Is Literary Arabic a Second Language for Native Arab Speakers?: Evidence from Semantic Priming Study

The mother tongue of the absolute majority of native Arabic speakers is Spoken Arabic (SA), which is a local dialect that does not have a written form. For reading and writing, as well as for formal communication Literary Arabic (LA) is used. For the literate Arabs, these two languages are extensively inter-twined in every day life. Consequently, it is possible that, despite the difference between them, LA is not processed like a regular second language by the cognitive system of the native Arabic speakers but rather as an enhancement of the spoken lexicon. In the present study we examined this possibility comparing semantic priming effects in auditory lexical decision within SA (L1), with the effects found across languages with LA or in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew is doubtlessly a second language for native Arabic speakers. In this study we have manipulated semantic priming. In Experiment 1 the targets were in Spoken Arabic and the primes in any of the three languages. The semantic priming effect was twice as large within L1 as between languages and there was no difference between Hebrew and LA. In Experiment 2, all primes were in SA whereas the targets were in any of the three languages. The priming effects in that experiment were doubled relative to the previous experiment, but the inter-language relationships were the same. For both language pairings, the semantic priming was larger when the primes were presented in SA (and the targets in either Hebrew or LA) than when the primes were presented in one of the second languages and the targets in SA. The conclusion is that, despite the intensive daily use adult native Arabic speakers make of SA and LA, and despite their shared origin, the two languages retain their status as first and second languages in the cognitive system.     

Types of Institutions as Patterns of Regulated Behaviour

Nowadays, neo-institutionalistic approaches are prominent in economics, political science, the science of public administration and sociology. There is a general complaint about the vagueness of the concept of institutions and the apparent disparity of phenomena falling under it. This article shows how institutional legal theory provides a typology of institutions as sets of rules and corresponding patterns of regulated behaviour that can help to avert much confusion. The typologys usefulness is tested by applying it to an array of private governance structures distinguished by transaction cost economics.The author would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.See for an extensive account of these two developments K. van Kersbergen and F. van Waarden, Shifts in Governance: Problems of Legitimacy and Accountability. Paper on the theme Shifts in Governance as part of the Strategic Plan 2002--2005 of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) (The Hague: NWO, 2001).     

Attachment-dissociation network: some thoughts about a modern complex theory

The paper revises the complex theory in the light of modern infant research, neurosciences and object relation theory. The author takes up Jean Knox's idea to understand complexes as analogies to the internal working models of attachment theory. The author proposes to understand complexes as dissociated sub-networks out of the network structure of the psyche; these sub-networks contain the internal working models, the characteristic affects and unconscious expectation phantasies. With this network model one can try to understand severe defensive organizations in some patients as a pathological organization of different complexes. This is illustrated by a clinical example.     

Cognitive capacities for behavioural flexibility in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): the effect of snare injury on complex manual food processing

In chimpanzees, it is only in the restricted context of tool use that manual and cognitive skills have been described, comparable to those that gorillas and orang-utans display in obtaining plant foods. We report the complex food preparation skills used to eat, without tools, the leaves of the tree Broussonettia papyrifera in the Sonso community of chimpanzees at Budongo Forest, Uganda. Able-bodied individuals used multi-stage techniques that required bimanual role differentiation at several stages, and were hierarchical in organisation. A total repertoire of 14 techniques was found, with strong preference in all individuals for either of two of these; 6 additional techniques were found when flowers and leaves were eaten together. However, in this community over 20% of individuals suffer from some form of upper- or lower-limb injury as a result of snares. We investigated the manner of compensation for upper-limb injury. Only the most severely injured showed reduced feeding efficiency. Injured individuals were found to use the same repertoire of techniques as able-bodied chimpanzees. We found no evidence to suggest that injured individuals were able to develop wholly novel techniques optimal for their specific injuries, although shifts in preference for particular techniques did occur. Rather, injured individuals used novel ways of achieving particular steps in the process; by "working around" their impairments; in this way, they managed to use the same techniques as the able-bodied. Since snare injuries generally befall young animals, these results suggest that chimpanzees learn techniques partly through observational learning (of, necessarily, able-bodied individuals). Accepted after revision: 8 February 2001 Electronic Publication     

Concurrent disjoint and reciprocal classification by Cebus apella in seriation tasks: evidence for hierarchical organization

We report the results of a 4-year-long study of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella ) on concurrent three-way classification and linear size seriation tasks using explicit ordering procedures, requiring subjects to select icons displayed on touch screens rather than manipulate and sort actual objects into groups. The results indicate that C. apella is competent to classify nine items concurrently, first into three disjoint classes where class exemplars are identical to one another, then into three reciprocal classes which share common exemplar (size) features. In the final phase we compare the relative efficiency of executive control under conditions where both hierarchical and/or linear organization can be utilized. Whilst this shows a superiority of categorical based size seriation for a nine item test set suggesting an adaptive advantage for hierarchical over linear organization, Cebus nevertheless achieved high levels of principled linear size seriation with sequence lengths not normally achieved by children below the age of six years.     

Outline of the evolution of behavioral and nonbehavioral patterns of parental care among the vertebrates: critical characteristics of mammalian and avian parental behavior

An outline of the evolution of parental care among the vertebrates is presented, leading to a characterization of critical features of parental care among the mammals and birds. Among the lower vertebrates (fishes, amphibia) and reptiles there are a variety of patterns of parental care. These can be divided into those that involve parental behavior and those that are nonbehavioral. Among extant species, parental behavior is not the predominant form of parental care, although it is present in many species of fish, frog and reptile. Nonbehavioral patterns of parental care predominate and are equally effective as parental behavior. Parental behavior is based on reciprocal stimulus interaction (trophallaxis) between the parent and the offspring and includes behavior directed at the nest, eggs, and developing young. Among lower vertebrates and reptiles there are increases in the complexity and completeness of parental behaviors but only among the mammals and birds has parental behavior been elaborated as the only form of parental care. Critical characteristics of mammalian parental behavior are: simultaneous onset of birth, lactation, and maternal care, rapid formation of an attachment of the mother to her offspring, synchrony in the behavioral interaction between mother and young during their development until weaning, and the significance of the mother-offspring unit as the basis of social organization. Among birds there is the period of egg incubation in the nest preceding hatching of the young, in addition to the above characteristics of mammals, but the mother-offspring unit is not the basis for social organization.     

基于物体的选择性注意理论的证据--对一例视觉忽视病人的研究

对一例视觉忽视病人的研究发现,线段划销任务中其忽视以基于相邻性组织而形成的知觉物体为中心;对视野两侧图形是否一样的判断受连通性组织的影响;报告数字时受基于颜色的相似性组织的影响.结果为基于物体的选择性注意理论提供了神经心理学证据.     

Does it fit? The relationships between personality,decision autonomy fit,work engagement,and emotional exhaustion in self-managing organizations

The novel organizational form of self-managing organizations decentralizes decision authority, thus promising higher adaptability and sustainability. However, recent practical experiences showed that such organizations struggle with employee turnover and lack of engagement, and thus, levers to improve personnel selection are required. This work investigated the relationship between person-environment fit regarding perceived and ideal decision autonomy and the employee outcomes of work engagement and emotional exhaustion in self-managing organizations. Furthermore, the associations with personality traits were examined. The study relied on cross-sectional survey data from two subsamples of employees working in self-managing and traditional organizations. Group comparison was used to test the elevated level of decision autonomy in self-managing organizations, polynomial regression with response surface analysis was used to investigate the effect of (mis-)fit, and multiple regression analyses evaluated the relationship with personality traits. The findings showed that employees in self-managing organizations experienced higher decision autonomy than those in traditional organizations. Additionally, the fit between ideal and perceived decision autonomy predicted higher work engagement, while extraversion, openness to experience, and low neuroticism predicted higher ideal decision autonomy. As a result, individual person-environment fit regarding decision autonomy and personality requires attention in self-managing organizations to engage employees. The findings imply that the effect of decision autonomy on engagement is not positive per se but depends on the intraindividual characteristics, which must be of concern when decentralizing decision authority organization-wide. Therefore, personnel selection and recruitment processes in self-managing organizations should consider ideal decision autonomy and personality traits as assessment criteria.     

Requirements for a Democratic Education Organization

What makes a democratic school democratic? This question is answered using the example of the Swiss education system; the focus, however, is not on the usual pedagogic perspective of teaching democracy, but on the democratic organization of the education system. The discussion concentrates on two basic requirements for a democratic education organization: on the one hand, education for all under the equal rights premise calls for the definition of an educational minimum for all students. At the same time, defining this minimum presupposes selection among the students. For part of the students are -- through the use of public funds -- being educated beyond the minimum; a situation which needs to be democratically legitimized. The selection is based on academic performance; as yet, a valuable alternative to this type of selection does not exist. On the other hand, it is essential in a democratic education organization that the authorities put in charge of certain responsibilities are democratically legitimized and controlled. The same applies to newly created authorities, such as principalships or autonomous schools, the introduction of which has been demanded repeatedly for some time now.

     

Scripts and checkerboards: The influence of ordered visual information on remembering locations in infancy

Five-month-old infants were trained to fixate 4 event locations, and memory for sequential locations was assessed following training. Results of two studies reveal that ordered visual information influences young infants' memory for sequential events.