Inferring Sublexical Correspondences from Sight Vocabulary: Evidence from 6- and 7-year-olds

We report an experiment designed to investigate 6-to-7-year-old children's ability to acquire knowledge of sublexical correspondences between print and sound from their reading experience. A computer database containing the printed word vocabulary of children taking part in the experiment was compiled and used to devise stimuli controlled for grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) frequency and rime neighbourhood consistency according to the children's reading experience. Knowledge of GPC rules and rime units was compared by asking children to read aloud three types of nonword varying in regularity of GPC and consistency of rime pronunciation. Results supported the view that children can acquire knowledge of both GPC rules and rime units from their reading experience. GPC rule strength affects the likelihood of a GPC response; rime consistency affects the likelihood of a rime response.     

Factor Composition of the Suicide Intent Scale

An exploratory analysis of the Suicide Intent Scale was performed on a sample of 98 psychiatric inpatients who had made suicide attempts. The factor analysis was performed using a method for polychotomous data, and resulted in a two-factor solution. The Lethal Intent factor contained items pertaining to the subjective level of lethal intent, while the Planning factor contained items largely related to objective planning for the attempt. Preliminary analysis of these factors suggest that the Suicide Intent Scale can be used to evaluate two separate aspects of suicidal behavior.