Christ-Centred Solidarity in a Time of Pandemic

The article proposes a reading of Colossians 1:15-20 for the time of COVID-19, arguing that the assertion that all things “hold together” in the incarnate Christ should lead Christians not only to practise solidarity with those most at risk, but also to evaluate societal and systemic responses to COVID-19 in the light of their effects on the most vulnerable members of society. The article considers the use and misuse of the rhetoric of self-sacrificial love or loving self-sacrifice, and the use and misuse of the image of warfare – arguing that in both of these areas, Christian communities offer urgent challenges and correctives on the basis of their traditions of Christ-centred solidarity.     

词切分的韵律学线索

本文是关于汉语普通话词切分的一个实验报告。用无意文重复句和合成句作语音材料,探讨音节时长分布、基频曲线、音节强度以及共振峰等韵律学线索在词切分中的作用。得到的主要结果是,在排除语义和音段层面信息的条件下,听者能够根据句子的韵律学特征进行句子结构的判断和词的切分;在对切分有效的韵律学线索中,最重要的是音节的时长分布模式,其次是基频曲线,音节的强度和共振峰变化对切分没有贡献。     

“John thinks that Mary thinks that…” attribution of second-order beliefs by 5- to 10-year-old children

Understanding of second-order belief structures by 5- and 10-year-old children was assessed in acted stories in which two characters (John and Mary) were independently informed about an object's (ice-cream van's) unexpected transfer to a new location. Hence both John and Mary knew where the van was but there was a mistake in John's second-order belief about Mary's belief: “John thinks Mary thinks the van is still at the old place”. Children's understanding of this second-order belief was tested by asking “Where does John think Mary will go for ice cream?” Correct answers could only be given if John's second-order belief was represented, since all shortcut reasoning based on first-order beliefs would have led to the wrong answer. Results suggested unexpected early competence around the age of 6 and 7 years, shown under optimal conditions when inference of second-order beliefs was prompted.     

Do children use similar processes to read and spell words?

The use of spelling-sound information in both reading and spelling was evaluated by having children read and spell nonwords and five types of words that differed in terms of their regularity for reading and spelling. The subjects were grade 3 children who had been psychometrically defined as good readers and good spellers (“good”), good readers and poor spellers (“mixed”), or poor readers and poor spellers (“poor”). Results indicated that all children attempted to use spelling-sound correspondences in both reading and spelling, although children in both the mixed and the poor groups had weaker knowledge of these correspondences and were less systematic in their use of them. Furthermore, even though the children in the mixed group had been matched with children in the good group on reading comprehension, the number and type of errors made by the mixed subjects on both the reading and spelling tasks were more similar to those of the poor subjects than to those of the good subjects.     

The pathological left-handedness syndrome

A clinical syndrome of pathological left-handedness (PLH) is proposed to identify the pattern of correlative changes in lateral development associated with early brain injury in some manifest left-handers. This syndrome is believed to be caused by a hemispheric lesion that is predominantly left-sided (or bilateral asymmetric), which onsets before Age 6, and which encroaches upon the critical speech zones of the frontotemporal/frontoparietal cortex. The pattern of changes may include any or all of the following features: shifts in manual dominance, trophic changes in the extremities, transfer of hemispheric speech, and/or intrahemispheric reorganization of visuospatial cognitive functions. Although some of these correlates of PLH have long been known, they have not been recognized as an interrelated pattern of traits that constitute a clinical syndrome. Identification of these individuals, all manifest left-handers, will be shown to have implications for diagnosis/remediation and for models of recovery of function.     

Visual dominance in inhibitory conditioning in the pigeon

In a conditioned inhibition paradigm (A+, B+, AX?_, pigeons received either of two keylight stimuli reliably followed by food (A+, B+). However, when one of these keylights was accompanied by another stimulus, food did not follow (AX?). For some groups, the putative inhibitor was a tone, whereas for others it was illumination of a red houselight. The birds pecked the A and B stimuli at a high rate. When X was red houselight, the birds pecked A at a much lower rate in the presence of X. When X was a tone, discrimination between A and AX was much poorer. Moreover, in a transfer test, red houselight inhibited responding to the other keylight, B, but tone did not. These results indicate that red houselight becomes a conditioned inhibitor more quickly than tone in appetitive situations, just as red houselight becomes a conditioned excitor more quickly in those situations. These results contradict the assertion that the latter outcome occurs because red houselight is a stronger appetitive excitor than tone at the start of the experiment (the “head start” hypothesis).     

Sex roles and depression: A preliminary investigation of the direction of causality

The present study examined the direction of the relation between sex role self-concept and depression. A total of 23 males and 32 females were given the Personal Attributes Questionnaire and the Beck Depression Inventory at two times separated by a 3-month interval. Results of a cross-lagged panel correlational analysis found no evidence for sex role orientation as a cause of depression. Instead, the data suggested that emotional well being precedes self-perceived instrumentality, but the influence of third variables could not be overlooked. The implications of these data are discussed with particular reference to the need for more complex theoretical formulations of the relation between self-perceived instrumentality and adjustment.     

Primary-school stutterers: Have attitudes changed?

How concerned are primary-school-aged stuttering children about their communication problem? What are the clinical implications of this concern?Fifteen years ago, Silverman (1970) suggested that primary-school-aged children who stuttered were not concerned about their disfluencies. A clinical implication of that report was that the interpreted lack of concern might negatively affect the children's motivation and desire for change in therapy. Scant research exists to support or refute this implication. While research is available on reactions to stuttering, pretherapeutic attitudes—especially those of children—have not been systematically reported. Guitar (1976) measured the pre-treatment attitudes of 38 adult stutterers and reported that, “those stutterers with more negative attitudes measured just prior to treatment, were most likely to have high levels of stuttering a year later, even though all subjects left therapy entirely fluent.” In related areas, research by Kolb, Winter, and Berlen (1968), McFall (1970), and McFall and Hammen (1971) has indicated that clients who are more motivated do better in behavior modification programs.Whether or not these findings may be generalized to children, in the midst of a developmental process, is purely speculative.     

Deep dyslexia in childhood?

Deep dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder in which semantic substitutions (e.g., city read as town) are made in reading single isolated words. In this paper, evidence for deep dyslexic-type errors is presented from the word-recognition responses of six children, aged 7 years and 0 month to 8 years and 9 months, with severe reading disorders. These semantic substitutions occur in the absence of phonological skills. Therefore, it appears that there exists a small subset of developmental dyslexics who at the beginning of acquisition of reading skills are able to engage in semantic processing, but who show severe impairment of phonological processing. The existence of these reading errors indicate that the use of a phonological code is not necessary to extract meaning from the printed word.