Use of vocalic cues to consonant voicing and native language background: The influence of experimental design

For native speakers of English and several other languages, preceding vocalic duration andFi offset frequency are two of the cues that convey the stop consonant voicing distinction in wordfinal position. For speakers learning English as a second language, there are indications that use of vocalic duration, but notFl offset frequency, may be hindered by a lack of experience with phonemic (i.e., lexical) vowel length (the “phonemic vowel length account”: Crowther & Mann, 1992). In this study, native speakers of Arabic, a language that includes a phonemic vowel length distinction, were tested for their use of vocalic duration andF1 offset in production and perception of the English consonant-vowel-consonant forms pod and pot. The phonemic vowel length hypothesis predicts that Arabic speakers should use vocalic duration extensively in production and perception. On the contrary, experiment l repealed that, consistent with Flege and Port’s (1981) findings, they produced only slightly (but significantly) longer vocalic segments in their pod tokens. It further indicated that their productions showed a significant variation inFl offset as a function of final stop voicing. Perceptual sensitivity to vocalic duration andFl offset as voicing cues was tested in two experiments. In experiment 2, we employed a factorial combination of these two cues and a finely spaced vocalic duration continuum. Arabic speakers did not appear to be very sensitive to vocalic duration, but they were abort as sensitive as native English speakers toF1 offset frequency. In Experiment 3, we employed a one-dimensional continuum of more widely spaced stimuli that varied only vocalic duration. Arabic speakers showed native-English-like sensitivity to vocalic duration- Anexplanation based on tie perceptual anchor theory of context coding (Braida et al., 1984; Macmillan, 1987; Macmillan, Braida, & Goldberg, 1987) and phoneme perception theory (Schouten & Van Hessen, 2992) is offered to reconcile the apparently contradictory perceptual findings. The explanation does not attribute native-English-like voicing perception to the Ambit subjects. The findings in this study call fox a modification of the phonemic vowel length hypothesis.     

Self-Reported Differences in the Experience and Expression of Anger Between Girls and Boys

Gender differences with regard to the emotion of anger were studied using elementary school-aged children in an urban, a suburban, and a rural school district. Both the suburban and rural samples were predominantly white (88% and 82%, respectively) while the urban sample was predominantly black (57%). Five hundred and fifty seven 4th and 5th grade children (287 boys and 270 girls) were given a self-report anger questionnaire. No significant differences were found between boys and girls in the self-reported total anger level However, item analysis indicated that some of the specific hypothetical situations that elicited anger differed in boys and girls. In addition, there were significant differences in the expression of anger between boys and girls. Consistent with previous research, boys reported significantly higher levels of aggressive responses. The location in which the children attended school emerged as an important variable with regard to the experience and expression of anger. As a group, urban youngsters reported significantly higher levels of anger than children who attended school in rural or suburban settings.     

WHY “DO NO HARM”?

Edmund Pellegrino has argued that the dramatic changes in American health care call for critical reflection on the traditional norms governing the therapeutic relationship. This paper offers such reflection on the obligation to “do no harm.” Drawing on work by Beauchamp and Childress and Pellegrino and Thomasma, I argue that the libertarian model of medical ethics offered by Engelhardt cannot adequately sustain an obligation to “do no harm.” Because the obligation to “do no harm” is not based simply on a negative duty of nonmaleficence but also on a positive duty of beneficence, I argue that it is best understood to derive from the fiduciary nature of the healing relationship.     

Effects of Pay Expected on Pay Received: The Confirmatory Nature of Initial Expectations1

Previous research suggests that women have lower pay expectations and a lower sense of personal entitlement with respect to pay than similarly qualified men (cf. Major & Konar, in press; Major, McFarlin, & Gagnon, 1984). The present research examined, in two liking simulation experiments, the impact of a job applicant's pay expectations and gender on starting salary offers, hiring recommendations, and evaluations made by management students. Results of both experiments indicated that, given identical applicant qualifications, the higher the salary requested by an applicant, the higher the salary he or she was offered, regardless of the applicant's gender. However, women with moderate pay expectations were offered significantly more money (Experiment 1) and were significantly more likely to be hired (Experiment 2) than were men with moderate expectations. Amount of pay expected had no impact on other evaluations of the applicant. The role that gender differences in pay expectations may play in perpetuating nonperformance-related pay differences between women and men is discussed.     

Decrements in children's responses to big and tall: A reconsideration of the potential Cognitive and Semantic causes

The potential causes of decrements in children's understanding of big and tall (Maratsos, 1973, Maratsos, 1974, 10, 367–375) are reconsidered. On the basis of data from English-speaking children, two of these hypotheses, the Strong Cognitive Hypothesis and the Strong Semantic Hypothesis, offer equally plausible explanations for those decrements. However, data from Arabic-speaking children between 2;9 and 6;3, who do not show a similar decrement in their understanding of kabiir, support the Strong Semantic Hypothesis that decrements in English-speaking children's understanding of big and tall are due to their positing semantic features such as [+ Vertical] for one word and overgeneralizing them to related words. This, in turn, supports Carey's (M. Halle, J. Bresnan, & G. Miller (Eds.), Linguistic theory and psychological reality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978. Pp. 264–293) theory that features are abstracted out for words after children are able to use those words correctly on the basis of stored haphazard examples. Further, the results support the view that children at least sometimes posit features for a word on the basis of its individual privileges of occurrence, rather than on the basis of what that word contrasts with.     

Naloxone and cold-water swim analgesia: Parametric considerations and individual differences

The role of endogenous opioids in the mediation of stress-induced analgesia has been studied using the opiate antagonist naloxone to reduce or eliminate the response. While the analgesic responses following some stressors are reduced by naloxone, other stressors, like cold-water swims, are altered minimally. However, in the case of inescapable foot shock analgesia, the temporal, numerical, and spatial arrangement of the shocks are critical parameters in determining whether naloxone is capable of altering the analgesic state. In assessing parametric variations of naloxone antagonism of cold-water swim analgesia, five experiments were performed. The first experiment showed that naloxone antagonized the analgesic response following a 3.5-min swim in a 15°C bath, but not in baths of 8°C and 2°C. The second experiment demonstrated dose-dependent antagonism of analgesia induced by 2°C swims for 2.5 and 3.5 min; shorter durations failed to increase thresholds. The third experiment indicated that naloxone decreased 2°C, 3.5-min swim analgesia when the pain test occurred 30 min after stress; longer intervals failed to produce analgesia. The fourth experiment showed that the temporal relationship between injections and swims had little bearing on resultant effects. Finally, since it appeared that naloxone decreased analgesia induced by the 2°C, 3.5-min swim in some animals, but not others, the fifth experiment found that the degree of naloxone antagonism was correlated with the magnitude of the analgesic response induced in individual animals. These results are discussed in terms of opioid and nonopioid mechanisms subserving pain inhibition.     

Effects of reward on delayed reaction time task performance of hyperactive children

This experiment was designed to investigate the effects of continuous, partial, and noncontingent schedules of reward, as well as the withdrawal of rewards, on the performance of hyperactive and normal control children on a delayed reaction time task. Although noncontingent reward resulted in faster reaction times for control subjects, performance of hyperactives deteriorated under noncontingent reward and improved when it was withdrawn. Also, reaction times of controls during extinction remained superior to baseline, whereas performance of hyperactives returned to baseline level. It was suggested that these and other findings reviewed point to an unusual sensitivity to rewards in hyperactive children.     

Effects of reinforcement on concept identification in hyperactive children

The effects of continuous and partial reward on the performance of hyperactive and normal children on a concept identification task were compared. Because reduction in information feedback is usually associated with partial reward schedules, the study was designed to yield information regarding the contribution of reduced feeback to performance in the partial reward condition. Previous findings of a performance deficit in hyperactives under partial reward were replicated. The findings help rule out an information feedback explanation for this deficit. The authors suggest that a motivational factor involving the elicitation of frustration when expected rewards fail to appear may be responsible for the poor performance of hyperactives on the partial schedule.This research was supported by Grant No. 943-03-34 from the Social Sciences Research Fund, McGill University.