Temporal aspects of stimulus-driven attending in dynamic arrays

Auditory sequences of tones were used to examine a form of stimulus-driven attending that involves temporal expectancies and is influenced by stimulus rhythm. Three experiments examined the influence of sequence timing on comparative pitch judgments of two tones (standard, comparison) separated by interpolated pitches. In two of the experiments, interpolated tones were regularly timed, with onset times of comparison tones varied relative to this rhythm. Listeners were most accurate judging the pitch of rhythmically expected tones and least accurate with very unexpected ones. This effect persisted over time, but disappeared when the rhythm of interpolated tones was either missing or irregular.     

Fear of storms and hurricanes in Antillean and Belgian children

The present study assessed fear of hurricanes in children who had been confronted with this natural event (i.e., Antillean children, n=161). Their fear levels were compared to those of children who are unfamiliar with such an event (i.e., Belgian children, n=185). Antillean children reported significantly higher levels of fear of storms than Belgian children did, thus providing support for the notion that exposure to dangerous events promotes children's fears of those events. Surprisingly, however, Antillean children had lower scores on the 'Hurricanes' item than Belgian children. Plausibly, differences in how children interpreted this item may have accounted for this unexpected finding. That is, ratings of Antillean children were probably based on actual experiences with hurricanes, whereas scores of Belgian children presumably reflected appraisal of threat in case they would be confronted with such an event. Implications of this finding for the assessment of childhood fears are briefly discussed.     

A cross-linguistic data bank for oral picture naming in Dutch, English, German, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish (PEDOI)

The well established effect of word frequency on adult's picture naming performance is now called into question. This is particularly true for variables which are correlated with frequency, as is the case of age of word acquisition. Since the work of [Carrol and White, 1973] there is growing agreement among researchers to confer an important role in lexical access to this variable. Indeed, it has been shown ( [Hodgson and Ellis, 1998]) that for normal English-speaking adults only the variables 'age-of-acquisition' and 'name agreement' are independent predictors of naming success among the various variables considered. However, when brain-damaged subjects with and without degenerative pathologies are studied, word frequency and word length as well as concept familiarity all give significant effects ( [Hirsh and Funnell, 1995]; [Lambon Ralph et al., 1998]; [Nickels and Howard, 1995]). Finally, it has been suggested that the production of specific error types may be related to such variables. According to [Nickels and Howard, 1994] the production of semantic errors is specifically affected by 'imageability' and in the recent study by [Kremin et al., 2001] 'age of acquisition' predicts (frank) word finding difficulties.     

Wicked incarnations: Jesus,intra-action,climate change

To take incarnation seriously, Creation Care Christians, such as Douglas and Jonathan Moo, focus on Jesus’ divinity in incarnation. If the divine Jesus was fully flesh, then creation must be good. And if we do not take care of it, we are sinning, they reason. Laurel C. Schneider's promiscuous view of incarnation insists on a porous flesh, one that is materially entangled with the world. This is beyond Sallie McFague's model of the world as God's body. Applying Schneider's promiscuous incarnation, Mary-Jane Rubenstein claims that the world is God's body, and, as such, God does not transcend matter as Ernest Simmons suggests. For Catherine Keller, unknowable divine interdependence must move us to civic action. In the middle of this conversation, I offer the term wicked incarnations to make explicit the intra-action of divinity and the world in its incarnations. To take incarnation seriously is to acknowledge incarnations as a dynamism of divine and material forces, neither of which pre-exist their relationship. I join Keller in hoping that this moves us to care about and for the material world, its changing climate, and our intra-active relationship with nonhuman, divine presence.     

Social networks and social competence: Exploring the effects of early adolescent friendships

Conclusions Perhaps the main significance of this work was in its methodological contributions. Most noteworthy were its attempts to expand network analysis beyond the examination of supportive functions, the use of a more objective measure of social support, and the use of a multivariate hierarchical strategy of analysis.This study obtained correlations between social network variables and social competence indices that were highly suggestive. However, it is important to keep in mind that the sample under investigation was fairly small and relatively homogeneous with respect to ethnicity, social class, and even values. Whether the exact nature of these relationships will generalize to different samples remains an empirical question. In fact, one would suppose that some of the results would be quite different for a population that does not highly value school. Further research, ideally longitudinal in nature, is sorely needed to address some of the issues raised by this study, both in terms of the social support/network literature and the possibly changing characteristics of minority children and their social environments as they move from preadolescence to adolescence.The author was in part funded by the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program and the Yale Bush Center of Child Development and Social Policy while this research was undertaken. The author thanks Edmund Gordon, Edward Zigler, Seymour Sarason, Roger Weissberg, Ron McMullen, and Lawrence Cohen for their helpfulness throughout this project.     

Does rule recursion make melodies easier to reproduce? If not, what does?

Two experiments examined the effects of variations in melodic rule structure and rhythm upon the ability of musically sophisticated listeners to reproduce auditory patterns. These experiments were designed to evaluate different theoretical perspectives on auditory pattern perception and the role of rule structure in perceiving and remembering. Predictions of a coding model, which emphasizes the impact of rule recursion, were contrasted with those of an accent model, which emphasizes the relative timing of melodic and temporal accents. Effects of recursive (hierarchical) and nonrecursive (linear) rule arrangements were studied in contexts where pattern contour differences were controlled for. Rhythm was also varied. Measured pauses were inserted between certain tones to make a rhythm compatible or incompatible with melodic rule phrases. Experiment 1 showed that pattern simplicity was determined not by rule recursive codes, but by the number and timing of contour changes and melodic rule breaks. Experiment 2 examined additional effects of rhythm on listeners' response to rule recursion and melodic phrasing in melodies of equivalent contour. Although modest effects of rule recursion appeared, these effects were again outweighed by large performance differences due to the relative timing of changes in contour and melodic rule structure. Implications of the accent model for dynamic attending are discussed in the context of a new proposal involving temporal phasing of accents.     

Important Goals,Meanings, and Relationships in Flourishing and Languishing States: Towards Patterns of Well-being

Qualitative studies of lay people’s perspectives on facets of well-being are scarce, and it is not known how the perspectives of people with high and low levels of well-being dovetail or differ. This research explored the experiences of people with high/flourishing versus low/languishing levels of positive mental health in three cross-sectional survey design studies. Languishing and flourishing participants were selected in each study based on quantitative data from the Mental Health Continuum - Short Form as reported by Keyes et al. (Journal of Health and Social Behavior 43:207–222, 2002). Qualitative content analyses were conducted on written responses to semistructured open-ended questions on the what and why of important meaningful things (study 1, n = 42), goals (study 2, n = 30), and relationships (study 3, n = 50). Results indicated that well-being is not only a matter of degree—manifestations differ qualitatively in flourishing and languishing states. Similar categories emerged for what flourishing and languishing people found important with regard to meaning, goals, and relationships, but the reasons for the importance thereof differed prominently. Languishing people manifested a self-focus and often motivated responses in terms of own needs and hedonic values such as own happiness, whereas flourishers were more other-focused and motivated responses in terms of eudaimonic values focusing on a greater good. We propose that positive mental health can be conceptualized in terms of dynamic quantitative and qualitative patterns of well-being. Interventions to promote well-being may need to take into account the patterns of well-being reflecting what people on various levels of well-being experience and value.

     

How perceived changes in the ethical culture of organizations influence the well-being of managers: a two-year longitudinal study

The first aim of this study was to identify long-term patterns of ethical organizational culture based on the perceptions of 368 Finnish managers over a period of two years. The second aim was to investigate whether there is a difference in the long-term occupational well-being (burnout and work engagement) of managers exhibiting different patterns of ethical culture. Based on latent profile analysis, five different patterns of the strength of ethical culture were identified: moderate, high, increasing, decreasing, and low. The results show that managers exhibiting either the low or decreasing pattern of ethical culture experienced significant changes in their well-being over time. Decreasing or permanently low ethical culture was related to increased cynical attitudes towards work, and to decreased work engagement. On the positive side, stably high ethical culture was associated with enduringly high levels of well-being over time. In sum, low or decreasing ethical culture poses a risk to occupational well-being, whereas an organization with a culture that is perceived as permanently strong represents a favourable work environment.