Conceptual priming for realistic auditory scenes and for auditory words

Two experiments were conducted using both behavioral and Event-Related brain Potentials methods to examine conceptual priming effects for realistic auditory scenes and for auditory words. Prime and target sounds were presented in four stimulus combinations: Sound–Sound, Word–Sound, Sound–Word and Word–Word. Within each combination, targets were conceptually related to the prime, unrelated or ambiguous. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to judge whether the primes and targets fit together (explicit task) and in Experiment 2 they had to decide whether the target was typical or ambiguous (implicit task). In both experiments and in the four stimulus combinations, reaction times and/or error rates were longer/higher and the N400 component was larger to ambiguous targets than to conceptually related targets, thereby pointing to a common conceptual system for processing auditory scenes and linguistic stimuli in both explicit and implicit tasks. However, fine-grained analyses also revealed some differences between experiments and conditions in scalp topography and duration of the priming effects possibly reflecting differences in the integration of perceptual and cognitive attributes of linguistic and nonlinguistic sounds. These results have clear implications for the building-up of virtual environments that need to convey meaning without words.     

SC-IAT范式下大学生感恩的内隐性

目的：研究探讨了单类内隐联想测验（SC-IAT）测量大学生感恩的可行性,并分析内隐感恩与外显感恩的关系。方法：采用inquisit3.0.2.0编制SC-IAT感恩测量程序,测量了大学生的内隐感恩;采用青少年感恩量表（AGS）测量了大学生的外显感恩,并运用相关技术分析两者之间的关系。结果：采用SC-IAT测量大学生感恩的内隐效应显著,内隐感恩不存在性别、生源地和独生与否等人口统计学指标上的显著差异,大学生的内隐感恩与外显感恩之间相关不显著。结论：（1）大学生整体上存在着积极的内隐感恩;（2）内隐感恩与外显感恩相互分离,是两个不同的建构。     

大学生习惯性负性自我思维与自尊的相关研究

采用实验法和测验法,让186名大学生完成内隐联想测验、SES量表和习惯性负性自我思维量表,探讨了中国文化背景下大学生习惯性负性自我思维与自尊的关系。结果发现:1)大学生有强烈的内隐自尊;2)内隐、外显自尊是相对独立的;3)习惯性负性自我思维存在显著性别差异;内隐、外显自尊及ZIAT-ZSES性别差异不显著;4)男大学生习惯性负性自我思维与外显自尊存在显著负相关,女大学生相关不显著;习惯性负性自我思维与内隐自尊及ZIAT-ZSES相关不显著。     

Pilgrimage today: the meaning-making potential of ritual

Pilgrimage on the Road to Santiago is flourishing, even in late modern times characterised by detraditionalisation, individualism and pluralism. A large number of these pilgrims is either not explicitly religious at all, or only moderately religious. Why, then, do they submit to this ancient Christian ritual, and what are the psychological consequences? After a short introduction to the study of implicit religiosity and different perspectives on rituals from the past to today, current research on pilgrimage is reviewed and pilgrimage to Santiago is analysed as a personal ritual from a perspective of implicit religiosity. In the psychological theory of implicit religiosity, rituals are identified as one of three universal religious structures (along with myths and experiences of transcending) with strong meaning-making potential. Personal rituals are defined as formalised patterns of action, pointing beyond the actual event to a particular meaning imbued by the actor. Data from 85 pilgrims on the Road to Santiago are presented. Motives for peregrination, base-line sources of meaning, experienced meaningfulness and crises of meaning are reported, as well as changes in sources of meaning, meaningfulness and crises of meaning immediately after the pilgrimage and four months later. The majority of pilgrims (about two third) is motivated by a “need for clarification.” Multidimensional scaling shows that pilgrims either travel for explicitly religious reasons (conviction) or in search of clarification (quest); they either draw motivation from vertical transcendence (religiosity or spirituality) or from apparently purely secular reasons, such as athletic challenge. Religious and spiritual motives are mostly reported by highly religious individuals. A need for clarification is primarily stated by individuals who suffer from a crisis of meaning. Crises of meaning are significantly more frequent among pilgrims before the journey than in the general population. For the entire sample of pilgrims, the meaning-making potential of pilgrimage is supported by the data. Directly after the journey, as well as four months later, pilgrims experience life as significantly more meaningful, and crises of meaning are overcome. Pilgrims also report a strengthened commitment to vertical selftranscendence, horizontal selftranscendence and selfactualisation. These changes occur independently of the motivation for pilgrimage.     

Age-Related Influences on Repetition Priming in the Verb Generation Task: Examining the Role of Response Competition

ABSTRACT

The identification-production framework suggests that aging is associated with a decline in production forms of repetition priming, particularly under test conditions that maximize response competition. The present study examined this prediction by testing young and healthy older adults in a single-encoding version of the verb generation task in which some items had one dominant verb response (low competition) or had no such dominant response (high competition). Further analyses examined whether priming and error rates were related to performance on neuropsychological tests purported to measure frontal lobe functioning. Priming was invariant across age groups and was not related to frontal lobe status in older adults, but frontal lobe status did predict task performance: low-frontal older adults made more errors than high-frontal older adults, particularly for high-competition items and items with high association strength. These results are not consistent with the identification-production framework, but are consistent with the conclusions that (a) aging is associated with invariance in the processes that support repetition priming in the verb generation task and (b) frontal lobe status in aging is related to verb generation performance.     

Peer Aggression by Secondary School Learners in a South African School Setting: Effects of Race,Ethnicity, and Gender

This study reports the experience of aggression by secondary school learners attending a South African school. There were 14 participants ranging in age from 16 to 19 years (Gender: 6 young women and 8 young men; Ethnicity: 7 Black; 3 Coloured; 2 Indian and 2 White). Data were collected using open ended interviews and analysed using Tesch's (1990) thematic panning method. The findings suggest these learners have little understanding or appreciation of diversity in their multicultural schools. Consequently, they experience negative interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers. The accompanying aggression they experience and display has racial and gender overtones that are shaped by the violence in their communities.     

Honoring the duallium: disability,environmental ethics,and the implicit religion of gardening

In recent years, the pilgrimage shrine of La Sainte-Baume has attracted an increasing number of non-Catholic pilgrims influenced by the ‘New Age’ and the Neopagan movement. These pilgrims consider Mary Magdalene as a sort of female counterpart of Jesus and the mountain of La Sainte-Baume, where according to a Christian legend she spent the last part of her life, as a ‘power place’ charged with ‘healing energy’. Based on 3 years of field work among Mary Magdalene pilgrims and drawing on Tanya Luhrmann's idea of ‘interpretive drift’ (1989), the essay describes the way in which these pilgrims gradually shift from their previous Christian background towards what they generally identify as ‘spirituality’. The pilgrims reconceptualise La Sainte-Baume and its saint, and make their own a shrine they feel was misappropriated and unjustly monopolised by the ‘Church’.     

Learning to read and write in Spanish: phonology in addition to which other processes? / Aprendiendo a leer y escribir en español: además de la fonología, ¿qué otros procesos?

Abstract

This study reviews some of the most relevant cognitive skills related to literacy acquisition in Spanish. Beyond the well-known influence of phonological segmental skills, it highlights the growing importance of other cognitive skills needed for acquisition, whether explicit or implicit in nature, to which too little attention has been devoted, including suprasegmental or prosodic skills, morphological skills and the implicit learning of linguistic regularities. It appears that all these skills constitute relevant factors that should be taken into account in order to understand typical as well as atypical literacy development.     

Women's Mental Health Issues

No abstract available for this article.