Expectation-based syntactic comprehension

This paper investigates the role of resource allocation as a source of processing difficulty in human sentence comprehension. The paper proposes a simple information-theoretic characterization of processing difficulty as the work incurred by resource reallocation during parallel, incremental, probabilistic disambiguation in sentence comprehension, and demonstrates its equivalence to the theory of Hale [Hale, J. (2001). A probabilistic Earley parser as a psycholinguistic model. In Proceedings of NAACL (Vol. 2, pp. 159-166)], in which the difficulty of a word is proportional to its surprisal (its negative log-probability) in the context within which it appears. This proposal subsumes and clarifies findings that high-constraint contexts can facilitate lexical processing, and connects these findings to well-known models of parallel constraint-based comprehension. In addition, the theory leads to a number of specific predictions about the role of expectation in syntactic comprehension, including the reversal of locality-based difficulty patterns in syntactically constrained contexts, and conditions under which increased ambiguity facilitates processing. The paper examines a range of established results bearing on these predictions, and shows that they are largely consistent with the surprisal theory.     

An alternative hierarchical organization of the mental disorders of the DSM-IV

With the approaching publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), alternative organizations of the DSM (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) categories have been proposed. This article compares several published alternative organizations to clinicians' organization of the DSM-IV categories. As demonstrations of their organization of DSM-IV categories, psychologists and psychiatrists sorted 66 DSM-IV diagnostic categories into groups of similar diagnoses and then made progressively larger and smaller groups of diagnoses or placed similar groups next to each other on a table. Hierarchical agglomerative data analysis of clinicians' individual sortings showed that clinicians retained many lower level DSM-IV categories (e.g., anxiety disorders, mood disorders), but not the higher level DSM-IV categories (e.g., Axis I vs. Axis II). Instead, at the highest hierarchical level, clinicians' categories resembled the structure of the first edition of the DSM (American Psychiatric Association, 1952), which followed clinicians' diagnostic decision-making scheme, dividing mental disorders into organic versus nonorganic and then psychotic versus neurotic disorders. At minimum, these data suggest a DSM organization that makes sense to clinicians.     

老年人记忆补偿的长期稳定性和变异性：来自维多利亚纵向研究的证据

两种记忆状况组来自于参与加拿大维多利亚纵向研究(VLS)的老年人原样本。一种是未受损伤的控制组(NIC), 另一种是轻度记忆损伤组(MMD)。在基线水平和纵向水平上(即5次追踪或12年)比较了他们在日常生活中对记忆补偿技术的使用。我们使用多水平模型(以年龄和教育水平为协变量)来检验基线水平的差异和长期的变化模式。基线的结果表明MMD组被试报告了近期在日常生活中使用记忆补偿策略方面有更大的增长。纵向的结果表明记忆补偿的使用在12年中具有明显的稳定性, 但是与努力相关的补偿机制存在显著组间差异。教育水平这一协变量(可认为是潜在的认知储备指标)和三种记忆补偿策略随时间的不同变化相关。     

A study of families' satisfaction with a family interventions in psychosis service in Somerset

Although research has shown the efficacy of family interventions in psychosis, there has been little research into families' own experience of services in routine clinical settings. Fifteen of the first twenty-two referrals to a Somerset Family Interventions Service agreed to take part in semi-structured interviews regarding family satisfaction and clinical outcome. High levels of engagement and satisfaction with the service were reported in spite of initial apprehension regarding family sessions. Family members thought that the sessions had helped them deal more effectively with problems and relatives' symptoms. They valued the opportunity for open discussion, developing new perspectives and problem-solving, as well as liaison/closer working with mental health services. Positive therapeutic qualities/skills (e.g. empathic, non-judgemental approach; mutually agreed goals) were highlighted. This study also indicated that successful engagement in family work requires referral at an early stage. The findings of this study, particularly those relating to the therapeutic relationship, are discussed, including their relevance for future research.     

Teachers’ perceived time pressure,emotional exhaustion and the role of social support from the school principal

Social Psychology of Education - Many teachers experience high levels of work-related strain due to time pressure, which over time can lead to various health problems, such as emotional exhaustion....     

Sex differences in self- and teachers' reports of self-esteem in preadolescents

The short form of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory was administered to 952 fourth- and fifth-grade children (482 males, 470 females) from 41 classes. The children's teachers completed Coopersmith's Behavior Rating Form, a measure of self-esteem-related behavior. In the self-ratings, girls were significantly lower than boys; in the teachers' ratings, girls were significantly higher. In 32 of the 41 classes, boys ranked higher in their self-ratings than in the teacher ratings; the reverse was true for girls — a highly significant difference. This pattern of findings did not occur in the 8 classes which had male teachers. Issues concerning the measurement and conceptualization of self-esteem are discussed.This research was supported by Lehigh University, using Institutional Grant funds from the National Science Foundation. The authors wish to express their appreciation to Patricia Horton for her assistance in the collection of the data.     

Persistent behavior maintained by unavoidable shocks

Squirrel monkeys were trained on a multiple schedule in which 10-min periods on a continuous shock avoidance schedule, indicated by a yellow light, alternated with 10-min periods on a 1.5-min variable interval schedule of food reinforcement (VI 1.5). A white light indicated that VI 1.5 was in effect, except for the middle 2 min of the period on VI 1.5, in which a blue light appeared and terminated with the delivery of a 0.5-sec unavoidable shock. Stable response rates developed in the avoidance and VI 1.5 components. However, the highest response rates occurred in the blue, preshock stimulus. A series of experiments showed that responding in the blue stimulus persisted even when responding had been extinguished on both the VI schedule of food reinforcement and the shock avoidance schedule. Responding in the blue stimulus ceased when the blue stimulus terminated without shock or when it terminated with a response-contingent shock. Each time responding ceased, it was restored by terminating the blue stimulus with an unavoidable shock. When the blue stimulus was on throughout each session and unavoidable shocks were delivered at regular 10-min intervals, responding was well maintained. These results show that in monkeys that have been trained on a continuous avoidance schedule, unavoidable shocks can maintain responding even under conditions where responses have no programmed consequences.