A Measure of the Stability of Activities in a Family Environment

The Stability of Activities in the Family Environment (SAFE) measure was developed to assess aspects of the construct of family stability. An earlier version of the SAFE was revised to improve its psychometric properties and better elaborate the construct that underlies the measure. College students completed the revised SAFE and other measures of family functioning with respect to their families of origin and measures of current adjustment. Findings support the reliability, internal consistency, and factor structure of the SAFE. It is suggested that the results of the factor analyses and findings that different aspects of family stability demonstrated different patterns of relationships to indices of family functioning, are consistent with the presumption guiding the development of the SAFE that families achieve stability in diverse ways. The validity of the SAFE was further supported by its relationship to measures of current self-esteem and depression.     

Measurement invariance of the Phubbing Scale across 20 countries

Mobile phone addiction is a robust phenomenon observed throughout the world. The social aspect of mobile phone use is crucial; therefore, phubbing is a part of the mobile phone addiction phenomenon. Phubbing is defined as ignoring an interlocutor by glancing at one's mobile phone during a face-to-face conversation. The main aim of this study was to investigate how the Phubbing Scale (containing 10 items) might vary across countries, and between genders. Data were collected in 20 countries: Belarus, Brazil, China, Croatia, Ecuador, India, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, UK, Ukraine and USA. The mean age across the sample (N = 7696, 65.8% women, 34.2% men) was 25.32 years (SD = 9.50). The cross-cultural invariance of the scale was investigated using multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA) as well as the invariance analyses. Additionally, data from each country were assessed individually via confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs). We obtained two factors, based on only eight of the items: (a) communication disturbances and (b) phone obsession. The 8 items Phubbing Scale.     

Virtues and vices in scientific practice

Synthese - The role intellectual virtues play in scientific inquiry has raised significant discussions in the recent literature. A number of authors have recently explored the link between virtue...     

Contact Join-semilattices

Studia Logica - Contact algebra is one of the main tools in region-based theory of space. In ([7, 8, 22, 23]) it is generalized by dropping the operation Boolean complement. Furthermore we can...     

Relational Representation Theorems for Extended Contact Algebras

Studia Logica - In topological spaces, the relation of extended contact is a ternary relation that holds between regular closed subsets A, B and D if the intersection of A and B is included in D....     

The comprehension of anomalous sentences: evidence from structural priming

We report three experiments investigating how people process anomalous sentences, in particular those in which the anomaly is associated with the verb. We contrast two accounts for the processing of such anomalous sentences: a syntactic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are similar in nature to the ones constructed for well-formed sentences; and a semantic account, in which the representations constructed for anomalous sentences are erroneous, or altogether missing, and interpretation is achieved on the basis of semantic representations instead. To distinguish between these accounts, we used structural priming. First, we ruled out the possibility that anomaly per se influences the magnitude of the priming effect: Prime sentences with morphologically incorrect verbs produced similarly enhanced priming (lexical boost) to sentences with the same correct verbs (Exp. 1). Second, we found that prime sentences with a novel verb (Exp. 2) or a semantically and syntactically incongruent verb (Exp. 3) produced a priming effect, which was the same as that produced by well-formed sentences. In accord with the syntactic account, we conclude that the syntactic representations of anomalous sentences are similar to those constructed for well-formed sentences. Our results furthermore suggest that lexically-independent syntactic information is robust enough to produce well-formed syntactic representations during processing without requiring aid from lexically-based syntactic information.     

Using the Model Statement to Elicit Information and Cues to Deceit from Native Speakers,Non‐native Speakers and Those Talking Through an Interpreter

We examined how the presence of an interpreter during an interview affects eliciting information and cues to deceit, whilst using a method that encourages interviewees to provide more detail (model statement, MS). Sixty native English speakers were interviewed in English, and 186 non‐native English speakers were interviewed in English or through an interpreter. Interviewees either lied or told the truth about a mock security meeting, which they reported twice: in an initial free recall and after listening to the MS. The MS resulted in the native English speakers and those interviewed with an interpreter providing more reminiscences (additional detail) than the non‐native English speakers interviewed without an interpreter. As a result, those interviewed through an interpreter provided more detail than the non‐native English speakers, but only after the MS. Native English participants were most detailed in both recalls. No difference was found in the amount of reminiscences provided by liars and truth tellers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Extended Contact Algebras and Internal Connectedness

Studia Logica - The notion of contact algebra is one of the main tools in the region-based theory of space. It is an extension of Boolean algebra with an additional relation C, called contact....