Attentional involvement and intrinsic motivation

The current study used the Experience Sampling Method to examine attentional involvement??the degree to which one??s attention is devoted to moment-to-moment activity??as a potential mediator of two previously identified relationships within the field of intrinsic motivation: (1) the positive relationship between a balance of challenges and skills and enjoyment, and (2) the positive relationship between competence valuation and enjoyment. Multilevel, within-person analyses indicated attentional involvement fully mediated both relationships. Implications of the findings for intrinsic motivation processes are discussed.     

Non-Selective Lexical Access in Late Arabic–English Bilinguals: Evidence from Gating

Previous research suggests that late bilinguals who speak typologically distant languages are the least likely to show evidence of non-selective lexical access processes. This study puts this claim to test by using the gating task to determine whether words beginning with speech sounds that are phonetically similar in Arabic and English (e.g., [b,d,m,n]) give rise to selective or non-selective lexical access processes in late Arabic–English bilinguals. The results show that an acoustic-phonetic input (e.g., [bæ]) that is consistent with words in Arabic (e.g., [bædrun] “moon”) and English (e.g., [bæd] “bad”) activates lexical representations in both languages of the bilingual. This non-selective activation holds equally well for mixed lists with words from both Arabic and English and blocked lists consisting only of Arabic or English words. These results suggest that non-selective lexical access processes are the default mechanism even in late bilinguals of typologically distant languages.     

Amalia X: dialogical sequence analysis as a method in theory-based single case research in psychoanalysis

In this article, Dialogical sequence analysis (DSA) is introduced as a method in theory-based single case research. The structure of article is as follows: first, we will describe briefly the historical background of single case studies and their position as the foundation of psychoanalytic knowledge formation. Secondly, we will describe through Amalia X’s case how one psychoanalytic ‘specimen case’ has been used as a cornerstone for a comprehensive psychoanalytic process research model, the so called ‘Ulm model’. Amalia X is one of the most studied single cases internationally also outside psychoanalytic process study field. Thirdly, we will introduce the central theory and practice of DSA. Fourthly, in the last section of our article, we will show in practice how DSA can be used in the analysis of Amalia’s dream in the session 152.     

Performance of Girls With ADHD and Comparison Girls On the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure: Evidence for Executive Processing Deficits

In spite of a multitude of scoring approaches, the ability of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) to measure executive functions versus grapho-motor skill is still open to question. To clarify this issue, we examined the performance of an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of preadolescent girls (ADHD-Combined, n = 93; ADHD-Inattentive, n = 47; and comparison girls, n = 88) on the ROCF, scoring both immediate copy and delayed recall performance. Girls with ADHD performed the task following a stimulant medication washout. Dependent measures were the established Developmental Scoring System variables of Organization, Accuracy, and Style, plus an operationalized and extensively detailed scoring of errors, featuring an error proportion score (EPS). The major finding is that only EPS differentiated girls with ADHD from comparison girls (a) on both immediate and delayed performance and (b) with stringent statistical control of Performance IQ, fine motor speed, and performance on the Porteus Mazes (as well as comorbidities), with effect sizes in the medium range. Perseverative errors contributed significantly to EPS. Overall, error scores on the ROCF appear to tap planning, a key executive function, and are quite sensitive to deficits in this domain for girls with ADHD.     

Electrical properties of thin films of a-Ga x Te100− x composed of nanoparticles

Thin films of Ga _x Te_{100? x} (x?=?3, 6, 9 and 12) have been synthesized by thermal evaporation. From SEM images, it is observed that all the films contain nanoparticles of sizes varying from 100 to 200?nm. The dc electrical conductivity of the as-deposited films of Ga _x Te_100?x nanoparticles is measured as a function of temperature range from 298 to 383?K, and increases exponentially with temperature. The value of the activation energy, calculated from the slope of ln?σ _dc versus 1000/T plots, is found to decrease with increase in the Ga content. On the basis of the value of the pre-exponential factor σ _o, it is suggested that the conduction is due to thermally assisted tunneling of carriers in localized states near the band edges. The optical measurements suggest an indirect optical band gap in this system. The value of the optical band gap decreases on increasing the Ga concentration.     

Examining the life story account of the reminiscence bump: Why we remember more from young adulthood

The reminiscence bump is a robust finding demonstrated mostly with the cue-word method in Western cultures. The first aim of the study was to replicate the reminiscence bump using a life history timeline method and to extend reminiscence bump research to a Turkish sample. The second aim was to empirically examine the recently proposed life story account (Glück & Bluck, 2007) for the reminiscence bump. The sample consisted of 40 women and 32 men aged 52 to 66 years. Participants’ lives were divided into 5-year intervals and they verbally reported as many memories as possible in a standard timeframe from each interval (in random order) and provided ratings of several memory characteristics. As expected, the lifespan distribution of the resulting 6373 memories demonstrated a reminiscence bump. In support of the life story account, bump memories were found to be more novel, more important for identity development, more distinct, and more likely to involve developmental transitions than memories from other age periods. Findings are discussed in terms of the life story account, which synthesises lifespan developmental theory and life story theory.     

Aralex: A lexical database for Modern Standard Arabic

In this article, we present a new lexical database for Modern Standard Arabic: Aralex. Based on a contemporary text corpus of 40 million words, Aralex provides information about (1) the token frequencies of roots and word patterns, (2) the type frequency, or family size, of roots and word patterns, and (3) the frequency of bigrams, trigrams in orthographic forms, roots, and word patterns. Aralex will be a useful tool for studying the cognitive processing of Arabic through the selection of stimuli on the basis of precise frequency counts. Researchers can use it as a source of information on natural language processing, and it may serve an educational purpose by providing basic vocabulary lists. Aralex is distributed under a GNU-like license, allowing people to interrogate it freely online or to download it from www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk:8081/aralex .online/login.jsp.     

Whose life is it anyway? Adoption of each other's autobiographical memories by twins

Anecdotal evidence suggests that twins may dispute ownership of autobiographical experiences. We investigated the frequency and characteristics of such disputed memories in comparison to memories with undisputed ownership. In the present study, monozygotic twins (MZ), dizygotic twins (DZ), and siblings were asked to remember disputed and non‐disputed memories. They also dated each memory and provided a rating on the following variables: level of imagery, detail, rehearsal, and importance. Results showed that disputed memories were more common among MZ twins than in DZ twins and siblings. The frequencies of undisputed memories were not different among the three groups. When compared to non‐disputed memories, disputed memories were more likely to come from events experienced during preschool years. We consider disputed memories as instances of false memories, at least partly influenced by social interactional processes, and event characteristics. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Allomorphic variation in Arabic: implications for lexical processing and representation

This study probes the effects of allomorphy on access to Arabic roots and word patterns in two cross-modal priming experiments. Experiment 1 used strong roots which undergo no allomorphy, and weak roots which undergo allomorphy and surface with only two of their three consonants in some derivations. Word pairs sharing a root morpheme prime each other reliably not only when the root was strong (e.g., [see text] participant/participate), but also when it was weak (e.g., [see text] agreement-agree, where the weak root [wfq] surfaces fully in the target but not the prime). This facilitation occurred even when the weak root surfaced with different semantic meanings across prime and target (e.g., [see text] destination/confront). Experiment 2 assessed the effects of allomorphy on word pattern processing, comparing word pairs where the word pattern is transparently realised in both prime and target (e.g., [see text] spread/bear], with pairs which share the same underlying word pattern but where a weak root triggers an assimilation process in the prime (e.g., [see text] unite/smile). This assimilation process does not disrupt the CV-structure of the word pattern, in contrast to a third condition where this is disrupted in both prime and target (e.g., [see text] turn around/say). Strong priming effects were observed in the first two conditions but not in the third. The bearing of these findings on models of lexical processing and representation is discussed.