Four Dimensions of Criticism Against Gender-Fair Language

Sex Roles - The gender-neutral third-person pronoun singular hen was recently introduced in Swedish as a complement to she (hon) and he (han). The initiative to add hen initially received strong...     

Personality and attitudinal correlates of healthy and unhealthy lifestyles in young adults

Abstract

The relationship between healthy lifestyle and personality and attitudinal variables was analyzed with data collected from 809 men and 996 women aged 18–30 years in England, Belgium, Finland and Norway as part of the European Health and Behaviour Survey. A health practices index was constructed on the basis of performance of sixteen behaviours including smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise, sleep time and a variety of dietary and preventive practices. Scores on the health practices index were higher in women than men, but in both sexes the index was normally distributed. Consistently healthy practices were positively correlated with extraversion and optimism, and negatively associated with neuroticism, psychoticism and chance locus of control beliefs. These effects were maintained after controlling for social desirability, but together accounted for only a modest proportion of the variance in the health practices index. The results are discussed in relation to the factors characterising health conscious and unhealthy lifestyles.     

PSYCHOMOTOR EXPRESSION AND PERSONALITY STUDY

The main purpose was to examine whether ratings of the 'natural speed of behaviour' are related to factors of 'personal tempo' found by common types of tempo tests. Psychomotor performance of varying levels of complexity was studied. In addition to standard tempo tasks, tests of maximum tempo were used. There were significant positive correlations between the ratings of the 'natural speed' and the tests of personal tempo, especially in ideomotor and drawing tasks, in subjects aged 13 to 14 years. In younger age groups the correlations were low. An attempt is made to interpret the results in terms of 'working habits'.     

Reducing a Male Bias in Language? Establishing the Efficiency of Three Different Gender-Fair Language Strategies

Sex Roles - Different strategies of gender-fair language have been applied to reduce a male bias, which means the implicit belief that a word describing an undefined person describes a man. This...     

Training and transfer effects of executive functions in preschool children

Executive functions, including working memory and inhibition, are of central importance to much of human behavior. Interventions intended to improve executive functions might therefore serve an important purpose. Previous studies show that working memory can be improved by training, but it is unknown if this also holds for inhibition, and whether it is possible to train executive functions in preschoolers. In the present study, preschool children received computerized training of either visuo‐spatial working memory or inhibition for 5 weeks. An active control group played commercially available computer games, and a passive control group took part in only pre‐ and posttesting. Children trained on working memory improved significantly on trained tasks; they showed training effects on non‐trained tests of spatial and verbal working memory, as well as transfer effects to attention. Children trained on inhibition showed a significant improvement over time on two out of three trained task paradigms, but no significant improvements relative to the control groups on tasks measuring working memory or attention. In neither of the two interventions were there effects on non‐trained inhibitory tasks. The results suggest that working memory training can have significant effects also among preschool children. The finding that inhibition could not be improved by either one of the two training programs might be due to the particular training program used in the present study or possibly indicate that executive functions differ in how easily they can be improved by training, which in turn might relate to differences in their underlying psychological and neural processes.     

The Poznań school methodology of idealization and concretization from the point of view of a revised structuralist theory conception

My thesis is that some methodological ideas of the Pozna school, i.e., the principles of idealization and concretization (factualization), and the correspondence principle can be represented rather successfully using the relations of theoretization and specialization of revised structuralism.Let <n(i), t(j)> (i=1,...m, j=1,...k) denote the conceptual apparatus of a theory T, and a class M={} (i=1,...m, j=1,...k) the models of T. The n-components refer to the values of dependent variables and t-components to the values of independent variables of the theory. The n- and t-components in turn represent appropriate concepts. Consider T ^* as a conceptual enrichment of T with concepts <n(i ^*), t(j ^*)> (i<i ^* or j<j ^*) and models M ^*={<D ^*, n(i ^*), t(j ^*)>}. If the classes M and M ^* are suitably related, then the situation illustrates both the case of the theoretization-relation of (revised) structuralism and of the factualization-principle of the Pozna school.Assume now that the concepts n(i), t(j) of T for some i, j are operationalized using some special assumptions generating appropriate empirical values n and t for these concepts. Let M denote the class {<D,...n,...t,...>} which is formed by substituting n and t for values of concepts n(i), t(j) in the elements of M. If the classes M and M are related in a suitable way then the situation is an example of both the specialization-relation of (revised) structuralism and the concretization-principle of the Pozna school. The correspondence principle in turn can be represented as a limiting case of the theoretization-relation of (revised) structuralism.Many thanks to my anonymous referees for critical and fruitful comments and special thanks to Dr. Carol Norris for correcting the language of this paper.     

LEVEL OF ACTIVATION AND GOAL-DIRECTED BEHAVIOUR: The effect of chlorpromazine on aggressive, achievement oriented, and affiliation oriented verbal responses

The purpose was to investigate the effect of chlorpromazine on verbal response contents in sentence completion tests. 30 male subjects participated in two chlorpromazine and one placebo session. It was found that the amount of aggressive, achievement and affiliation oriented responses was significantly reduced as an effect of drug intake. The results are discussed on the basis of the theories of conflict motivation and of arousal.     

PSYCHOMOTOR EXPRESSION AND PERSONALITY STUDY: I. Some theoretical and methodological considerations

In this introductory article in a series of experimental reports an attempt is made to classify the psychomotor and expressive techniques on the basis of the amount and the quality of mediating processes involved in performance. Furthermore, psychomotor variables occurring in different types of technique are presented, and suggestions are made for an experimental study of psychomotor and expressive techniques.     

The Sound of Grasp Affordances: Influence of Grasp‐Related Size of Categorized Objects on Vocalization

Previous research shows that simultaneously executed grasp and vocalization responses are faster when the precision grip is performed with the vowel [i] and the power grip is performed with the vowel [ɑ]. Research also shows that observing an object that is graspable with a precision or power grip can activate the grip congruent with the object. Given the connection between vowel articulation and grasping, this study explores whether grasp‐related size of observed objects can influence not only grasp responses but also vowel pronunciation. The participants had to categorize small and large objects into natural and manufactured categories by pronouncing the vowel [i] or [ɑ]. As predicted, [i] was produced faster when the object's grasp‐related size was congruent with the precision grip while [ɑ] was produced faster when the size was congruent with the power grip (Experiment 1). The effect was not, however, observed when the participants were presented with large objects that are not typically grasped by the power grip (Experiment 2). This study demonstrates that vowel production is systematically influenced by grasp‐related size of a viewed object, supporting the account that sensory‐motor processes related to grasp planning and representing grasp‐related properties of viewed objects interact with articulation processes. The paper discusses these findings in the context of size–sound symbolism, suggesting that mechanisms that transform size‐grasp affordances into corresponding grasp‐ and articulation‐related motor programs might provide a neural basis for size‐sound phenomena that links small objects with closed‐front vowels and large objects with open‐back vowels.