Word association in early Alzheimer's disease

The hypothesis that Alzheimer's disease (AD) degrades semantic representations predicts that AD qualitatively alters spontaneous thoughts. In two experiments contrasting free associations to words with strong (e.g., bride-groom) versus weak (e.g., body-leg) associates participants with AD produced less common responses (e.g., bride-pretty) than normal controls but only for words with strong associations, and only on the first (but not on second or third) association response. Furthermore, all participants produced fewer semantically related responses to words with weak associates. Because strong associations should be retrieved more easily than weak associations these results are problematic for retrieval-based accounts of AD. Instead we propose that AD entails a semantic deficit, and that strong associations involve more semantic processing than weak associations (in all speakers).     

Cross-language influences: translation status affects intraword sense relatedness

Many words have more than one meaning, and these meanings vary in their degree of relatedness. In the present experiment, we examined whether this degree of relatedness is influenced by whether or not the two meanings share a translation in a bilingual’s other language. Native English speakers with Spanish as a second language (i.e., English-Spanish bilinguals) and native Spanish speakers with English as a second language (i.e., Spanish-English bilinguals) were presented with pairs of phrases instantiating different senses of ambiguous English words (e.g., dinner date–expiration date) and were asked to decide whether the two senses were related in meaning. Critically, for some pairs of phrases, a single Spanish translation encompassed both meanings of the ambiguous word (joint-translation condition; e.g., mercado in Spanish refers to both a flea market and the housing market), but for others, each sense corresponded to a different Spanish translation (split-translation condition; e.g., cita in Spanish refers to a dinner date, but fecha refers to an expiration date). The proportions of “yes” (related) responses revealed that, relative to monolingual English speakers, Spanish–English bilinguals consider joint-translation senses to be less related than split-translation senses. These findings exemplify semantic cross-language influences from a first to a second language and reveal the semantic structure of the bilingual lexicon.     

A Protocol for Improving Loneliness in People with Multiple Sclerosis

Loneliness is a subjective and unpleasant emotional state that occurs when people feel social networks or social relationships are deficient in some way. People with multiple sclerosis are often lonely and frequently withdraw from participating in meaningful social activities. Common symptoms, such as cognitive changes, decreased physical functioning, fatigue, incontinence, visual changes, or depression, may contribute to decreased social participation, which can lead to loneliness. This article presents an intervention protocol for improving loneliness in people with multiple sclerosis. This protocol is based on Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, which focuses on improving self-efficacy to reduce loneliness in people with multiple sclerosis.     

Social dilemmas between individuals and groups

Three computer-controlled experiments were conducted to study interactions between individuals and non-cooperative groups in prototypical social-dilemma games. The asymmetric competition between an individual and a group was compared with symmetric control conditions where both competitors were either individuals or groups. All games were played repeatedly with the same players interacting for 120 rounds. The results show that the outcome of the conflict depends both on the type of competing players and on the structure of the competition. Generally, individuals do better than non-cooperative groups, regardless of the type of conflict, and more often than not it is better to have a non-cooperative group rather than an individual as an opponent. The relative advantage is a result of individuals generally cooperating better with other individuals (as compared to cooperation between two groups), and that in mixed competitions the individual takes advantage of the group’s difficulties in mobilizing collective-action, and dominates it.     

Don’t just repeat after me: Retrieval practice is better than imitation for foreign vocabulary learning

Second language (L2) instruction programs often ask learners to repeat aloud words spoken by a native speaker. However, recent research on retrieval practice has suggested that imitating native pronunciation might be less effective than drill instruction, wherein the learner is required to produce the L2 words from memory (and given feedback). We contrasted the effectiveness of imitation and retrieval practice drills on learning L2 spoken vocabulary. Learners viewed pictures of objects and heard their names; in the imitation condition, they heard and then repeated aloud each name, whereas in the retrieval practice condition, they tried to produce the name before hearing it. On a final test administered either immediately after training (Exp. 1) or after a 2-day delay (Exp. 2), retrieval practice produced better comprehension of the L2 words, better ability to produce the L2 words, and no loss of pronunciation quality.     

The Effect of School Entrance Age on Academic Achievement and Social-Emotional Adjustment of Children

The relationship between school entrance age and academic and social-emotional adjustment was examined for 104 first-grade pupils toward the end of the school year. The sample population included only the oldest and youngest pupils in the class (i.e., those born between January and March and between October and December of the same year). The oldest first graders surpassed their younger peers in all tests of reading and arithmetic skills. They were better adjusted both socially and emotionally and were more highly rated by their teachers. Younger girls showed a slight advantage over younger boys in the sociometric measure only.     

Psychoacoustic abilities as predictors of vocal emotion recognition

Prosodic attributes of speech, such as intonation, influence our ability to recognize, comprehend, and produce affect, as well as semantic and pragmatic meaning, in vocal utterances. The present study examines associations between auditory perceptual abilities and the perception of prosody, both pragmatic and affective. This association has not been previously examined. Ninety-seven participants (49 female and 48 male participants) with normal hearing thresholds took part in two experiments, involving both prosody recognition and psychoacoustic tasks. The prosody recognition tasks included a vocal emotion recognition task and a focus perception task requiring recognition of an accented word in a spoken sentence. The psychoacoustic tasks included a task requiring pitch discrimination and three tasks also requiring pitch direction (i.e., high/low, rising/falling, changing/steady pitch). Results demonstrate that psychoacoustic thresholds can predict 31% and 38% of affective and pragmatic prosody recognition scores, respectively. Psychoacoustic tasks requiring pitch direction recognition were the only significant predictors of prosody recognition scores. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying prosody recognition and may have an impact on the assessment and rehabilitation of individuals suffering from deficient prosodic perception.     

Another view of “we”: Majority and minority group perspectives on a common ingroup identity

Drawing on the evidence of the role of social categorisation and identity in the development and maintenance of intergroup biases, research on the Common Ingroup Identity Model (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000 Gaertner, S. L. and Dovidio, J. F. 2000. Reducing intergroup bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model, Philadelphia, PA: The Psychology Press.  [Google Scholar]) has investigated how modifying the ways that the self and others are categorised can reduce prejudice and discrimination. In this article, we review more recent research that extends our initial formulation of the model by considering more fully alternative forms of recategorisation (a dual identity as well as a one-group representation), the different preferences of majority and minority groups for these different forms of recategorised representations, and the potential implications of these different preferences on the content of intergroup interaction and on the possibilities for social change towards equality.     

ORTHODOXY AND THE CHALLENGE OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM

Traditional Jewish theology and practice are predicated on belief in the divinity of the Torah. Biblical criticism has posed increasingly formidable challenges to this belief in modern times. To the extent that Modern Orthodoxy has addressed the problem, it has generally attempted to refute the findings of scientific scholarship on its own terms. This article will suggest that such an approach represents a misplaced framing of the question, by viewing all religious truth claims cognitively as simple statements of fact. Instead of questioning whether the doctrine of Torah from Heaven is true empirically, its “truth” is established via its function within the context of the “form of life” (in the Wittgensteinian sense) that it engenders.     

Retrospective and prospective metacognitive judgments in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)

A growing body of research suggests that some non-human animals are capable of making accurate metacognitive judgments. In previous studies, non-human animals have made either retrospective or prospective judgments (about how they did on a test or how they will do on a test, respectively). These two types of judgments are dissociable in humans. The current study tested the abilities of two rhesus macaque monkeys to make both retrospective and prospective judgments about their performance on the same memory task. Both monkeys had been trained previously to make retrospective confidence judgments. Both monkeys successfully demonstrated transfer of retrospective metacognitive judgments to the new memory task. Furthermore, both monkeys transferred their retrospective judgments to the prospective task (one, immediately, and one, following the elimination of a response bias). This study is the first to demonstrate both retrospective and prospective monitoring abilities in the same monkeys and on the same task, suggesting a greater level of flexibility in animals’ metacognitive monitoring abilities than has been reported previously.