Latino Religious Affiliation and Ethnic Identity

Despite the pervasiveness of Catholicism among Latinos, studies reveal an increasing shift toward Protestantism. Examining the relationship between religion and ethnicity, we explore homeland language use as a core ethnic marker using a survey from the Pew Hispanic Center. Results reveal that Catholic Latinos are significantly more likely to use Spanish at home, even after controlling for other key variables. In response, we posit that Latino Catholicism and Protestantism entail significantly different religiosities in both home and host countries that impact Latino ethnic identification and its markers such as language use. Catholicism displays a higher level of inculturation in the sending country and greater overt institutional acceptance of ethnic culture in host countries. Protestantism in Latin America breaks with localized religiosity and traditions, and U.S. Protestant congregations may de‐emphasize ethnic culture in their theologies and worship. Hence, Latino Catholicism acts as a bridge to homelands and reinforces ethnic salience, thereby supporting continued Spanish use at home. In contrast, Protestants embrace a reorienting religiosity that often presides over ethnic identification, decreasing the salience of homeland cultural markers.     

The Usual and the Unusual: Solving Remote Associates Test Tasks Using Simple Statistical Natural Language Processing Based on Language Use

In this study we show how complex creative relations can arise from fairly frequent semantic relations observed in everyday language. By doing this, we reflect on some key cognitive aspects of linguistic and general creativity. In our experimentation, we automated the process of solving a battery of Remote Associates Test tasks. By applying Statistical Natural Language Processing techniques to a large web‐based corpus, we perform a frequency and collocation analysis of the test items. Results show that 37% of the 68 tasks were automatically solved, whereas human accuracy reached 43%. Our method outperformed humans in the tasks rated as difficult: 38% and 32%, respectively. Highly relevant is that the novel and adequate relations established in order to solve the RAT were not previously present in the corpus. The frequency based approach pervades all stages of our method: during the divergent stage, highly frequent collocations are listed, while the convergent stage starts by matching each task's triads output, shrinking that list, and finalizing it by choosing the least frequent, therefore more informative and often correct, result. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model in overcoming functional fixedness and understanding cognitive salience in the creative process.     

The Interaction of Language‐Specific and Universal Factors During the Acquisition of Morphophonemic Alternations With Exceptions

Using the artificial language paradigm, we studied the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations with exceptions by 160 German adult learners. We tested the acquisition of two types of alternations in two regularity conditions while additionally varying length of training. In the first alternation, a vowel harmony, backness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix. This process is grounded in substance (phonetic motivation), and this universal phonetic factor bolsters learning a generalization. In the second alternation, tenseness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix vowel. This process is not based in substance, but it reflects a phonotactic property of German and our participants benefit from this language‐specific factor. We found that learners use both cues, while substantive bias surfaces mainly in the most unstable situation. We show that language‐specific and universal factors interact in learning.     

THE HUMAN BEING SHAPING AND TRANSCENDING ITSELF: WRITTEN LANGUAGE,BRAIN, AND CULTURE

Recent theological anthropology emphasizes a dynamic and integral understanding of the human being, which is also related to Karl Rahner's idea of active self‐transcendence and to the imago Dei doctrine. The recent neuroscientific discovery of the “visual word form area” for reading, regarded in light of the concept of cultural neural reuse, will produce fresh implications for the interrelation of brain biology and human culture. The theological and neuroscientific parts are shown in their mutual connections thus articulating the notion that human beings shape and transcend themselves both at the biological and at the cultural level. This will have relevant implications for the timely topic of human uniqueness in science and theology, and in proposing a new research perspective in which theology may consider culture along with its biological import, but not necessarily in strictly evolutionary terms alone.     

That’s not funny: Instrument validation of the concern for political correctness scale

The transformation of common language toward inclusion of all people is the mechanism by which many aim to alter attitudes and beliefs that stand in the way of more meaningful social change. The term for this motivated concern for language is “political correctness” or “PC.” The current project seeks to introduce a new tool for investigations into this phenomenon, the concern for political correctness (CPC) scale. CPC assesses individual differences in concern for politically correct speech. Exploratory and confirmatory structural equation modeling showed consistent factor structure of the two subscales; an emotion subscale measuring negative emotional response to hearing politically incorrect language, and an activism subscale measuring a willingness to correct others who use politically incorrect language. Correlational analyses suggested that concern for political correctness is associated with more liberal beliefs and ideologies and less right-wing authoritarianism. The emotion subscale was also found to be associated with lower emotional well-being and the activism subscale with more frequent arguments. Laboratory-based criterion validation studies indicated that the two subscales predicted negative reactions to politically incorrect humor.     

Validity Issues in Assessing Linguistic Minorities

Throughout the world, tests are administered to some examinees who are not fully proficient in the language in which they are being tested. It has long been acknowledged that proficiency in the language in which a test is administered often affects examinees’ performance on a test. Depending on the context and intended uses for a particular assessment, linguistic proficiency may be relevant to the tested construct and subsequent interpretations, or may be a source of construct-irrelevant variance that undermines accurate interpretation of the test performance of linguistic minorities who are not proficient in the language of the assessment. In this article, we highlight key validity issues to be considered when testing linguistic minorities, regardless of whether language is central or construct-irrelevant. We discuss examples of the different types of studies test users and developers could conduct to evaluate the validity of scores of linguistic minorities. These issues span test development and validation activities. We conclude with a list of critical factors to consider in test development and evaluation whenever linguistic minorities are tested.     

Handwriting or Typewriting? The Influence of Pen- or Keyboard-Based Writing Training on Reading and Writing Performance in Preschool Children

Digital writing devices associated with the use of computers, tablet PCs, or mobile phones are increasingly replacing writing by hand. It is, however, controversially discussed how writing modes influence reading and writing performance in children at the start of literacy. On the one hand, the easiness of typing on digital devices may accelerate reading and writing in young children, who have less developed sensory-motor skills. On the other hand, the meaningful coupling between action and perception during handwriting, which establishes sensory-motor memory traces, could facilitate written language acquisition. In order to decide between these theoretical alternatives, for the present study, we developed an intense training program for preschool children attending the German kindergarten with 16 training sessions. Using closely matched letter learning games, eight letters of the German alphabet were trained either by handwriting with a pen on a sheet of paper or by typing on a computer keyboard. Letter recognition, naming, and writing performance as well as word reading and writing performance were assessed. Results did not indicate a superiority of typing training over handwriting training in any of these tasks. In contrast, handwriting training was superior to typing training in word writing, and, as a tendency, in word reading. The results of our study, therefore, support theories of action-perception coupling assuming a facilitatory influence of sensory-motor representations established during handwriting on reading and writing.     

On the motivations for Merleau-Ponty’s ontological research

This paper attempts to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s later work by tracing a hitherto overlooked set of concerns that were of key consequence for the formulation of his ontological research. I argue that his ontology can be understood as a response to a set of problems originating in reflections on the intersubjective use of language in dialogue, undertaken in the early 1950s. His study of dialogue disclosed a structure of meaning-formation and pointed towards a theory of truth (both recurring ontological topics) that post-Phenomenology premises could not account for. A study of dialogue shows that speakers’ positions are interchangeable, that speaking subjects are active and passive in varying degrees, and that the intentional roles of subjects and objects are liable to shift or ‘transgress’ themselves. These observations anticipate the concepts of ‘reversibility’ and ‘narcissism’, his later view of activity and passivity, and his later view of intentionality, and sharpened the need to adopt an intersubjective focus in ontological research.