What underlies the neuropsychological pattern of irregular > regular past-tense verb production?

The disadvantage in producing the past tense of regular relative to irregular verbs shown by some patients with non-fluent aphasia has been alternatively attributed (a) to the failure of a specific rule-based morphological mechanism, or (b) to a more generalised phonological impairment that penalises regular verbs more than irregular owing to the on-average greater phonological complexity of regular past-tense forms. Guided by the second of these two accounts, the current study was designed to identify more specific aspects of phonological deficit that might be associated with the pattern of irregular > regular past-tense production. Non-fluent aphasic patients (N = 8) were tested on past-tense verb production tasks and assessed with regard to the impact of three main manipulations in other word-production tasks: (i) insertion of a delay between stimulus and response in repetition; (ii) presence/number of consonant clusters in a target word in repetition; (iii) position of stress within a bi-syllabic word in repetition and picture naming. The performance of all patients deteriorated in delayed repetition; but the patients with the largest discrepancy between regular and irregular past-tense production showed greater sensitivity to the other two manipulations. The phonological nature of the factors that correlated with verb-inflection performance emphasises the role of a phonological deficit in the observed pattern of irregular > regular.     

"Economic man" in cross-cultural perspective: behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model - based on self-interest - fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life.     

Organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance: the role of affect and cognitions

To investigate the role of affect and cognitions in predicting organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and workplace deviance behavior (WDB), data were collected from 149 registered nurses and their coworkers. Job affect was associated more strongly than were job cognitions with OCB directed at individuals, whereas job cognitions correlated more strongly than did job affect with OCB directed at the organization. With respect to WDB, job cognitions played a more important role in prediction when job affect was represented by 2 general mood variables (positive and negative affect). When discrete emotions were used to represent job affect, however, job affect played as important a role as job cognition variables, strongly suggesting the importance of considering discrete emotions in job affect research.     

Limb and gender differences in the development of coordination in early infancy

Young infants produce a variety of spontaneous arm and leg movements in the first few months of life. Coordination of leg joints has been extensively investigated, whereas arm joint coordination has mainly been investigated in the sitting position in the context of early reaching and grasping. The current study investigated arm and leg joint coordination of movements produced in the supine position in 10 fullterm infants aged 6, 12 and 18 weeks. Longitudinal comparisons within limbs (intralimb) as well as between limbs (interlimb, ipsilateral and contralateral) were made as well as an exploration of differences in the development for boys and girls. The relationship between the joint angles was examined by measuring pair-wise cross-correlation functions for the angular displacement curves of the leg (hip, knee and ankle) and arm (shoulder, elbow and wrist) joints of both the right and left side. Both the arms and legs were found to follow a similar pattern of intralimb coordination, although the leg joints were more tightly coupled than the arm joints, particularly the proximal with the middle joint. In support of earlier findings, differences in the development of the right and left side were identified. In addition, gender differences in joint coordination were found for both intralimb and interlimb coordination. This contrasts with the view that gender differences in motor development may be primarily a result of environmental influences.     

The dynamics of threat and challenge appraisals prior to stressful achievement events

Research on cognitive appraisal of stressful achievement events has emphasized threat appraisals and anxiety. The present research also focused on challenge and positive emotion. Study 1 used hypothetical scenarios of stressful events. Study 2 explored temporal pattems of appraisal and emotion prior to an exam. Compared with threat appraisals, trait and state challenge appraisals were associated with more confident coping expectancies, lower perceptions of threat, higher positive emotion, and more beneficial perceptions of the effects of appraisal and emotion on performance. Beneficial perceptions of state appraisals were associated with higher exam performance. These findings were interpreted in the context of theoretical perspectives on the cognitive appraisal of stressful events and the adaptive functions of challenge and positive emotion.     

Extinction of conditioned odor potentiation of startle

Several recent studies with rats (Sprague-Dawley strain) have documented that an odor previously paired with shock potentiates the acoustic startle response, a phenomenon referred to as conditioned odor potentiation of startle (OPS). A surprising finding in these studies was that OPS did not extinguish even though the odor was present throughout the 25-min test session. Therefore, the present study more fully examined extinction of OPS. The results of Experiment 1, which employed both within-subject and between-group comparisons, showed that extinction of OPS occurred in adult rats only after several days of testing. Experiment 2 used the between-group procedure and found similar results with 23-day-old rats, the youngest age that exhibits the OPS effect. Experiment 2 also showed that giving rats 15 odor-shock pairings at 16 days of age, an age where they acquire the odor-shock association but cannot express it via OPS, does not increase subsequent resistance to extinction following odor-shock pairings at 23 days of age. Taken together, the results of this study show that (1) although OPS is somewhat resistant to extinction, it does extinguish with repeated tests and (2) suggests that there are no age differences in the rate of extinction of OPS.     

Reinforcer Variation in a Token Economy

We evaluated whether generalized conditioned reinforcers mitigate the effects of satiation with an individual with intellectual disabilities. Previous research indicates that generalized conditioned reinforcers are not sensitive to satiation effects. However, this effect has not been investigated on varying classes of backup reinforcers. First, we established a highly preferred (HP) edible as a reinforcer. Then, we provided presession access to the HP edible, and, in a multi‐element comparison, the participant could either earn tokens for only the HP edible, for edibles that were similar to the HP edible, for edibles that were dissimilar to the HP edible, or earn no tokens. A decreasing trend in responding for the HP edible was observed following presession access. Furthermore, the participant completed the task at a high rate when backup reinforcers were dissimilar to the HP edible. Results suggest that varying the classes of stimuli that are used as backup reinforcers may increase the effectiveness of generalized conditioned reinforcers. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Intersection of Perceptions and Experiences of Bullying by Race and Ethnicity among Middle School Students in the United States

Little is known about how ethnic identity influences bullying. Using a racially diverse sample, we examine how within-race perceptions match experiences. We utilize bivariate probit regression to examine the correlation between actual and perceived victimization and bullying experiences. Results suggest no differences in victimization by ethnicity but perceived victimization differed across groups. Perceived and actual bullying differed across all groups. School climate acted as a protective factor against bullying and victimization, but school diversity increased the likelihood of bullying by whites and Latinos. These findings shed light on the importance of ethnic identity in understanding the etiology of bullying.