Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the impact of regional variation on phoneme perception

This event-related potential (ERP) study examined the impact of phonological variation resulting from a vowel merger on phoneme perception. The perception of the /e/-/ε/ contrast which does not exist in Southern French-speaking regions, and which is in the process of merging in Northern French-speaking regions, was compared to the /ø/-/y/ contrast, which is stable in all French-speaking regions. French-speaking participants from Switzerland for whom the /e/-/ε/ contrast is preserved, but who are exposed to different regional variants, had to perform a same-different task. They first heard four phonemically identical but acoustically different syllables (e.g., /be/-/be/-/be/-/be/), and then heard the test syllable which was either phonemically identical to (/be/) or phonemically different from (/bε/) the preceding context stimuli. The results showed that the unstable /e/-/ε/ contrast only induced a mismatch negativity (MMN), whereas the /ø/-/y/ contrast elicited both a MMN and electrophysiological differences on the P200. These findings were in line with the behavioral results in which responses were slower and more error-prone in the /e/-/ε/ deviant condition than in the /ø/-/y/ deviant condition. Together these findings suggest that the regional variability in the speech input to which listeners are exposed affects the perception of speech sounds in their own accent.     

Not all visual features are created equal: early processing in letter and word recognition

In four experiments, we investigated the effect of deleting specific features of letters on letter and word recognition in the context of reading aloud. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the relative importance of vertices versus midsegments in letter recognition. Experiments 3 and 4 tested the relative importance of vertices versus midsegments in word recognition. The results demonstrate that deleting vertices is more detrimental to letter and word identification than is deleting midsegments of letters. These results converge with those of previous research on the role of vertices in object identification. Theoretical implications for early processing in reading are noted.     

Maternal intrusion: Its roots and consequences

Abstract

Behind an intrusive mother’s view of her actual child lies a disproportionate, hidden desire to revive an ideal relationship with a perfect mother. The resulting image of an idealized child then becomes a strategic aspect of the mother’s own identity, representing an idealized figure from her own past. As the mother’s idealization is disturbed by the reality of the child, the mother experiences the situation between herself and the baby as “pathological,” that is, disruptive to her. She then attempts to repair the idealization by resisting any change in the status of her relationship to her child, even as the child grows older. Her rigidity in this regard necessarily excludes a paternal presence that could challenge or change the mother–infant idealized dyad. The mother’s orientation is also contradictory to, and acts as a resistance to, psychoanalytic therapeutic interventions, which aim at any “change.”     

Which behaviours? Identifying the most common and burdensome behaviour changes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Behaviour change is increasingly recognised as a common feature of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and may be similar to that seen in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The behaviours most disturbed in ALS, and those that relate most significantly to caregiver burden, however, have not been well established. Forty ALS participants and their caregivers, and 27 age- and gender-matched healthy controls and their relatives, participated in this study. ALS participants were assessed on a disease rating scale, and caregivers and control informants completed the revised version of the Cambridge Behaviour Inventory and a measure of burden. ALS caregivers reported significantly more disturbance than healthy control informants on the functional domains of everyday skills, self-care, and sleep, and in the behavioural domains of mood and motivation. There were no differences between groups in frequency of memory and orientation difficulties, or behaviours characteristic of FTD, such as changes to eating habits or stereotypic and motor behaviour, indicating that the behavioural profile in ALS may differ from FTD. In the ALS group, the domains with the strongest relationship to caregiver burden were everyday skills, motivation and memory, likely because poor motivation, memory dysfunction and difficulties completing activities of daily living require more carer support via direct supervision, prompting or hands on care. Services to support ALS patients and caregivers need to provide targeted interventions for those functional and behavioural changes which are most burdensome in the disease.     

A Patchier Picture Still: Biases,Beliefs and Overlap on the Inferential Continuum

It has been proposed that, whilst implicit attitudes, alike beliefs, are propositionally structured (Mandelbaum Noûs, 50(3), 629–658, 2016), the former respond to evidence and modulate other attitudes in a fragmented manner, and so constitute a sui generis class, the “patchy endorsements” (Levy Noûs, 49(4), 800–823, 2015). In the following, I demonstrate that the patchy endorsements theorist is committed to the truth of two claims: (i) no implicit attitude is responsive to content to the same extent as any belief; and (ii) there is a significant gap between the most responsive implicit attitude and the least responsive belief. I argue that both (i) and (ii) fail to hold. Many implicit attitudes respond to evidence and modulate other attitudes. Meanwhile, at least some ordinary beliefs exhibit lower evidence-responsiveness and inferential efficacy than at least some implicit attitudes, defeating (i) and (ii). A better interpretation is that attitudes may be ordered along a continuum according to their responsiveness to content. At one extreme end, we find attitudes usually identified as implicit, and at the other, attitudes usually identified as beliefs, but in the middle, there is an area of overlap. I consider the consequences of the continuum view for existing folk psychological concepts.

     

Culture, gender, and the self: variations and impact of social comparison processes

Psychological differences between women and men, far from being invariant as a biological explanation would suggest, fluctuate in magnitude across cultures. Moreover, contrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality. This research on gender differences in self-construals involving 950 participants from 5 nations/cultures (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and Malaysia) illustrates how variations in social comparison processes across cultures can explain why gender differences are stronger in Western cultures. Gender differences in the self are a product of self-stereotyping, which occurs when between-gender social comparisons are made. These social comparisons are more likely, and exert a greater impact, in Western nations. Both correlational and experimental evidence supports this explanation.     

More than one kind of happiness: Can we recognize vocal expressions of different positive states?

Several theorists have proposed that distinctions are needed between different positive emotional states, and that these discriminations may be particularly useful in the domain of vocal signals (Ekman, 1992b, Cognition and Emotion, 6, 169–200; Scherer, 1986, Psychological Bulletin, 99, 143–165). We report an investigation into the hypothesis that positive basic emotions have distinct vocal expressions (Ekman, 1992b, Cognition and Emotion, 6, 169–200). Non-verbal vocalisations are used that map onto five putative positive emotions: Achievement/Triumph, Amusement, Contentment, Sensual Pleasure, and Relief. Data from categorisation and rating tasks indicate that each vocal expression is accurately categorised and consistently rated as expressing the intended emotion. This pattern is replicated across two language groups. These data, we conclude, provide evidence for the existence of robustly recognisable expressions of distinct positive emotions.     

How does culture shape our moral identity? Moral foundations in Saudi Arabia and Britain

North American measures of moral identity (MI) assume that caring and fairness are the most prototypical features of morality. Moral foundations theory describes such individualising foundations of morality as dominant in individualist cultures and binding foundations of morality as more particular to collectivist cultures. We weighed the criticism that moral identity scales are guilty of “liberal ethnocentrism” in two studies drawing on participants in the UK and Saudi Arabia. Only individualising traits were prototypical of concepts of moral people in Britain, while individualising and binding traits were both prototypical of such concepts in Saudi Arabia (Study 1, N = 160). In Study 2 (N = 539), participants completed the moral identity scale following typical instructions that referred to the prototypical traits of one of five moral foundations. Overall MI scores were lower in Britain than in Saudi Arabia, particularly when instructions described binding traits as characteristics of a moral person. Cross-cultural differences were mediated by the perceived cultural importance attributed to these traits, particularly binding traits. These results justify concerns that existing moral identity scales underestimate important cultural variation in conceptualising moral identity, but justice and caring concerns remain the best single candidates for a universal foundation of human morality.