连绵词语音类似的启动效应

研究采用快速启动范型考察了视觉连绵词加工中语音的自动激活.两个实验发现,无论是首字同音还是尾字同音启动都可以促进对连绵词的命名反应,且基本不受目标词熟悉性(词频高低)及真假词的影响.可以推断,至少在连绵词--这种单词素词的词汇通达中存在语音的自动激活,这种语音的激活可以说是前词的装配与词水平上的改变.     

序列位置内隐学习产生机制的实验研究

内隐学习是当今认知和学习领域继内隐记忆之后又一重要的研究课题。该研究利用序列反应时研究程式,通过两个实验,对序列位置内隐学习产生的机制进行了探讨。结果表明：（１）在序列反应时任务程式中,随着反应一刺激间隔的延长,序列位置内隐学习的学习量逐渐减少;（２）异形同模式迁移组和异形异模式迁移组被试间内隐学习量无显著差异,被试未能内隐地习得抽象的序列模式。说明序列位置内隐学习产生的基础是水平联结,在该实验条件下没有发现垂直联结存在的证据。     

医患风险沟通：角色与信息匹配的视角

医患沟通失真常引发高误诊率、医患冲突。现有风险具体观和抽象观各自提出风险沟通模型,但存在诸多矛盾或不一致。通过引入角色与信息匹配视角,从建构水平理论提出事件体验(事件吸引力)和概率体验(概率敏感性)解释,有助于调和矛盾并提出建议：为医生匹配抽象风险信息、患者匹配具体风险信息,能减少沟通失真,提高风险沟通质量。未来需进一步深究个体差异对匹配效应的影响、探索匹配效应的生态效度、开发科学有效的沟通模式。     

Whose reading matters? Rereading Exodus 1 in the context of African (South African) women

The narrative of the interaction of African (South African) women and the Bible is first situated within the framework of the folktale of the Lion and the Rabbit. The theme of the multiplication of (male) babies as featured in Exodus 1 is then re-read through the hermeneutical lenses of African (South African) women's experiences. If Exodus 1 is read in family-oriented cultures like that of ancient Israel and Africa, what insights may be gleaned? Which reading(s) may emerge? Will the resultant readings matter especially to African (South) African women? The preceding questions, will be engaged with in this essay.     

Dialogue and Dominance in Couple Therapy for Depression: Exploring Therapists’ Responses in Creating Collaborative Moments

Previous investigations have found specific communication patterns in couples dealing with depression, specifically when depression concurs with conjugal conflicts. The presence of these patterns can reflect couples’ difficulties in engaging in collaborative communication during their sessions, posing a real challenge for therapists. This exploratory study uses a dialogical approach to examine issues of dominance and type of dialogue in two couples who differed in terms of their levels of dyadic adjustment. The therapists’ reactions were explored in order to detect the kinds of responses that were most effective at engendering a collaborative attitude in therapy sessions. The method used to analyze the dialogue was Dialogical Investigations of Happenings of Change (DIHC). Results on dominance indicated that the degree of quantitative and semantic dominance displayed by a different member of the couple in each case was illustrative of their relational dynamics, while in both cases interactional dominance was exercised by the therapists. Results on dialogue revealed that dialogic dialogue might help to coconstruct new shared meanings of depression. The findings indicated that certain responses by therapists as part of the dialogue could be useful in bringing about a reduction in hostility between the members of a couple, provided that the responses are maintained over the course of the session. Some research and clinical implications that emerge from the results are discussed.     

Adolescent Gender and Age Differences in Responsiveness to Functional Family Therapy

The current study contributes to a sparse literature on moderators of Functional Family Therapy (FFT) by examining whether responsiveness to FFT, measured by a broad range of outcomes, varies by adolescent gender, age, and their interaction. This study was informed by 687 families (n, adolescents = 581; n, caregivers = 933) and utilized a pre–post comparison design. Fixed-effects regressions with gender, age, and their interaction included as explanatory variables were conducted to calculate the average change in youth mental health, callous–unemotional traits, academic outcomes, substance use, and family functioning. Moderation analyses revealed that according to parent report, girls had significantly greater improvements in peer problems and family functioning, and boys benefited more in increased liking of school. There were differential effects by age, such that older youth had less beneficial mental health outcomes and a smaller decrease in frequency of hash use. The gender by age interaction was significant for adolescents’ report of mental health and family functioning outcomes, which suggests that girls benefit from FFT less than boys during early adolescence, but benefit more than boys in late adolescence. This finding adds to literature which has evidenced that family functioning is particularly important for girls by suggesting that FFT is important for improving older girls’ mental health and family functioning in particular. The study’s results expand the examination of outcomes of FFT to include academic outcomes, and provide insight into key factors that should be considered in addressing adolescent behavioral problems and family functioning.     

Eighteen-month-olds integrate verbal cues into their action processing: Evidence from ERPs and mu power

Behavioral research has shown that infants use both behavioral cues and verbal cues when processing the goals of others’ actions. For instance, 18-month-olds selectively imitate an observed goal-directed action depending on its (in)congruence with a model’s previous verbal announcement of a desired action goal. This EEG-study analyzed the electrophysiological underpinnings of these behavioral findings on the two functional levels of conceptual action processing and motor activation. Mid-latency mean negative ERP amplitude and mu-frequency band power were analyzed while 18-month-olds (N = 38) watched videos of an adult who performed one out of two potential actions on a novel object. In a within-subjects design, the action demonstration was preceded by either a congruent or an incongruent verbally announced action goal (e.g., “up” or “down” and upward movement). Overall, ERP negativity did not differ between conditions, but a closer inspection revealed that in two subgroups, about half of the infants showed a broadly distributed increased mid-latency ERP negativity (indicating enhanced conceptual action processing) for either the congruent or the incongruent stimuli, respectively. As expected, mu power at sensorimotor sites was reduced (indicating enhanced motor activation) for congruent relative to incongruent stimuli in the entire sample. Both EEG correlates were related to infants’ language skills. Hence, 18-month-olds integrate action-goal-related verbal cues into their processing of others’ actions, at the functional levels of both conceptual processing and motor activation. Further, cue integration when inferring others’ action goals is related to infants’ language proficiency.     

The role of TPH2 variant rs4570625 in shaping infant attention to social signals

TPH2, the rate-limiting enzyme in the synthesis of serotonin, has been connected to several psychiatric outcomes. Its allelic variant, rs4570625, has been found to relate to individual differences in cognitive and emotion regulation during infancy with T-carriers of rs4570625 showing a relatively heightened attention bias for fearful faces. A significant gene-environment interaction was also reported with the T-carriers of mothers with depressive symptoms showing the highest fear bias.We investigated these associations in a sample of 8-month old infants (N = 330), whose mothers were prescreened for low/high levels of prenatal depressive and/or anxiety symptoms. Attention disengagement from emotional faces (neutral, happy, fearful, and phase-scrambled control faces) to distractors was assessed with eye tracking and an overlap paradigm. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed at several time points during pregnancy and postpartum. The mean levels of symptoms at six months postpartum and the trajectories of symptoms from early pregnancy until six months postpartum were used in the analyses (N = 274).No main effect of the rs4570625 genotype on attention disengagement was found. The difference in fear bias between the genotypes was significant but in an opposite direction compared to a previous study. The results regarding the interaction of the genotype and maternal depression were not in accordance with the previous studies.These results show inconsistencies in the effects of the rs4570625 genotype on attention biases in separate samples of infants from the same population with only slight differences in age.