Audience Design in Multiparty Conversation

How do speakers design what they say in order to communicate effectively with groups of addressees who vary in their background knowledge of the topic at hand? Prior findings indicate that when a speaker addresses a pair of listeners with discrepant knowledge, that speakers Aim Low, designing their utterances for the least knowledgeable of the two addressees. Here, we test the hypothesis that speakers will depart from an Aim Low approach in order to efficiently communicate with larger groups of interacting partners. Further, we ask whether the cognitive demands of tracking multiple conversational partners' perspectives places limitations on successful audience design. We find that speakers can successfully track information about what up to four of their partners do and do not know in conversation. When addressing groups of 3–4 addressees at once, speakers design language based on the combined knowledge of the group. These findings point to an audience design process that simultaneously represents the perspectives of multiple other individuals and combines these representations in order to design utterances that strike a balance between the different needs of the individuals within the group.     

Influence of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and catechol O-methyl transferase polymorphisms on effects of meditation on plasma catecholamines and stress

Meditation may show differential effects on stress and plasma catecholamines based on genetic polymorphisms in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and catechol O-methyl transferase (COMT). Eighty adults (40 men, 40 women; mean age 26 years) who practiced meditation regularly and 57 healthy control adults (35 men, 22 women; mean age 26 years) participated. Plasma catecholamines (norepinephrine (NE), epinephrine (E), and dopamine (DA)) concentrations were measured, and a modified form of the Stress Response Inventory was administered. The results were analyzed using two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with control and meditation subjects, gene polymorphism as factors, and meditation duration as the covariate. Two-way ANCOVA showed a significant interaction between control and meditation subjects, and BDNF Val66Met polymorphism on DA/NE+DA/E (p = 0.042) and NE/E+NE/DA (p = 0.046) ratios. A significant interaction was found for control and meditation subjects with COMT Val158Met polymorphism and plasma NE concentrations (p = 0.009). Post hoc ANCOVA in the meditation group, adjusted for meditation duration, showed significantly higher plasma NE concentrations for COMT Met carriers than COMT Val/Val subjects (p = 0.025). Significant differences of stress levels were found between the control and meditation subjects in BDNF Val/Met (p < 0.001) and BDNF Met/Met (p = 0.003), whereas stress levels in the BDNF Val/Val genotype did not differ between the control and meditation groups. This is the first evidence that meditation produces different effects on plasma catecholamines according to BDNF or COMT polymorphisms.     

Why does service with a smile make employees happy? A social interaction model

Drawing on the social interaction model, we examine the mediating role that the customer's display of positive emotions plays on the relationship between the employee's display of positive emotions and the employee's positive mood. We also examine the moderating role that the customer's personality traits-agreeableness, extraversion, and emotional stability-play on the relationship between the employee's display of positive emotions and the customer's display of positive emotions. The results show that the customer's display of positive emotions mediates the relationship between the employee's display of positive emotions and the employee's positive mood. In addition, the customer's personality traits moderate the relationship between the employee's display of positive emotions and the customer's display of positive emotions. The customer's display of positive emotions depends less on the employee's display of positive emotions when the customer has high levels of agreeableness and emotional stability than when the customer has low levels of agreeableness and emotional stability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Neural Correlates of Bridging Inferences and Coherence Processing

We explored the neural correlates of bridging inferences and coherence processing during story comprehension using Positron Emission Tomography (PET). Ten healthy right-handed volunteers were visually presented three types of stories (Strong Coherence, Weak Coherence, and Control) consisted of three sentences. The causal connectedness among sentences in the Strong Coherence story was strong that readers would not have to generate bridging inferences, whereas the causal antecedent of the last sentence in the Weak Coherence story was not explicitly stated so that readers should draw bridging inferences to fill the gap between sentences. It was found that the left middle temporal gyrus was activated while participants read the Weak Coherence stories. In contrast, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex were activated only in the Strong Coherence condition. This suggests that the dmPFC was involved in coherence processing whereas bridging inference was mediated by the left middle temporal gyrus. It was also found that anterior temporal pole and the temporo-parietal junction mediated general semantic processing.     

Auditory‐motor adaptation is reduced in adults who stutter but not in children who stutter

Previous studies have shown that adults who stutter produce smaller corrective motor responses to compensate for unexpected auditory perturbations in comparison to adults who do not stutter, suggesting that stuttering may be associated with deficits in integration of auditory feedback for online speech monitoring. In this study, we examined whether stuttering is also associated with deficiencies in integrating and using discrepancies between expected and received auditory feedback to adaptively update motor programs for accurate speech production. Using a sensorimotor adaptation paradigm, we measured adaptive speech responses to auditory formant frequency perturbations in adults and children who stutter and their matched nonstuttering controls. We found that the magnitude of the speech adaptive response for children who stutter did not differ from that of fluent children. However, the adaptation magnitude of adults who stutter in response to auditory perturbation was significantly smaller than the adaptation magnitude of adults who do not stutter. Together these results indicate that stuttering is associated with deficits in integrating discrepancies between predicted and received auditory feedback to calibrate the speech production system in adults but not children. This auditory‐motor integration deficit thus appears to be a compensatory effect that develops over years of stuttering.     

Father Involvement and Behavior Problems among Preadolescents at Risk of Maltreatment

Although there is a well-established connection between father involvement and children’s positive behavioral development in general, this relation has been understudied in more vulnerable and high-risk populations. The aims of this study were to examine how the quantity (i.e., the amount of shared activities) and quality (i.e., perceived quality of the father-child relationship) of father involvement are differently related to internalizing and externalizing behavior problems among preadolescents at risk of maltreatment and test if these associations are moderated by father type and child maltreatment. A secondary data analysis was conducted using data from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN). Generalized estimating equations analysis was performed on a sample of 499 preadolescents aged 12 years. The results indicated that higher quality of father involvement was associated with lower levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems whereas greater quantity of father involvement was associated with higher levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. The positive association between the quantity of father involvement and behavior problems was stronger in adolescents who were physically abused by their father. The association between father involvement and behavior problems did not differ by the type of father co-residing in the home. The findings suggest that policies and interventions aimed at improving the quality of fathers’ relationships and involvement with their children may be helpful in reducing behavior problems in adolescents at risk of maltreatment.     

Adult age differences in the effects of goals on self-regulated sentence processing

The authors examined age differences in adults' allocation of effort when reading text for either high levels of recall accuracy or high levels of efficiency. Participants read a series of sentences, making judgments of learning before recall. Older adults showed less sensitivity than the young to the accuracy goal in both reading time allocation and memory performance. Memory accuracy and differential allocation of effort to unlearned items were age equivalent, so age differences in goal adherence were not attributable to metacognitive factors. However, comparison with data from a control reading task without monitoring showed that learning gains among older adults across trial were reduced relative to those of the young by memory monitoring, suggesting that monitoring may be resource consuming for older learners. Age differences in the responsiveness to (information-acquisition) goals could be accounted for, in part, by independent contributions from working memory and memory self-efficacy. Our data suggest that both processing capacity ("what you have") and beliefs ("knowing you can do it") can contribute to individual differences in engaging resources ("what you do") to effectively learn novel content from text.