First graders' cognitive representation of number and understanding of place value: Cross-national comparisons: France, Japan, Korea, Sweden, and the United States.

Attempts to replicate the results of earlier research comparing US and Japanese 1st graders' cognitive representation of number and understanding of place value. First graders from France, Sweden, and Korea were also included in the study. This investigation examines the idea that variability in mathematics performance may be due, in part, to differences in cognitive representation of number that is affected by numerical language characteristics differentiating Asian- and non-Asian-language groups. Comparison of Asian- and non-Asian-language speakers revealed that the performance of the children was different across the 2 groups but similar within the groups. There is strong evidence that cognitive representation of number may differ depending on the language spoken. There were also differences in performance on place value tasks related to the language spoken. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Child and mother play in three U.S. cultural groups: Comparisons and associations.

Child and mother play (n = 113 20-month-olds) among South American Latino immigrants, Japanese immigrants, and European Americans in the United States was investigated. Culturally universal patterns of play dominated the findings. For example, no cultural differences in the prevalence of exploratory or symbolic play were found for either children or their mothers. Regardless of their culture, boys engaged in significantly more exploratory and less symbolic play than did girls when they played by themselves. Few relations were found between child play in the two play sessions. Across cultural groups, children’s exploratory play was significantly positively related to both maternal demonstrations and solicitations of exploratory play. The results identify which realms of child growth, parenting, and family function call for special attention and cultural sensitivity, as well as which do not, in the dynamics of immigrant families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Increasing first graders' reading accuracy and comprehension by accelerating their reading rates.

I carried out four experiments to determine the effects on decoding mistakes and comprehension of test passages at fastest and slowest reading rates. The subjects of the first three studies were 161 Israeli first graders, and those of the last experiment were 61 American first graders reading English. Analysis of reading rates obtained during a self-paced condition provided the base rates for each subject. I hypothesized that because of the constraints of short-term memory, requiring subjects to maintain their own maximal oral reading rates would result in improvements in both reading accuracy and comprehension. When presented with the text at their maximal normal reading rates, subjects averaged fewer reading errors and higher comprehension scores than in the self-paced conditions. By contrast, when the text was presented at the slowest reading rates, subjects' decoding accuracy improved, but their comprehension decreased significantly. In one of the experiments, the text contained deliberate letter-substitution errors. Increased reading rate once more reduced the overall errors and increased comprehension. In addition, the deliberate mistakes were more frequently corrected to normal words than in the self-paced condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression and cognitive style: Comparisons between measures.

Discusses 4 devices developed recently to measure cognitive styles associated with depression that appear to have an underlying similarity—an attributional style questionnaire developed by M. F. Seligman et al (see PA, Vol 88:6218); a model of characterological self-blame developed by R. Janoff-Bulman (see record 1981-01320-001); a cognitive-bias questionnaire developed by C. Hammen (1981); and an attitudes-toward-self (ATS) scale developed by C. S. Carver and R. J. Ganellen (see record 1983-32781-001). Each measure appears to reflect a tendency for respondents to infer a general lack of self-worth (or a continued likelihood of bad events) on the basis of a single discrete failure. The present research was a comparative test of one of these scales against the other 3 in terms of associations with Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores. Though all instruments were significantly correlated with the BDI, partial correlations revealed that the generalization (ATS) scale was a more robust predictor of BDI than were the measures of characterological self-blame, cognitive bias, and attributional style. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The mental representation of parity and number magnitude.

Nine experiments of timed odd–even judgments examined how parity and number magnitude are accessed from Arabic and verbal numerals. With Arabic numerals, Ss used the rightmost digit to access a store of semantic number knowledge. Verbal numerals went through an additional stage of transcoding to base 10. Magnitude information was automatically accessed from Arabic numerals. Large numbers preferentially elicited a rightward response, and small numbers a leftward response. The Spatial–Numerical Association of Response Codes effect depended only on relative number magnitude and was weaker or absent with letters or verbal numerals. Direction did not vary with handedness or hemispheric dominance but was linked to the direction of writing, as it faded or even reversed in right-to-left writing Iranian Ss. The results supported a modular architecture for number processing, with distinct but interconnected Arabic, verbal, and magnitude representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The cognitive and neural architecture of sequence representation.

The authors theorize that 2 neurocognitive sequence-learning systems can be distinguished in serial reaction time experiments, one dorsal (parietal and supplementary motor cortex) and the other ventral (temporal and lateral prefrontal cortex). Dorsal system learning is implicit and associates noncategorized stimuli within dimensional modules. Ventral system learning can be implicit or explicit. It also allows associating events across dimensions and therefore is the basis of cross-task integration or interference, depending on degree of cross-task correlation of signals. Accordingly, lack of correlation rather than limited capacity is responsible for dual-task effects on learning. The theory is relevant to issues of attentional effects on learning; the representational basis of complex, sequential skills; hippocampal- versus basal ganglia-based learning; procedural versus declarative memory; and implicit versus explicit memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Premarital sexual standards among U.S. college students: comparison with Russian and Japanese students

The study of the sexual permissiveness of young adults has been popular topic in sociology and social psychology, especially since the empirical and theoretical work of Reiss. We extended previous research on premarital sexual standards by examining the degree of sexual permissiveness and the endorsement of the traditional double standard in a large sample of young adults in the United States (N = 1043). In addition, comparative data were collected from young adults in two other countries: Russia (N = 401) and Japan (N = 223). American subjects expressed more acceptance of premarital sex than did the Russian and Japanese subjects. Men were more sexually permissive than women in the U.S. and in Russia but not in Japan. The degree to which the double standard was endorsed also depended on culture and gender. Russian subjects were more likely to endorse the double standard than Japanese and American subjects. However, American men were most likely to endorse the traditional double standard concerning sex early in the dating relationship.     

Young children's understanding of conflicting mental representation predicts suggestibility.

This study examined the relation between developmental suggestibility effects and preschoolers' emerging ability to reason about conflicting mental representations (CMRs). Three- to 5-yr-olds listened to a story accompanied by pictures. Following a 4-min delay, children answered straightforward and misleading questions about the story. One wk later, their memory for the story was assessed. Children also completed tasks indexing their ability to reason about CMRs. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that suggestibility was negatively related to performance on CMR tasks. This finding remained significant after controlling for age, children's level of initial encoding of the event, and their ability to retrieve event details when not misled. An integration is proposed between children's theory of mind and source monitoring that may help to explain early developmental changes in suggestibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preschoolers' understanding of pretense and presumption of congruity between action and representation.

In a series of 4 studies, A. S. Lillard's (see record 1993-32884-001) paradigm for studying preschoolers' understanding of pretense was replicated and systematically examined. The design varied the extent of the contradiction built into Lillard's format. Decreases in contradictory information yielded increases in the incidence of correct judgments indicative of an implicitly representational understanding of pretense. The findings present a challenge to Lillard's (see record 1993-32884-001) conceptual analysis of pretense and suggest that methods adopted from the classic false-belief paradigm of H. Wimmer and J. Perner (see record 1983-27705-001) may be inappropriate for assessing preschoolers understanding of pretense. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The concept of auditory stimulus representation in cognitive neuroscience.

The sequence of neurophysiological processes elicited in the auditory system by a sound is analyzed in search of the stage at which the processes carrying sensory information cross the borderline beyond which they directly underlie sound perception. Neurophysiological data suggest that this transition occurs when the sensory input is mapped onto the physiological basis of sensory memory in the auditory cortex. At this point, the sensory information carried by the stimulus-elicited process corresponds, for the first time, to that contained by the actual sound percept. Before this stage, the sensory stimulus code is fragmentary, lacks the time dimension, cannot enter conscious perception, and is not accessible to top-down processes (voluntary mental operations). On these grounds, 2 distinct stages of auditory sensory processing, prerepresentational and representational, can be distinguished. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-cultural convergence in the structure of mood: A Japanese replication and a comparison with U.S. findings.

Investigated Japanese affective structure and its relation to English-language mood in an idiographic/nomothetic analysis. 57 Japanese mood terms were derived from an initial pool through factor analysis of content sortings. 18 Japanese undergraduates provided daily self-ratings on these terms for 3 mo. Each Ss' data were subjected to an individual factor analysis. Two large factors—Positive and Negative Affect, the major dimensions of mood found in previous research among English-speaking US Ss—emerged in most of the solutions. Japanese/English bilinguals made content sortings of the Japanese terms and 60 English mood words. The resulting 15 bilingual content categories were used in a comparison of Japanese and US mood structures, and a remarkable convergence was revealed. Factor score distributions were also similar in the 2 languages. The major difference between the structures involved the content factor Sleepy, which did not have a significant negative loading on the Japanese Positive Affect factor. This appears to be consistent with known cultural differences in values and behavior. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention, automaticity, and levels of representation in number processing.

Participants performed same–different judgments for pairs of numerals in 2 conditions: numerical matching (responding "same" to pairs such as 2–TWO), or physical matching (responding "different" to pairs such as 2–TWO). In most cases, a distance effect was obtained, with the different responses being slower when the 2 numbers were numerically close together (e.g., 1–2) than when they were further apart (e.g., 1–8). This indicates that numbers were automatically converted mentally into quantities, even when the participants had been told to attend exclusively to their physical characteristics. As postulated by several models of number processing, (e.g., Dehaene, see PA, Vol 80:4300; McCloskey, see PA, Vol 80:6390) Arabic and verbal numerals thus appear to converge toward a common semantic representation of quantities. However, the present results suggest that an asemantic transcoding route might allow for a direct mapping of Arabic and verbal numbers, perhaps by means of a common phonological representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

黄金与美元

在货币体系中,美元一诞生,黄金就成为美元的计价基础。布雷顿森林体系中,黄金一美元成为国际货币制度的基础。黄金非货币化后,美元成为黄金的主要计价货币,美元汇率对金价产生重大影响。     

Violence and U.S. regional culture.

The US South, and western regions of the US initially settled by Southerners, are more violent than the rest of the country. Homicide rates for White Southern males are substantially higher than those for White Northern males, especially in rural areas. But only for argument-related homicides are Southern rates higher. Southerners do not endorse violence more than do Northerners when survey questions are expressed in general terms, but they are more inclined to endorse violence for protection and in response to insults. Southern Ss responded with more apparent anger to insults than did Northerners and were more likely to propose violent solutions to conflicts presented in scenarios after being insulted. The social matrix that produced this pattern may be the culture of honor characteristic of particular economic circumstances, including the herding society of the early South. Consistent with this possibility, the herding regions of the South are still the most violent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deep dyslexia and the right hemisphere hypothesis: Evidence from the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.

Discusses the theory that asserts that the residual reading abilities seen in deep dyslexia entirely reflect the operation of an intact right hemisphere reading system rather than a partially disabled left hemisphere reading system. Evidence from an experiment with normal Ss in a report by the present author and colleagues (1983) is presented, which suggests that the right hemisphere contains no lexical entries for abbreviations that can be accessed by visual presentation. Data are presented from studies by K. E. Patterson (1980; see also PA, Vols 63:12203 and 64:10691) on 2 male deep dyslexic's understanding of printed abbreviations, along with observations of a young female deep dyslexic who was tested on understanding of abbreviations and on letter-naming abilities. Considerable sparing of the ability to obtain semantic information from printed abbreviations was evidenced in all 3 Ss. This contrast suggests that the current right hemisphere account of the residual reading abilities seen in deep dyslexia is not a sufficient one and should be modified. (French abstract) (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

U.S. psychology and world psychology.

Contends that although US psychology at present occupies a major position in world psychology, the field is growing more rapidly in many other countries. An example of international cooperation in an endeavor that could not be achieved by the psychological community of any single nation (i.e., securing the admission of the International Union of Psychological Science to the International Council of Scientific Unions) is given. A list of suggestions is presented outlining ways in which individual psychologists can take part in international psychological activities. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of age on virtual environment place navigation and allocentric cognitive mapping.

This study assessed age differences in navigational behavior in a virtual Morris water maze (vMWM) and examined the ability of older adults to develop cognitive maps after vMWM experience. Compared with younger participants, older volunteers traversed a longer linear distance to locate the hidden platform. On the probe trial, younger volunteers spent a greater proportion of their total distance traveled in proximity to the platform and had more platform intersections. Analysis of map reproductions demonstrated that older participants used proximal objects to locate the goal but did not use room-geometry cues to aid navigation. These findings demonstrate age-related deficits on a laboratory measure of place learning and suggest that deficiencies in allocentric mapping may contribute to these deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marketing Practices of U.S. Contractors

The construction industry possesses characteristics of the production and service industries. This uniqueness requires marketing practices tailored specifically to match the construction market. A questionnaire survey of 65 U.S. contractors was conducted to determine the extent to which they are implementing a modified marketing mix theory that is compatible with the construction industry. The modified marketing mix theory recommends that contractors confront marketing from five perspectives, known as the five P’s of marketing: product, price, promotion, place, and people. This study showed that the five P’s of marketing are used by U.S. contractors in this decreasing order: product, price, place, promotion, and people. According to the survey results, U.S. contractors allocate about 1.5% of their annual revenue to marketing, but they may be spending more than they report. There seem to be only few differences between contractors that negotiate their contracts versus contractors who competitively bid their contracts, larger versus smaller companies, and contractors with a higher success rate in getting new contract awards versus contractors with a lower success rate.