Brain dynamics of word familiarization in 20-month-olds: effects of productive vocabulary size

The present study investigated the brain mechanisms involved during young children's receptive familiarization with new words, and whether the dynamics of these mechanisms are related to the child's productive vocabulary size. To this end, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 20-month-old children in a pseudoword repetition task. Results revealed distinct patterns of repetition effects for children with large and small productive vocabularies. High producers showed evidence of recognizing the novel words already after three presentations, while the low producers needed five presentations to display a recognition effect. The familiarization process was manifested in the modulations of two components, the N200-400 and a later fronto-central component, which appeared to increase in amplitude until a certain level of encoding was reached and then decrease with further repetition. These findings suggest a relation between the onset of the productive vocabulary spurt and the rate of receptive word familiarization.     

Is Retirement Good or Bad for Subjective Well-Being?

Retirement has been viewed either as a transition that is accompanied by psychological distress or as a time of continued, or even enhanced, subjective well-being. Existing evidence is mixed, with some studies reporting retirement as positively related to well-being and others reporting a negative relationship or none at all. Our research indicates that developmental and social contexts shape an individual’s retirement decisions and experiences, so that retirement should be studied in its ecological and life-course context. Research on marital quality and subjective well-being in retirement has demonstrated both similarities and differences between men and women, as well as the need to consider couples conjointly (rather than viewing individuals in isolation). Future research focusing on the retirement process as it unfolds over time and in ecological context can serve to illuminate the circumstances under which retirement promotes or detracts from the quality of life.     

Killing your children to hurt your partner: A South African perspective on the motivations for revenge filicide

The aim of the study was to investigate the offence characteristics and motivations for revenge filicides. Revenge filicide is an act where one parent kills their own offspring for retribution to hurt and upset the other parent. The cases of 20 revenge filicide murderers (14 male and six female) were analysed to determine the motivations and offence characteristics of revenge filicide offenders. It is the first South African study to highlight the motivations and associated characteristics in revenge filicides. Themes such as a loss of social identity due to rejection; extreme rage type anger; external locus of control; sadism; a desire to cause pain and a need to inflict harm are highlighted in this article. The initial emotional response may escalate from mild anger to a level of narcissistic rage which eventually culminates in the murdering of the child to punish and hurt the other parent and to restore control.     

Comparing Quality of Life Instruments in a Population of Abused Women

The SF-36 Health Survey and the WHO Quality of Life Index—BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) were used to study quality of life among women who had experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). The aim was to determine how these instruments correlated with each other and with physical and psychological IPV, in order to find the best instrument to use. IPV was measured using the Severity of Violence against Women Scale (SVAWS) and the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Index (PMWI). A self-administrated questionnaire was given to women able to understand Norwegian who were staying at a women’s shelter in Norway for more than 1 week. 87 of 212 women asked to participate completed the questionnaire. The physical acts of violence in SVAWS correlated significantly (P<0.001) with both the general health and bodily pain dimensions in SF-36 and global overall health (OH) in WHOQOL-BREF. Most correlations between WHOQOL-BREF and SF-36 were moderate. The WHOQOL-BREF domains explained 46% of the variance in OH and 40% of the variance in the global overall quality of life (OQOL). The SF-36 domains explained 66% of the variance in OH and 27% of OQOL. The mean WHOQOL-BREF and SF-36 scores were all low. The SF-36 correlated better with physical and psychological IPV in this population than the WHOQOL-BREF. The significant correlations between the OH, general health and bodily pain domains and acts of violence show the importance of including questions concerning bodily symptoms in determining the quality of life in a population of abused women.     

Moving from patches to quilts: developing self-aware,reflective leaders through curriculum innovation based on a Patchwork Text approach

A Patchwork Text is a creative approach to learning and assessment based on short pieces of reflective writing to promote deep, meaningful reflection. A five-year study was undertaken to explore whether this approach supports postgraduate students’ personal and academic development and the factors that influenced student experience, within one UK university. Our adapted approach encompasses patches of reflection, a structured Reflective Journal, formative feedback, and action learning within a constructively aligned curriculum. Between 2010 and 2015, 100 students attended the MSc Leadership Development programme and 71% (n=71) completed a questionnaire at the end of the first module. The questionnaire contained mainly open questions. The overwhelming majority of responses (89%, n=63) reported their experience of action learning was extremely positive. Eighty-five percent (n=58) reported that the Patchwork Text approach supported their academic development. Seventy-five percent (n=52) agreed the approach was helpful in relation to their summative assessment which comprised a reflective integrated portfolio. Thematic framework analysis of the qualitative data suggests the Patchwork Text approach increased self-awareness and insight; deepened and promoted on-going reflection; and facilitated critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis thereby enabling completion of the summative assignment. Findings suggest the adapted Patchwork Text approach increased students’ self-awareness as well as supporting them with both their summative assignment and the development of academic writing skills.     

Fit inside the work‐family black box: An ecology of the life course,cycles of control reframing

Scholars have not fully theorized the multifaceted, interdependent dimensions within the work‐family ‘black box’. Taking an ecology of the life course approach, we theorize common work‐family and adequacy constructs as capturing different components of employees' cognitive appraisals of fit between their demands and resources at the interface between home and work. Employees' appraisals of their work‐family linkages and of their relative resource adequacy are not made independently but, rather, co‐occur as identifiable constellations of fit. The life course approach hypothesizes that shifts in objective demands/resources at work and at home over the life course result in employees experiencing cycles of control, that is, corresponding shifts in their cognitive assessments of fit. We further theorize patterned appraisals of fit are key mediators between objective work‐family conditions and employees' health, well‐being and strategic adaptations. As a case example, we examine whether employees' assessments on 10 dimensions cluster together as patterned fit constellations, using data from a middle‐class sample of 753 employees working at Best Buy's corporate headquarters. We find no single linear construct of fit that captures the complexity within the work‐family black box. Instead, respondents experience six distinctive constellations of fit: one optimal; two poor; and three moderate fit constellations.     

The Unity and Commensurability of Pleasures and Pains

In this paper I seek to answer two interrelated questions about pleasures and pains: (i) The question of unity: Do all pleasures share a single quality that accounts for why these, and only these, are pleasures, and do all pains share a single quality that accounts for why these, and only these, are pains? (ii) The question of commensurability: Are all pleasures and pains rankable on a single, quantitative hedonic scale? I argue that our intuitions draw us in opposing directions: On the one hand, pleasures and pains seem unified and commensurable; on the other hand, they do not. I further argue that neither intuition can be abandoned, and examine three different paths to reconciliation. The first two are response theory and split experience theory. Both of these, I argue, are unsuccessful. A third path, however—which I label “dimensionalism” —succeeds. Dimensionalism is the theory that pleasure and pain have the ontological status as opposite sides of a hedonic dimension along which experiences vary. This view has earlier been suggested by C. D. Broad, Karl Duncker, Shelly Kagan, and John Searle, but it has not been worked out in detail. In this paper I work out the dimensionalist view in some detail, defend it, and explain how it solves the problem of the unity and commensurability of pleasures and pains.     

Brain responses to lexical-semantic priming in children at-risk for dyslexia

Deviances in early event-related potential (ERP) components reflecting auditory and phonological processing are well-documented in children at familial risk for dyslexia. However, little is known about brain responses which index processing in other linguistic domains such as lexicon, semantics and syntax in this group. The present study investigated effects of lexical-semantic priming in 20- and 24-month-olds at-risk for dyslexia and typically developing controls in two ERP experiments. In both experiments an early component assumed to reflect facilitated lexical processing for primed words was enhanced in the at-risk group compared to the control group. Moreover, an N400-like response which was prominent in the control group was attenuated or absent in at-risk children. Results suggest that deficiencies in young children at-risk for dyslexia are not restricted to perceptual and lower-level phonological abilities, but also affect higher order linguistic skills such as lexical and semantic processing.     

Eliminating Terms of Confusion: Resolving the Liberal–Republican Dispute

John Rawls thinks republicanism is compatible with his political liberalism. Philip Pettit insists that the two conflict in important ways. In this paper, I make sense of this dispute by employing David Chalmers’s method of elimination to reveal the meaning underlying key terms in Rawls’s political liberalism and Pettit’s republicanism. This procedure of disambiguating terms will show how the two theories defend the same institutional arrangement on the same grounds. The procedure thus vindicates Rawls’s view of the two theories being compatible. The reason for this compatibility is that both theories are politicized—that is, they are constructed to attract the compliance of all reasonable members of a modern, pluralistic society.