Processing variant forms in spoken word recognition: the role of variant frequency

Recognition of a spoken word phonological variant--schwa vowel deletion (e.g., corporate --> corp'rate)--was investigated in vowel detection (absent/present) and syllable number judgment (two or three syllables) tasks. Variant frequency corpus analyses (Patterson, LoCasto, & Connine, 2003) were used to select words with either high or low schwa vowel deletion rates. Speech continua were created for each word in which schwa vowel length was manipulated (unambiguous schwa-present and schwa-absent endpoints, along with intermediate ambiguous tokens). Matched control nonwords were created with identical schwa vowel continua and surrounding segments. The low-deletion-rate words showed more three-syllable judgments than did the high-deletion-rate words. Matched control nonwords did not differ as a function of deletion rate. Experiments 2 and 3 showed a lexical decision reaction time advantage for more frequent surface forms, as compared with infrequent ones, for schwa-deleted (Experiment 2) and schwa-present (Experiment 3) stimuli. The results are discussed in terms of representations of variant forms of words based on variant frequency.     

Unrestricted composition and restricted quantification

Many of those who accept the universalist thesis that mereological composition is unrestricted also maintain that the folk typically restrict their quantifiers in such a way as to exclude strange fusions when they say things that appear to conflict with universalism. Despite its prima facie implausibility, there are powerful arguments for universalism. By contrast, there is remarkably little evidence for the thesis that strange fusions are excluded from the ordinary domain of quantification. Furthermore, this reconciliatory strategy seems hopeless when applied to the more fundamental conflict between universalism and the intuitions that tell against it.

Defining relationships: Comparing Canadians, Chinese and Indians

To examine whether cultural differences exist in defining family, friend, relative, colleague and neighbour, non-student samples were drawn from Canada, China and India. The data generated several unexpected findings. (i) The means of the relationship definitions between the Chinese and Canadians were not significantly different. The means between the Chinese and Indians were significantly different. The means between the Canadians and Indians were significantly different. (ii) Females defined their relationships more interdependently than males in the Indian and Canadian samples but not in the Chinese sample. (iii) Definitions were target specific and the order of closeness differed from group to group. (iv) In the Indian and Chinese samples, participants' age was negatively correlated with closeness in defining friends, indicating that a person's perceived closeness with friends changes over the life span. Results of past research using student samples need to be interpreted with caution.     

A diathesis-stress model of engagement in risky behaviors in Chinese adolescents

The current study examined whether the association between the occurrence of negative events and increased engagement in risky behavior is moderated by maladaptive and/or adaptive coping strategies. At time 1, 411 adolescents (ages 14–19) from Yue Yang, Hunan, completed self-report measures assessing coping strategies, engagement in risky behaviors, and the occurrence of negative events. Once a month for the subsequent 6 months, adolescents completed measures assessing engagement in risky behaviors and the occurrence of negative events. In line with our hypotheses, results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses indicated that adolescents possessing high levels of maladaptive coping strategies reported greater engagement in risky behaviors following the occurrence of negative events than adolescents possessing low levels. In contrast to our hypotheses, the association between the occurrence of negative events and increased engagement in risky behavior was not moderated by adaptive coping strategies.     

Dynamic action units slip in speech production errors

In the past, the nature of the compositional units proposed for spoken language has largely diverged from the types of control units pursued in the domains of other skilled motor tasks. A classic source of evidence as to the units structuring speech has been patterns observed in speech errors--"slips of the tongue". The present study reports, for the first time, on kinematic data from tongue and lip movements during speech errors elicited in the laboratory using a repetition task. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that speech production results from the assembly of dynamically defined action units--gestures--in a linguistically structured environment. The experimental results support both the presence of gestural units and the dynamical properties of these units and their coordination. This study of speech articulation shows that it is possible to develop a principled account of spoken language within a more general theory of action.     

What Would Jesus Buy: American Consumption of Religious and Spiritual Material Goods

This article examines an important and understudied part of the sociological study of religion: consumption of religious materials. We use data from the Baylor Religion Survey and present an initial look at which Americans read the Left Behind series, viewed The Passion of the Christ , or purchased religious paraphernalia such as "What Would Jesus Do" bracelets. Drawing on cultural consumption and religious capital research we explore class, demographic, and religious influences on consumption patterns. We find some support for each of these perspectives, which suggests that religious consumption is not a subset of cultural consumption nor of religious practice but is some combination of both.     

Bayes nets and babies: infants' developing statistical reasoning abilities and their representation of causal knowledge

A fundamental assumption of the causal graphical model framework is the Markov assumption, which posits that learners can discriminate between two events that are dependent because of a direct causal relation between them and two events that are independent conditional on the value of another event(s). Sobel and Kirkham (2006) demonstrated that 8-month-old infants registered conditional independence information among a sequence of events; infants responded according to the Markov assumption in such a way that was inconsistent with models that rely on simple calculations of associative strength. The present experiment extends these findings to younger infants, and demonstrates that such responses potentially develop during the second half of the first year of life. These data are discussed in terms of a developmental trajectory between associative mechanisms and causal graphical models as representations of infants' causal and statistical learning.