Iconicity and Diachronic Language Change

Iconicity, the resemblance between the form of a word and its meaning, has effects on behavior in both communicative symbol development and language learning experiments. These results have invited speculation about iconicity being a key feature of the origins of language, yet the presence of iconicity in natural languages seems limited. In a diachronic study of language change, we investigated the extent to which iconicity is a stable property of vocabulary, alongside previously investigated psycholinguistic predictors of change. Analyzing 784 English words with data on their historical forms, we found that stable words are higher in iconicity, longer in length, and earlier acquired during development, but that the role of frequency and grammatical category may be less important than previously suggested. Iconicity is revealed as a feature of ultra-conserved words and potentially also as a property of vocabulary early in the history of language origins.     

Emotion Control Values and Responding to an Anger Provocation inAsian-American and European-American Individuals

The present research examined whether Asian-American (AA) versus European-American (EA) women differed in experiential, expressive, or autonomic physiological responding to a laboratory anger provocation and assessed the mediating role of values about emotional control. Results indicate that AA participants reported and behaviorally displayed less anger than EA participants, while there were no group differences in physiological responses. Observed differences in emotional responses were partially mediated by emotion control values, suggesting a potential mechanism for effects of cultural background on anger responding.     

Female Trouble: The Menstrual Self-Evaluation Scale And Women'S Self-Objectification

Strong cultural messages are sent to women that their bodies are unacceptable as they are, thus encouraging engagement in a variety of body-altering practices. It seems that one of the obligations that women have in a culture that sexually objectifies their bodies is to conceal their bodies' more physical functions, such as menstruation. A new scale was constructed to measure women's attitudes and emotions toward menstruation. A study was conducted to test the relationship between self-objectification and women's menstrual self-evaluations. Results showed that women who internalize a more sexually objectified view of their physical selves have more negative attitudes and emotions, including disgust and shame, toward their own menstrual cycles.     

Boot night shelter

This article is an outline of the author's work as a volunteer counsellor, and describes some of the methods used and insights obtained in dealing with the special problems of counselling in non-institutionalised and unstructured settings. The general background of this type of counselling and the counselling methods used are illustrated with reference to a case study; there is also an overall evaluation of the contribution that this kind of counselling offers in contrast to more formal and institutionalised counselling methods.     

Gaze,goals and growing up: Effects on imitative grasping

Developmental differences in the use of social‐attention cues to imitation were examined among children aged 3 and 6 years old (n = 58) and adults (n = 29). In each of 20 trials, participants watched a model grasp two objects simultaneously and move them together. On every trial, the model directed her gaze towards only one of the objects. Some object pairs were related and had a clear functional relationship (e.g., flower, vase), while others were functionally unrelated (e.g., cardboard square, ladybug). Owing to attentional effects of eye gaze, it was expected that all participants would more faithfully imitate the grasp on the gazed‐at object than the object not gazed‐at. Children were expected to imitate less faithfully on trials with functionally related objects than those without, due to goal‐hierarchy effects. Results support effects of eye gaze on imitation of grasping. Children's grasping accuracy on functionally related and functionally unrelated trials was similar, but they were more likely to only use one hand on trials where the object pairs were functionally related than unrelated. Implications for theories of imitation are discussed.     

Task-switching costs, Stroop-costs, and executive control: a correlational study.

Three correlational studies investigated the relationship between the time costs associated with Stroop stimuli (Stroop-costs) with the time costs associated with task-switching (switch-costs) obtained from colour-word stimuli and digit stimuli. In all studies, large and significant positive correlations were found between different measures of switch-costs. However, only small (and sometimes non-significant) correlations were obtained between the different measures of Stroop-costs and between measures of Stroop-costs and measures of switch-costs. The results are taken as evidence for the existence of some common or shared specialized mechanisms involved in task-switching, which are different from those used to overcome Stroop interference.