Children's and adults' parafoveal processes in German: Phonological and orthographic effects

Phonological and orthographic information has been shown to play an important role in parafoveal processing in skilled adult reading in English. In the present study, we investigated whether similar parafoveal effects can be found in children using the boundary eye tracking method. Children and adults read sentences in German with embedded target nouns which were presented in original, pseudohomophone (PsH), transposed-letter (TL), lower-case and control conditions to assess phonological and orthographic preview effects. We found evidence of PsH preview benefit effects for children. We also found TL preview benefit effects for adults, while children only showed these effects under specific conditions. Results are consistent with the developmental view that reading initially depends on phonological processes and that orthographic processes become increasingly important.     

Intrusive and avoidant ideation among females pursuing infertility treatment

Abstract

It was shown that infertility and its treatment constitute a stressful experience for women, reflected particularly in disturbing intrusive ideation about the stress source. Infertility patients reported levels of intrusive ideation significantly higher than routine gynecologic patients and not significantly different from levels of psychiatric outpatients being treated for stress reactions to traumatic events. Intrusive ideation also predicted the degree of self-reported infertility-specific distress and dysfunction, further clarifying the key role of such ideation in the experience. Finally, as hypothesized, the frustration level of the treatment experience (as indexed by the number of infertility treatment methods attempted) predicted avoidant ideation. Implications for managing the psychological distress and disruption associated with the infertility treatment experience were discussed.     

Desire and pleasure in John Pollock’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Thinking about Acting</Emphasis>

The first third of John Pollock’s Thinking about Acting is on the topics of pleasure, desire, and preference, and these topics are the ones on which this paper focuses. I review Pollock’s position and argue that it has at least one substantial strength (it elegantly demonstrates that desires must be more fundamental than preferences, and embraces this conclusion wholeheartedly) and at least one substantial weakness (it holds to a form of psychological hedonism without convincingly answering the philosophical or empirical objections that might be raised).     

The Effects of Delayed Report and Motive for Reporting on Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

We examined whether the timing of the report and the victim's apparent motive for reporting influences women's and men's perceptions of sexual harassment. Undergraduates (153 women, 149 men) listened to 1 of 6 versions of audiotaped testimony of the victim and defendant. The report was filed either immediately or 18 months later, and motive either was presented as altruistic, retaliatory, or was not specified. Participants chose a verdict, rated the defendant's guilt, and rated the defendant and victim on several dimensions. Higher guilt ratings, more positive evaluations of the victim, and more negative evaluations of the defendant were associated with immediate reporting and an altruistic motive, although women weighed these factors more heavily than did men.     

Justice Beyond Borders

Liberal theories of social justicefocus predominantly on the national, ratherthan international, level, and where they doaddress international concerns they insist thatprinciples of justice at the national levelhave priority over principles at theinternational level. We question the coherenceof this arrangement, given liberal theory'scommitment to moral equality of persons as suchrather than to that of particular sets of persons. What isat issue is whether liberal theory can providea coherent basis for international justice atall. If it is to do so, we suggest that it mustbe prepared to theorise beyond the nationstate, and to take a historical perspectivewhich takes into account the ways in whichcolonial power and exploitation have given riseto the problems of international justice weface today. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An examination of the potential lingering effects of smartphone use on cognition

Smartphones might offer an extension of our own cognitive abilities, potentially preventing practice of certain forms of cognition. Our first study established that heavier usage of smartphones was negatively correlated with social problem solving and delayed gratification, as well as positively correlated with some aspects of critical thinking. Studies 2 and 3 involved experiments where participants were assigned to either a lower or higher smartphone usage group. In both experiments, higher usage of smartphones led only to a diminished ability to interpret and analyze the deeper meaning of information. However, Study 3 showed that, after a 4‐week interval, the difference in the ability to interpret and analyze meaning between lower and higher phone usage groups was no longer evident. The findings of this study suggest that, even in the rare cases where smartphones might alter cognition, this effect is likely transitory.     

Developmental changes of sleep spindles and their impact on sleep‐dependent memory consolidation and general cognitive abilities: A longitudinal approach

Sleep spindles are related to sleep‐dependent memory consolidation and general cognitive abilities. However, they undergo drastic maturational changes during adolescence. Here we used a longitudinal approach (across 7 years) to explore whether developmental changes in sleep spindle density can explain individual differences in sleep‐dependent memory consolidation and general cognitive abilities. Ambulatory polysomnography was recorded during four nights in 34 healthy subjects (24 female) with two nights (baseline and experimental) at initial recording (age range 8–11 years) and two nights at follow‐up recording (age range 14–18 years). For declarative learning, participants encoded word pairs with a subsequent recall before and after sleep. General cognitive abilities were measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale. Higher slow (11–13 Hz) than fast (13–15 Hz) spindle density at frontal, central, and parietal sites during initial recordings, followed by a shift to higher fast than slow spindle density at central and parietal sites during follow‐up recordings, suggest that mature spindle topography develops throughout adolescence. Fast spindle density increases from baseline to experimental night were positively related to sleep‐dependent memory consolidation. In addition, we found that the development of fast spindles predicted the improvement in memory consolidation across the two longitudinal measurements, a finding that underlines a crucial role for mature fast spindles for sleep‐dependent memory consolidation. Furthermore, slow spindle changes across adolescence were related to general cognitive abilities, a relationship that could indicate the maturation of frontal networks relevant for efficient cognitive processing. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NXJzm8HbIw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuMQY1OIJ0s     

Estimating retest effects in longitudinal assessments of cognitive functioning in adults between 18 and 60 years of age

Several analyses were conducted on data from samples of adults between 18 and 58 years of age who completed the same cognitive tests after an interval ranging from less than 1 week to 35 years. Because the retest interval varied across individuals, it was possible to determine the length of time needed before the gains associated with a retest decreased to 0 and to obtain simultaneous estimates of the magnitude of effects associated with increased age and a prior assessment. The results indicated that for adults within this age range, 7 or more years were needed before positive retest effects were no longer detectable. Age effects in longitudinal comparisons could be interpreted in terms of large positive effects associated with a prior assessment and negative effects associated with age that were comparable in magnitude to those observed in cross-sectional comparisons.