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SOPARSE predicts so-called local coherence effects: locally plausible but globally impossible parses of substrings can exert a distracting influence during sentence processing. Additionally, it predicts digging-in effects: the longer the parser stays committed to a particular analysis, the harder it becomes to inhibit that analysis. We investigated the interaction of these two predictions using German sentences. Results from a self-paced reading study show that the processing difficulty caused by a local coherence can be reduced by first allowing the globally correct parse to become entrenched, which supports SOPARSE’s assumptions.
Consonants have been proposed to carry more of the weight of lexical processing than vowels. This consonant bias has consistently been found in adults and has been proposed to facilitate early language acquisition. We explore the origins of this bias over the course of development and in infants learning different languages. Although the consonant bias was originally thought to be present at birth, evidence suggests that it arises from the early stages of phonological and (pre-)lexical acquisition. We discuss two theories that account for the acquisition of the consonant bias: the lexical and acoustic-phonetic hypotheses.
The current study investigates to what extent masked morphological priming is modulated by language-particular properties, specifically by its writing system. We present results from two masked priming experiments investigating the processing of complex Japanese words written in less common (moraic) scripts. In Experiment 1, participants performed lexical decisions on target verbs; these were preceded by primes which were either (i) a past-tense form of the same verb, (ii) a stem-related form with the epenthetic vowel -i, (iii) a semantically-related form, and (iv) a phonologically-related form. Significant priming effects were obtained for prime types (i), (ii), and (iii), but not for (iv). This pattern of results differs from previous findings on languages with alphabetic scripts, which found reliable masked priming effects for morphologically related prime/target pairs of type (i), but not for non-affixal and semantically-related primes of types (ii), and (iii). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime/target pairs which are neither morphologically, semantically, phonologically nor - as presented in their moraic scripts—orthographically related, but which—in their commonly written form—share the same kanji, which are logograms adopted from Chinese. The results showed a significant priming effect, with faster lexical-decision times for kanji-related prime/target pairs relative to unrelated ones. We conclude that affix-stripping is insufficient to account for masked morphological priming effects across languages, but that language-particular properties (in the case of Japanese, the writing system) affect the processing of (morphologically) complex words.
The current study investigates to what extent masked morphological priming is modulated by language-particular properties, specifically by its writing system. We present results from two masked priming experiments investigating the processing of complex Japanese words written in less common (moraic) scripts. In Experiment 1, participants performed lexical decisions on target verbs; these were preceded by primes which were either (i) a past-tense form of the same verb, (ii) a stem-related form with the epenthetic vowel -i, (iii) a semantically-related form, and (iv) a phonologically-related form. Significant priming effects were obtained for prime types (i), (ii), and (iii), but not for (iv). This pattern of results differs from previous findings on languages with alphabetic scripts, which found reliable masked priming effects for morphologically related prime/target pairs of type (i), but not for non-affixal and semantically-related primes of types (ii), and (iii). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime/target pairs which are neither morphologically, semantically, phonologically nor - as presented in their moraic scripts—orthographically related, but which—in their commonly written form—share the same kanji, which are logograms adopted from Chinese. The results showed a significant priming effect, with faster lexical-decision times for kanji-related prime/target pairs relative to unrelated ones. We conclude that affix-stripping is insufficient to account for masked morphological priming effects across languages, but that language-particular properties (in the case of Japanese, the writing system) affect the processing of (morphologically) complex words.
We examined the spontaneous association between numbers and space by documenting attention deployment and the time course of associated spatial-numerical mapping with and without overt oculomotor responses. In Experiment 1, participants maintained central fixation while listening to number names. In Experiment 2, they made horizontal target-direct saccades following auditory number presentation. In both experiments, we continuously measured spontaneous ocular drift in horizontal space during and after number presentation. Experiment 2 also measured visual-probe-directed saccades following number presentation. Reliable ocular drift congruent with a horizontal mental number line emerged during and after number presentation in both experiments. Our results provide new evidence for the implicit and automatic nature of the oculomotor resonance effect associated with the horizontal spatial-numerical mapping mechanism.
Much research on language control in bilinguals has relied on the interpretation of the costs of switching between two languages. Of the two types of costs that are linked to language control, switching costs are assumed to be transient in nature and modulated by trial-specific manipulations (e.g., by preparation time), while mixing costs are supposed to be more stable and less affected by trial-specific manipulations. The present study investigated the effect of preparation time on switching and mixing costs, revealing that both types of costs can be influenced by trial-specific manipulations.
Editorial
(2016)
The aim of the present study was to test the functional relevance of the spatial concepts UP or DOWN for words that use these concepts either literally (space) or metaphorically (time, valence). A functional relevance would imply a symmetrical relationship between the spatial concepts and words related to these concepts, showing that processing words activate the related spatial concepts on one hand, but also that an activation of the concepts will ease the retrieval of a related word on the other. For the latter, the rotation angle of participant's body position was manipulated either to an upright or a head-down tilted body position to activate the related spatial concept. Afterwards participants produced in a within-subject design previously memorized words of the concepts space, time and valence according to the pace of a metronome. All words were related either to the spatial concept UP or DOWN. The results including Bayesian analyses show (1) a significant interaction between body position and words using the concepts UP and DOWN literally, (2) a marginal significant interaction between body position and temporal words and (3) no effect between body position and valence words. However, post-hoc analyses suggest no difference between experiments. Thus, the authors concluded that integrating sensorimotor experiences is indeed of functional relevance for all three concepts of space, time and valence. However, the strength of this functional relevance depends on how close words are linked to mental concepts representing vertical space.
Background: The goal of this study was to estimate the prevalence of and risk factors for diagnosed depression in heart failure (HF) patients in German primary care practices.
Methods: This study was a retrospective database analysis in Germany utilizing the Disease Analyzer (R) Database (IMS Health, Germany). The study population included 132,994 patients between 40 and 90 years of age from 1,072 primary care practices. The observation period was between 2004 and 2013. Follow-up lasted up to five years and ended in April 2015. A total of 66,497 HF patients were selected after applying exclusion criteria. The same number of 66,497 controls were chosen and were matched (1:1) to HF patients on the basis of age, sex, health insurance, depression diagnosis in the past, and follow-up duration after index date.
Results: HF was a strong risk factor for diagnosed depression (p < 0.0001). A total of 10.5% of HF patients and 6.3% of matched controls developed depression after one year of follow-up (p < 0.001). Depression was documented in 28.9% of the HF group and 18.2% of the control group after the five-year follow-up (p < 0.001). Cancer, dementia, osteoporosis, stroke, and osteoarthritis were associated with a higher risk of developing depression. Male gender and private health insurance were associated with lower risk of depression.
Conclusions: The risk of diagnosed depression is significantly increased in patients with HF compared to patients without HF in primary care practices in Germany.
Strategic sexual signals
(2016)
The color red has special meaning in mating-relevant contexts. Wearing red can enhance perceptions of women's attractiveness and desirability as a potential romantic partner. Building on recent findings, the present study examined whether women's (N = 74) choice to display the color red is influenced by the attractiveness of an expected opposite-sex interaction partner. Results indicated that female participants who expected to interact with an attractive man displayed red (on clothing, accessories, and/or makeup) more often than a baseline consisting of women in a natural environment with no induced expectation. In contrast, when women expected to interact with an unattractive man, they eschewed red, displaying it less often than in the baseline condition. Findings are discussed with respect to evolutionary and cultural perspectives on mate evaluation and selection.
Background: Given the well-established association between perceived stress and quality of life (QoL) in dementia patients and their partners, our goal was to identify whether relationship quality and dyadic coping would operate as mediators between perceived stress and QoL.
Methods: 82 dyads of dementia patients and their spousal caregivers were included in a cross-sectional assessment from a prospective study. QoL was assessed with the Quality of Life in Alzheimer's Disease scale (QoL-AD) for dementia patients and the WHO Quality of Life-BREF for spousal caregivers. Perceived stress was measured with the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14). Both partners were assessed with the Dyadic Coping Inventory (DCI). Analyses of correlation as well as regression models including mediator analyses were performed.
Results: We found negative correlations between stress and QoL in both partners (QoL-AD: r = -0.62; p < 0.001; WHO-QOL Overall: r = -0.27; p = 0.02). Spousal caregivers had a significantly lower DCI total score than dementia patients (p < 0.001). Dyadic coping was a significant mediator of the relationship between stress and QoL in spousal caregivers (z = 0.28; p = 0.02), but not in dementia patients. Likewise, relationship quality significantly mediated the relationship between stress and QoL in caregivers only (z = -2.41; p = 0.02).
Conclusions: This study identified dyadic coping as a mediator on the relationship between stress and QoL in (caregiving) partners of dementia patients. In patients, however, we found a direct negative effect of stress on QoL. The findings suggest the importance of stress reducing and dyadic interventions for dementia patients and their partners, respectively.
Linked linear mixed models
(2016)
The complexity of eye-movement control during reading allows measurement of many dependent variables, the most prominent ones being fixation durations and their locations in words. In current practice, either variable may serve as dependent variable or covariate for the other in linear mixed models (LMMs) featuring also psycholinguistic covariates of word recognition and sentence comprehension. Rather than analyzing fixation location and duration with separate LMMs, we propose linking the two according to their sequential dependency. Specifically, we include predicted fixation location (estimated in the first LMM from psycholinguistic covariates) and its associated residual fixation location as covariates in the second, fixation-duration LMM. This linked LMM affords a distinction between direct and indirect effects (mediated through fixation location) of psycholinguistic covariates on fixation durations. Results confirm the robustness of distributed processing in the perceptual span. They also offer a resolution of the paradox of the inverted optimal viewing position (IOVP) effect (i.e., longer fixation durations in the center than at the beginning and end of words) although the opposite (i.e., an OVP effect) is predicted from default assumptions of psycholinguistic processing efficiency: The IOVP effect in fixation durations is due to the residual fixation-location covariate, presumably driven primarily by saccadic error, and the OVP effect (at least the left part of it) is uncovered with the predicted fixation-location covariate, capturing the indirect effects of psycholinguistic covariates. We expect that linked LMMs will be useful for the analysis of other dynamically related multiple outcomes, a conundrum of most psychonomic research.
Skipping a grade, one specific form of acceleration, is an intervention used for gifted students. Quantitative research has shown acceleration to be a highly successful intervention regarding academic achievement, but less is known about the social-emotional outcomes of grade-skipping. In the present study, the authors used the grounded theory approach to examine the experiences of seven gifted students aged 8 to 16 years who skipped a grade. The interviewees perceived their feeling of being in the wrong place before the grade-skipping as strongly influenced by their teachers, who generally did not respond adequately to their needs. We observed a close interrelationship between the gifted students' intellectual fit and their social situation in class. Findings showed that the grade-skipping in most of the cases bettered the situation in school intellectually as well as socially, but soon further interventions, for instance, a specialized and demanding class- or subject-specific acceleration were added to provide sufficiently challenging learning opportunities.
Effects of resistance training in youth athletes on muscular fitness and athletic performance
(2016)
During the stages of long-term athlete development (LTAD), resistance training (RT) is an important means for (i) stimulating athletic development, (ii) tolerating the demands of long-term training and competition, and (iii) inducing long-term health promoting effects that are robust over time and track into adulthood. However, there is a gap in the literature with regards to optimal RT methods during LTAD and how RT is linked to biological age. Thus, the aims of this scoping review were (i) to describe and discuss the effects of RT on muscular fitness and athletic performance in youth athletes, (ii) to introduce a conceptual model on how to appropriately implement different types of RT within LTAD stages, and (iii) to identify research gaps from the existing literature by deducing implications for future research. In general, RT produced small -to -moderate effects on muscular fitness and athletic performance in youth athletes with muscular strength showing the largest improvement. Free weight, complex, and plyometric training appear to be well -suited to improve muscular fitness and athletic performance. In addition, balance training appears to be an important preparatory (facilitating) training program during all stages of LTAD but particularly during the early stages. As youth athletes become more mature, specificity, and intensity of RT methods increase. This scoping review identified research gaps that are summarized in the following and that should be addressed in future studies: (i) to elucidate the influence of gender and biological age on the adaptive potential following RT in youth athletes (especially in females), (ii) to describe RT protocols in more detail (i.e., always report stress and strain based parameters), and (iii) to examine neuromuscular and tendomuscular adaptations following RT in youth athletes.
The semantics of focus particles like only requires a set of alternatives (Rooth, 1992). In two experiments, we investigated the impact of such particles on the retrieval of alternatives that are mentioned in the prior context or unmentioned. The first experiment used a probe recognition task and showed that focus particles interfere with the recognition of mentioned alternatives and the rejection of unmentioned alternatives relative to a condition without a particle. A second lexical decision experiment demonstrated priming effects for mentioned and unmentioned alternatives (compared with an unrelated condition) while focus particles caused additional interference effects. Overall, our results indicate that focus particles trigger an active search for alternatives and lead to a competition between mentioned alternatives, unmentioned alternatives, and the focused element.
Processes involved in late bilinguals' production of morphologically complex words were studied using an event-related brain potentials (ERP) paradigm in which EEGs were recorded during participants' silent productions of English past- and present-tense forms. Twenty-three advanced second language speakers of English (first language [L1] German) were compared to a control group of 19 L1 English speakers from an earlier study. We found a frontocentral negativity for regular relative to irregular past-tense forms (e.g., asked vs. held) during (silent) production, and no difference for the present-tense condition (e.g., asks vs. holds), replicating the ERP effect obtained for the L1 group. This ERP effect suggests that combinatorial processing is involved in producing regular past-tense forms, in both late bilinguals and L1 speakers. We also suggest that this paradigm is a useful tool for future studies of online language production.
Processes involved in late bilinguals' production of morphologically complex words were studied using an event-related brain potentials (ERP) paradigm in which EEGs were recorded during participants' silent productions of English past- and present-tense forms. Twenty-three advanced second language speakers of English (first language [L1] German) were compared to a control group of 19 L1 English speakers from an earlier study. We found a frontocentral negativity for regular relative to irregular past-tense forms (e.g., asked vs. held) during (silent) production, and no difference for the present-tense condition (e.g., asks vs. holds), replicating the ERP effect obtained for the L1 group. This ERP effect suggests that combinatorial processing is involved in producing regular past-tense forms, in both late bilinguals and L1 speakers. We also suggest that this paradigm is a useful tool for future studies of online language production.
Do properties of individual languages shape the mechanisms by which they are processed? By virtue of their non-concatenative morphological structure, the recognition of complex words in Semitic languages has been argued to rely strongly on morphological information and on decomposition into root and pattern constituents. Here, we report results from a masked priming experiment in Hebrew in which we contrasted verb forms belonging to two morphological classes, Paal and Piel, which display similar properties, but crucially differ on whether they are extended to novel verbs. Verbs from the open-class Piel elicited familiar root priming effects, but verbs from the closed-class Paal did not. Our findings indicate that, similarly to other (e.g., Indo-European) languages, down-to-the-root decomposition in Hebrew does not apply to stems of non-productive verbal classes. We conclude that the Semitic word processor is less unique than previously thought: Although it operates on morphological units that are combined in a non-linear way, it engages the same universal mechanisms of storage and computation as those seen in other languages.
„Was ist Migration?“
(2016)
Auch wenn die Appelle, die Bedeutung von Migration für Erwachsenenbildung deutlicher wahrzunehmen, unüberhörbar sind, bleiben sie bezüglich kategorialer Arbeit bemerkenswert wenig beachtet. Grundlagentheoretisch motivierte Arbeit am Begriff „Migration“ ist in der Erwachsenenbildung noch lange nicht hinreichend ausgeschöpft. Auch wenn sich einzelne Studien mit ihm auseinandersetzen, besteht dennoch der Eindruck, dass kategoriale Klärungsversuche singulär bleiben. Die nicht einfache Aufgabe, den Begriff Migration vor seiner kategorialen Stilllegung zu bewahren, bleibt eine ernsthafte Herausforderung für erwachsenenpädagogische Migrationsforschung, sofern sie daran interessiert ist, die Risiken eines bisher essentialistischen Kurses ernsthaft ins Visier zu nehmen.
Background:
Exercising at intensities where fat oxidation rates are high has been shown to induce metabolic benefits in recreational and health-oriented sportsmen. The exercise intensity (Fat peak ) eliciting peak fat oxidation rates is therefore of particular interest when aiming to prescribe exercise for the purpose of fat oxidation and related metabolic effects. Although running and walking are feasible and popular among the target population, no reliable protocols are available to assess Fat peak as well as its actual velocity (V PFO ) during treadmill ergometry. Our purpose was therefore, to assess the reliability and day-to-day variability of V PFO and Fat peak during treadmill ergometry running.
Methods:
Sixteen recreational athletes (f = 7, m = 9; 25 ± 3 y; 1.76 ± 0.09 m; 68.3 ± 13.7 kg; 23.1 ± 2.9 kg/m 2 ) performed 2 different running protocols on 3 different days with standardized nutrition the day before testing. At day 1, peak oxygen uptake (VO 2peak ) and the velocities at the aerobic threshold (V LT ) and respiratory exchange ratio (RER) of 1.00 (V RER ) were assessed. At days 2 and 3, subjects ran an identical submaximal incremental test (Fat-peak test) composed of a 10 min warm-up (70 % V LT ) followed by 5 stages of 6 min with equal increments (stage 1 = V LT , stage 5 = V RER ). Breath-by-breath gas exchange data was measured continuously and used to determine fat oxidation rates. A third order polynomial function was used to identify V PFO and subsequently Fat peak . The reproducibility and variability of variables was verified with an int raclass correlation coef ficient (ICC), Pearson ’ s correlation coefficient, coefficient of variation (CV) an d the mean differences (bias) ± 95 % limits of agreement (LoA).
Results:
ICC, Pearson ’ s correlation and CV for V PFO and Fat peak were 0.98, 0.97, 5.0 %; and 0.90, 0.81, 7.0 %, respectively. Bias ± 95 % LoA was − 0.3 ± 0.9 km/h for V PFO and − 2±8%ofVO 2peak for Fat peak.
Conclusion:
In summary, relative and absolute reliability indicators for V PFO and Fat peak were found to be excellent. The observed LoA may now serve as a basis for future training prescriptions, although fat oxidation rates at prolonged exercise bouts at this intensity still need to be investigated.