An Irish Cohort Study of Risk and Protective Factors for Infant Language Development at 9 Months

This nationally representative study of Irish infants explores whether the set of child and environmental factors established as predicting language outcomes aged 3 years would also predict language and communication development as early as age 9 months. Associations between infant and environmental characteristics and infant language outcomes at 9 months, as measured on the ASQ 10‐month communication questionnaire, were explored in a series of bivariate logistic regression models and in a fully adjusted multivariable logistic regression model. Infant gender, health, birthweight and temperament were significantly associated with passing the ASQ communication measure at 9 months. Being an only child and having some experience of relative childcare predicted positive communication outcomes. Infants of older mothers and mothers who spoke less to the child while doing other things were significantly less likely to pass. Infants of mothers with the lowest educational level were more likely than their peers to pass at 9 months. Unlike language outcomes at 3 years, low maternal education does not appear to be a risk factor for poorer outcomes at 9 months. This study adds significantly to the infant language development literature by focussing on communication outcomes in early infancy and identifying protective and risk factors at such an early stage. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

网格对工作记忆中视觉客体空间位置编码的影响

为探究网格在工作记忆中对视觉客体位置编码的影响,本研究采用n-back范式,通过客体位置的确定性和网格出现的不同认知加工阶段,探索了网格线在空间工作记忆视觉客体位置记忆中的作用机制.实验1的结果表明,被试将依据客体的位置确定性强弱来选择类别编码或坐标编码.实验2的结果显示,网格在识记阶段可能有利于位置记忆,而在提取阶段可能有干扰作用.     

空间观点采择过程中自我视角表征的旋转和回位

观点采择是用于理解别人的想法、观念的能力,允许人们从另一个人的观点和视角来看待事物和客体。已有研究表明空间观点采择涉及自我旋转(self-rotation),在此基础上,我们假设自我视角表征在旋转到目标位置后将缓慢旋转回位,提出了"旋转-回位"的假说。通过两个包含连续观点采择任务的实验,研究结果表明两个任务的目标之间角度差越大,判断所需反应时越长,且角度差与反应时间的关系类似于单个空间观点采择任务中目标与被试位置间的角度与反应时的关系;且两个任务间时间间隔的增长减弱了角度差对反应时的影响。研究初步支持了"旋转-回位"假说:空间观点采择过程中个体的自我视角表征先向目标位置旋转,在任务完成后逐渐回位。这一结果和结论巩固并补充了现有的关于观点采择的理论,并对理解观点采择过程中对视角表征进行的认知操作具有启发意义。     

Statistical modelling in the investigation of stranger rape

A sample of stranger rape offences (n = 271) registered in the Dutch Violence Crime Linkage Analysis System database in the Netherlands between 1997 and 2007 was studied with the objective of developing statistical models, which give an indication of the probability of basic offender characteristics. Observable crime characteristics concerning the modus operandi, interaction between the offender and the victim, violence, precautionary measures, and sexual behaviours were selected in the dataset. Offender characteristics were selected based on their usefulness for the police organisation in narrowing the scope of a criminal investigation. Spatial behaviour, criminal history, and living situation of the offender were selected. From the predictive models, four out of five achieved a correct rate of over 70%, and all models predicted better than the best guess method. The proposed models for distance and prior convictions for violence seem particularly promising. Both these models show an improvement of correctly predicted offender characteristics of more than 20 percentile points compared with that which could have been estimated based on the average in the total sample. The predictive value of the models needs to be tested further with ‘new offences’, which were not used to construct the model. In general, the current study supports the finding that crime characteristics can be used to get an indication of the probability of certain offender characteristics. Nevertheless, for an understanding of the relationship between the crime characteristics and offender characteristics, a further development of a theoretical framework is urgently necessary. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The ordinary

This paper discusses Peter Lomas's work in the context of the concepts of ‘ordinary people’ and ‘ordinary language’. Obsessions about whether a person is ordinary or not tend to occur in people who are disturbed. Psychoanalysts use the special language of mechanics to explain the phenomena they observe in the consulting room. In this paper it is argued that ordinary language, our mother tongue, is a better way of understanding people. In his work as a psychotherapist and writer, Peter Lomas found more insight in the ordinary language of literature than he did in theory.     

Age-related changes in processing speed modulate context use during idiomatic ambiguity resolution

ABSTRACT

The goal of the current study was to investigate whether age-related changes in processing speed, as indexed by verbal fluency, modulate context use in the resolution of ambiguous idioms (e.g., tie the knot). Younger and older adults completed a cross-modal priming experiment where they decided whether visual word targets were related in meaning to idiomatically or literally biased auditory sentence primes. Older adults with high verbal fluency, similar to younger adults, showed context-dependent facilitation in both biasing sentence contexts. In contrast, older adults with low verbal fluency did not show facilitation of literal meanings in literally biased sentence contexts, likely because they had difficultly inhibiting the dominant figurative meaning. These findings argue that age-related changes in context use during ambiguity resolution are restricted to older adults with reduced processing speed. The results also suggest that verbal fluency may reflect the speed in recruiting frontally-mediated selection mechanisms during ambiguity resolution.     

English for Bible and Theology: Understanding and Communicating Theology Across Cultural and Linguistic Barriers

This article introduces English for Bible and Theology (EBT), an inherently interdisciplinary field that merges English language learning with the content of biblical and theological studies in a context that is, by nature, cross‐cultural. Within this collaboration there exists the possibility not only to enable theological study, but also to enhance it through a focus on personal meaning and its communication, both of which are foundational to the communicative language classroom. That is, EBT seeks both to aid students worldwide in attaining the specialized language and cultural proficiency necessary to access English theological resources and to provide a community in which students can connect theological content to their lives. It is this second aim that provides EBT its relevance across a range of theological contexts, as native English‐speaking students likewise stand to benefit from the application of EBT's principles.     

Delegitimisation of Disliked Political Organisations Through Biased Language and Acronyming

The study investigated the use of biased language and acronyming in political organisations in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The study surveyed the discourses of political parties that were posted on the internet. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse the discourses of the political parties. The results indicated that political organisations used biased language to delegitimise the opposition. The ingroup and outgroup stereotypes were evident in the discourses. Acronyms of opposition political parties were used pejoratively. The findings of this study suggest that political parties in developing democracies have a tendency of using biased language and acronyming to disparage the opposition. Biased language and acronyming of the outgroup in African politics could result in hate speech directed at individuals and political violence.