Lexicality, morphological structure, and semantic transparency in the processing of German ver-verbs: The complementarity of on-line and off-line evidence

Two types of experiments investigate the visual on-line and off-line processing of German ver-verbs (e.g., verbittern ‘to embitter'). In Experiments 1 and 2 (morphological priming), latency patterns revealed the existence of facilitation effects for the morphological conditions (BITTER-VERBITTERN and BITTERN-VERBITTERN) as compared to the neutral conditions (SAUBER-VERBITTERN and SÄUBERN-VERBITTERN). In Experiments 3 and 4 (rating tasks) participants had to judge whether the target (VERBITTERN) “comes from,” “contains a form of,” or “contains the meaning of” the root (BITTER) or the root+en substring (BITTERN). Taken together, these studies revealed the combined influence of the three factors of lexicality (real word status), morphological structure, and semantic transparency.     

Serving Culturally Diverse Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance and Their Families

Over the coming decades, we can expect that cultural diversity will abound within the U.S. population and the imagery of an American melting pot will long be discarded. One significance of this trend will be the imperative to account for cultural diversity in assessing the needs of children with serious emotional disturbance (SED), to ensure that assessments, diagnoses, and treatments are accurate, fair, and meaningful. To achieve that end, however, will first require that all persons in the fields of education, mental health, social services, and juvenile justice become fully prepared to support children with SED and their families, prepared to bring to the process a sophisticated understanding of the interplay between culture and social behaviors. Nothing less than that level of preparedness will enable practitioners to develop unbiased interventions that competently and sensitively weigh cultural influences and target the needs of diverse students with emotional and behavioral difficulties. In this paper, we present the need for culturally competent practitioners in the area of SED, ways in which service providers can increase their cultural knowledge, and strategies for more effective service with this population.     

Predictors of Family Functioning Within Alcoholic Families

This study assessed the effects of various predictor variables on dimensions of functioning within alcoholic families. Participants were 173 college student volunteers from alcoholic families who completed a measure of family functioning, demographic questions, and questions related to experiences in their families of origin. Child abuse, spousal violence, parental divorce, length of time living with an alcoholic parent, parental marital status, and parental availability and predictability significantly affected family functioning, whereas frequency of parental drinking did not. Results suggest that quality of parental interactions with children is more important for functioning in alcoholic families than frequency of parental drinking.     

A Multilevel Contextual Model of Family Conflict and Deviance

This paper presents a multiple-group multivariate hierarchical specification of family problem behaviors across ethnicities using structural equation modeling techniques which explicitly model the individual-level and family-level covariance matrices in familial problem behavior. Analyses were conducted across White and African American ethnic groups. The sample (N = 1,168; 647 White and 521 African Americans) comprised children and their parents from 392 families. In addition to relations between family conflict and deviant behaviors, covariates were included at each level of analysis: neighborhood desirability at the family (between) level, and age and gender at the individual (within) level. At the between level, neighborhood desirability influenced family conflict and family conflict influenced family levels of deviance. At the within level, conflict was significantly related to individual levels of deviance. Discussion focuses on the substantive results as well as the application of multilevel analyses to contextual influences of family problem behavior.     

Validity of the Short Form of the Parenting Stress Index for Fathers of Toddlers

We examined the psychometric properties of two scales of the parenting stress index-short form (PSI-SF) in a low-income sample of fathers of toddlers. The factor structure, reliability, and validity of the parental distress and parent–child dysfunctional interaction subscales were assessed for 696 fathers in a multi-site study of Early Head Start. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) compared the fit of the developer recommended two-factor scales with five-factor scales theoretically derived and supported with mothers. Our results suggested that two subscales from the PSI-SF were reliable and valid for this sample of racially diverse, low-income fathers of toddlers. However, these subscales capture multiple dimensions of parenting stress and results also supported the use of more narrowly defined aspects of parenting stress that included general distress, distress specifically related to parenting demands, problematic interactions of the father–toddler dyad, perceptions of the child, and parental perceptions of self as a parent. These unidimensional scales may prove useful in research and clinical activities by allowing researchers to elucidate the mechanisms through which stress impacts parenting and permitting clinicians information to develop more targeted interventions for young children and their families.     

Unemployment, Social Capital, and Subjective Well-Being

It has been shown in past research that unemployment has a large negative impact on subjective well-being of individuals. In this paper, I explore whether and to what extent people with more social capital are sheltered from the harmful effects of unemployment. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel 1984–2004, I find that social capital is an important predictor of well-being levels, but there is no evidence that it moderates the effect of unemployment on well-being. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed, and suggestions for future research given. This paper was written while I was visiting scholar at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, MI. I am grateful to the Institute for its hospitality, to Andrew Clark, Andrew Oswald and three anonymous referees for valuable comments, and to the German Socio Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, for providing the data.     

Grammatical Processing of Spoken Language in Child and Adult Language Learners

This article presents a selective overview of studies that have investigated auditory language processing in children and late second-language (L2) learners using online methods such as event-related potentials (ERPs), eye-movement monitoring, or the cross-modal priming paradigm. Two grammatical phenomena are examined in detail, children’s and adults’ processing of German plural inflections (Lück et al. Brain Res 1077:144–152, 2006; Hahne et al. J Cognitive Neurosci 18:121–134, 2006; Clahsen et al. J Child Language 34:601–622, 2007) and language learners’ processing of filler-gap dependencies in English (Felser C, Roberts L Second Language Res 23:9–36, 2007; Roberts et al. J Psycholinguist Res 36:175–188, 2007). The results from these studies reveal clear differences between native and nonnative processing in both domains of grammar, suggesting that nonnative listeners rely less on grammatical parsing routines during processing than either child or adult native listeners. We also argue that factors such as slower processing speed or cognitive resource limitations only provide a partial account of our findings.     

Family Homelessness: State or Trait?

Compares conceptualizations of homelessness as a temporary state through which people pass or a permanent trait that emanates from individual characteristics. Evidence from a longitudinal study of 564 homeless families in New York City and additional secondary sources supports the view that for families, homelessness is a temporary state that is resolved by the provision of subsidized housing. Even for single individuals with severe mental disturbances, housing is a key factor in ending homelessness, although here there is more evidence that social services also contribute. Policy implications are that governments should take a more active role in reducing homelessness by providing access to subsidized housing.     

Family Therapy with English Caribbean Immigrant Families in the United States: Issues of Emigration, Immigration, Culture, and Race

Many English Caribbean families in the United States are referred for therapy because of difficulties related to their adaptation to a new country/culture. This paper focuses on the intra-familial, and the family-larger system transitional/adjustment difficulties experienced by these families and presents issues specific to therapy with them. Effective therapy with English Caribbean families and their subsystems requires that therapists communicate to these families an understanding of their concerns, be knowledgeable about heterogeneity in cultural values and traditions, and create a therapeutic atmosphere in which families can feel valued and respected. Recommendations for therapists are presented and discussed.     

Style in Philosophy: Parts II and III

The essential task of the philosophy of style is to uncover the irreducibility of the singular to any kind of universal, static structure or metalinguistic code. Style is not only a surplus element that exceeds propositional meaning, but also a clue of the ineradicable contingency of "intersubjective"-communicational relationships. The receiver must respect the unique individuality of the sender's style as what demonstrates the cognitive inexhaustibility of the world. Consequently, philosophy can no longer regard literature as foreign and incorrigible by asserting a radical difference of genre and thereby reserving truth exclusively for itself. Rather, I go on to argue, the difference is merely one of quantity . The picture of the world drawn by literature is simply fuller and richer than any comparatively monochromatic system of philosophical propositions. However, within the history of philosophy, there have been instances when the philosophical import of literature has been accorded its due. One example is the dialogical approach of early German Romanticism. The other example is a writer most frequently considered the purest thinker of philosophical sense and meaning – namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein. I conclude by reading Wittgenstein as a philosopher concerned, above all, with the ineffable that style reveals.