Gender differences on the semantic flanker task using transposed-letter target words

Previous research has demonstrated that men and women are differentially influenced by irrelevant distractors. Other lines of evidence have suggested that increasing the perceptual load of a task reduces distractor interference for participants generally. The present study examined these effects using a semantic version of the flanker task; participants made speeded responses to category target words that were flanked by irrelevant distractors. The response mapping between the target and flanker words was either congruent (mapped to the same motor response) or incongruent (target word mapped to a different motor response to that of the flankers). Target words were presented either normally (e.g., table: low perceptual load) or with the beginning letters transposed (e.g., atble: high perceptual load). The results revealed that women showed a larger congruency effect than men but this was not due to greater interference on incongruent trials. While men and women made faster responses to normal than to transposed target words, this was similar in magnitude. The magnitude of the flanker effect for normal and transposed target words was significantly correlated in men but not in women. These findings are consistent with the view that women may process target words to a deeper level than men and therefore may engage in more conflict monitoring then men.     

小学二年级学生的字形预视效应

字形信息在汉语阅读中具有重要作用。小学二年级是儿童阅读流畅性发展的重要时期,而对注视点右侧字词的预加工及所获得的预视效应是影响流畅阅读的重要因素。本研究考察了字形信息在二年级学生预加工中的作用。实验1采用副中央凹启动范式发现,在词汇识别任务中,二年级学生在100ms副中央凹启动时间下,表现出字形预视效应。实验2采用边界范式发现,在句子默读任务中,二年级学生能够获取副中央凹处的字形信息。结果表明,二年级学生在阅读中能够使用副中央凹处的字形信息,促进随后中央凹处的词汇加工。     

A mixed effects negative binomial analysis of road mortality determinants in Sub-Saharan African countries

This paper uses aggregate data for a panel of 23 Sub-Saharan African countries to explore the potential predictors of road traffic fatalities between 2001 and 2010. In addition to the Gross Domestic Product per capita, the set of covariates includes some demographic, safe driving behavior, health and infrastructure-related variables. Estimations from a mixed effects negative binomial regression suggest that the fraction of populations aged between 15 and 64 years, the size of the road network and seat belt laws significantly increase fatalities. However, populations of age 65 and above, hospital beds and physicians’ densities, and road audits significantly decrease these fatalities. Moreover, traffic fatalities are found to increase with the Gross Domestic Product per capita. The economic implications of this finding is not to lower the economic growth but to design policies and technologies that could prevent African countries from experiencing the same road tragedy observed in industrialized countries during their development process.     

Cruel intentions on television and in real life: can viewing indirect aggression increase viewers' subsequent indirect aggression?

Numerous studies have shown that viewing violence in the media can influence an individual's subsequent aggression, but none have examined the effect of viewing indirect aggression. This study examines the immediate effect of viewing indirect and direct aggression on subsequent indirect aggression among 199 children ages 11 to 14 years. They were shown an indirect, direct, or no-aggression video and their subsequent indirect aggression was measured by negative evaluation of a confederate and responses to a vignette. Participants viewing indirect or direct aggression gave a more negative evaluation of and less money to a confederate than participants viewing no-aggression. Participants viewing indirect aggression gave less money to the confederate than those viewing direct aggression. Participants viewing indirect aggression gave more indirectly aggressive responses to an ambiguous situation and participants viewing direct aggression gave more directly aggressive responses. This study provides the first evidence that viewing indirect aggression in the media can have an immediate impact on subsequent aggression.     

Generalized multilevel structural equation modeling

A unifying framework for generalized multilevel structural equation modeling is introduced. The models in the framework, called generalized linear latent and mixed models (GLLAMM), combine features of generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) and structural equation models (SEM) and consist of a response model and a structural model for the latent variables. The response model generalizes GLMMs to incorporate factor structures in addition to random intercepts and coefficients. As in GLMMs, the data can have an arbitrary number of levels and can be highly unbalanced with different numbers of lower-level units in the higher-level units and missing data. A wide range of response processes can be modeled including ordered and unordered categorical responses, counts, and responses of mixed types. The structural model is similar to the structural part of a SEM except that it may include latent and observed variables varying at different levels. For example, unit-level latent variables (factors or random coefficients) can be regressed on cluster-level latent variables. Special cases of this framework are explored and data from the British Social Attitudes Survey are used for illustration. Maximum likelihood estimation and empirical Bayes latent score prediction within the GLLAMM framework can be performed using adaptive quadrature in gllamm, a freely available program running in Stata.gllamm can be downloaded from http://www.gllamm.org. The paper was written while Sophia Rabe-Hesketh was employed at and Anders Skrondal was visiting the Department of Biostatistics and Computing, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.     

Regularity re-revisited: modality matters

The issue of regular-irregular past tense formation was examined in a cross-modal lexical decision task in Modern Greek, a language where the orthographic and phonological overlap between present and past tense stems is the same for both regular and irregular verbs. The experiment described here is a follow-up study of previous visual lexical decision experiments (Tsapkini, Kehayia, & Harema, 2002) that also addressed the regular-irregular distinction in Greek. In the present experiment, we investigated the effect of input modality in lexical processing and compared different types of regular and irregular verbs. In contrast to our previous intra-modal (visual-visual) priming experiments, in this cross-modal (auditory-visual) priming study, we found that regular verbs with an orthographically salient morphemic aspectual marker elicited the same facilitation as those without an orthographically salient marker. However, irregular verbs did not exhibit a different priming pattern with respect to modality. We interpret these results in the framework of a two-level lexical processing approach with modality-specific access representations at a surface level and modality-independent morphemic representations at a deeper level.     

Is Neighborhood Context Differently Related to Externalizing Problems and Delinquency for Girls Compared with Boys?

Although a number of reviews of gender differences in conduct problems and delinquency exist, this paper fills a gap in reviewing neighborhood influences on gender differences in conduct problems and delinquency. These influences are known to be important for boys in childhood and adolescence, but cannot be assumed to be influential in the same manner for girls. The paper starts with several conceptualizations of the association between gender, neighborhoods and juvenile delinquency. It then addresses 4 key questions. Is residing in a disadvantaged neighborhood associated with problem behavior in girls? Are neighborhood effects independent of girls' age? Are girls in disadvantaged neighborhoods exposed to more risk factors than girls in advantaged neighborhoods? Can mediating risk factors explain gender differences in neighborhood effects on children's and adolescents' conduct problems and delinquent behavior? Answers to these questions are important to steer research and elucidate aspects of interventions that can be optimized for girls.     

Event memory and misinformation effects in a gorilla (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Gorilla gorilla gorilla</Emphasis>)

Event memory and misinformation effects were examined in an adult male gorilla ( Gorilla gorilla gorilla). The gorilla witnessed a series of unique events, involving a familiar person engaging in a novel behavior (experiment 1), a novel person engaging in a novel behavior (experiment 2), or the presentation of a novel object (experiment 3). Following a 5- to 10-min retention interval, a tester gave the gorilla three photographs mounted on wooden cards: a photograph depicting the correct person or object and two distractor photographs drawn from the same class. The gorilla responded by returning a photograph. If correct, he was reinforced with food. Across three experiments, the gorilla performed significantly above chance at recognizing the target photograph. In experiment 4, the gorilla showed at-chance performance when the event was followed by misinformation (a class-consistent, but incorrect photograph), but significantly above-chance performance when no misinformation occurred (either correct photograph or no photograph). Although the familiarity can account for these data, they are also consistent with an episodic-memory interpretation.