Cognitive control factors in speech perception at 11 months

The development of speech perception during the 1st year reflects increasing attunement to native language features, but the mechanisms underlying this development are not completely understood. One previous study linked reductions in nonnative speech discrimination to performance on nonlinguistic tasks, whereas other studies have shown associations between speech perception and vocabulary growth. The present study examined relationships among these abilities in 11-month-old infants using a conditioned head-turn test of native and nonnative speech sound discrimination, nonlinguistic object-retrieval tasks requiring attention and inhibitory control, and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (L. Fenson et al., 1993). Native speech discrimination was positively linked to receptive vocabulary size but not to the cognitive control tasks, whereas nonnative speech discrimination was negatively linked to cognitive control scores but not to vocabulary size. Speech discrimination, vocabulary size, and cognitive control scores were not associated with more general cognitive measures. These results suggest specific relationships between domain-general inhibitory control processes and the ability to ignore variation in speech that is irrelevant to the native language and between the development of native language speech perception and vocabulary.     

Players' quality of play and overall interest of the game in dyadic competition

These experiments examined the cognitive processes involved in judging the quality of play of a player competing against another player and the overall interest of a competitive game as a function of the players' respective ability and motivation levels. For the quality of play of one player, a very simple information integration rule was found. Quality of play was judged almost exclusively as an additive function of the ability and motivation levels of the player. For the interest of the game, an apparently complex but fundamentally simple integration rule was found. For a game to be very interesting, players had to be both highly able and highly motivated; for a game to be somewhat interesting, each player had to be at least either highly able or highly motivated; and all other configurations corresponded to lower expected levels of interest.     

Bayesian generic priors for causal learning

The article presents a Bayesian model of causal learning that incorporates generic priors--systematic assumptions about abstract properties of a system of cause-effect relations. The proposed generic priors for causal learning favor sparse and strong (SS) causes--causes that are few in number and high in their individual powers to produce or prevent effects. The SS power model couples these generic priors with a causal generating function based on the assumption that unobservable causal influences on an effect operate independently (P. W. Cheng, 1997). The authors tested this and other Bayesian models, as well as leading nonnormative models, by fitting multiple data sets in which several parameters were varied parametrically across multiple types of judgments. The SS power model accounted for data concerning judgments of both causal strength and causal structure (whether a causal link exists). The model explains why human judgments of causal structure (relative to a Bayesian model lacking these generic priors) are influenced more by causal power and the base rate of the effect and less by sample size. Broader implications of the Bayesian framework for human learning are discussed.     

Oral cavity awareness in nonnative speakers acquiring English

This investigation assessed awareness of the oral cavity of nonnative speakers acquiring English. University students (60 men, 60 women) were placed into three equal-size groups. The Less Experienced group lived in the USA less than 6 mo. (M = 3.3 mo., SD = 2.4). The More Experienced group lived in the United States 3 or more years (M = 5.0 yr., SD = 1.9). Native English speakers were the control group. Participants were recruited from undergraduate general education classes and passed a speech screening in English including accurate production of the seven English syllables tested, namely, suh, luh, tuh, kuh, ruh, shuh, and thuh. Participants answered four multiple-choice questions about lingual contact for each of the syllables imitated. Total test mean scores were significantly higher for the More Experienced group. Native speakers performed the task best. Findings support the effects of amount of time speaking the language. Training methods employed to teach English and slight dialectal variations may account for the significant differences seen in the two groups of nonnative speakers. Further study is warranted.     

Effects of music on memory for text

Previous research has suggested that the use of song can facilitate recall of text. This study examined the effect of repetition of a melody across verses, familiarity with the melody, rhythm, and other structural processing hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. Two experiments were conducted, each with 100 participants recruited from undergraduate Psychology programs (44 men, 156 women, M age = 28.5 yr., SD = 9.4). In Exp. 1, participants learned a four-verse ballad in one of five encoding conditions (familiar melody, unfamiliar melody, unknown rhythm, known rhythm, and spoken). Exp. 2 assessed the effect of familiarity in rhythm-only conditions and of pre-exposure with a previously unfamiliar melody. Measures taken were number of verbatim words recalled and number of lines produced with correct syllabic structure. Analysis indicated that rhythm, with or without musical accompaniment, can facilitate recall of text, suggesting that rhythm may provide a schematic frame to which text can be attached. Similarly, familiarity with the rhythm or melody facilitated recall. Findings are discussed in terms of integration and dual-processing theories.     

Effects of an Extracurricular Science Intervention on Science Performance, Self-Worth, Social Skills, and Sexist Attitudes of Taiwanese Adolescents from Single-Parent Families

A one group pretest-posttest design was used to investigate effects of an extracurricular science intervention on female and male junior high school students’ science performance, self-worth, social skills, and sexist attitudes. Twenty-eight 8th grade Taiwanese students (16 boys, 12 girls) from single parent families participated in this study. Student responses to a questionnaire measuring their self-worth, social skills, and sexist attitudes, and interviews and classroom observations used for triangulation and consolidation of qualitative findings revealed that girls improved significantly on several indices of science performance, and that both boys and girls decreased their sexist attitudes. Girls had significantly less sexist attitudes than boys at both pretest and posttest. Implications for practice and research are provided.     

Comparison of Tetradic WAIS-III Short Forms in Predicting Full Scale IQ Scores in Neuropsychiatric Clinic Settings

Patients from two neuropsychology clinics (n = 283) were divided into model development (n = 189) and validation samples (n = 94) with proportional representation from each clinic. Three regression based models of four WAIS-III subtests were developed and cross-validated to evaluate their FSIQ estimation accuracy: (1) an optimized stepwise regression model derived from the development sample (Comprehension, Matrix Reasoning, Similarities, and Picture Arrangement), (2) an a priori WASI based model (Similarities, Matrix Reasoning, Vocabulary, and Block Design), and (3) an a priori model with relatively rapidly administered subtests from each Index Score factor of the WAIS-III (Information, Picture Completion, Arithmetic, and Digit Symbol-Coding). The models produced good (92 to 97%) FSIQ estimation accuracy within 10 points of FSIQ with none of these models performing significantly better than another. The utility of clinical use of short form FSIQ estimation is a function of accuracy needed versus administration time reduction and ease for the patient.     

Calculating the attentional orientation of an unfamiliar agent in infancy

By the end of the first year, infants are able to recognize both goal-directed and perceptually guided behavior in the actions of non-human agents, even faceless ones. How infants derive the relevant orientation of an unfamiliar agent in the absence of familiar markers such as eyes, ears, or face is unknown. The current studies tested the hypothesis that infants’ calculate an agent's “front” from the geometry of its behavior in the spatial environment. In the first study, 14–15-month-old infants observed a symmetrical, faceless agent either interact contingently with a confederate or act randomly. It then turn toward one of two target objects. Infants were more likely to look in the direction the agent turned than the opposite direction, but only in the contingent condition. In the second study, the location of the confederate and target objects was varied, which in turn influenced which end of the agent infants interpreted as the front. Finally, implications for infants’ early gaze-following behaviors with humans are tested and implications for theory of mind development more broadly are discussed.