On Philosophy

In this article the author holds that progress in philosophy is a vague concept. Its criteria are not universally acknowledged. All that is clear is that philosophy does not develop in a linear way. Philosophy is polydiscoursive. As for the past fifty years, the author believes three important things happened in philosophy. (1) It has been shown that consciousness exists not within one individual but spreads within a community of people; (2) philosophy has discovered autism, a result that helps us to understand a human being as neither a biological nor a social individual but a third thing—a dreaming being who is not only asocial but also tongueless, where speech and consciousness are separated; and (3) contemporary philosophy has learned to distinguish between sign and symbol. And it has been realized that the human mind is neither an instinct nor a computer but an objectified suffering, a transformed emotion.     

ACTION,AGENCY, AND EMPATHY: SCHAFER ON THE ANALYST'S DILEMMA

Throughout his career, a central feature of Roy Schafer's theorizing has been to highlight the role of activity and personal agency in every facet of human experience. This theme has remained at the forefront of Schafer's work, despite being embedded within different frames of reference. In this paper, the author highlights Schafer's focus on activity, notes some clinical problems to which it can give rise, and suggests the way that Schafer has attempted to deal with these difficulties.     

Inter‐religious Encounter

This article examines Robert A. Yelle's Semiotics of Religion. The author argues that the project is weakened by an over-privileging of language as the only mode of semiosis. Using the figure of Orpheus and the semiotic exteriority of music, the author suggests that a semiotics of religion must escape this most fundamental logocentrism if it is not simply to perpetuate the ideological gestures Yelle works hardest to expose.     

The neural correlates of statistical learning in a word segmentation task: An fMRI study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess neural activation as participants learned to segment continuous streams of speech containing syllable sequences varying in their transitional probabilities. Speech streams were presented in four runs, each followed by a behavioral test to measure the extent of learning over time. Behavioral performance indicated that participants could discriminate statistically coherent sequences (words) from less coherent sequences (partwords). Individual rates of learning, defined as the difference in ratings for words and partwords, were used as predictors of neural activation to ask which brain areas showed activity associated with these measures. Results showed significant activity in the pars opercularis and pars triangularis regions of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). The relationship between these findings and prior work on the neural basis of statistical learning is discussed, and parallels to the frontal/subcortical network involved in other forms of implicit sequence learning are considered.     

Language aptitude for pronunciation in advanced second language (L2) Learners: Behavioural predictors and neural substrates

Individual differences in second language (L2) aptitude have been assumed to depend upon a variety of cognitive and personality factors. Especially, the cognitive factor phonological working memory has been conceptualised as language learning device. However, strong associations between phonological working memory and L2 aptitude have been previously found in early-stage learners only, not in advanced learners. The current study aimed at investigating the behavioural and neurobiological predictors of advanced L2 learning. Our behavioural results showed that phonetic coding ability and empathy, but not phonological working memory, predict L2 pronunciation aptitude in advanced learners. Second, functional neuroimaging revealed this behavioural trait to be correlated with hemodynamic responses of the cerebral network of speech motor control and auditory-perceptual areas. We suggest that the acquisition of L2 pronunciation aptitude is a dynamic process, requiring a variety of neural resources at different processing stages over time.     

Prediction of toddlers’ expressive language from maternal sensitivity and toddlers’ anger expressions: A developmental perspective

Despite evidence for the importance of individual differences in expressive language during toddlerhood in predicting later literacy skills, few researchers have examined individual and contextual factors related to language abilities across the toddler years. Furthermore, a gap remains in the literature about the extent to which the relations of negative emotions and parenting to language skills may differ for girls and boys. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate the associations among maternal sensitivity, children's observed anger reactivity, and expressive language when children were 18 (T1; n = 247) and 30 (T2; n = 216) months. At each age, mothers reported on their toddlers’ expressive language, and mothers’ sensitive parenting behavior was observed during an unstructured free-play task. Toddlers’ anger expressions were observed during an emotion-eliciting task. Using path modeling, results showed few relations at T1. At T2, maternal sensitivity was negatively related to anger, and in turn, anger was associated with lower language skills. However, moderation analyses showed that these findings were significant for boys but not for girls. In addition, T1 maternal sensitivity and anger positively predicted expressive language longitudinally for both sexes. Findings suggest that the relations between maternal sensitivity, anger reactivity and expressive language may vary depending on the child's developmental stage and sex.     

How Do Children Restrict Their Linguistic Generalizations? An (Un‐)Grammaticality Judgment Study

A paradox at the heart of language acquisition research is that, to achieve adult‐like competence, children must acquire the ability to generalize verbs into non‐attested structures, while avoiding utterances that are deemed ungrammatical by native speakers. For example, children must learn that, to denote the reversal of an action, un‐ can be added to many verbs, but not all (e.g., roll/unroll; close/*unclose). This study compared theoretical accounts of how this is done. Children aged 5–6 (N = 18), 9–10 (N = 18), and adults (N = 18) rated the acceptability of un‐ prefixed forms of 48 verbs (and, as a control, bare forms). Across verbs, a negative correlation was observed between the acceptability of ungrammatical un‐ prefixed forms (e.g., *unclose) and the frequency of (a) the bare form and (b) alternative forms (e.g., open), supporting the entrenchment and pre‐emption hypotheses, respectively. Independent ratings of the extent to which verbs instantiate the semantic properties characteristic of a hypothesized semantic cryptotype for un‐ prefixation were a significant positive predictor of acceptability, for all age groups. The relative importance of each factor differed for attested and unattested un‐ forms and also varied with age. The findings are interpreted in the context of a new hybrid account designed to incorporate the three factors of entrenchment, pre‐emption, and verb semantics.     

Does cardiovascular reactivity during speech reflect self-construction processes?

Abstract

Substantial empirical research has been undertaken on cardiovascular reactivity (CVR). however interpretation of this research is hampered by a lack of theoretical frameworks. This paper develops a framework initially stimulated by evidence demonstrating that the cardiovascular system increases in activity during communication, and that the extent of this activation depends upon numerous and diverse psychosocial factors. We attempt to account for this phenomenon using merit post-structuralist ideas concerning the constructive nature of language and its centrality to an individual's sense of self. Our theoretical framework proposes that the CVR exhibited during language use is explicable in terms of self-construction - From this analysis we hypothesised that CVR would differ across conversations about private self. public self and non-self topics, and that these differences would depend upon people's speaking histories. We found that the blood pressure and heart rate of 102 women was most reactive when they talked in a laboratory with a stranger about aspects of their private self, and least reactive during non-self talk, whilst their heart rate was most reactive during talk about their public self. Overall the results highlight the inextricable link between our inherent socialness and our cardiovascular systems.

SUMMARY

The explanatory scheme outlined here is an attempt to provide a social reconceptualisation of a phenomenon that is typically interpreted in individualistic psychophysiological terms, and which is consistent with the notion that repeated exposure to situations which provoke large haemodynamic changes may lead to CHD disease progression. The explanation draws heavily on post-structuralist ideas regarding language, and the social constructionist notion that engaging in language use is central to constructing and maintaining a sense of self. This sense of self is a central theoretical entity in our everyday lives, produced and maintained in our interactions with others. We argue that it is this centrality of self-construction that helps to explain the extraordinary consistency of elevated CVR in conversation. Further, we have noted the striking parallels between those features of conversations that make the self salient, and those that have been associated with elevated CVR. To examine it more explicitly, it needs to be tested empirically with new data, using explicitly derived operationalisations and hypotheses.     

The role of verbal and nonverbal memory in the Family Pictures Subtest: Data from children with specific language impairment

This study examined the contribution of verbal and visual memory to performance on the Family Pictures subtest of the Children’s Memory Scale. This subtest purports to assess declarative memory functioning in the visual/nonverbal domain. A total of 115 nine-year-old children participated in this study. Fifty-eight had specific language impairment (SLI), whilst the remaining 57 were typically developing (TD), with no history of language difficulties. Results showed that the children with SLI, who had intact declarative memory for visual but not verbal information, obtained significantly lower scores on the Family Pictures subtest when compared to the TD group. Regression analyses revealed that across the entire sample, individual differences on the Family Pictures subtest was best predicted by a measure of verbal working memory. These results question whether the Family Pictures subtest can be considered a measure of visual memory in pediatric populations. These results have implications for the interpretation of scores on this subtest regarding the nature of the types of neurocognitive difficulties children may exhibit.     

Reading and Spelling Disabilities in Children with and Without a History of Early Language Delay: A Neuropsychological and Linguistic Study

Language delay is a frequent antecedent of literacy problems, and both may be linked to phonological impairment. Studies on developmental dyslexia have led to contradictory results due to the heterogeneity of the pathological samples. The present study investigated whether Italian children with dyslexia showed selective phonological processing deficits or more widespread linguistic impairment and whether these deficits were associated with previous language delay. We chose 46 children with specific reading deficits and divided them into two groups based on whether they had language delay (LD) or not (NoLD). LD and NoLD children showed similar, severe deficits in reading and spelling decoding, but only LD children showed a moderate impairment in reading comprehension. LD children were more impaired in phonological working memory and phonological fluency, as well as in semantic fluency, grammatical comprehension, and verbal IQ. These findings indicate the presence of a moderate but widespread linguistic deficit (not limited to phonological processing) in a subset of dyslexic children with previous language delay that does not generalize to all children with reading difficulties.