Statistical information and coarticulation as cues to word boundaries: a matter of signal quality

We investigated how statistical information in the form of transitional probabilities (TPs) interacts with coarticulation, another sublexical cue to word boundaries, and examined the impact of signal quality on the weighting of these cues. In an artificial-language-learning setting, with phonetically intact speech, coarticulation overruled TPs, suggesting the predominance of subsegmental, low-level information. However, whereas the role of coarticulation in segmentation was highly modulated by signal quality, TPs were very resilient to noise. When coarticulation was rendered unreliable by strongly degrading the input with a 10-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), only statistical information drove segmentation. In a more mildly degraded 22-dB SNR condition, in which some acoustic properties were still available, coarticulation was exploited, although with less reliability than in optimal conditions. These results can be interpreted according to a hierarchical approach (Mattys, White, & Melhorn, 2005) in which both the available segmentation cues and the listening conditions have an important role in speech segmentation.     

Career Choice Barriers, Supports, and Coping Strategies: College Students' Experiences

This study used qualitative methods to examine the perceived influences on college students' selection and implementation of career choices. Students at two universities participated in a structured interview examining (a) factors that had affected their choice of occupational field, (b) supports and barriers to pursuing their choices, and (c) methods they had used to cope with choice barriers. Across both samples, person factors (e.g., interests) and work-relevant experiences were frequently cited bases for choice selection, although contextual factors (e.g., financial constraints, social supports) were among the most salient barriers and supports to choice implementation. Each sample also reported choice selection and implementation influences and coping strategies that may have been linked to their particular environmental and developmental contexts. Implications of these findings for career theory, research, and practice are considered.     

Spatial associations for musical stimuli: a piano in the head?

This study was aimed at examining whether pitch height and pitch change are mentally represented along spatial axes. A series of experiments explored, for isolated tones and 2-note intervals, the occurrence of effects analogous to the spatial numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect. Response device orientation (horizontal vs. vertical), task, and musical expertise of the participants were manipulated. The pitch of isolated tones triggered the automatic activation of a vertical axis independently of musical expertise, but the contour of melodic intervals did not. By contrast, automatic associations with the horizontal axis seemed linked to music training for pitch and, to a lower extent, for intervals. These results, discussed in the light of studies on number representation, provide a new example of the effects of musical expertise on music cognition.     

Racism,Antisemitism, and the Schism Between Blacks and Jews in the United States: A Pilot Intergroup Encounter Program

A schism now exists between Blacks and Jews in the United States, 2 groups that were strong allies during the civil rights movement. The authors describe the historical antecedents of and contributing factors to this schism and present information on and lessons learned from 2 Black‐Jewish dialogues that were conducted. Existe en la actualidad un cisma entre Negros y Judíos en los Estados Unidos, 2 grupos que fueron grandes aliados durante el movimiento de reivindicación de los derechos civiles. Los autores describen los antecedentes históricos y los factores que han contribuido a este cisma y presentan la información obtenida y las lecciones aprendidas a partir de 2 conversaciones llevadas a cabo entre individuos Negros y Judíos.     

Luise Meyer im Zeitfenster

The psychoanalyst Luise Meyer documents the inextricable entanglement of the inner and outer world in post-war Germany. With the assistance of psychoanalysis she hoped to find inner peace and a social niche which allowed a professional development.     

Cultural Difference in Stereotype Perceptions and Performances in Nonverbal Deductive Reasoning and Creativity

A total of 182 undergraduate students from China and the United States participated in a study examining the presence of stereotypical perceptions regarding creativity and deductive reasoning abilities, as well as the influence of stereotype on participants' performance on deductive reasoning and creativity in nonverbal form. The results showed that participants from both China and the United States believed that Americans have better creativity abilities than Chinese and that Chinese have better deductive reasoning skills than Americans. Significant cultural difference in the performances on the measures of creativity was found. The cultural difference in deductive reasoning was found between Chinese participants in China and the Caucasian (not the Asian) participants in the United States, which were somewhat congruent to the stereotypical perceptions. However, the study did not find that stereotypic perceptions directly influenced participants' performance on deductive reasoning and creativity.     

How Sexy are Sexist Men? Women’s Perception of Male Response Profiles in the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory

In Studies 1 to 3, German female students (total N?=?326) rated the likability and typicality of male targets: a nonsexist, a benevolent sexist, a hostile sexist, and (in Studies 2 and 3) an ambivalent sexist. When targets were presented as response profiles in the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick and Fiske 1996) (Studies 2 and 3), the benevolent sexist was rated to be most likable but least typical, whereas the ambivalent sexist was rated to be highly typical. Thus, women were aware of a link between benevolent and hostile sexism and approved of men’s benevolent sexism, especially when it was not paired with hostile sexism. Likability ratings were moderated by participants’ own benevolent sexism and feminist attitude.     

The impact of attention load on the use of statistical information and coarticulation as speech segmentation cues

In two artificial language learning experiments, we investigated the impact of attention load on segmenting speech through two sublexical cues: transitional probabilities (TPs) and coarticulation. In Experiment 1, we observed that coarticulation processing was resilient to high attention load, whereas TP computation was penalized in a graded manner. In Experiment 2, we showed that encouraging participants to actively search for “word” candidates enhanced overall performance but was not sufficient to preclude the impairment of statistically driven segmentation by attention load. As long as attentional resources were depleted, independently of their intention to find these “words,” participants segmented only TP words with the highest TPs, not TP words with lower TPs. Attention load thus has a graded and differential impact on the relative weighting of the cues in speech segmentation, even when only sublexical cues are available in the signal.     

Songs as an aid for language acquisition

In previous research, Saffran and colleagues [Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, 274, 1926-1928; Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 606-621.] have shown that adults and infants can use the statistical properties of syllable sequences to extract words from continuous speech. They also showed that a similar learning mechanism operates with musical stimuli [Saffran, J. R., Johnson, R. E. K., Aslin, N., & Newport, E. L. (1999). Abstract Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults. Cognition, 70, 27-52.]. In this work we combined linguistic and musical information and we compared language learning based on speech sequences to language learning based on sung sequences. We hypothesized that, compared to speech sequences, a consistent mapping of linguistic and musical information would enhance learning. Results confirmed the hypothesis showing a strong learning facilitation of song compared to speech. Most importantly, the present results show that learning a new language, especially in the first learning phase wherein one needs to segment new words, may largely benefit of the motivational and structuring properties of music in song.