Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: a Japanese-Italian cross-linguistic study

Learning word order is one of the earliest feats infants accomplish during language acquisition [Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.]. Two theories have been proposed to account for this fact. Constructivist/lexicalist theories [Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74(3), 209-253.] argue that word order is learned separately for each lexical item or construction. Generativist theories [Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.], on the other hand, claim that word order is an abstract and general property, determined from the input independently of individual words. Here, we show that eight-month-old Japanese and Italian infants have opposite order preferences in an artificial grammar experiment, mirroring the opposite word orders of their respective native languages. This suggests that infants possess some representation of word order prelexically, arguing for the generativist view. We propose a frequency-based bootstrapping mechanism to account for our results, arguing that infants might build this representation by tracking the order of functors and content words, identified through their different frequency distributions. We investigate frequency and word order patterns in infant-directed Japanese and Italian corpora to support this claim.     

The effects of self-criticism and self-oriented perfectionism on goal pursuit

Five separate studies examined the associations of self-criticism and self-oriented perfectionism with goal pursuit across a variety of domains. Although self-criticism has previously been shown to be related to diminished goal progress, a controversy remains regarding the potential association between aspects of "positive perfectionism," such as self-oriented perfectionism, and enhanced goal progress. The results of the five studies demonstrated a consistent pattern of negative association between self-criticism and goal progress. The results also showed a positive association between self-oriented perfectionism and goal progress when self-criticism was controlled. The important role of self-criticism for understanding the impact of perfectionistic concerns is highlighted by these results. Implications for the debate concerning the possible positive effects of perfectionistic strivings are also discussed.     

Attachment and motivational strategies in adolescence: exploring links

Within the framework of attachment theory and of motivation goal theory, this study explored the relation between quality of attachment strategies and quality of motivational strategies in a sample of young adolescents. Specifically, this study examined patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and emotions as they related to representations of attachment and motivational functioning in situations that challenge or threaten three psychological needs (emotional security, competence, and autonomy). Forty-four students, aged 11 to 14 years, responded to imagined stressful situations in order to: (a) assess attachment strategies; (b) identify and assess students' motivational strategies in stressful classroom circumstances; (c) assess motivational strategies of students with high and low control and agency beliefs; and (d) examine the relations between attachment and motivational strategies. Four distinct action patterns were identified: flexible action, rigid action, passive behavior, and disorganized behavior. Significant relations were found between control beliefs and motivational strategies, as well as a trend toward relations between attachment and motivational strategies, suggesting that secure adolescents show more constructive motivational strategies and less disorganized strategies when compared to insecure adolescents.     

The implications of value conflict: how disagreement on values affects self-involvement and perceived common ground

This article presents two studies demonstrating the implications of having different values (vs. interests) in a situation where people take opposite positions. Study 1 examined how people respond to a range of conflict issues that were framed either as referring to conflicting values or as referring to conflicting interests. Study 2 used a more immersive methodology, in which participants were led to consider either their values or interests in taking up a particular position, after which they were presented with a confederate who took up the opposite position. Results of both studies converge to demonstrate that framing a particular conflict issue in terms of values causes people to experience more self-involvement and to perceive less common ground. This result can be seen as a potential explanation of why value conflicts tend to escalate more easily than conflicts of interests and also offers scope for interventions directed at value conflict resolution.     

An empirical study of the traditional Mach card effect

The traditional achromatic Mach card effect is an example of lightness inconstancy and a demonstration of how shape and lightness perception interact. We present a quantitative study of this phenomenon and explore the conditions under which it occurs. The results demonstrate that observers show lightness constancy only when sufficient information is available about the light-source position, and the perceptual task required of them is surface identification rather than direct colour-appearance matching. An analysis and comparison of these results with the chromatic Mach card effect (Bloj et al 1999 Nature 402 877-879) demonstrate that the luminance effects of mutual illumination do not account for the change in lightness perception in the traditional Mach card.     

Mental Health Symptoms and Parenting Stress of Parents of Court-Involved Youth

Youth involved in the juvenile justice system are at risk for emotional and behavioral problems. However, research with court-involved adolescents has neglected to examine the mental health of their parents, who may also have significant personal and parenting stress. This sample consisted of 144 parent–adolescent dyads. Adolescents (aged 11–17 years) identified by court officials were referred to the study to receive mental health treatment. Parents and adolescents completed surveys about their mental health diagnoses, treatment, and family relationships. Using the clinical cut-off for the global severity index of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, bivariate and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to examine group differences between parents with and without significant mental health symptoms. Results indicated that 35% of parents endorsed clinically significant mental health symptoms. Parents with clinically significant symptoms, compared to those without, reported significantly greater parenting stress (p?<?.05), and were more likely to have received prior mental health treatment (54 vs. 25%; p?<?.05) and a psychiatric diagnosis (52 vs. 19%; p?<?.05). Our findings revealed that more than one in three parents of court-involved adolescents are currently experiencing significant mental health symptoms. Improved mental health screening and intervention that incorporates the unique needs of families is recommended, including the possible use of family-based approaches as well as individualized treatment for the parents of court-involved youth.     

Determinants of Parental Monitoring and Preadolescent Sexual Risk Situations Among African American Families Living in Urban Public Housing

We investigated determinants of parental monitoring and the association between parental monitoring and preadolescent sexual risk situations among low-income, African American families living in urban public housing. Preadolescents and their parents or caregivers who participated in a longitudinal study of familial and contextual influences on HIV/AIDS risk provided data on parental monitoring and preadolescent sexual risk situations. Data were also collected on parent risk factors (psychological distress, maternal age at first childbirth); preadolescent risk factors (responsiveness to parents, peer pressure) and contextual factors (parenting help, household type, friendship, partner presence, and perception of religious guidance) that were hypothesized to predict parental monitoring levels. Results showed that greater parental monitoring predicted less sexual risk situations. Further, instrumental and emotional supports were both significant predictors of parental monitoring, but parent and preadolescent risk factors were not strongly associated with parental monitoring. These results were similar for male and female preadolescent youth. Our findings suggest that preventive interventions to reduce sexual risk situations for urban, African American youth should consider parental monitoring. In addition, contextual factors such as strong parental friendship networks and instrumental help may enable parents to provide closer monitoring of youth.     

Intended persistence: comparing academic and creative challenges in high school

How do high school students approach academic and creative challenges? This study compares the content of academic and creative challenges for 190 high school students, and examines students’ intentions to persist. Students reported experiencing academic and creative challenges in different areas: academic challenges were described primarily in math/science and English, with themes related to time management and striving to improve, while creative challenges were described overwhelmingly in art and music and concerned problem solving difficulties. Students reported more interest and intention to persist in the creative than academic challenges. Interest was the strongest predictor of persistence across both academic and creative challenges. The divergent perceptions of creative and academic challenges suggest that capitalizing on the creative elements of academic assignments could boost student interest and subsequent persistence.     

French normative data and naming times for action pictures

The aim of the present study was to provide French normative data for 112 action line drawings. The set of action pictures consisted of 71 drawings taken from Masterson and Druks (1998) and 41 additional drawings. It was standardized on six psycholinguistic variables—that is, name agreement, image agreement, image variability, visual complexity, conceptual familiarity, and age of acquisition (AoA). Naming latencies to the action pictures were collected, and a regression analysis was performed on the naming latencies, with the standardized variables, as well as with word frequency and length, taken as predictors. A reliable influence of AoA, name agreement, and image agreement on the naming latencies was observed. The findings are consistent with previous published studies in other languages. The full set of these norms may be downloaded fromwww.psychonomic.org/archive/.