular location in an actual space. We discuss possible implications of the differential difficulty of retrieval and placement tasks for the understanding of symbolic development.     

Perceived collective continuity and ingroup identification as defence against death awareness

Perhaps unique among the animal species, humans are aware that they will ultimately die. Terror management theory (TMT) posits that investing in a social group helps people to manage paralysing anxiety stemming from death awareness. In line with this proposition, research to date has shown that when reminded of their own mortality, people increase their identification with a relevant group and defend its beliefs, values, and practices. In the reported study, we demonstrate that a mortality salience induction enhances people’s perceptions of group temporal endurance—or perceived collective continuity (PCC), as we define it. Enhanced PCC leads, in turn, to enhanced group identification. This is in line with the TMT assumption that death awareness leads people to invest in a social group because this constitutes a temporally enduring meaning-system that imbues life with meaning, order, and permanence, and promises death transcendence to those who meet the prescribed standards of value.     

Shaming and Unreasonable Shame in the Book of Job1

While the philosophical study of shame has gained popularity, its application in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible remains in its early stages. This paper delves into an analysis of shaming and unreasonable shame in the Book of Job, particularly in chapter 19. Through an examination of the Hebrew text and drawing on contemporary philosophical definitions of shame and shaming, I argue that Job perceives his friends, God, and the community to be employing shaming tactics against him, attempting to induce feelings of shame, a sentiment Job considers unjustified. In his case, shame is deemed unreasonable because Job has not violated any cherished values that would warrant such an emotion. Additionally, I demonstrate that while Job senses God shaming him, the biblical character acknowledges that his deity is the sole entity aware of his innocence—God's eyes perceive accurately, in contrast to humans', which only assess outward appearances. The role of God as the perfect witness to Job's life is fulfilled in the epilogue of the book, where Yahweh vindicates Job from the shame he has endured by publicly denouncing the serious faults of his friends.     

Developmental changes in consistency of autobiographical memories: adolescents’ and young adults’ repeated recall of recent and distance events

Autobiographical memories contribute continuity and stability to one’s self yet they also are subject to change: they can be forgotten or be inconsistently remembered and reported. In the present research, we compared the consistency of two reports of recent and distant personal events in adolescents (12- to 14-year-olds) and young adults (18- to 23-year-olds). In line with expectations of greater mnemonic consistency among young adults relative to adolescents, adolescents reported the same events 80% of the time compared with 90% consistency among young adults; the significant difference disappeared after taking into consideration narrative characteristics of individual memories. Neither age group showed high levels of content consistency (30% vs. 36%); young adults were more consistent than adolescents even after controlling for other potential predictors of content consistency. Adolescents and young adults did not differ in consistency of estimating when their past experiences occurred. Multilevel modelling indicated that the level of thematic coherence of the initial memory report and ratings of event valence significantly predicted memory consistency at the level of the event. Thematic coherence was a significant negative predictor of content consistency. The findings suggest a developmental progression in the robustness and stability of personal memories between adolescence and young adulthood.     

Robust memory of where from way back when: evidence from behaviour and visual attention

Retention of events typically exhibits a sharp initial decrease followed by levelling off of forgetting. In an apparent exception to this general rule, college students have robust memory for their own locations in obscured versions of photographs of their entering classes taken during orientation-related activities, whether tested 2 months or 42 months after the event. Experiment 1 of the present research was a test for conceptual replication of this finding in photographs depicting more than twice the number of students (and thus potential distracters). There was no difference in memory accuracy for personal spatial location across retention intervals of 6–30 months. Experiment 2 featured 40-h and 2-month retention intervals, thereby providing a more fine-grained test of the forgetting function. The findings replicated Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, eye-tracking measures of visual attention revealed that participants rapidly fixated their own spatial locations within the photographs, even in the absence of explicit awareness. In all three experiments, memory for temporal features of the orientation activities (e.g., day and time the photograph was taken) followed the typical forgetting function. The findings suggest differential preservation of episodic memory for where relative to other aspects of events and experiences, such as when.     

Is place-value processing in four-digit numbers fully automatic? Yes,but not always

Knowing the place-value of digits in multi-digit numbers allows us to identify, understand and distinguish between numbers with the same digits (e.g., 1492 vs. 1942). Research using the size congruency task has shown that the place-value in a string of three zeros and a non-zero digit (e.g., 0090) is processed automatically. In the present study, we explored whether place-value is also automatically activated when more complex numbers (e.g., 2795) are presented. Twenty-five participants were exposed to pairs of four-digit numbers that differed regarding the position of some digits and their physical size. Participants had to decide which of the two numbers was presented in a larger font size. In the congruent condition, the number shown in a bigger font size was numerically larger. In the incongruent condition, the number shown in a smaller font size was numerically larger. Two types of numbers were employed: numbers composed of three zeros and one non-zero digit (e.g., 0040–0400) and numbers composed of four non-zero digits (e.g., 2795–2759). Results showed larger congruency effects in more distant pairs in both type of numbers. Interestingly, this effect was considerably stronger in the strings composed of zeros. These results indicate that place-value coding is partially automatic, as it depends on the perceptual and numerical properties of the numbers to be processed.     

Co‐occurrence statistics as a language‐dependent cue for speech segmentation

To what extent can language acquisition be explained in terms of different associative learning mechanisms? It has been hypothesized that distributional regularities in spoken languages are strong enough to elicit statistical learning about dependencies among speech units. Distributional regularities could be a useful cue for word learning even without rich language‐specific knowledge. However, it is not clear how strong and reliable the distributional cues are that humans might use to segment speech. We investigate cross‐linguistic viability of different statistical learning strategies by analyzing child‐directed speech corpora from nine languages and by modeling possible statistics‐based speech segmentations. We show that languages vary as to which statistical segmentation strategies are most successful. The variability of the results can be partially explained by systematic differences between languages, such as rhythmical differences. The results confirm previous findings that different statistical learning strategies are successful in different languages and suggest that infants may have to primarily rely on non‐statistical cues when they begin their process of speech segmentation.