Past tense formation and comprehension of passive sentences in Parkinson's disease: evidence from Greek

The present study investigates the production of regular and irregular verbs in the past tense and the comprehension of passive sentences by Greek-speaking PD patients, and compares their behavior to that of normal speakers. Although the two groups manifest large scale differences at all the above constructions, the behavior of PDs is not different at regular vs. irregular past tense formation neither did we obtain strong evidence that they do not comprehend passives, most importantly, they certainly do not perform at chance. On the basis of the above, we conclude that there are no indications for a clearly linguistic deficit of the PD group, hence, their difference with the control group should be attributed to other factors, such as the computational demands of the tasks.     

The development of interpretations for novel noun-noun conceptual combinations during the early school years

This research investigates issues surrounding early school children's use of the similarity between head and modifier terms in deriving interpretations for novel noun-noun conceptual combinations. In these experiments, 6- and 9-year-olds and adults were asked to formulate interpretations of similar and dissimilar conceptual combinations. Both children and adults were sensitive to the similarity aspect of conceptual combinations, although the children had some difficulty with the property interpretations that high-similarity combinations require. Next, we examined 40 popular children's books for the presence of noun-noun conceptual combinations. Adult participants provided interpretations for these combinations and rated the similarity of the head and modifier nouns. Results indicated that there were few high-similarity combinations and few combinations requiring property interpretations, suggesting that children have limited exposure to highly similar combinations and property interpretations. Further analysis of children's interpretations indicates that they may have difficulty in selecting and integrating properties of the modifier onto the head, a process required by property interpretations.     

Developing knowledge of objects' motion properties in infancy

Three experiments with a novel variation of the inductive generalization procedure examined 18- and 22-month-olds' knowledge of objects' motion properties. Infants observed simple air and land movements modeled with an appropriate category member (e.g. dog) or an ambiguous block and were allowed to imitate with one or more of four exemplars. The experiments show that 18-month-olds' knowledge of land motions is grounded in causally relevant object parts, whereas 22-month-olds relate such motions more broadly to appropriate category members. Infants' basis for generalizing air motions suggested that at 22 months they have little knowledge about objects from that domain. The results are discussed in relation to the early development of the animate-inanimate distinction and the nature of the inductive generalization task.     

Children's and adults' understanding of the impact of nutrition on biological and psychological processes

Four studies examined children's and adults' beliefs about the impact of nutrition on growth and mood states. In Studies 1 and 2, 271 participants (preschoolers through adults) judged the impact of healthy and unhealthy nutrition on height and weight. In Studies 3 and 4, 267 participants judged the impact of healthy and unhealthy nutrition on positive and negative mood states. The results suggest that young children demonstrate a co‐existence of an ontologically distinct theory of biology as well as a theory of cross‐domain interaction when reasoning about the impact of food on biological and psychological processes.     

学生的自我妨碍行为及其教育干预

学校是典型的能力评价情境,学生的自我妨碍行为较为常见。自我妨碍行为的潜在认知机制是防御性归因模式,学生会有意无意地采取不努力等多种方式为学业成功设置障碍,这样在失败时以避免对自己做缺乏能力的归因,从而保护自我价值和他人心目中的能力形象。文章从自我妨碍行为的动机、结果、归因、影响因素等多方面进行了探讨,并在此基础上提出了一系列有效的预防和干预措施。     

Reading Loewald: Oedipus reconceived

Loewald's 'Waning of the Oedipus complex' is a watershed paper in the history of psychoanalytic thought. By means of a close reading of Loewald's paper, the author frames, discusses and clinically illustrates his understanding of Loewald's reconceptualization of the Oedipus complex. The principal elements of Loewald's reformulation include: 1) the idea that the tension between the pressures of parental infl uence and the child's innate need to establish his own capacities for originality lies at the core of the Oedipus complex; 2) the notion that oedipal parricide is driven, most fundamentally, by the child's 'urge for emancipation.' Parricide involves a revolt against, and an appropriation of, parental authority; 3) the idea that the child atones for the act of parricide by internalizing a transformed version of the child's experience of the oedipal parents. This results in an alteration of the very structure of the child's self (i.e. in the formation of the superego as the agency of autonomy and responsibility); 4) the notion that, in the child's appropriation of parental authority, he in reality 'kill[s] something vital in them [thus] contributing to their dying' and to the succession of generations; and 5) the idea that the incestuous component of the Oedipus complex involves, in health, the creation of a transitional incestuous object relationship which, over the course of one's life, mediates the interplay between undifferentiated and differentiated aspects of self and relatedness to others. The author concludes with a comparison of Freud's and Loewald's conceptions of the Oedipus complex.     

Gender stereotypes as situation–behavior profiles

Recent research suggests that social perceivers’ dispositional inferences are influenced by information about the ways others’ behavior varies stably across situations. We extend this research to stereotypes. Specifically, we examined peoples’ preconceptions about the situation–behavior profiles that social groups are likely to display, as well as the implications of such preconceptions for behavioral judgments. Focusing on gender stereotypes, in Study 1 we found that perceivers’ expectations about men’s and women’s assertiveness are qualified by situational information. Study 2 revealed that perceivers’ beliefs about the mentalistic attributes (e.g., goals, beliefs, motivations) that characterize men and women mediated the relationship between target gender and perceivers’ expectations about situation–behavior patterns. Study 3 explored how such contextualized stereotypes affect on-line judgments of targets’ behavior, showing that perceivers judge a given behavior’s assertiveness based not only on target gender but also on situation type.     

Similarity and Social Interaction: When Similarity Fosters Implicit Behavior Toward a Stranger

ABSTRACT

People interact more readily with someone whom they think they have something in common with. At a pedestrian crossing, confederates asked participants for the time and, in one condition, said she/he had the same watch as the participant. The amount of time that participants lingered near a confederate was used as the dependent variable. Participants in the similarity condition spent significantly more time near the confederate than when no similarity was manipulated. The results showed that similarity fosters implicit behavior, adding to the growing body of data on the positive effects of similarity and its role in social interaction.