Adaptation to time-compressed speech: phonological determinants

Perceptual adaptation to time-compressed speech was analyzed in two experiments. Previous research has suggested that this adaptation phenomenon is language specific and takes place at the phonological level. Moreover, it has been proposed that adaptation should only be observed for languages that are rhythmically similar. This assumption was explored by studying adaptation to different time-compressed languages in Spanish speakers. In Experiment 1, the performances of Spanish-speaking subjects who adapted to Spanish, Italian, French, English, and Japanese were compared. In Experiment 2, subjects from the same population were tested with Greek sentences compressed to two different rates. The results showed adaptation for Spanish, Italian, and Greek and no adaptation for English and Japanese, with French being an intermediate case. To account for the data, we propose that variables other than just the rhythmic properties of the languages, such as the vowel system and/or the lexical stress pattern, must be considered. The Greek data also support the view that phonological, rather than lexical, information is a determining factor in adaptation to compressed speech.     

Different selection principles of freestanding and bound morphemes in language production

Freestanding and bound morphemes differ in many (psycho)linguistic aspects. Some theorists have claimed that the representation and retrieval of freestanding and bound morphemes in the course of language production are governed by similar processing mechanisms. Alternatively, it has been proposed that both types of morphemes may be selected for production in different ways. In this article, the authors first review the available experimental evidence related to this topic and then present new experimental data pointing to the notion that freestanding and bound morphemes are retrieved following distinct processing principles: freestanding morphemes are subject to competition, bound morphemes not.     

The role of religion in human values: a case study

By helping social norms to be internalized, values are indirectly sources of relationship behaviour. Likewise, cultural traditions, religion and language have different meanings that shape beliefs and influence social life. Thus, it seems important to revaluate the role of values in social life in a society which is extremely distinguishable in religious terms. An adaptation of Schwartz’s (1994a Schwartz, S. H. 1994a. “Studying human values”. In Journeys Into Cross‐Cultural Psychology, Edited by: Bouvy, A., Vijver, F., Boski, P. and Schmitz, P. 239–254. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger.  [Google Scholar]) value survey was used. MANOVA analysis revealed significant differences between groups in four value types and in three higher dimensions. Overall, results indicate that a combination of Schwartz’ values with insights from individualism/collectivism can be useful in contexts like Mozambique, a nation characterized by divergent religious groups, which can lead to a collision between religious viewpoints and values. Altogether, it seems most important to investigate further the historical and social influences that shape individual and communal identities with regard to questions of religion and values.     

On the facilitatory effects of cognate words in bilingual speech production

There is a growing body of evidence showing that a word's cognate status is an important dimension affecting the naming performance of bilingual speakers. In a recent article, Kohnert extended this observation to the naming performance of an aphasic bilingual (DJ). DJ named pictures with cognate names more accurately than pictures with non-cognate names. Furthermore, having named the pictures in Spanish helped the subsequent retrieval (with a delay of one week between the two tests) of the same pictures' names in English, but only for pictures with cognate names. That is, there was a language transfer but only for those translation words that were phonologically similar. In this article we first evaluate the conclusions drawn from these results by Kohnert, and second we discuss the theoretical implications of the facilitatory effects of cognate words for models of speech production in bilingual speakers.     

The NEO-PI-3: a more readable revised NEO Personality Inventory

Use of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) in adolescent samples has shown that a few respondents have difficulty with a subset of items. We identified 30 items that were not understood by at least 2% of adolescent respondents and 18 additional items with low item-total correlations, and we wrote 2 trial replacement items for each. We used self-report and observer rating data from 500 respondents aged 14 to 20 to select replacement items. The modified instrument retained the intended factor structure and showed slightly better internal consistency, cross-observer agreement, and readability (Flesch-Kincaid grade level = 5.3). The NEO-PI-3 appears to be useful in high school and college samples and may have wider applicability to adults as well.     

A cross-sectional evaluation of the factorial invariance of anxiety sensitivity in adolescents and young adults

This study examined the cross-sectional factorial invariance of anxiety sensitivity in an ethnically diverse sample of adolescents (n = 173; mean age 15.5 years) and young adults (n = 291; mean age 20.1 years). Research in adult and youth samples suggests that anxiety sensitivity is best understood as a hierarchical construct with several lower-order factors. Factor models based on previous research using both adult and youth samples were compared and a hierarchical model with three lower-order factors provided the best fit to the data. Results supported the hypothesis that the factor structure of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index was invariant across age and gender. The factor scores also demonstrated differential correlations with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Results are discussed with regard to construct validation and understanding the structure of anxiety sensitivity in youth.     

Learning first-pass structural attachment preferences with dynamic grammars and recursive neural networks

One of the central problems in the study of human language processing is ambiguity resolution: how do people resolve the extremely pervasive ambiguity of the language they encounter? One possible answer to this question is suggested by experience-based models, which claim that people typically resolve ambiguities in a way which has been successful in the past. In order to determine the course of action that has been "successful in the past" when faced with some ambiguity, it is necessary to generalize over past experience. In this paper, we will present a computational experience-based model, which learns to generalize over linguistic experience from exposure to syntactic structures in a corpus. The model is a hybrid system, which uses symbolic grammars to build and represent syntactic structures, and neural networks to rank these structures on the basis of its experience. We use a dynamic grammar, which provides a very tight correspondence between grammatical derivations and incremental processing, and recursive neural networks, which are able to deal with the complex hierarchical structures produced by the grammar. We demonstrate that the model reproduces a number of the structural preferences found in the experimental psycholinguistics literature, and also performs well on unrestricted text.     

The gender congruency effect and the selection of freestanding and bound morphemes: evidence from croatian

The authors report 3 picture-word interference experiments in which they explore some properties of the agreement process in speech production. In Experiment 1, Croatian speakers were asked to produce utterances in which the noun's gender value had an impact on the selection of gender-marked freestanding morphemes (pronouns) while ignoring the presentation of same- or different-gender distractor words. In Experiments 2 and 3, Croatian speakers were asked to name the same pictures using noun phrases in which the noun's gender value surfaced as an inflectional suffix. Different-gender distractors interfered more than same-gender distractors (the gender congruency effect) in Experiment 1, but not in Experiments 2 and 3. These contrasting results show that the cause of the gender congruency effect is not at the level where lexical-grammatical information is selected but at the level of selection of freestanding morphemes.     

Schrödinger logics

Schrödinger logics are logical systems in which the principle of identity is not true in general. The intuitive motivation for these logics is both Erwin Schrödinger's thesis (which has been advanced by other authors) that identity lacks sense for elementary particles of modern physics, and the way which physicists deal with this concept; normally, they understandidentity as meaningindistinguishability (agreemment with respect to attributes). Observing that these concepts are equivalent in classical logic and mathematics, which underly the usual physical theories, we present a higher-order logical system in which these concepts are systematically separated. A classical semantics for the system is presented and some philosophical related questions are mentioned. One of the main characteristics of our system is that Leibniz' Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles cannot be derived. This fact is in accordance with some authors who maintain that quantum mechanics violates this principle. Furthermore, our system may be viewed as a way of making sense some of Schrödinger's logical intuitions about the nature of elementary particles.The authors very much would like to thank the anonymous referee for his quite interesting suggestions, which contributed significantly to improve the paper.Presented byJan Zygmunt;