Alienable Speech: Ideological Variations in the Application of Free-Speech Principles

Although freedom of speech is a Constitutionally protected and widely endorsed value, political tolerance research finds that people are less willing to protect speech they dislike than speech they like ( Gibson, 2006 ). Research also suggests liberal-conservative differences in political tolerance ( Davis & Silver, 2004 ). We measured U.S. citizens' political tolerance for speech acts, while manipulating the speaker's ethnicity and the speech's ideological content. Speech criticizing Americans was protected more strongly than was speech criticizing Arabs, especially among more politically liberal respondents. Liberals also reported greater free-speech support. Respondents expressed greater political tolerance for a speaker when he was an exemplar of the criticized group, but showed equal political tolerance for speakers whose group membership (as a White or Black American) was irrelevant to the speech. Finally, implicit political identity showed convergent validity with explicit political identity in predicting speech tolerance, and implicit racial and ethnic preferences showed variable prediction of speech tolerance across the two studies.     

An interaction between prosody and statistics in the segmentation of fluent speech

Sensitivity to prosodic cues might be used to constrain lexical search. Indeed, the prosodic organization of speech is such that words are invariably aligned with phrasal prosodic edges, providing a cue to segmentation. In this paper we devise an experimental paradigm that allows us to investigate the interaction between statistical and prosodic cues to extract words from a speech stream. We provide evidence that statistics over the syllables are computed independently of prosody. However, we also show that trisyllabic sequences with high transition probabilities that straddle two prosodic constituents appear not to be recognized. Taken together, our findings suggest that prosody acts as a filter, suppressing possible word-like sequences that span prosodic constituents.     

Further evaluation of emerging speech in children with developmental disabilities: training verbal behavior

The conceptual basis for many effective language-training programs are based on Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior. Skinner described several elementary verbal operants including mands, tacts, intraverbals, and echoics. According to Skinner, responses that are the same topography may actually be functionally independent. Previous research has supported Skinner's assertion of functional independence (e.g., Hall & Sundberg, 1987; Lamarre & Holland, 1985), and some research has suggested that specific programming must be incorporated to achieve generalization across verbal operants (e.g., Sigafoos, Reichle, & Doss, 1990). The present study provides further analysis of the independence of verbal operants when teaching language to children with autism and other developmental disabilities. In the current study, 3 participants' vocal responses were first assessed as mands or tacts. Generalization for each verbal operant across alternate conditions was then assessed and subsequent training provided as needed. Results indicated that generalization across verbal operants occurred across some, but not all, vocal responses. These results are discussed relative to the functional independence of verbal operants as described by Skinner.     

Loneliness and Dread as Time Sense Disturbances

Our consciousness of time is created by our longing over duration for the care of a nurturing other. By means of a case study, it is shown here that the experience of abject loneliness is dependent upon a disturbed consciousness of time: unmet needs over the passage of time. Loneliness as such is the denial of the present moment—its possibilities and its demands. The loss of the present moment fosters a disturbed judgment of time: the sense that the present moment has stopped—is virtually endless, since the present moment has no future toward which to intend. This time disturbance diminishes the subject's capacity for agency.     

Is talking to yourself thinking?

The question whether talking to yourself is thinking is considered from two viewpoints: radical behaviorism and teleological behaviorism. For radical behaviorism, following Skinner (1945), mental events such as ‘thinking’ may be explained in terms of private behavior occurring within the body, ordinarily unobservable by other people; thus, radical behaviorism may identify talking to yourself with thinking. However, to be consistent with its basic principles, radical behaviorism must hold that private behavior, hence thinking, is identical with covert muscular, speech movements (rather than proprioception of those movements). For teleological behaviorism, following Skinner (1938), all mental terms, including ‘thinking,’ stand for abstract, temporally extended patterns of overt behavior. Thus, for teleological behaviorism, talking to yourself, covert by definition, cannot be thinking.