Using morphology when spelling in a shallow orthographic system: The case of Spanish

Deep orthographies usually represent morphology and phonology simultaneously; both resources are necessary for spelling. In shallow orthographies, such as Spanish, phonology would be enough to spell most words. However, morphological knowledge may also take part in spelling. This study examined how Spanish children in 1st (N = 148), 2nd (N = 155) and 3rd grade (N = 155) use morphological information to spell plural nouns and verbs. A word dictation task was designed. The task included high and low frequency plural nouns ending in “s” (morphological “-s” condition) and verbs in the 2nd person ending in “s” (morphological “-s” condition). A lexical condition including words with a final “s” which was not morphologically motivated was used as a control condition (lexical “-s” condition). The results show that, although Spanish spelling is influenced by phonology, morphological information is also used. These results are discussed in relation to current models of word spelling.     

心理研究中引入贝叶斯统计推断的必要性、应用思路与领域

本文从科学范式演变和概率统计推断特征分析出发,就贝叶斯统计推断引入心理学的必要性、怎么应用、在哪些领域应用集中进行了论述。首先在分析科学范式演进各阶段统计推断任务需要、经典的频率概率统计推断不足基础上,得出科学范式处于危机和革命阶段时需要对相关理论做可信度检验。然后,在介绍贝叶斯定理及其统计推断的基础上,进一步分析了贝叶斯推断能解决理论可信度的多种假设检验情景。最后本文还就贝叶斯统计推断在心理学理论争鸣与建构、心理技术产品开发与评估具体领域应用做了分析。     

Differences between probability and frequency judgments: The role of individual differences in working memory capacity

Most theories of probability judgment assume that judgments are made by comparing the strength of a focal hypothesis relative to the strength of alternative hypotheses. In contrast, research suggests that frequency judgments are assessed using a non-comparative process; the strength of the focal hypothesis is assessed without comparing it to the strength of alternative hypotheses. We tested this distinction between probability and frequency judgments using the alternative outcomes paradigm (Windschitl, Young, & Jenson, 2002). Assuming that judgments of probability (but not judgments of frequency) entail comparing the focal hypothesis with alternative hypotheses, we hypothesized that probability judgments would be sensitive to the distribution of the alternative hypotheses and would be negatively correlated with individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity. In contrast, frequency judgments should be unrelated to the distribution of the alternatives and uncorrelated with WM-capacity. Results supported the hypotheses.     

Effects of competitive reward distribution on auditing and competitive responding

This study allowed subjects to audit each other's responding during a series of competitive contests. Six pairs of female college students competed in 3-min contests in which the competitive response was a knob pull. A sum of money was divided using a proportional distribution or a 100%/0% reward distribution. In the proportional distribution, a subject's proportion of the sum was her proportion of the total number of responses. Also, in every contest either subject could make a response that would end the contest prematurely and give both subjects the same amount: a sum equal to 33% of the competitive total. Each subject could press either or both of two audit buttons that displayed her own and the other's response total for 10 s. Results replicated earlier findings in showing the superiority of the proportional distribution in total number of competitive responses made. No subject audited continuously, and only 1 audited most of the time. Most audits were interpersonal, including both own and other's scores. Auditing typically was more frequent in 100%/0% contests in which subjects were more likely to stop the contest when they were far behind. Winners were more likely to audit than were losers. Competitive response rates increased when the differences revealed by audits were small and decreased when they were large. Overall audit patterns were consistent with the view that feedback as "news" is more often sought when it can lead to improved outcomes.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in visual word recognition: evidence from expert vocabularies

Three experiments assessed the contributions of age-of-acquisition (AoA) and frequency to visual word recognition. Three databases were created from electronic journals in chemistry, psychology and geology in order to identify technical words that are extremely frequent in each discipline but acquired late in life. In Experiment 1, psychologists and chemists showed an advantage in lexical decision for late-acquired/high-frequency words (e.g. a psychologist responding to cognition) over late-acquired/low-frequency words (e.g. a chemist responding to cognition), revealing a frequency effect when words are perfectly matched. However, contrary to theories that exclude AoA as a factor, performance was similar for the late-acquired/high-frequency and early-acquired/low-frequency words (e.g. dragon) even though their cumulative frequencies differed by more than an order of magnitude. This last finding was replicated with geologists using geology words matched with early-acquired words in terms of concreteness (Experiment 2). Most interestingly, Experiment 3 yielded the same pattern of results in naming while controlling for imageability, a finding that is particularly problematic for parallel distributed processing models of reading.     

Who uses what and how often?: Personality predictors of multiplatform social media use among young adults

To understand who uses social media and how often they do so, we examined the personality traits that predict frequency of using a set of 10 different types of social media (e.g., social networks, blogs, virtual worlds). Using survey data collected from two large-scale samples of young adults (Exploratory Study 1 N = 1586, Confirmatory Study 2 N = 1432), we conducted direct replications of our findings to test whether the observed relationships between social media use and personality traits were reliable. Our replicated findings reveal that sex, age and extraversion are reliable predictors of several types of social media use (e.g., Facebook, Messaging Platforms, Online Forums), while other traits (e.g., agreeableness, Machiavellianism) showed unreliable associations. Our findings also reveal dimensions of multiplatform social media use that categorize the media ecologies of young adults and show significant associations with individual difference measures.     

Inflected words in production: Evidence for a morphologically rich lexicon

Current evidence suggests that there is a difference between the representations of multimorphemic words in production and perception. In perception, it is widely believed that both whole-word and root representations exist, while in production there is little evidence for whole-word representations. The present investigation demonstrates that whole-word and root frequency independently predict the duration of words suffixed with –ing, –ed, and –s, which reveals that both root and word representations play a role in the production of inflected English words. In a second line of analysis, we find that the number of inflected phonological neighbours independently predicts the duration of monomorphemic words, which extends these results and suggests that whole-word representations exist at the lexical level. Together these results suggest that both root and word representations of inflected words are stored in the lexicon and are relevant for the production of both monomorphemic and multimorphemic words.     

Usage-based account of the acquisition of liaison: evidence from sensitivity to the singular/plural orientation of nouns

This study investigates whether children’s production and recognition of obligatory liaison sequences in French depend on the singular/plural orientation of nouns. Certain nouns occur more frequently in the plural (e.g., arbre “tree”), whereas others are found more often in the singular (e.g., arc-en-ciel “rainbow”). In the input, children more frequently encounter these plural-oriented nouns after determiners that indicate plurality (e.g., les,des “the”, deux “two”) and that are often associated with a /z/ liaison (e.g., deux arbres [døzarbr] “two trees”). In Experiment 1, 122 children (3 years 2 months to 6 years 3 months of age) were asked to produce nominal phrases with either /z/ liaisons (i.e., in plural contexts such as deux ours [døzurs] “two bears”) or /n/ liaisons (i.e., in singular contexts such as un ours [nurs] “one bear”). We found correlations between the plural orientation of the nouns and (a) the probability that they will be preceded by an incorrect /z/ liaison in the singular context and (b) the probability that they will be preceded by a correct /z/ liaison in the plural context. This result was, however, restricted to the younger children. In Experiment 2, 20 children (5 years 5 months to 6 years 3 months of age) were asked to monitor target words in auditorily presented sentences. The results showed shorter reaction times for singular-oriented nouns when preceded by a singular determiner than when preceded by a plural determiner. Conversely, plural-oriented nouns were responded to faster when preceded by a plural determiner than when preceded by a singular determiner. Results are discussed within the framework of a two-stage model of liaison acquisition recently proposed by Chevrot, Chabanal, and Dugua (Journal of French Language Studies,17 [2007] 103-128) as well as by Chevrot, Dugua, and Fayol (Journal of Child Language [in press]).     

Regression away from the mean: Theory and examples

Using a standard repeated measures model with arbitrary true score distribution and normal error variables, we present some fundamental closed-form results which explicitly indicate the conditions under which regression effects towards (RTM) and away from the mean are expected. Specifically, we show that for skewed and bimodal distributions many or even most cases will show a regression effect that is in expectation away from the mean, or that is not just towards but actually beyond the mean. We illustrate our results in quantitative detail with typical examples from experimental and biometric applications, which exhibit a clear regression away from the mean (‘egression from the mean’) signature. We aim not to repeal cautionary advice against potential RTM effects, but to present a balanced view of regression effects, based on a clear identification of the conditions governing the form that regression effects take in repeated measures designs.