Exploring Emotive Verbs in Persian and English Short Stories: A Contrastive Sociopragmatic Approach

Current developments in the areas of discourse analysis and cross-cultural studies have led to an increased interest in the way people of different cultures express their affections on various occasions. Individuals learn how to regulate their emotional reactions according to sociocultural norms of behavior defined by the cultures to which they belong. Accordingly, this article aimed to investigate the linguistic expression of emotions in English and Persian short stories in order to fathom out the impact of culture on the way feelings are expressed cross-culturally. For this purpose, a corpus of eight different English and Persian short stories, four in each language, was selected based on a purposive sampling method. Then, using Devon’s (The origin of emotions, 2006) typology of emotions, different types of emotive verbs were selected as the unit of analysis. Finally, the frequency and percentage values of emotive verb tokens used in these stories were carefully tabulated in terms of types and their respective metalinguistic categories introduced by Wierzbicka (Emotions across languages and cultures: diversity and universals, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999). The results obtained from the analysis of the targeted corpora reflected that English and Persian writers employ different types of emotive verbs in expressing their feelings. Essentially, the findings of the present study may have important implications for language teachers, material developers, and course designers.     

Self-Rating of religiosity (SRR) in Iran: validity,reliability, and associations with the Big Five

ABSTRACT

The present research aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Self-Rating of Religiosity (SRR) in Iran. In addition, the associations between the Persian version of this single-item measure of religiosity and the Big Five personality dimensions were investigated. Study 1 (n?=?51) suggested that the Persian translation of the SRR had adequate test-retest reliability over a three-week period. Study 2 (n?=?228) provided evidence for good convergent validity of the SRR, indexed by strong positive associations with scores on the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL). The Big Five dimensions of personality were measured using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI). Moreover, the scores on the SRR were positively associated with Agreeableness (r?=?.23, p?<?.01) and Conscientiousness (r?=?.16, p?<?.05), while negatively associated with Openness to Experience (r?=??.25, p?<?.01). These findings are in line with cross-cultural findings on personality correlates of intrinsic religiosity. Limitations and future directions are discussed.     

Effects of reversible inactivation of locus coeruleus on long-term potentiation in perforant path-DG synapses in rats

The locus coeruleus (LC) is the main source of noradrenergic innervations to the forebrain and the hippocampal formation but does not receive noradrenergic projections itself. Previous studies have suggested that hippocampal neural response is modulated by the noradrenergic pathway and that the experimental activation of the LC can potentiate hippocampal responses. Most studies have suggested that the noradrenergic system has controversial effects on long-term potentiation (LTP) in hippocampal neurons, because its influence on synaptic plasticity in perforant path-DG synapses is ambiguous. The aim of this article was to study the LC's role in baseline activity and LTP in perforant path-DG cells of hippocampus by in vivo LC inactivation. Rats were anesthetized with urethane, and LC was temporarily suppressed by intra-LC injection of lidocaine. Population spike (PS) amplitude and excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP) slope in DG were recorded 10 min before and 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, and 120 min after tetanization (400 Hz). Saline or lidocaine was injected during the baseline recording (experiment 1), 5 min before tetanus (experiment 2), and 5 min after tetanus (experiment 3). The results from this study indicated that the LC inactivation has no effect on baseline activity of granular cells or maintenance of LTP after tetanization. Moreover, LC inactivation before tetanus had no effect on LTP induction but decreased PS-LTP amplitude 60 and 120 min after tetanization. Taken together, the LC noradrenergic system likely influences LTP induction in later time periods while it has no effect on LTP in earlier time periods.     

Reliability and validity of the Oxford Happiness Inventory among university students in Iran

The aim of the present study was to examine the internal reliability, content validity, construct validity, and concurrent validity of the Persian translation/Farsi version of the Oxford Happiness Inventory. The Oxford Happiness Inventory and Fordyce Happiness Inventory were completed by a sample of 727 Iranian university students. Findings confirmed the internal reliability, construct, and concurrent validity of the Oxford Happiness Inventory. Thus, it can be recommended for use as a trait-measure of happiness among Iranian samples.     

ALTERING THE NEAR‐MISS EFFECT IN SLOT MACHINE GAMBLERS

This study investigated the potential for recreational gamblers to respond as if certain types of losing slot machine outcomes were actually closer to a win than others (termed the near‐miss effect). Exposure to conditional discrimination training and testing disrupted this effect for 10 of the 16 participants. These 10 participants demonstrated high percentages of conditional discrimination testing performance, and the remaining 6 participants failed the discrimination tests. The implications for a verbally based behavioral explanation of gambling are presented.     

Natural teeth and cognitive function in humans

A number of neurobiological, psychological and social factors may account for cognitive impairment. In animal studies a relation between dental status and cognitive performance has been found. It is unclear whether such a relation exists for humans. In a first step we compared the performance of 1,351 participants (53% women, 47% men; age M = 54.0) with natural teeth to 487 edentulous participants (59% women, 41% men; age M = 71.3) on 12 cognitive tests. The natural teeth group had a lower mean age, fewer women, more years of education, higher mini-mental state (MMSE), and performed significantly higher on several cognitive tests. In a subsequent analysis, the cognitive performance of a subset of the participants (50-85 years) was examined. In this analysis, 211 had natural dentition and 188 were edentulous. The groups were matched for gender, age, social variables, diseases, stress and MMSE. The cognitive disadvantage of the edentulous group was still apparent. The results suggest that functional natural teeth relate to relatively preserved cognitive functioning in older age.     

Stop the clock because I can’t stop: time pressure,but not monitoring pressure,impairs response inhibition performance

ABSTRACT

Psychological pressure can exert detrimental effects on cognitive tasks that depend on attentional control. However, the effect of psychological pressure on inhibitory cognitive processes has been relatively overlooked. The study purpose was to examine the effect of psychological pressure on response inhibition. In Experiment 1, participants (N?=?125) were assigned to a combined time and performance-based incentive pressure condition or control condition. In Experiment 2, participants (N?=?124) were allocated to a time pressure only or control condition. Participants (N?=?149) in Experiment 3 were assigned to either an explicit monitoring pressure condition in which their performance was video-recorded or control condition. Participants in all experiments completed a Go/NoGo Task to assess response inhibition performance. Pressure impaired performance in Experiments 1 and 2 but not Experiment 3. The results demonstrate that time pressure, but not explicit monitoring pressure, significantly impairs inhibition accuracy. These findings are consistent with the distraction theory of performance pressure.     

Responsiveness of measures of attentional bias to clinical change in social phobia

This study examined responsiveness of the dot probe measure of attentional bias to standard cognitive-behaviour group therapy (CBGT) for social phobia. People who met criteria for social phobia were randomly allocated to either an immediate treatment condition or a waiting list control (WLC). All participants completed self-report measures of social anxiety, depression, and anxiety sensitivity, a verbal dot probe and a facial dot-probe task before and after eight weeks of standard CBGT was undertaken by the treatment group. On the first measurement occasion the two groups had similar scores on all measures. On the second measurement occasion the self-report scores for the CBGT group were lower than those of the WLC group. Performance on the dot-probe tasks for the CBGT group had also changed. The treatment group appeared to direct their attention away from social threat words and threatening faces after CBGT.     

Visual Attention and Lexical Involvement in L1 and L2 Word Processing: Emotional Stroop Effect

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Given the fact that the process of engaging and interacting with the text is not only the function of a reader but also the text itself, the current study...