A sensitive period for the acquisition of a nonnative phonological system

Immigrants who had learned English at various ages and who had been in the United States for various amounts of time were judged for degree of accent in English. It was found that age at arrival was a strong predictor of degree of accent, while length of stay had very little effect. Other practice and motivational factors were related to accent only by virtue of their correlation with age at arrival. It was suggested that a sensitive period exists for the acquisition of a nonnative phonological system.This article was adapted from a doctoral dissertation for the Department of Psychology and Social Relations, Harvard University, 1973 (unpublished), which was supported by NSF Grant No. GS-36263 and the Radcliffe Institute.     

Society,self, and mind in moral philosophy: The scottish moralists as precursors of symbolic interactionism

Many of the concepts central to symbolic interactionism were anticipated by the eighteenth century Scottish moralists. The symbolic-interactionist and Scottish moralist orientations both hold that society alone engenders uniquely human qualities, self arises through sympathetic interaction, and mind and self reconstruct their environments. George H. Mead's conception of thought as internal dialogue between the “I” and “me” aspects of the self and his notion of the “generalized other” were foreshadowed by some of the Scottish moralists, particularly Adam Smith. These schools differ, though, in their treatments of emotion, communication, political structures, and the origin of sympathy.     

COVID-19, precarity and loneliness

In this paper I discuss Jungian psychological work of the trauma and loss experienced in reaction to COVID-19 with a man who represents a clinical composite. The issues of precarity, a concept used by the philosopher Judith Butler, are combined with the notions of lack and absence of French psychoanalyst André Green. The psychological and societal situation of precarity aroused the man’s childhood issues that were long repressed. The loneliness, isolation and death from COVID-19 mirrored his personal and the collective responses to the disaster from this global pandemic. He felt on the edge of collapse as what he knew of his world crashed and he found himself unable to cope. The subsequent Jungian work taking place through the virtual computer screen was taxing and restorative simultaneously for both analyst and analysand.     

Using the 11-item Version of the RCADS to Identify Anxiety and Depressive Disorders in Adolescents

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - The purpose of this study was to identify items from the Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale – RCADS-C/P that provided a...     

Training sequence effects on emergent conditional discriminations: Replication and extension to selection-based training

We examined the replicability and generality of a previously reported training sequence effect on emergent conditional discriminations in the intraverbal naming task. In Experiment 1, a tact–intraverbal (TI) group learned first to vocally label 6 visual patterns and then to intraverbally relate pairs of verbal labels, whereas an intraverbal–tact (IT) group received the same training in the opposite sequence. Emergent conditional discriminations among pattern stimuli were assessed in match-to-sample (MTS) format. Experiment 2 was identical, except vocal tact and intraverbal training were replaced with selection-based training in which the verbal labels were text stimuli. Compared to the IT sequence, the TI sequence resulted in greater mean accuracy at test (Experiment 1), higher yields (Experiment 2), and shorter reaction times (Experiment 2). Experiment 2 data suggested the TI group's performance might be less dependent on intact intraverbal relations relative to the IT group, but related to participants' reports of visualization during intraverbal training. The results suggest the sequence effect is replicable and occurs in experimental preparations commonly used to study derived stimulus relations. They also provide novel support for the hypothesis that participant behavior during training alters sources of stimulus control available at test.     

When Gender Matters in Scientific Communication: The Role of Generic Language

Sex Roles - Prior research has documented gender differences in self-presentation and self-promotion. For example, a recent analysis of scientific publications in the biomedical sciences reveals...