A critical review of ERP and fMRI evidence on L2 syntactic processing

The current review focuses on recent event-related brain potential (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in L2 syntactic processing data. To this end, critical factors influencing both the dynamics of neural mechanisms (ERPs) and critical functional brain correlates (fMRI) are discussed. These entail the critical period hypothesis, levels of proficiency, cross-linguistic syntactic similarities and dissimilarities as well as brain bases that may or may not be shared during syntactic processing in a first (L1) and a second (L2) language. The data to date reveal that (i) the critical period hypothesis plays less of a significant role than initially discussed, (ii) L2 proficiency is a driving factor influencing peak and extent of activation in brain correlates and in neurophysiological mechanisms as a function of learning, and (iii) language transfer effects (i.e., positive transfer effects when L1 and L2 are structurally similar or negative transfer effects when L1 and L2 are structurally dissimilar) primarily from the L1 to the L2 and potentially vice versa need to be critically considered in future research.     

Car use of young adults: The role of travel socialization

This study evaluates how different aspects of travel socialization during childhood and adolescence contribute to the explanation of travel mode choice in young adulthood. In an online survey with 2612 students who had access to a car three different socialization aspects were measured retrospectively: communication with parents about the environmental impact of travel mode choice at the participants’ age of 15, the symbolic-affective importance of driving and acquisition of a driver’s license at the age of 18, and finally multi-mobility in the peer group at the age of 18. It was expected that socialization constructs would have a direct effect on social and personal norm as wells as on car use habit and an indirect effect on car use, mediated by norms, habit and intention. Structural equation modelling showed a significant impact of all socialization constructs on either norms or car use habit or both. Moreover, the postulated mediator effect could be confirmed. The paper encourages widening the perspective of transport studies by aspects of socialization, which have been neglected in former research on adults mobility behaviour.     

Keep ‘hoping’ for rationality: a solution to the backward induction paradox

We formalise a notion of dynamic rationality in terms of a logic of conditional beliefs on (doxastic) plausibility models. Similarly to other epistemic statements (e.g. negations of Moore sentences and of Muddy Children announcements), dynamic rationality changes its meaning after every act of learning, and it may become true after players learn it is false. Applying this to extensive games, we “simulate” the play of a game as a succession of dynamic updates of the original plausibility model: the epistemic situation when a given node is reached can be thought of as the result of a joint act of learning (via public announcements) that the node is reached. We then use the notion of “stable belief”, i.e. belief that is preserved during the play of the game, in order to give an epistemic condition for backward induction: rationality and common knowledge of stable belief in rationality. This condition is weaker than Aumann’s and compatible with the implicit assumptions (the “epistemic openness of the future”) underlying Stalnaker’s criticism of Aumann’s proof. The “dynamic” nature of our concept of rationality explains why our condition avoids the apparent circularity of the “backward induction paradox”: it is consistent to (continue to) believe in a player’s rationality after updating with his irrationality.     

Character Strengths and Job Satisfaction: Differential Relationships Across Occupational Groups and Adulthood

Character strengths are a central construct within positive psychology, and their importance for the workplace was supported recently. Little is known, however, which strengths matter the most at the workplace. The aim of the present investigation was thus to assess the relationship between the level of the 24 character strengths with overall job satisfaction in a general working population (N = 12,499) as well as in eight occupational subgroups (nurses, physicians, supervisors, office workers, clinical psychologists, social workers/educators, economists, and secondary-school teachers) and in six age groups (from 18 to 61+ years) and to compare the overall level of character strengths across the eight occupational subgroups. Results showed that, similar to life satisfaction, zest, hope, curiosity, love, and gratitude, and emotional strengths in general, related most strongly to overall job satisfaction. However, the relationships of the strengths with job satisfaction differed depending on the facet of job satisfaction, the occupational subgroup, and the age group under study. Knowing which individual strengths as well as strengths factors are more important for specific working populations can help to develop and apply more effective strength-based interventions in the workplace, thus improving positive and reducing negative work-related outcomes.

     

Developmental Differences in the Ability to Provide Temporal Information About Repeated Events

Children (n = 372) aged 4–8 years participated in one or four occurrences of a similar event and were interviewed 1 week later. Compared with 85% of children who participated once, less than 25% with repeated experience gave the exact number of times they participated, although all knew they participated more than once. Children with repeated experience were asked additional temporal questions, and there were clear developmental differences. Older children were more able than younger children to judge relative order and temporal position of the four occurrences. They also demonstrated improved temporal memory for the first and last relative to the middle occurrences, while younger children did so only for the first. This is the first systematic demonstration of children's memory for temporal information after a repeated event. We discuss implications for theories of temporal memory development and the practical implications of asking children to provide temporal information. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recalling Positive Events at Work Makes Employees Feel Happier,Move More,but Interact Less: A 6-Week Randomized Controlled Intervention at a Japanese Workplace

Simple self-administered activities, such as practicing gratitude or kindness, have been shown to increase happiness, yet only self-report measures have been used so far. Our study, conducted with a Japanese workplace sample, incorporated a novel technology to gather precise behavioral data reflecting participant movement and social interactions. Employees were randomly assigned to either recount three positive events at work (a positive activity) or list work tasks they completed (control) weekly for 6 weeks; furthermore, they reported their happiness levels and wore sociometric badges that recorded their behavior. Relative to controls, participants who considered good things at work not only reported relatively greater happiness over time but moved more upon arriving to work, engaged in less social interaction, and left the office earlier. Most of the findings were moderated by participant effort, such that those who put more effort into the positive activity also showed greater changes.     

Measuring Spiritual Needs in a Secular Society: Validation and Clinimetric Properties of the Danish 20-Item Spiritual Needs Questionnaire

Journal of Religion and Health - In secular cultures, such as Denmark, tools to measure spiritual needs are warranted to guide existential and spiritual care. We examined the clinimetric properties...     

Bayesian PTSD-Trajectory Analysis with Informed Priors Based on a Systematic Literature Search and Expert Elicitation

There is a recent increase in interest of Bayesian analysis. However, little effort has been made thus far to directly incorporate background knowledge via the prior distribution into the analyses. This process might be especially useful in the context of latent growth mixture modeling when one or more of the latent groups are expected to be relatively small due to what we refer to as limited data. We argue that the use of Bayesian statistics has great advantages in limited data situations, but only if background knowledge can be incorporated into the analysis via prior distributions. We highlight these advantages through a data set including patients with burn injuries and analyze trajectories of posttraumatic stress symptoms using the Bayesian framework following the steps of the WAMBS-checklist. In the included example, we illustrate how to obtain background information using previous literature based on a systematic literature search and by using expert knowledge. Finally, we show how to translate this knowledge into prior distributions and we illustrate the importance of conducting a prior sensitivity analysis. Although our example is from the trauma field, the techniques we illustrate can be applied to any field.