Atypical birdsong and artificial languages provide insights into how communication systems are shaped by learning,use, and transmission

In this article, I argue that a comparative approach focusing on the cognitive capacities and behavioral mechanisms that underlie vocal learning in songbirds and humans can provide valuable insights into the evolutionary origins of language. The experimental approaches I discuss use abnormal song and atypical linguistic input to study the processes of individual learning, social interaction, and cultural transmission. Atypical input places increased learning and communicative pressure on learners, so exploring how they respond to this type of input provides a particularly clear picture of the biases and constraints at work during learning and use. Furthermore, simulating the cultural transmission of these unnatural communication systems in the laboratory informs us about how learning and social biases influence the structure of communication systems in the long run. Findings based on these methods suggest fundamental similarities in the basic social–cognitive mechanisms underlying vocal learning in birds and humans, and continuing research promises insights into the uniquely human mechanisms and into how human cognition and social behavior interact, and ultimately impact on the evolution of language.     

A LACANIAN LOOK AT ENGLISH ELEGANCE: SOME REFLECTIONS ON IAN MCEWAN'S ENDURING LOVE

This paper makes use of certain thought-provoking ideas from Lacan's seminars in the years between 1959 and 1962 in order to engage with the very subtly conveyed inner drama that subtends the plot of Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love . Freud, in his 1914 paper 'On narcissism', had referred to theories on the earliest moments of subjectivity as 'nebulous, scarcely imagined concepts'. In 1959 Lacan created a concept that he called the o-object to make incursions into theories on the lasting impact of the anxiety-ridden passage of the small pre-subject into subjective existence. In particular, the seminar on Anxiety (1962-3), for all the convolutions of syntax and sense that render it so difficult to read, opens up reflections on this topic that are not dissimilar to those stimulated by McEwan's accomplished prose. Both Lacan and McEwan explore the problematic dissolution of the everyday distinction between subjectivity and objectivity attendant on the upsurge of anxiety driven by unconscious forces.     

Let's Ask the Homeless People Themselves: A Needs Assessment Based on a Probability Sample of Adults

A probability sample of 301 homeless adults from Buffalo, NY, was followed over 6 months to document the utilization of a variety of community services, examine services desired, and identify factors associated with service utilization, preference, and satisfaction. The following needs were all rated as at least equally important as the need for affordable housing: safety, education, transportation, medical/dental treatment, and job training/placement (most of these needs were also rated as difficult to obtain). Needs for formal mental health and substance abuse services were rated as relatively unimportant and easy to obtain, and for those who actually used them, respondents were often dissatisfied with them. Of 16 predictor variables examined in multivariate analyses, several showed consistent relationships with subsequent service use, preference, and satisfaction. Younger adults, persons of color, those with dependent children, and persons having fewer social supports reported less service utilization, less satisfaction with services received, different perceived needs for particular services, and/or greater difficulty obtaining services.     

Parenting practices and adolescent social anxiety: A direct or indirect relationship?

Background/ObjectivesAccording to existing evidence, parental educational practices and social anxiety are to some degree connected. However, the possibility that this relationship is an indirect one and is mediated by individual factors such as self-esteem or emotional regulation has not yet been explored. The aim of this study was therefore to explore the relationship between maternal and paternal educational practices and social anxiety, and test both the direct and the indirect pathways. Method: The representative sample consisted of 2,060 Andalusian students (47.7% girls, M_age = 14.34) who filled in various self-reports. Results: The structural equation models confirmed that a direct relationship, with a low effect size, exists between parental educational practices and social anxiety and that there is also an indirect relationship, mediated by negative self-esteem and emotional suppression (the emotional regulation strategy), which accounted here for 49.1% of the variance in social anxiety. Conclusions: Parental education practices seem to act as a family asset which either promotes or hinders the development of basic attitudes and competencies such as self-esteem or emotional regulation and, by doing this, either encourages or prevents the emergence of problems such as social anxiety.