Cognitive Science

Some US researchers and practitioners are calling for the use of written codeswitching in mainstream college courses, despite a strong English-only sentiment among many teachers and the public. This paper describes the existing positions in this debate and presents findings from the author's research to shed light on the debate and make recommendations for the classroom. The research describes the functions of codeswitching found in 47 personal letters exchanged between two young adults. Findings indicate that there are many similarities between the functions of informal written and oral codeswitching. Also, not all bilinguals codeswitch or do so with the same frequency. In addition, bilinguals who codeswitch in writing are more likely to do so in informal situations among other codeswitching bilinguals than in formal school environments. Written codeswitching provides an unsurpassed opportunity for bilingual students to fully express themselves, but its use in the classroom runs counter to linguistic and cultural norms and must be guided by an informed and sensitive instructor in an appropriate context.

More than 20 years ago Habib Davanloo coined the term unlocking of the unconscious to describe how the psychodynamic concept of the human unconscious can become accessible using the technique of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). According to Davanloo, the possibility that unconscious material will be revealed is greatly increased when therapeutic efforts promote dominance of the unconscious therapeutic alliance over unconscious resistance. When these ingredients are present there is a psychic shift that allows unacceptable painful feelings to come to the surface. Toward adding further empirical support for the concept, in this article we compare outcomes between patients who experienced one or more major unlocking of the unconscious (N = 57) to those who did not experience major unlocking (N = 32) during ISTDP treatment. Significant and widespread differences were seen between these two groups, those with major unlocking had greater symptom reduction, interpersonal...

We investigated the occurrence and underlying processes of odor-color associations in French and American 6- to 10-year-old children (n = 386) and adults (n = 137). Nine odorants were chosen according to their familiarity to either cultural group. Participants matched each odor with a color, gave hedonic and familiarity judgments, and identified each odor. By 6 years of age, children displayed culture-specific odor-color associations, but age differences were noted in the type of associations. Children and adults in both cultural groups shared common associations and formed associations that were unique to their environment, underscoring the importance of exposure learning in odor-color associations.

... complex, dynamic stimulus presentations and the capacity to record and measure all responses precisely within the virtual environ-ment. ... presented, followed by a description of our ongoing work developing a VR mental rotation and spatial skills cognitive assessment and ...

Aim and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The main goal of this study was to examine noun–adjective gender agreement in Russian by comparing bilingual children with diverse L2 backgrounds (English, Finnish, German, and Hebrew) with age-matched monolingual children and monolinguals one year younger. This comparison was made to investigate the influence of L2 grammar on the acquisition of gender agreement by (L1) Russian-speaking children. Design/Methodology/Approach: The participants included four groups of 4–5-year-old bilingual children with Russian as L1 and English, German, Finnish, or Hebrew as L2, who were compared to monolingual children in Russia in two age groups (3–4 and 4–5 years old). The children were matched by socioeconomic status and parents’ educational background. All children were tested individually during one testing session. Agreement data were elicited using a semi-structured elicitation test, with verbal and visual stimuli. Data and Analysis: We used qual...

... This gap between what we know should be provided and what is provided is the result of a poorly structured health care financing system ... applied in a host of other settings where children are served, including schools, health clin-ics, child welfare agencies, and juvenile courts. ...

Decline in episodic memory is one of the most prominent cognitive deficits seen in late adulthood. It is therefore surprising that few studies have examined how the related capacity for episodic foresight might also be affected in this age group. Preliminary evidence suggests that older adults show deficits in generating phenomenological characteristics of future events, but the critical question of whether such deficits extend to generating and executing appropriate future intentions remains to be addressed. Here, we present 2 studies. In Study 1, we report the results of our pilot testing, which was used to develop and validate stimuli for the first measure of this construct that is appropriate for use in adult populations. In Study 2, we administer this measure to 40 older and 40 younger adults. The results indicate that, relative to their younger counterparts, older adults are less likely to spontaneously acquire items that would later allow a problem to be solved, and are also ...

In this fMRI study we investigated functional connectivity between components of the mentalising system during a social emotion task, using psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis. Ten adults (22–32 years) and 18 adolescents (11–18 years) were scanned while thinking about scenarios in which a social or a basic emotion would be experienced. Unlike basic emotions (such as disgust and fear), social emotions (such as embarrassment and guilt) require the representation of another’s mental states. In both adults and adolescents, an anterior rostral region of medial prefrontal cortex (arMPFC) involved in mentalising showed greater connectivity with the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) bordering on the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and with anterior temporal cortex (ATC) during social than during basic emotion. This result provides novel evidence that components of the mentalising system interact functionally during a social emotion task. Furthermore, functional connectivity differed between adolescence and adulthood. The adolescent group showed stronger connectivity between arMPFC and pSTS/TPJ during social relative to basic emotion than did the adult group, suggestive of developmental changes in functional integration within the mentalising system.

Affective realism, the phenomenon whereby affect is integrated into an individual's experience of the world, is a normal consequence of how the brain processes sensory information from the external world in the context of sensations from the body. In the present investigation, we provided compelling empirical evidence that affective realism involves changes in visual perception (i.e., affect changes how participants see neutral stimuli). In two studies, we used an interocular suppression technique, continuous flash suppression, to present affective images outside of participants' conscious awareness. We demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more smiling when paired with unseen affectively positive stimuli. Study 2 also demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more scowling when paired with unseen affectively negative stimuli. These findings have implications for real-world situations and challenge beliefs that affect is a distinct psychological p...

... References. JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY 7, 197207 (1973) Necessary versus Sufficient Causal Schemata for Success and Failure' ANNA KUN AND ... That is, if one succeeds, then high ability, high effort expenditure, an easy task, or good luck are believed to be ...