Embodiment Effects and Language Comprehension in Alzheimer's Disease

It has been shown that when participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences that describe a transfer of an object toward or away from their body, they are faster to respond when the response requires a movement in the same direction as the transfer described in the sentence. This phenomenon is known as the action compatibility effect (ACE). This study investigates whether the ACE exists for volunteers with Alzheimer's disease (AD), whether the ACE can facilitate language comprehension, and also whether the ACE can still be produced if the order of the two events is inverted, that is, whether overt movement can prime comprehension of transfer sentences. In Study 1, participants with AD, younger, and older adults were tested on an adaptation of the ACE Paradigm. In Study 2, the same paradigm was modified to include an arm movement that participants had to perform prior to sentence exposure on screen. In Study 1, young, older adults, and individuals with AD were faster to respond when the direction of the response movement matched the directionality implied by the sentence (ACE). In Study 2, no traditional ACE was found; participants were faster when the direction of the movement immediately preceding the sentence matched the directionality of the sentence. It was found that compatibility effects generated a relative advantage, that transfer schemata are easier to process, and that an ACE‐like effect can be the result of mutual priming between language and movement. Results suggested preservation in AD of the neural systems for action engaged during language comprehension, and conditions under which comprehension in AD can be facilitated in real life may be identified.     

Making Probabilistic Relational Categories Learnable

Theories of relational concept acquisition (e.g., schema induction) based on structured intersection discovery predict that relational concepts with a probabilistic (i.e., family resemblance) structure ought to be extremely difficult to learn. We report four experiments testing this prediction by investigating conditions hypothesized to facilitate the learning of such categories. Experiment 1 showed that changing the task from a category‐learning task to choosing the “winning” object in each stimulus greatly facilitated participants' ability to learn probabilistic relational categories. Experiments 2 and 3 further investigated the mechanisms underlying this “who's winning” effect. Experiment 4 replicated and generalized the “who's winning” effect with more natural stimuli. Together, our findings suggest that people learn relational concepts by a process of intersection discovery akin to schema induction, and that any task that encourages people to discover a higher order relation that remains invariant over members of a category will facilitate the learning of putatively probabilistic relational concepts.     

Helping Peers Seek Professional Treatment for Depression Among Young South Koreans: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

This study examined the applicability of the theory of planned behavior to understand factors that influence whether young South Koreans help peers with depression to seek professional counseling services. The structural equation modeling on the survey data collected from 191 South Korean students suggests that subjective norms and behavioral control could be salient factors for young South Koreans to take initiative and assist their peers in need of counseling services. Este estudio examinó la aplicabilidad de la teoría del comportamiento planificado para comprender factores que influyen sobre la decisión de jóvenes surcoreanos de ayudar a sus compañeros que sufren de depresión a buscar ayuda profesional a través de servicios de consejería. El modelo de ecuación estructural de los datos de la encuesta recogidos de 191 estudiantes surcoreanos sugiere que las normas subjetivas y el control del comportamiento podrían ser factores destacados para los jóvenes surcoreanos a la hora de tomar la iniciativa y ayudar a sus compañeros que necesitan servicios de consejería.     

Transmitting pro‐environmental behaviours to the next generation: A comparison between Germany and Japan

The present study examined the processes by which children acquire pro‐environmental behaviours in different cultures. Our focus was on parental influence. Several studies have been conducted on adults' environmental behaviours; however, we know little about how children's environmental attitudes and behaviours are formed. We conducted a questionnaire survey with elementary school children and one of their parents in Germany and Japan. Two hundred and twenty‐one pairs participated in Germany and 365 in Japan. The results of structural equation modelling showed that parents' behaviours affected children's environmental behaviours directly and also via the subjective norm (the children's experienced expectations of their parents). A comparison of the two countries revealed that hypothesized cultural differences between the impact of personal norms and subjective norms were clearer for adults. The results also showed that the effects of subjective norms were stronger for children, indicating that children are more likely to be influenced by expectations of others. The results of the study suggest that for promoting children's environmental behaviours, showing the behaviours in daily life would be most effective.     

Spirituality and spiritual care – missing concepts from core undergraduate children’s nursing textbooks

Background: Spiritual care is espoused to be fundamental in children’s nursing; however, the extent to which current fundamental children’s nursing textbooks support and advocate spiritual care delivery by children’s nurses and nursing students is unknown. Aim and objectives: To examine whether or not fundamental undergraduate children’s nursing textbooks include spiritual care content. Methods: Five hundred and nineteen books were sampled from the Nursing and Midwifery Core Collection list (UK) using a survey, the Spirituality Textbook Analysis Tool (STAT) to collect data. Analysis and Results: 519 books were included in the study using the STAT and 13 books included content on children’s spirituality. There were a variety of textbooks in the audit of those that made reference to the search terms in the STAT, it was found that content mainly addressed only two areas; religious faiths and the dying child. Recommendations: Children’s nurses require education about children’s spiritual developmental stage and age appropriate spiritual assessment. A lack of detailed information in core children’s nursing textbooks means that this area of nursing practice may be taught as an adjunct to care and not as an element of holistic care which is the gold standard that children’s nurses should strive for.     

Children’s prayers from a Hospital Chapel

Children’s prayers, from prayer books left in the Chapel of a Children’s Hospital between 1998 and 2002, were studied for what the children’s God-talk would reveal about their perceptions of God. Of the 3893 prayers written during this period, 346 were confidently identified as being authored by children. The sample of 346 prayers, which gave rise to 558 expressions of prayer, was explored through a content analysis, used quantitatively to summarise and describe the data, and a thematic analysis, informed by methods from Grounded Theory. The psychological and spiritual significance of the prayers is drawn out, demonstrating the richness and relationality of children’s spirituality. The predominance of prayers written by female writers, suggests that the extent to which relationality is present is related to gender. Questions concerning possible gender-related differences in girls’ and boys’ spirituality are raised and implications for practice are considered.     

Dev E-R: A computational model of early cognitive development as a creative process

This paper describes a computational model named Dev E-R (Developmental Engagement-Reflection) that, inspired by Piaget’s theory, simulates the assimilation-accommodation adaptation process. It is implemented with a new extended version of the computational model of creativity known as Engagement-Reflection. That is, this model simulates adaptation as a creative activity. We introduce here the implementation of our model on an agent that is initialized with basic reflex conducts and that through the interaction with a 3D virtual world, it is able to build new behaviors autonomously. The new acquired skills, according to Piaget’s theory, are typically observed in children that have reached the second substage of the sensorimotor period.