Effects of simulated stuttering on listener recall

In an investigation of the effects of simulated stuttering on listener recall, a presentation was varied on two factors: degree of stuttering (mild or severe) and information value of stuttered words (low or high). A control presentation featuring non-stuttered speech also was prepared. Five groups of 16 subjects were randomly assigned to, and participated in, one of the five listening conditions. Then they completed a 20-item recall test. A one-way analysis of variance revealed sognificant differences among the five conditions. Two-way analysis of variance disclosed no main effects. However, a significant interaction showed that recall was lowest in the severe stuttering-high information condition. The results are discussed in terms of attention to critical information.     

The old homeless and the new homelessness in historical perspective

In the 1950s and 1960s homelessness declined to the point that researchers were predicting its virtual disappearance in the 1970s. Instead, in the 1980s, homelessness increased rapidly and drastically changed in composition. The "old homeless" of the 1950s were mainly old men living in cheap hotels on skid rows. The new homeless were much younger, more likely to be minority group members, suffering from greater poverty, and with access to poorer sleeping quarters. In addition, homeless women and families appeared in significant numbers. However, there were also points of similarity, especially high levels of mental illness and substance abuse.     

Examining Temporal Cognition in Preschoolers With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Insights From Parent–Child Interactions

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Increasing evidence supports the existence of time-related impairments in school-aged children and adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD),...     

Employee Happiness: Why We Should Care

Albert Schweitzer once stated that “success is not the key to happiness, happiness is the key to success.” Despite this widespread belief, employee happiness is often perceived by organizations as an insubstantial topic, irrelevant to bottom-line outcomes. Equally as problematic, past investigations have primarily utilized other positive emotion variables as a proxy for happiness, thus convoluting the relationships between happiness and work outcomes. As such, taking a scientist-practitioner approach, the present study sought to address the need to: (a) directly measure employees’ happiness, (b) link employee happiness to outcomes of organizational interest, and (c) assess the impact that organizational psychosocial factors have in decreasing employee happiness levels. Therefore, by measuring employee happiness, job demands, and organizational outcomes through a two-wave full panel design, the present study provided evidence for employee happiness’s ability to significantly mediate the relationship between job demands and organizational outcomes. Explicitly, a high level of job demands decreased employee happiness, which subsequently decreased employees’ organizational commitment, task performance, and contextual performance, while increasing turnover intentions and counterproductive work behaviors. These results carry significant theoretical and practical implications. Future QOL (Quality of Life) and organizational research would benefit from building on the present findings and establishing a nomological net of employee happiness. Additionally, practitioners have the opportunity to utilize this evidence to demonstrate the impact that employee happiness has on organizationally-relevant outcomes and the role that organizations can have in fostering employee happiness.

     

La Bella Figura: The role of a cultural philosophy on Italian consumerism

The La Bella Figura concept extends to many Italian cultural dimensions including physical appearance, perception of self, and behaviours. La Bella Figura plays an essential role in shaping Italian consumer behaviour and consumerism. The current study sought to understand how women living in Italy conceptualize La Bella Figura and how it affects their day‐to‐day lives, attitudes, and consumption behaviours. This research extracted concepts from Consumer Culture Theory to construct a qualitative codebook and structure thematic data analyses. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 30 women aged 18–50 years living in Florence, Italy. Participants were recruited through study flyers, social media, and snowball sampling. Open and axial coding were facilitated by HyperRESEARCH 4.0.1 software to generate key themes. Data were collected and analyzed by trained researchers living in Florence, Italy, who utilized grounded theory techniques to identify emergent themes. Results indicated various components of La Bella Figura contributed to consumer behaviour, namely its influence on identity (i.e., appearance, confidence), lifestyle goals (i.e., health, consumerism), and social norms (i.e., perceptions of others, media). Findings offer practical recommendations for marketers and retailers to appeal to the Italian market through effective and informed mediums.     

Iterated Belief Revision and Conditional Logic

In this paper we propose a conditional logic called IBC to represent iterated belief revision systems. We propose a set of postulates for iterated revision which are a small variant of Darwiche and Pearl's ones. The conditional logic IBC has a standard semantics in terms of selection function models and provides a natural representation of epistemic states. We establish a correspondence between iterated belief revision systems and IBC-models. Our representation theorem does not entail Gärdenfors' Triviality Result.     

A comparative analysis of global and local processing of hierarchical visual stimuli in young children (Homo sapiens) and monkeys (Cebus apella)

Results obtained with preschool children (Homo sapiens) were compared with results previously obtained from capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in matching-to-sample tasks featuring hierarchical visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, monkeys, in contrast with children, showed an advantage in matching the stimuli on the basis of their local features. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment in which control trials enabled the authors to rule out that children used spurious cues to solve the matching task. In a 3rd experiment featuring conditions in which the density of the stimuli was manipulated, monkeys' accuracy in the processing of the global shape of the stimuli was negatively affected by the separation of the local elements, whereas children's performance was robust across testing conditions. Children's response latencies revealed a global precedence in the 2nd and 3rd experiments. These results show differences in the processing of hierarchical stimuli by humans and monkeys that emerge early during childhood.     

Empirical evaluation of the MCMI-III personality disorder scales

The MCMI-III personality disorder scales were empirically validated with a sample of 870 clinical patients and inmates. Prevalence rates of personality disorders were in general lower on the MCMI-III than clinical ratings, but trait prevalence was generally higher; thus a base rate of 75 on the MCMI-III could be a guideline in the screening of trait prevalence. However, the sensitivity of some MCMI-III scales was very low. Moreover, the correlations of most personality disorder scales of the MCMI-III were significant and positive with corresponding measures on clinical ratings and MMPI-2 personality disorder scales, but these were, in general, not significantly higher than some other correlations. As a consequence the discriminant validity seems to be questionable. The MCMI-III alone cannot be used as a diagnostic inventory, but the test could be useful as a screening device as a part of a multimethod approach that allows aggregation over measures in making diagnostic decisions.     

Apraxia is not associated to a disproportionate naming impairment for manipulable objects

The relevance of gesture knowledge for the semantic representation of manipulable objects was investigated in a series of 15 patients with a focal left-hemisphere lesion. The patients were classified according to the presence/absence of ideomotor and ideational apraxia. We investigated picture naming and word-picture matching (pointing to a picture on verbal command) with stimuli including items from three categories: manipulable objects, non-manipulable objects, and animals. The analysis was performed at group level and at single-patient level. Nine patients were affected by ideational apraxia and nine by ideomotor apraxia: two cases presented ideomotor but not ideational apraxia, and two cases presented the opposite dissociation. Patients affected by ideational apraxia were more severely impaired in all tasks, but did not show a disproportionate impairment with the category of manipulable objects in contrast to the other categories. The presence of ideomotor apraxia did not cause a greater impairment in any task or category. Finally, we observed a patient with ideational apraxia who performed flawlessly in naming and word-picture matching for all the stimuli, including manipulable objects. In conclusion, we did not find a relationship between ideational apraxia and a disproportionate impairment of the semantic knowledge of manipulable objects.     

Global and local processing of hierarchical visual stimuli in tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Capuchin monkeys' (Cebas apella) relative accuracy in the processing of the global shape or the local features of hierarchical visual stimuli was assessed. Three experiments are presented featuring manipulations of the arrangement and the density of the local elements of the stimuli. The results showed a clear advantage for local level processing in this species, which is robust under manipulations of the density of the local elements of the stimuli. By contrast the density of the component elements linearly affected accuracy in global processing. These findings, which support those from other studies in which a local superiority emerged in animals, challenge the generality of early claims concerning the adaptive value of global advantage in the processing of hierarchical visual patterns.