The role of type and token frequency in using past tense morphemes correctly

Type and token frequency have been thought to be important in the acquisition of past tense morphology, particularly in differentiating regular and irregular forms. In this study we tested the role of frequency in two ways: (1) in bilingual children, who typically use and hear either language less often than monolingual children and (2) cross-linguistically: French and English have different patterns of frequency of regular/irregular verbs. Ten French-English bilingual children, 10 French monolingual and 10 English monolingual children between 4 and 6 years watched a cartoon and re-told the story. The results demonstrated that the bilingual children were less accurate than the monolingual children. Their accuracy in both French and English regular and irregular verbs corresponded to frequency in the input language. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that children learn past tense morphemes by analogy with other words in their vocabularies. We propose a developmental sequence based on conservative generalization across a growing set of verbs.     

Assessing vocational interests in the Basque Country using paired comparison design

This article proposes the Thurstonian paired comparison model to assess vocational preferences and uses this approach to evaluate the Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprise, and Conventional (RIASEC) model in the Basque Country (Spain). First, one unrestricted model is estimated in the Structural Equation Modelling framework using one paired comparison design. Secondly, the RIASEC circumplex structure is evaluated upon the estimated latent preferences correlation matrix. The results show good fit between the Thurstonian model and the data, but do not confirm the RIASEC structure in the Basque population.     

Conditional relations with compound abstract stimuli using a go/no-go procedure

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether emergent conditional relations could be established with a go/no-go procedure using compound abstract stimuli. The procedure was conducted with 6 adult humans. During training, responses emitted in the presence of certain stimulus compounds (A1B1, A2B2, A3B3, B1C1, B2C2, and B3C3) were followed by reinforcing consequences (points); responses emitted in the presence of other compounds (A1B2, A1B3, A2B1, A2B3, A3B1, A3B2, B1C2, B1C3, B2C1, B2C3, B3C1 and B3C2) were not (i.e., extinction). During subsequent tests of emergent relations, new configurations (BA, CB, AC, and CA relations) were presented, formed by the recombination of training stimuli and structurally resembling tests usually employed in stimulus equivalence studies. Results showed that all 6 participants displayed immediate emergence of relations consistent with symmetry. Four participants exhibited emergent relations consistent with both transitivity and equivalence. These results indicate that a go/no-go procedure with compound stimuli can establish emergent conditional relations, thus providing a procedural alternative to the matching-to-sample procedures commonly used in studies of stimulus equivalence.     

Disorders in planning and strategy application in frontal lobe lesion patients

The aim of this study was to investigate deficits in planning ability using an adapted version of the Modified Six Elements Test, from the Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome—BADS [Wilson, B. A., Alderman, N., Burgess, P. W., Emslie, H., & Evans, J. J. (1996). Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS). Bury St Edmunds, U.K.: Thames Valley Test Company. Trans. Ricardo O Souza, Sergio L Schmidt. Rio de Janeiro: Cognição]. Subjects were left- and right-frontal lobe lesion patients. Other measures of executive dysfunctions used were verbal fluency, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, and the Trail Making Test. These other instruments were sensitive to detect executive deficits in the left frontal lobe lesion group, except the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, which showed impairment only for the frontal lobe lesion group as a whole. The Modified Six Elements Test detected planning disorders in left frontal lobe lesion patients. The deficit of these patients was due to a greater likelihood to break the rules of the task, that is, in plan-following processes, rather than in planning the strategic approach to solve it.     

Switching between sensory and affective systems incurs processing costs

Recent models of the conceptual system hold that concepts are grounded in simulations of actual experiences with instances of those concepts in sensory-motor systems (e.g., Barsalou, 1999, 2003; Solomon & Barsalou, 2001). Studies supportive of such a viewhave shown that verifying a property of a concept in one modality, and then switching to verify a property of a different concept in a different modality generates temporal processing costs similar to the cost of switching modalities in perception. In addition to non-emotional concepts, the present experiment investigated switching costs in verifying properties of positive and negative (emotional) concepts. Properties of emotional concepts were taken from vision, audition, and the affective system. Parallel to switching costs in neutral concepts, the study showed that for positive and negative concepts, verifying properties from different modalities produced processing costs such that reaction times were longer and error rates were higher. Importantly, this effect was observed when switching from the affective system to sensory modalities, and vice-versa. These results support the embodied cognition view of emotion in humans.     

Future Contingents,Indeterminacy and Context

In Facing the Future, Belnap et al. reject bivalence and propose double time reference semantics to give a pragmatic response to the following assertion problem: how can we make sense of assertions about future events made at a time when the outcomes of those events are not yet determined? John MacFarlane employs the same semantics, now bolstered with a relative‐truth predicate, to accommodate the following apparently conflicting intuitions regarding the truth‐value of an uttered future contingent: at the moment of utterance, if asked to evaluate the truth‐value of the asserted future contingent one has the intuition that the assertion is neither true nor false, yet later, at the moment of the predicted event, one has the intuition that the assertion was, already, either true or false. Both MacFarlane and Belnap assume that assertions of future contingents have complete propositional content – the traditional propositional contents that, according to him ‘are the contents of assertions and beliefs’. This assumption is challenged.     

An Examination of Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms and Aggression among Children with a History of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Childhood aggression is associated with many deleterious outcomes and is a common reason for psychiatric referral (Card & Little, 2006; Gurnani et al., 2016). One factor associated with childhood aggression is Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs; Felitti et al., 1998). However, existing research remains equivocal on which characteristics of ACEs (e.g., cumulative impact, typology, etc.) are significantly elated to aggression, especially when considering differential effects of ACEs on proactive aggression (PA) and reactive aggression (RA; Dodge & Coie, 1987). Post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are a common negative sequalae of ACEs and are characterized by disruptions in several cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes similar to those associated with both RA and PA (e.g., Marsee, 2008). As such, the examination of PTSS as an underlying mechanism of influence on the relation between ACEs, PA, and RA is warranted. The present study fills several gaps in the literature by examining ACE characteristics that might be related to PTSS, PA, and RA while also examining direct and indirect effects on the relation between ACEs, PTSS and PA and RA. Results indicated the type of ACE, specifically child maltreatment ACEs (CM-ACEs), was most strongly related to all outcome variables. Therefore, CM-ACEs were included in a path analysis with PTSS, PA, and RA. Results indicated a significant indirect effect for PTSS on the relation between CM-ACEs and RA (β?=?.18, p?<?.01) but not PA. Findings have several implications for future research and clinical practice, especially for children with an extensive history of CM-ACEs.

     

ABUSED WOMEN'S PERSPECTIVES ON THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM'S RESPONSE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

This study used Q methodology to better understand battered women's views about the criminal justice system (CJS). Fifty-eight abused and formerly abused women, representing a broad range of experiences, were involved in the study. Participants sorted 72 statements about domestic violence and the CJS according to how strongly they agreed with each one in relation to the other statements. A small subset of women was interviewed to help illuminate the emerging perspectives. Five perspectives that are new in both their complexity and in their substance were identified: (1) The CJS can be trusted; (2) The CJS has potential, but is ultimately disappointing to victims; (3) Victims should have input into the CJS and be sure they want to use it; (4) The CJS cannot protect women and can make matters worse; and (5) The CJS should be used for her safety, for his rehabilitation, and for justice despite its problems.     

On the relationship between children's perspective taking in complex scenes and their spatial drawing ability

Depicting space and volume in drawings is challenging for young children in particular. It has been assumed that several cognitive skills may contribute to children's drawing. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between perspective‐taking skills in complex scenes and the spatial characteristics in drawings of 5‐ to 9‐year‐olds (N= 121). Perspective taking was assessed by two tasks: (a) a visual task similar to the three‐mountains task, in which the children had to select a three‐dimensional model that showed the view on a scene from particular perspective and (b) a spatial construction task, in which children had to plastically reconstruct a three‐dimensional scene as it would appear from a new point of view. In the drawing task, the children were asked to depict a three‐dimensional scene exactly as it looked like from their own point of view. Several spatial features in the drawings were coded. The results suggested that children's spatial drawing and their perspective‐taking skills were related. The axes system and the spatial relations between objects in the drawings in particular were predicted, beyond age, by certain measures of the two perspective‐taking tasks. The results are discussed in the light of particular demands that might underlay both perspective taking and spatial drawing.