幼儿复述能力的发展及其与言语工作记忆的关系

采用语音呈现、无图片辅助的复述任务,探查5～6岁幼儿故事复述能力的发展特点及其与工作记忆的关系。结果发现,幼儿复述能力在学前期存在明显的发展变化,6岁幼儿宏观结构的得分及微观结构中的叙事总词汇数、复句占T单元比率、连词使用总数等均显著好于5岁幼儿;幼儿的复述能力表现出性别差异;工作记忆与复述的宏观结构和微观结构的不同指标之间均表现出显著相关,并对幼儿复述能力的发展具有独立贡献。结果表明,言语工作记忆是与幼儿复述能力相关的重要认知因素。     

Hemispatial neglect and serial order in verbal working memory

Working memory refers to our ability to actively maintain and process a limited amount of information during a brief period of time. Often, not only the information itself but also its serial order is crucial for good task performance. It was recently proposed that serial order is grounded in spatial cognition. Here, we compared performance of a group of right hemisphere-damaged patients with hemispatial neglect to healthy controls in verbal working memory tasks. Participants memorized sequences of consonants at span level and had to judge whether a target consonant belonged to the memorized sequence (item task) or whether a pair of consonants were presented in the same order as in the memorized sequence (order task). In line with this idea that serial order is grounded in spatial cognition, we found that neglect patients made significantly more errors in the order task than in the item task compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, this deficit seemed functionally related to neglect severity and was more frequently observed following right posterior brain damage. Interestingly, this specific impairment for serial order in verbal working memory was not lateralized. We advance the hypotheses of a potential contribution to the deficit of serial order in neglect patients of either or both (1) reduced spatial working memory capacity that enables to keep track of the spatial codes that provide memorized items with a positional context, (2) a spatial compression of these codes in the intact representational space.     

Effects of homophobic name‐calling and verbal sexual harassment on substance use among young adults

Verbal aggression victimization, such as homophobic name‐calling, has been linked to heavier substance use among young people, but little longitudinal research has examined how different types of victimization may affect substance use or whether certain psychosocial factors moderate these risks. In a diverse cohort (N = 2,663), latent transition analysis was used to model heterogeneity in victimization (age 19) and substance use (age 20). Four victimization (high victimization, homophobic name‐calling only, verbal sexual harassment only, and low victimization) and three substance use (poly‐substance use, alcohol, and cannabis only, low all) classes were identified. The high victimization and homophobic name‐calling only classes had the highest probabilities of transitioning into the poly‐substance use class, and the high victimization class had the highest probability of transitioning into the alcohol and cannabis only class. The probability of transitioning into the low all substance use class was highest in the low victimization class and lowest in the high victimization class. For the high victimization class, greater depressive symptoms increased the odds, and better peer relationship quality decreased the odds, of transitioning into the poly‐substance use and alcohol and cannabis only classes. For the homophobic name‐calling only class, greater depressive symptoms increased the odds of transitioning into the poly‐substance use class. Homophobic name‐calling, alone or in combination with verbal sexual harassment, is a risk factor for escalating substance use in young adulthood, especially among victims with depressive symptoms.     

Direct verbal suggestibility: Measurement and significance

Hypnotic suggestibility is part of the wider psychological trait of direct verbal suggestibility (DVS). Historically, DVS in hypnosis has informed theories of consciousness and of conversion disorder. More recently it has served as a research tool in cognitive science and in cognitive neuroscience in particular. Here we consider DVS as a general trait, its relation to other psychological characteristics and abilities, and to the origin and treatment of clinical conditions. We then outline the distribution of DVS in the population, its measurement, relationship to other forms of suggestibility, placebo responsiveness, personal characteristics, gender, neurological processes and other factors, such as expectancy. There is currently no scale specifically designed to measure DVS outside a hypnotic context. The most commonly used and well-researched of the hypnosis-based scales, the Harvard Group Scale, is described and identified as a basis for a more broadly based measure of DVS for use in psychological research.     

Social judgment of aggressive language: Effects of target and sender sex on the evaluation of slurs

We investigated the influence of the sex of the target and the sex of the sender on the judgment of slurs (verbal derogation). From previous research, we selected and clustered slurs into seven categories and respondents rated their degree of perceived insult in two consecutive questionnaire surveys (N = 281 and N = 224, respectively). Results confirm that slurs are generally judged as being more insulting when directed towards females than towards males. In comparison, differences in sex of sender were small. When directed towards females, slurs referring to “being loose” were rated as the most insulting. For both target sexes, remarks referring to homosexuality and physical unattractiveness were among those rated as the most insulting. Least insulting were slurs referring to unethical acts, lack of intelligence and cowardliness. A sex of respondent effect was found, suggesting that women rated slurs generally more insulting than men. The pattern of results showed considerable stability across surveys attesting for the reliability of the method for measuring the social evaluation of slurs.     

Verbal-Motor Attention-Focusing Instructions Influence Kinematics and Performance on a Golf-Putting Task

The authors examined how varying the content of verbal-motor instructions and requesting an internal versus external focus influenced the kinematics and outcome of a golf putting task. On Day 1, 30 novices performed 120 trials with the instruction to focus attention either on performing a pendulum-like movement (internal) or on the desired ball path (external). After 20 retention trials on Day 2, they performed 20 transfer trials with the opposite instruction. Group differences for retention and a group by block interaction showed that external instruction enhanced movement outcome. Kinematic data indicated that specific instruction content influenced outcomes by eliciting changes in movement execution. Switching from the external to the internal focus instruction resulted in a more pendulum-like movement.     

The differential effect of background music on memory for verbal and visuospatial information

Background music is a part of our everyday activities. Considerable evidence suggests that listening to music while performing cognitive tasks may negatively influence performance. However, other studies have shown that it can benefit memory when the music played during the encoding of information is also provided during the retrieval of that information, in the so-called context dependent memory effect. Since controversial results may be attributed to the nature of the material to be memorized, the aim of the present study is to compare the potential effect of consistent background music on the immediate and long-term recall of verbal and visuospatial information. Experiment 1 showed that instrumental background music does not benefit nor decrease recall of a list of unrelated words, both at the immediate and the 48-hours-delayed tests. By contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that the same background music can impair immediate and therefore long-term memory for visuospatial information. Results are interpreted in terms of competition for neurocognitive resources, with tasks mostly relying on the same brain hemisphere competing for a limited set of resources. Hence, background music might impair visuospatial memory to a greater extent than verbal memory, in the context of limited capacity cognitive system. In conclusion, the nature of the material to be learnt must be considered to fully understand the effect of background music on memory.     

Predictors of early person reference development: Maternal language input,attachment and neurodevelopmental markers

In a longitudinal natural language development study in Germany, the acquisition of verbal symbols for present persons, absent persons, inanimate things and the mother–toddler dyad was investigated. Following the notion that verbal referent use is more developed in ostensive contexts, symbolic play situations were coded for verbal person reference by means of noun and pronoun use. Depending on attachment classifications at twelve months of age, effects of attachment classification and maternal language input were studied up to 36 months in four time points. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, except for mother absence, maternal verbal referent input rates at 17 and 36 months were stronger predictors for all referent types than any of the attachment organizations, or any other social or biological predictor variable. Attachment effects accounted for up to 9.8% of unique variance proportions in the person reference variables. Perinatal and familial measures predicted person references dependent on reference type. The results of this investigation indicate that mother-reference, self-reference and thing-reference develop in similar quantities measured from the 17-month time point, but are dependent of attachment quality.