The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children's and adults' graded judgements of argument-structure overgeneralization errors

Participants (aged 5-6 yrs, 9-10 yrs and adults) rated (using a five-point scale) grammatical (intransitive) and overgeneralized (transitive causative)(1) uses of a high frequency, low frequency and novel intransitive verb from each of three semantic classes [Pinker, S. (1989a). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]: "directed motion" (fall, tumble), "going out of existence" (disappear, vanish) and "semivoluntary expression of emotion" (laugh, giggle). In support of Pinker's semantic verb class hypothesis, participants' preference for grammatical over overgeneralized uses of novel (and English) verbs increased between 5-6 yrs and 9-10 yrs, and was greatest for the latter class, which is associated with the lowest degree of direct external causation (the prototypical meaning of the transitive causative construction). In support of Braine and Brooks's [Braine, M.D.S., & Brooks, P.J. (1995). Verb argument strucure and the problem of avoiding an overgeneral grammar. In M. Tomasello & W. E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (pp. 352-376). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum] entrenchment hypothesis, all participants showed the greatest preference for grammatical over ungrammatical uses of high frequency verbs, with this preference smaller for low frequency verbs, and smaller again for novel verbs. We conclude that both the formation of semantic verb classes and entrenchment play a role in children's retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors.     

Development and initial validation of brief public domain RIASEC marker scales

Although commercially developed interest measures based on Holland’s RIASEC types are effectively used in a variety of applied settings, these measures have somewhat limited research utility due to their length and copyright restrictions placed by the test publishers. In the present study, two sets of 8-item RIASEC scales were developed using activity-based items selected from the 30-item RIASEC scales of the Interest Profiler, and two sets of 8-item RIASEC scales were developed using sets of 30 occupational job titles selected from the O∗NET database representing each Holland type. Responses to the items were obtained from three samples of college students with a total of 1024 female and 639 male participants. Results obtained in the initial development and validation process suggest that the sets of brief activity- and occupational-based RIASEC scales developed in the current study retain acceptable levels of reliability and convergent validity. The development of these brief public domain RIASEC interest measures addresses the copyright and length limitations of current scales and may be useful when conducting integrative research examining the inter-relations between Holland’s types and other individual differences measures.     

Validation of the Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS) in a Community Sample with Elevated Depressive Symptoms

The Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS) was previously developed to measure changes in avoidance and activation over the course of Behavioral Activation for depression. Initial scale development, definition of the factor structure and confirmation of the factor structure was performed with a non-depressed undergraduate sample. These prior results revealed four factors (Activation, Avoidance/Rumination, Work/School Impairment, and Social Impairment) with good factor structure, internal consistency, and test–retest reliability. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the psychometric properties, factor structure and construct validity of the BADS with a community sample with elevated depressive symptoms (N = 193). Results indicated good psychometric properties, additional evidence for construct validity of the total scale and subscales, and adequate fit of the data to the original factor structure. Normative data are also provided separately for depressed men and women, and for Caucasians and African Americans.     

中学生自我导向学习倾向性量表的结构和效度

本研究的目的是修订中学生自我导向学习倾向性量表,探讨它的结构和效度。研究参考台湾修订版对Guglielmino量表进行翻译,构成量表;结合内外控量表、学业成就归因量表和学业自我效能感量表,有效测试了1000名中学生,采用信度分析、因素分析和外部效标分析等方法考察量表的结构和效度。结果发现6个因子结构最优,α分别为0.861,0.791,0.809,0.630,0.888,0.781,各个条目的因子负荷介于0.30-0.69。6因子结构模型的各项拟合指标都在0.90以上,6因子与各个效标的相关为大多达到了显著性水平。研究的结论是修订的中学生自我导向学习倾向量表具有良好的6因子结构和信效度。     

中国大学生网络成瘾倾向问卷的初步研究

网络成瘾是一种对互联网络的心理依赖,包括网络关系成瘾、网络娱乐成瘾、信息搜集成瘾三种类型。被试为中国重庆三所高校的大学生675人。对其中随机抽取的390份数据进行探索性因素分析,得出初步的因素结构为：网络关系成瘾倾向包括了问题、依附、认知偏差和失控四种倾向;网络娱乐成瘾倾向和信息搜集成瘾倾向包括问题、依附和失控倾向。得到较好的问卷内部一致性系数、分半信度、内容效度和结构效度。对余下285份数据进行验证性因素分析,得到较好的模型拟合指数。相关关系检验发现三类网络成瘾倾向与使用频率都有显著相关．与使用时间都无显著相关。T检验发现女生在网络关系成瘾倾向的依附倾向得分显著高于男生,男生在网络娱乐成瘾倾向和信息搜集成瘾倾向的问题倾向得分显著高于女生。     

Is the relationship between self-esteem and physical aggression necessarily U-shaped?

Recent research by Perez, Vohs, and Joiner [Perez, M., Vohs, K. D., & Joiner, T. E., Jr. (2005). Discrepancies between self- and other-esteem as correlates of aggression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24, 607–620] has supported a U-shaped curvilinear relationship between self-esteem and physical aggression in a sample of 140 undergraduates. The present study attempted to replicate this effect with a sample size more than 12 times larger. Thus, 1781 undergraduates completed items from Rosenberg’s [Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University] Self-Esteem Scale and from the Physical Aggression subscale of Buss and Perry’s [Buss, A. H., & Perry, M. (1992). The Aggression Questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 452–459] Aggression Questionnaire. The results did not support a U-shaped relationship between self-esteem and physical aggression; if anything, they supported an inverted U-shaped one, such that the simple relationship between self-esteem and physical aggression became more negative and as self-esteem increased. Controlling for gender strengthened these effects, consistent with a pattern of mutual suppression between gender and self-esteem.     

Subject-Verb Agreement in Children and Adults: Serial or Hierarchical Processing?

Two processes, serial and hierarchical, are generally opposed to account for grammatical encoding in language production. In a developmental perspective, the question addressed here is whether the subject-verb agreement during writing is computed serially, once the words are linearly ordered in the sentence, or hierarchically, as soon as the number features are determined in a hierarchical frame. Adults and children from 3rd to 5th grades were requested to listen to sentences with built-in prepositional phrases or relative clauses and to transcribe them as quickly as possible. A serial hypothesis assumes that subject-verb agreement errors should be equally frequent with both preambles because each has the same length separating the subject head noun and the main verb. Conversely, according to a hierarchical view, errors should be more frequent with a prepositional phrase because the syntactic distance between the subject and the verb is greater than with a relative clause. The results revealed a main effect of the preamble manipulated in 5th graders and adults, but not in 3rd graders. These data were in favor of a hierarchical processing in older writers and a serial one in younger children. However, in 3rd grade, we assumed that the potential serial account was a result of the resource constraint on writing more than of a real serial processing of the agreement.     

Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: Convergent validity of subscale scores

This study examined the convergent validity of scores from the four subscales in the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale. The differential relation of each subscale to theoretically-related constructs was examined in a sample of 332 graduating university students. The results were as predicted. Career concern related highest to future time perspective; career control related highest to both locus of control and core self-evaluations as well as inversely to neuroticism; career curiosity related highest to proactive personality; and career confidence related highest to generalized self-efficacy. The only relation that was not as predicted involved self-esteem, which was predicted to relate highest to confidence. It related higher to career control (r = .42) and career concern (r = .41).     

Effects of syllable structure in aphasic errors: implications for a new model of speech production

Current models of word production assume that words are stored as linear sequences of phonemes which are structured into syllables only at the moment of production. This is because syllable structure is always recoverable from the sequence of phonemes. In contrast, we present theoretical and empirical evidence that syllable structure is lexically represented. Storing syllable structure would have the advantage of making representations more stable and resistant to damage. On the other hand, re-syllabifications affect only a minimal part of phonological representations and occur only in some languages and depending on speech register. Evidence for these claims comes from analyses of aphasic errors which not only respect phonotactic constraints, but also avoid transformations which move the syllabic structure of the word further away from the original structure, even when equating for segmental complexity. This is true across tasks, types of errors, and, crucially, types of patients. The same syllabic effects are shown by apraxic patients and by phonological patients who have more central difficulties in retrieving phonological representations. If syllable structure was only computed after phoneme retrieval, it would have no way to influence the errors of phonological patients. Our results have implications for psycholinguistic and computational models of language as well as for clinical and educational practices.     

Rhyming words and onset-rime constituents: an inquiry into structural breaking points and emergent boundaries in the syllable

Geudens and Sandra, in their 2003 study, investigated the special role of onsets and rimes in Dutch-speaking children's explicit phonological awareness. In the current study, we tapped implicit phonological knowledge using forced-choice similarity judgment (Experiment 1) and recall of syllable lists (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, Dutch-speaking prereaders judged rime-sharing pseudowords (/fas/-/mas/) to sound more similar than pseudowords sharing an equally sized nonrime unit (/fas/-/fak/). However, in a syllable recall task (/tepsilonf/, /ris/, /nal/), Dutch-speaking prereaders were as likely to produce recombination errors that broke up the rime (/tepsilons/) as to produce errors that retained the rime (/repsilonf/). Thus, a rime effect was obtained in a task that highlighted the phonological similarity between items sharing their rimes, but this effect disappeared in tasks without repetition of rime units. We conclude that children's sensitivity to rimes depends on similarity relations and might not reflect a fixed perceived structure of spoken syllables.