Observations with self-embedded sentences using written aids

Self-embedded sentences of any degree beyond one are permitted by the syntactic rules of English, yet previous studies report that Ss typically reject these sentences as being ungrammatical and, in addition, often cannot recover the meaning of these sentences. The present paper investigated the possibility of introducing specially structured self-embedded sentences as “aids” to the discovery of the structure of more complex self-embedded sentences. The group of Ss who received these aids performed significantly better in discovering the subject-verb and subject-object assignments in the complex sentences (many achieved perfect scores) in contrast to Ss who did not initially receive these aids (these latter Ss obtained close to the minimum possible scores).     

Adult Education is the Psychologist's Business

One hundred eighty-seven kindergarten through sixth grade Caucasian boys and girls ranked seven types of candy according to preference, then were given the opportunity to share candy with children described as similar to them, with children described as dissimilar and needy, or with both. Charitable behavior, defined as sharing significantly more with needy recipients, was shown to emerge at about age 7 and to increase significantly to age 10. Results are discussed in relation to age changes in perceptual discrimination, ability to abstract, and internalization of social norms.     

Use of Services Prior to and Following Intensive Family Preservation Services

A goal of short-term intensive family preservation services (IFPS) is to facilitate access to other services. However, service use following IFPS has rarely been studied. I describe the types of aftercare services that IFPS therapists recommended and use of these services in the two months following IFPS termination. Since families were using services that were not on the recommended aftercare plans, use of these services is also described. Primary caregivers of families who received family preservation through either child welfare or mental health were interviewed at two months after family preservation for the purpose of ascertaining service use. Different types of services were recommended and used based on whether families received IFPS through child welfare or mental health. However, there were also differences in the presenting problems and demographics between families in child welfare and mental health. Future research should include an independent assessment of need in order to determine the relationship between need and the types of services recommended and used. Even though families used services prior to IFPS, the findings indicated that IFPS facilitated use of new services. More research is needed on the process of how therapists decide what services to recommend and what they do to help families access services. It is also important to examine whether use of less restrictive services helps prevent out-of-home placements and the relationship between informal support and use of formal services.     

Individual differences in college students' performance on formal operations tasks

Piaget has suggested that the stage of formal operations may be present in all normal adults, albeit in different areas according to aptitudes and professional specialization. Three formal operations tasks (pendulum, political socialization concepts, and literary styles analysis) were chosen to represent the content of problems encountered in three fields of academic specialization (physics, political science, and English). Ten male junior and senior college students in each of the three academic majors were tested on the three tasks. A significant academic major by task interaction was obtained. Results supported the hypothesis that young adults evidence formal level reasoning in accordance with their college majors. Explanations of task-specific formal level performance were considered. Individual differences in formal operations attainment have implications for assessment of adult intelligence.     

Reorganization of the cerebro-cerebellar network of language production in patients with congenital left-hemispheric brain lesions

Patients with congenital lesions of the left cerebral hemisphere may reorganize language functions into the right hemisphere. In these patients, language production is represented homotopically to the left-hemispheric language areas. We studied cerebellar activation in five patients with congenital lesions of the left cerebral hemisphere to assess if the language network is reorganized completely in these patients, i.e. including also cerebellar language functions. As compared to a group of controls matched for age, sex, and verbal IQ, the patients recruited an area not in the right but in the left cerebellar hemisphere. The extent of laterality of the cerebellar activation correlated significantly with the laterality of the frontal activation. We suggest that the developing brain reacts to early focal lesions in the left hemisphere with a mirror-image organization of the entire cerebro-cerebellar network engaged in speech production.     

Influence of typical size of objects in a categorization task]

This study explores the influence of typical size during a categorization task. The specificity of this experimental work is based on the homogeneity of the graphic stimuli size. We have created a typical size standard of our stimuli, that concerns the real size of the objects represented by the drawings of homogeneous sizes. Then, a priming experiment was performed in which the prime and target drawings had two types of relations: a typical size, and a categorial. The participants are na?ve as to the typical size relation between prime and target. The results show a positive priming effect of the typical size but not of the category. The results are discussed in term of theoretical approach developed by Barsalou and his colleagues (1999, 2003). In this theoretical framework, the typical size can be considered as a perceptual knowledge. In that way, we propose that participants could automatically simulate the typical size as soon as they perceived the drawings of objects with homegenous sizes.