Young children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactics in the developing lexicon

A series of three experiments examined children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactic structure as reflected in the relative frequencies with which speech sounds occur and co-occur in American English. Children, ages 212 and 312 years, participated in a nonword repetition task that examined their sensitivity to the frequency of individual phonetic segments and to the frequency of combinations of segments. After partialling out ease of articulation and lexical variables, both groups of children repeated higher phonotactic frequency nonwords more accurately than they did low phonotactic frequency nonwords, suggesting sensitivity to phoneme frequency. In addition, sensitivity to individual phonetic segments increased with age. Finally, older children, but not younger children, were sensitive to the frequency of larger (diphone) units. These results suggest not only that young children are sensitive to fine-grained acoustic-phonetic information in the developing lexicon but also that sensitivity to all aspects of the sound structure increases over development. Implications for the acoustic nature of both developing and mature lexical representations are discussed.     

Cognitive Bias in Spider-Phobic Children: Comparison of a Pictorial and a Linguistic Spider Stroop

The relation between spider fear in children and cognitive processing bias toward threatening information was examined. It was investigated whether spider fear in children is related to a cognitive bias for threatening pictures and words. Pictorial and linguistic Stroop stimuli were administered to 28 spider phobic and 30 control children aged 8–12. Spider-phobic children showed a moderate bias for threatening words. Surprisingly, no bias was found for spider pictures, while the spider-phobic children judged the pictures as more aversive. Moreover, in a recent similar study in adults (Kindt & Brosschot, 1997), a strong relation between spider phobia and bias toward threat words and pictures was found. Several explanations are given to account for this divergence.     

Determinants of reinforcer accumulation during an operant task.

Responses by rats on an earn lever made available food pellets that were delivered to a food cup by responses on a second, collect, lever. The rats could either collect and immediately consume or accumulate (defined as the percentage of multiple earn responses and as the number of pellets earned before a collect response) earned pellets. In Experiment 1, accumulation varied as a function of variations in the earn or collect response requirements and whether the earn and collect levers were proximal (31 cm) or distal (248 cm) to one another. Some accumulation occurred under all but one of the conditions, but generally was higher when the earn and collect levers were distal to one another, particularly when the earn response requirement was fixed-ratio (FR) 1. In Experiment 2, the contributions of responses and time to accumulation were assessed by comparing an FR 20 earn response requirement to a condition in which only a single earn response was required at the end of a time interval nominally yoked to the FR interval. When 248 cm separated the earn and collect levers, accumulation was always greater in the FR condition, and it was not systematically related to reinforcement rate. In Experiment 3, increasing the earn response requirement with a progressive-ratio schedule that reset only with a collect response increased the likelihood of accumulation when the collect and earn levers were 248 cm apart, even though such accumulation increased the next earn response requirement. Reinforcer accumulation is an understudied dimension of operant behavior that relates to the analysis of such phenomena as hoarding and self-control, in that they too involve accumulating versus immediately collecting or consuming reinforcers.     

Do Subtle Linguistic Interventions Priming a Social Identity as a Voter Have Outsized Effects on Voter Turnout? Evidence From a New Replication Experiment

An ongoing debate in political psychology is about whether small wording differences have outsized behavioral effects. A leading example is whether subtle linguistic cues embedded in voter mobilization messages dramatically increase turnout. An initial study analyzing two small‐scale field experiments argued that describing someone as a voter (noun) instead of one who votes (verb) increases turnout rates 11 to 14 points because the noun activates a person's social identity as a voter. A subsequent study analyzing a large‐scale field experiment challenged this claim and found no effect. But questions about the initial claim's domain of applicability persist. The subsequent study may not have reproduced the conditions necessary for the psychological phenomenon to occur, specifically the electoral contexts were not competitive or important enough for the social identity to matter. To address the first of these critiques, as well as other potential explanations for different results between the first two studies, we conduct a large‐scale replication field experiment. We find no evidence that this minor wording change increases turnout levels. This research provides new evidence that the strategy of invoking the self does not appear to consistently increase turnout and calls into question whether subtle linguistic cues have outsized behavioral effects.     

时空距离、特征类型对态度的影响

建构水平理论（Construal level theory）认为时间能够独立地改变评价对象的建构水平,从而对对象的不同特征赋予不同的权重。个体倾向于用抽象的整体的特征表征时距远的事物,而用具体的局部的特征表征时距近的事物。空间距离不同的评价对象是否也遵循同样的规律？在考察时空距离与个人相关性的基础上,通过2（时间距离：明天和十年后）×2（空间距离：近地点和远地点）×2（特征类型：样例特征和类型特征）三因素被试间实验设计,探讨时间距离、空间距离、特征类型对态度的影响。结果发现,空间距离影响人们对事物的态度。在远空间距离水平上,时间距离对态度的影响显著,而在近空间距离水平上时间距离对态度的影响不显著;在远空间条件下,时距远的对象优先注意类型化的特征,时距近的对象优先注意样例化特征。最后,在建构水平理论框架内讨论了实验结果。     

Clinical issues in analyses over the telephone and the internet

There is professional consensus that teleanalysis, the practice of psychoanalysis conducted remotely using the telephone and the Internet, is increasing in response to more mobility in the population. But there is controversy as to whether the use of technology leads to a dilution of analysis or to adaptive innovation that is clinically effective and true to the tenets of psychoanalysis. The author reviews the psychoanalytic literature and shows the development of analytic thinking about this technology-assisted practice of psychoanalysis. She summarizes analysts' perceptions and experiences of the advantages and disadvantages, and considers the indications and contra-indications. She focuses on the clinical concerns that arise in terms of the frame, resistance, and the development of analytic process through the unconscious communication of internal objects, unconscious fantasy, transference and countertransference. She gives vignettes from the analysis of a man with trauma-related depression to address the concerns raised and to support her argument that analysis using the telephone and the Internet is a viable, clinically effective alternative to traditional analysis where necessary.     

An evaluation of the stimulus equivalence paradigm to teach single-subject design to distance education students via blackboard

The purpose of the current study was to examine the degree to which instruction based on stimulus equivalence procedures could be used to teach single-subject design methodology to graduate-level professionals through a Web-based course management system known as Blackboard (see http://www.blackboard.com). Specifically, we used the stimulus equivalence paradigm to teach relations among the names, definitions, graphical representations of the designs, and two practical scenarios of when it would be appropriate to implement each design. Most participants demonstrated the emergence of untaught relations, and some participants showed generalization to novel vignettes and graphs. Relations largely were not maintained at follow-up but were retaught.     

Effects of a meaningful, a discriminative, and a meaningless stimulus on equivalence class formation

Thirty college students attempted to form three 3-node 5-member equivalence classes under the simultaneous protocol. After concurrent training of AB, BC, CD, and DE relations, all probes used to assess the emergence of symmetrical, transitive, and equivalence relations were presented for two test blocks. When the A-E stimuli were all abstract shapes, none of 10 participants formed classes. When the A, B, D, and E stimuli were abstract shapes and the C stimuli were meaningful pictures, 8 of 10 participants formed classes. This high yield may reflect the expansion of existing classes that consist of the associates of the meaningful stimuli, rather than the formation of the ABCDE classes, per se. When the A-E stimuli were abstract shapes and the C stimuli became S(D)s prior to class formation, 5 out of 10 participants formed classes. Thus, the discriminative functions served by the meaningful stimuli can account for some of the enhancement of class formation produced by the inclusion of a meaningful stimulus as a class member. A sorting task, which provided a secondary measure of class formation, indicated the formation of all three classes when the emergent relations probes indicated the same outcome. In contrast, the sorting test indicated "partial" class formation when the emergent relations test indicated no class formation. Finally, the effects of nodal distance on the relatedness of stimuli in the equivalence classes were not influenced by the functions served by the C stimuli in the equivalence classes.     

Followership at a distance: Follower adjustment to distal leadership during COVID-19

Leader distance theory has received scant empirical attention in the extant literature; however, the “work from home” orders associated with COVID-19 have made this theory and its empirical findings highly relevant for organizations. Our study integrates leader distance theory and followership theory to understand how follower role beliefs affect follower effort, performance, and withdrawal under physical leader distance and varying conditions of leader interaction frequency. Using a three-wave survey methodology with 260 adults working remotely, our study finds that followers' levels of effort, performance, and withdrawal were contingent on leader interaction frequency. Specifically, followers with a coproduction role orientation, who see their role as more collaborative, reported higher levels of effort under conditions of high leader interaction. Furthermore, the indirect effect of coproduction on follower performance and withdrawal via effort was moderated by leader interaction frequency. The results for followers with passive role orientations, however, were in the opposite direction. These followers reported less effort when leader interaction was high, and the mediational chain predicting performance and withdrawal was contingent on leader interaction frequency. Our study contributes to the ongoing conversation about the positive and negative effects of leader distance and positions followership characteristics as important boundary conditions of distal leadership.     

What Does Children's Spatial Language Reveal About Spatial Concepts? Evidence From the Use of Containment Expressions

Children's overextensions of spatial language are often taken to reveal spatial biases. However, it is unclear whether extension patterns should be attributed to children's overly general spatial concepts or to a narrower notion of conceptual similarity allowing metaphor‐like extensions. We describe a previously unnoticed extension of spatial expressions and use a novel method to determine its origins. English‐ and Greek‐speaking 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds used containment expressions (e.g., English into, Greek mesa) for events where an object moved into another object but extended such expressions to events where the object moved behind or under another object. The pattern emerged in adult speakers of both languages and also in speakers of 10 additional languages. We conclude that learners do not have an overly general concept of Containment. Nevertheless, children (and adults) perceive similarities across Containment and other types of spatial scenes, even when these similarities are obscured by the conventional forms of the language.