Naming times and standardized norms for the italian PD/DPSS set of 266 pictures: Direct comparisons with American, English, French, and Spanish published databases

The present study provides Italian normative measures for 266 line drawings belonging to the new set of pictures developed by Lotto, Dell’Acqua, and Job (in press). The pictures have been standardized on the following measures: number of letters, number of syllables, name frequency, within-category typicality, familiarity, age of acquisition, name agreement, and naming time. In addition to providing the measures, the present study focuses on indirect and direct comparisons (i.e., correlations) of the present norms with databases provided by comparable studies in Italian (in which normative data were collected with Snodgrass & Vanderwart’s set of pictures; Nisi, Longoni, & Snodgrass, 2000), in British English (Barry, Morrison, & Ellis, 1997), in American English (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980; Snodgrass & Yuditsky, 1996), in French (Alario & Ferrand, 1999), and in Spanish (Sanfeliu & Fernandez, 1996).     

Connectionist Models of Language Production: Lexical Access and Grammatical Encoding

Theories of language production have long been expressed as connectionist models. We outline the issues and challenges that must be addressed by connectionist models of lexical access and grammatical encoding, and review three recent models. The models illustrate the value of an interactive activation approach to lexical access in production, the need for sequential output in both phonological and grammatical encoding, and the potential for accounting for structural effects on errors and structural priming from learning.     

“Metaphysics Without Ethics is Blind”: The Legacy of Hilary Putnam

Two convictions underlie the following article. The first is that Hilary Putnam has been one of the greatest thinkers of our time, a philosopher who was able to propose groundbreaking ideas in virtually every area of philosophy. As the reader will see, the topics he tackled in his writings included questions of philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and logic, philosophy of mind, metaethics, the fact-value dichotomy, the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later thought, the question of relativism, the analysis of rationality, the analysis of religious experience, the character of Jewish philosophy, the interpretation of pragmatism, the elucidation of the concept of truth, the question of realism, the relationship between mind and the world. The second is that the changes some of his positions underwent, far from being a point of weakness—as some critics have sometimes felt compelled to claim—reveal the freshness and genuineness of Putnam’s way of philosophising and at the same time the essence of philosophical discussion itself.     

Planning and articulation in incremental word production: syllable-frequency effects in English

We investigated the role of syllables during speech planning in English by measuring syllable-frequency effects. So far, syllable-frequency effects in English have not been reported. English has poorly defined syllable boundaries, and thus the syllable might not function as a prominent unit in English speech production. Speakers produced either monosyllabic (Experiment 1) or disyllabic (Experiment 2-4) pseudowords as quickly as possible in response to symbolic cues. Monosyllabic targets consisted of either high- or low-frequency syllables, whereas disyllabic items contained either a 1st or 2nd syllable that was frequency-manipulated. Significant syllable-frequency effects were found in all experiments. Whereas previous findings for disyllables in Dutch and Spanish-languages with relatively clear syllable boundaries-showed effects of a frequency manipulation on 1st but not 2nd syllables, in our study English speakers were sensitive to the frequency of both syllables. We interpret this sensitivity as an indication that the production of English has more extensive planning scopes at the interface of phonetic encoding and articulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

Driving impairs talking

It is well known that conversation (e.g, on a cell phone) impairs driving. We demonstrate that the reverse is also true: Language production and comprehension, and the encoding of the products of comprehension into memory, are less accurate when one is driving. Ninety-six pairs of drivers and conversation partners engaged in a story-retelling task in a driving simulator. Half of the pairs were older adults. Each pair completed one dual-task block (driving during the retelling task) and two single-task control blocks. The results showed a decline in the accuracy of the drivers’ storytelling and of their memory for stories that were told to them by their nondriving partners. Speech production suffered an additional cost when the difficulty of driving increased. Measures of driving performance suggested that the drivers gave priority to the driving task when they were conversing. As a result, their linguistic performance suffered.     

Limits on learning phonotactic constraints from recent production experience

Adults can learn new artificial phonotactic constraints by producing syllables that exhibit the constraints. The experiments presented here tested the limits of phonotactic learning in production using speech errors as an implicit measure of learning. Experiment 1 tested a constraint in which the placement of a consonant as an onset or coda depended on the identity of a nonadjacent consonant. Participant speech errors reflected knowledge of the constraint but not until the 2nd day of testing. Experiment 2 tested a constraint in which consonant placement depended on an extralinguistic factor, the speech rate. Participants were not able to learn this constraint. Together, these experiments suggest that phonotactic-like constraints are acquired when mutually constraining elements reside within the phonological system.     

Moral Injury,Chaplaincy and Mental Health Provider Approaches to Treatment: A Scoping Review

Journal of Religion and Health - The aim of this research was to describe the evidence examining the approaches taken by mental health providers (MHPs) and chaplains to address symptoms related to...     

Speech errors reflect the phonotactic constraints in recently spoken syllables, but not in recently heard syllables

Adults rapidly learn phonotactic constraints from brief production or perception experience. Three experiments asked whether this learning is modality-specific, occurring separately in production and perception, or whether perception transfers to production. Participant pairs took turns repeating syllables in which particular consonants were restricted to particular syllable positions. Speakers’ errors reflected learning of the constraints present in the sequences they produced, regardless of whether their partner produced syllables with the same constraints, or opposing constraints. Although partial transfer could be induced (Experiment 3), simply hearing and encoding syllables produced by others did not affect speech production to the extent that error patterns were altered. Learning of new phonotactic constraints was predominantly restricted to the modality in which those constraints were experienced.     

Attributions of Responsibility for Memory Problems in Older and Younger Adults

This study investigated older and younger persons' responsibility attributions for the cause of and solution to a memory problem and, for comparison, a weight problem. Traditional college-age students (n = 116) and persons over 65 years of age (n = 98) read a vignette describing either a 25-year-old or 65-year-old who had a memory or weight problem. Results indicated that both the age of the help-seeker and problem type affected attributions. Specifically, the 65-year-old was perceived to be less responsible than the 25-year-old for the cause of and solution to a memory problem. In addition, help-seekers with a memory problem were held less responsible for causing and solving their problem than were help-seekers with a weight problem.