Examining the evidence for an independent semantic analyzer: an ERP study in Spanish

Recent ERP findings challenge the widespread assumption that syntactic and semantic processes are tightly coupled. Syntactically well-formed sentences that are semantically anomalous due to thematic mismatches elicit a P600, the component standardly associated with syntactic anomaly. This ‘thematic P600’ effect has been attributed to detection of semantically plausible thematic relations that conflict with the surface syntactic structure of the sentence, implying a processing architecture with an independent semantic analyzer. A key finding is that the P600 is selectively sensitive to the presence of plausible verb-argument relations, and that otherwise an N400 is elicited (The hearty meal was devouring … vs. The dusty tabletop was devouring …: Kim & Osterhout, 2005). The current study investigates in Spanish whether the evidence for an independent semantic analyzer is better explained by a standard architecture that rapidly integrates multiple sources of lexical, syntactic, and semantic information. The study manipulated the presence of plausible thematic relations, and varied the choice of auxiliary between passive-biased fue and active-progressive biased estaba. Results show a late positivity that appeared as soon as comprehenders detected an improbable combination of subject animacy, auxiliary bias, or verb voice morphology. This effect appeared at the lexical verb in the fue conditions and at the auxiliary in the estaba conditions. The late positivity elicited by surface thematic anomalies was the same, regardless of the presence of a plausible non-surface interpretation, and no N400 effects were elicited. These findings do not implicate an independent semantic analyzer, and are compatible with standard language processing architectures.     

Forgetting in recognition memory with and without recollective experience

Retention interval was manipulated in two recognition-memory experiments in which subjects indicated when recognizing a word whether its recognition was accompanied by some recollective experience ("remember") or whether it was recognized on the basis of familiarity without any recollective experience ("know"). Experiment 1 showed that between 10 min and 1 week, "remember" responses declined sharply from an initially higher level, whereas "know" responses remained relatively unchanged. Experiment 2 showed that between 1 week and 6 months, both kinds of responses declined at a similar, gradual rate and that despite quite low levels of performance after 6 months, both kinds of responses still gave rise to accurate discrimination between target words and lures. These findings are discussed in relationship to current ideas about multiple memory systems and processing accounts of explicit and implicit measures of retention.     

Intelligence and semen quality are positively correlated

Human cognitive abilities inter-correlate to form a positive matrix, from which a large first factor, called ‘Spearman's g’ or general intelligence, can be extracted. General intelligence itself is correlated with many important health outcomes including cardio-vascular function and longevity. However, the important evolutionary question of whether intelligence is a fitness-related trait has not been tested directly, let alone answered. If the correlations among cognitive abilities are part of a larger matrix of positive associations among fitness-related traits, then intelligence ought to correlate with seemingly unrelated traits that affect fitness—such as semen quality. We found significant positive correlations between intelligence and 3 key indices of semen quality: log sperm concentration (r = .15, p = .002), log sperm count (r = .19, p < .001), and sperm motility (r = .14, p = .002) in a large sample of US Army Veterans. None was mediated by age, body mass index, days of sexual abstinence, service in Vietnam, or use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or hard drugs. These results suggest that a phenotype-wide fitness factor may contribute to the association between intelligence and health. Clarifying whether a fitness factor exists is important theoretically for understanding the genomic architecture of fitness-related traits, and practically for understanding patterns of human physical and psychological health.     

GENDER AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARITAL-ROLE QUALITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS

In this paper, we estimate the association between marital-role quality and psychological distress in a sample of 300 full-time employed women and men in dual-earner couples. We control for such individual-level variables as age, education, occupational prestige, and job-role quality, and for such couple-level variables as length of marriage, parental status, and household income. We then compare the magnitude of this effect for men and for women and for parents and nonparents. Results indicate that in dual-earner couples marital-role quality is signifycantly negatively associated with psychological distress for women as well as men and that the magnitude of the effect depends little, if at all, on gender or on parental status. These findings challenge the view that marital experiences more significantly influence women's mental health states than men's. The results are discussed in the context of identity theory.     

The role of sleep in changing our minds: a psychologist's discussion of papers on memory reactivation and consolidation in sleep

The group of papers on memory reactivation and consolidation during sleep included in this volume represents cutting edge work in both animals and humans. They support that the two types of sleep serve different necessary functions. The role of slow wave sleep (SWS) is reactivation of the hippocampal-neocortical circuits activated during a waking learning period, while REM sleep is responsible for the consolidation of this new learning into long-term memory. These studies provide further insights into mechanisms involved in brain plasticity. Robeiro has demonstrated the upregulation of an immediate-early gene (IEG zif 268) to waking levels, which occurs only in REM and only in connection with new learning. McNaughton and his group have identified electrical indicators that the hippocampus and neocortex are talking to each other by testing the coactivation of hippocampal sharp wave bursts in SWS and shifts from down to up states of activation in the neocortex. In human studies Smith's group reports work on individual differences such as intelligence and presleep alcohol that affect postsleep performance, and Stickgold and collaborators report that a short nap will improve performance if it contains REM sleep. Payne and Nadel suggest that the recall benefit associated with REM sleep may be due to its association with increased cortisol levels. These papers are important not only in their individual contributions but also in revitalizing the work coordinating waking and sleep. This promises to further the understanding of how our unique capacity to learn from experience and modify our behavior takes place.     

Fathers' participation in the care of their preschool children

Correlates of fathers' participation in the care of their preschool children were investigated, using two indices of participation: (a) child-care tasks performed by the father independently; and (b) child-care tasks performed jointly with the mother. Subjects were 79 fathers and mothers of Caucasian middle-class 4-year-old girls and the girls themselves, and 36 fathers and mothers of a matched sample of preschool boys. Major factors examined as possible influences on participation included (a) maternal work-role pattern; (b) fathers' and mothers' sex-role ideology; and (c) family work load, i.e., family size and number of children under 6. Indices of variables conceptualized as possible consequences of participation included (a) girls' sex-role stereotyping; (b) fathers' self-perceptions of masculinity and femininity; and (c) wives' role-pattern satisfaction. Results indicated that fathers' independent (but not joint) performance of child-care tasks was significantly and positively related to maternal work-role variables and to nontraditional sex-role ideology of fathers and wives, but not to family work load. Independent (but not joint) participation was significantly and negatively related to daughters' stereotyping and to fathers' perceptions of themselves as stereotypically masculine. Wives' role-pattern satisfaction was unexpectedly found to be negatively related to both joint and independent participation.Data reported here were gathered as part of a research project supported by NIMH Grant #25215. The authors wish to acknowledge the collaboration of Susan Dibner.     

Dworkin and Casey on abortion

This article responds to two important recent treatments of abortion rights. I will mainly discuss Ronald Dworkin's recent writings concerning abortion: his article "Unenumerated rights: whether and how Roe should be overruled," and his book Life's Dominion. In these writings Dworkin presents a novel view of what the constitutional and moral argument surronding abortion is really about. Both debates actually turn, he argues, on the question of how to interpret the widely shared idea that human life is sacred. At the heart of the abortion debate is the essentially religious notion that human life has value which transcends its value to any particular person; abortion is therefore at bottom a religious issue. Dworkin hopes to use this analysis to show that the religion clauses of the First Amendment provide a "textual home" for a woman's right to choose abortion. I wish to scrutinize this suggestion here; I want to probe the precise consequences for abortion rights of such an understanding of their basis. I will argue that the consequences are more radical than Dworkin seems to realize. The other work I will examine here is the important 1992 Supreme Court decision on abortion, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The controlling opinion in that case, written jointly by Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, and Souter, strongly reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, but also upheld most of the provisions of a Pennsylvania statute that had mandated various restrictions on abortion. The justices' basis for upholding these restictions was their introduction of a new constitutional standard for abortion regulations, an apparently weaker standard than those that had governed previous Supreme Court abortion decisions. I think there is a flaw in Casey's new constitutional test for abortion regulations, and I will explain, when we turn to Casey, what it is and why it bears a close relation to Dworkin's reluctance to carry his argument as far as it seems to go.     

The two faces of dominance: The differential effect of ingroup superiority and outgroup inferiority on dominant-group identity and group esteem

The present paper provides evidence that dominant-group members distinguish dominance framed as ingroup superiority from dominance framed as outgroup inferiority, and that ingroup superiority enhances esteem for, and thus identification with, the group more than outgroup inferiority. In Experiment 1, Democrats report higher levels of party identification after being told that Democrats won an election than after being told that Republicans lost the election. These effects are attenuated among dominant group members whose values are in conflict with how dominance was achieved. In Experiments 2a and 2b, unearned dominance framed as ingroup superiority resulted in higher levels of White identification than unearned dominance framed as outgroup inferiority among Whites who did not value meritocracy. In contrast, Whites who valued meritocracy did not increase their levels of identification with the group. In Experiment 2b, this interactive effect on racial identification was mediated by esteem for the group.