Cognitive Control Processes and Defense Mechanisms That Influence Aggressive Reactions: Toward an Integration of Socio-Cognitive and Psychodynamic Models of Aggression

Research on cognitive processes has primarily focused on cognitive control and inhibitory processes to the detriment of other psychological processes, such as defense mechanisms (DMs), which can be used to modify aggressive impulses as well as self/other images during interpersonal conflicts. First, we conducted an in-depth theoretical analysis of three socio-cognitive models and three psychodynamic models and compared main propositions regarding the source of aggression and processes that influence its enactment. Second, 32 participants completed the Hostile Expectancy Violation Paradigm (HEVP) in which scenarios describe a hostile vs. non-hostile social context followed by a character's ambiguous aversive behavior. The N400 effect to critical words that violate expected hostile vs. non-hostile intent of the behavior was analyzed. Prepotent response inhibition was measured using a Stop Signal task (SST) and DMs were assessed with the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ-60). Results showed that reactive aggression and HIA were not significantly correlated with response inhibition but were significantly positively and negatively correlated with image distorting defense style and adaptive defense style, respectively. The present article has highlighted the importance of integrating socio-cognitive and psychodynamic models to account for the full complexity underlying psychological processes that influence reactive aggressive behavior.

An Approach for Movie Review Classification in Turkish

Web 2.0 has given to all people the right to become a representative of a huge cast of informal media. The importance of this power is getting more evident everyday. Every social media actor can influence the rest of the world by one’s own opinions, feelings, and thoughts generously shared on multiple media. This information belonging to various fields of life can be very handy and be used to one’s advantage, gaining precious experience. One of the greatest problems that this poses is the huge number of data spread everywhere, which are difficult to process as row data per se. Social media and general sentiment text analysis is of much valuable use, accomplishing the task extracting pure gold out of raw mineral. The key point of this investigation is to characterize new reviews automatically. To start with, features selected out of all the word roots appearing in the comments were used to train the system according to known machine learning algorithms. Next, critical words determining positive or negative sense were extracted. Another strategy was attempted eliminating common terms and dealing only with the significant class-determining words to build vocabulary with them. Aparts from linear approach, vector based feature sets were prepared out all or some of the features. The outcomes acquired were analyzed and compared leading to important conclusions, emphasizing the importance of feature selection in text classification.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Over the Right Anterior Temporal Lobe Does Not Modulate False Recognition

Non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) has been shown to cause a reduction in the rate of false memories with semantically related words. Such a reduction seems to be specific to false memories induced by the study of associative lists, but is not observed when the studied lists are categorical in nature. These findings are interpreted as evidence that the left ATL functions as an integration hub that is crucial for the binding of semantic information into coherent representations of concepts. In order to investigate whether the right ATL might also contribute to semantic integration in the processing of verbal associative material, a follow-up tDCS study was conducted with the stimulation at study lateralized on the right ATL. A sample of 75 undergraduate students participated in an experiment in which they studied 8 associative lists and 8 categorical lists. One third of the participants studied all their word lists under anodal stimulation, another third studied under cathodal stimulation and the other third under sham stimulation. Results showed that stimulation of the right ATL by tDCS does not modulate false recognition for either association-related critical words or category-related critical words. These results provide preliminary support to views positing asymmetric connectivity between the anterior temporal lobes and the semantic representational network, and provide evidence for understanding bilateral brain dynamics and the nature of semantically induced memory distortions.

Sensory Emotion in Words: Evidence From an ERP Study in Light of the Emotioncy Model

Introduction: Delving into the prominent role of emotions and senses in the realm of language is not something new in the field. Thereupon, the newly developed notion of emotioncy has been introduced to the foreign language education to underscore the role of sense-induced emotions in the process of language learning and teaching. Methods: The present study implemented ERPs to provide evidence to the significance of employing emosensory instructional strategies in teaching vocabulary items. Hence, eighteen female participants were randomly instructed six English nouns toward which they had no prior knowledge and received no instruction for the other three words. Then, while the participants’ EEG was being recorded, they took a sentence comprehension task. Results: Behavioral results demonstrated significant differences among the avolved, the exvolved, and the involved nouns. However, ERP analyses of target words indicated the modulations of N100 and N480 components while no significant effect was observed at P200. Further, the analysis of sensory N100 for the critical words revealed no significant effect. Conclusion: In conclusion, the emotioncy-based language instruction could affect neural correlates of emotional word comprehension from the early stages of EEG recording. The findings of this study can shed light on the importance of including senses and emotions in language teaching, learning, and testing, along with materials development.

On Special k-Spectra, k-Locality, and Collapsing Prefix Normal Words

The domain of Combinatorics on Words, first introduced by Axel Thue in 1906, covers by now many subdomains. In this work we are investigating scattered factors as a representation of non-complete information and two measurements for words, namely the locality of a word and prefix normality, which have applications in pattern matching. In the first part of the thesis we investigate scattered factors: A word u is a scattered factor of w if u can be obtained from w by deleting some of its letters. That is, there exist the (potentially empty) words u1, u2, . . . , un, and v0,v1,...,vn such that u = u1u2 ̈ ̈ ̈un and w = v0u1v1u2v2 ̈ ̈ ̈unvn. First, we consider the set of length-k scattered factors of a given word w, called the k-spectrum of w and denoted by ScatFactk(w). We prove a series of properties of the sets ScatFactk(w) for binary weakly-0-balanced and, respectively, weakly-c-balanced words w, i.e., words over a two- letter alphabet where the number of occurrences of each letter is the same, or, respectively, one letter has c occurrences more than the other. In particular, we consider the question which cardinalities n = | ScatFactk (w)| are obtainable, for a positive integer k, when w is either a weakly-0- balanced binary word of length 2k, or a weakly-c-balanced binary word of length 2k ́ c. Second, we investigate k-spectra that contain all possible words of length k, i.e., k-spectra of so called k-universal words. We present an algorithm deciding whether the k-spectra for given k of two words are equal or not, running in optimal time. Moreover, we present several results regarding k-universal words and extend this notion to circular universality that helps in investigating how the universality of repetitions of a given word can be determined. We conclude the part about scattered factors with results on the reconstruction problem of words from scattered factors that asks for the minimal information, like multisets of scattered factors of a given length or the number of occurrences of scattered factors from a given set, necessary to uniquely determine a word. We show that a word w P {a, b} ̊ can be reconstructed from the number of occurrences of at most min(|w|a, |w|b) + 1 scattered factors of the form aib, where |w|a is the number of occurrences of the letter a in w. Moreover, we generalise the result to alphabets of the form {1, . . . , q} by showing that at most ∑q ́1 |w|i (q ́ i + 1) scattered factors suffices to reconstruct w. Both results i=1 improve on the upper bounds known so far. Complexity time bounds on reconstruction algorithms are also considered here. In the second part we consider patterns, i.e., words consisting of not only letters but also variables, and in particular their locality. A pattern is called k-local if on marking the pattern in a given order never more than k marked blocks occur. We start with the proof that determining the minimal k for a given pattern such that the pattern is k-local is NP- complete. Afterwards we present results on the behaviour of the locality of repetitions and palindromes. We end this part with the proof that the matching problem becomes also NP-hard if we do not consider a regular pattern - for which the matching problem is efficiently solvable - but repetitions of regular patterns. In the last part we investigate prefix normal words which are binary words in which each prefix has at least the same number of 1s as any factor of the same length. First introduced in 2011 by Fici and Lipták, the problem of determining the index (amount of equivalence classes for a given word length) of the prefix normal equivalence relation is still open. In this paper, we investigate two aspects of the problem, namely prefix normal palindromes and so-called collapsing words (extending the notion of critical words). We prove characterizations for both the palindromes and the collapsing words and show their connection. Based on this, we show that still open problems regarding prefix normal words can be split into certain subproblems.

Is reanalysis selective when regressions are consciously controlled?

The selective reanalysis hypothesis of Frazier and Rayner (1982) states that readers direct their eyes towards critical words in the sentence when faced with garden-path structures (e.g., Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him). Given the mixed evidence for this proposal in the literature, we investigated the possibility that selective reanalysis is tied to conscious awareness of the garden-path effect. To this end, we adapted the well-known self-paced reading paradigm to allow for regressive as well as progressive key presses. Assuming that regressions in such a paradigm are consciously controlled, we found no evidence for selective reanalysis, but rather for occasional extensive, heterogeneous rereading of garden-path sentences. We discuss the implications of our findings for the selective reanalysis hypothesis, the role of awareness in sentence processing, as well as the usefulness of the bidirectional self-paced reading method for sentence processing research.

Sobre a Natureza dos Contos de Fadas

A 12ª edição da Revista Literartes, segundo número dedicado a reflexões artísticas, teóricas e críticas acerca do maravilhoso feérico em seus múltiplos suportes e mídias, tem o prazer de entrevistar uma das maiores referências mundiais em termos de pesquisa sobre o conto de fadas: Ruth Bottigheimer, docente junto ao Departamento de Análises Culturais e Teoria da Universidade Pública de Nova York em Stony Brook. Ruth dedicou grande parte de sua formação acadêmica a áreas como Língua e Literatura Germânica, História Medieval, História da Ilustração e História da Bíblia. Formou-se na Universidade de Berkeley, Califórnia, na Universidade de Munique e no Colégio Universitário de Londres. Ao longo de mais de cinquenta anos de magistério, ministrou aulas nas Universidades de Viena, Princeton e Califórnia. É membro da Sociedade Internacional de Pesquisa em Narrativas Folclóricas e da Associação de Literatura Infantil, entre outras. Entre suas principais obras, destacam-se: Grimm’s Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales (“As Meninas Más e os Garotos Durões de Grimm: A Visão Moral e Social dos Contos”, Yale University Press, 1987), Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm (“Contos de Fadas e Sociedade: Ilusão, Alusão e Paradigma”, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition (“O Padrinho das Fadas: Straparola, Veneza e a Tradição dos Contos de Fadas”, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), Fairy Tales: A New History (“Contos de Fadas: Uma Nova História”, State University of New York Press, 2009), Fairy Tales Framed: Early Forewords, Afterwords, and Critical Words (“Contos de Fadas em Moldura: Prefácios, Posfácios e Notas Críticas”, State University of New York Press, 2012) e Magic Tales and Fairy Tale Magic from Ancient Egypt to the Italian Renaissance (“Contos de Magia e a Magia dos Contos de Fadas do Antigo Egito à Renascença Italiana”, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Nesta entrevista, exploramos temas como a história do conto de fadas, as fontes modelares do gênero e os contos de fadas de autoria feminina, convidando nossos leitores a refletirem sobre as mais recentes descobertas feitas nesse campo de estudos.

Acceptability ratings cannot be taken at face value

This chapter addresses how linguists’ empirical (syntactic) claims should be tested with non-linguists. Recent experimental work attempts to measure rates of convergence between data presented in journal articles and the results of large surveys. Three follow-up experiments to one such study are presented. It is argued that the original method may underestimate the true rate of convergence because it leaves considerable room for naïve subjects to give ratings that do not reflect their true acceptability judgments of the relevant structures. To understand what can go wrong, the experiments were conducted in two parts. The first part had visually presented sentences rated on a computer, replicating previous work. The second part was an interview where the experimenter asked the participants about the ratings they gave to particular items, in order to determine what interpretation or parse they had assigned, whether they had missed any critical words, and so on.

الألفاظ النقدية الجارحة في مؤلفات الذهبي ( تاريخ الإسلام إنموذجاً )

The historian Al-Thehebi was one of the prominent historians in the eighth century AH, in spite of his reputation as a critic historian, and that made him respectful by most of the researchers, as he did not hesitate in criticizing the nearest characters to him. In spite of the fact that he is a religious man and famous jurist in his age , and getting the title of Sheikh Al-Muhdtheen ( the old of the narrators) and the Historian of Islam but we noticed through looking at his writings and one of them is ( The History of Islam) his intolerance unlike most of the historians who preceded him in historical writing in using words that are not suitable to him as a religious man and a historian of the books of the history of Islam from its beginning till the his age in which he lives. As instead of giving a good image through his expression in his book as a Muslim historian, we find him attack many of the scientists or the politicians who are from other doctrines like Shia or from other religions like Christians and others by using unacceptable and offensive words against them though his mentioning to their rank and scientific position in their age in which they live. We decided to present this study which is 'The Hurtful Words in the Writing of Al-Thehebi: The History of Islam as a Sample' to follow and stand on a lot of the words that he used against many characters. We first try to identify the rank of Al-Thehebi among the scientists of his age and their attitudes towards him. And we may identify, through this research, the scientific rank he had among his contemporaries. Secondly, we deal with the unacceptable critical words against Shia men and how he used critical words and hurtful and offensive clauses, which do not fit him as a religious man and a jurist, against a lot of different characters from other doctrines like Shia. Through our study of the hurting words which Al-Thehebi used in history. Thirdly, we deal with the hurtful critical words which he used in his writing against the Jewish and Christians who have held a treaty with the Muslim. As he used a lot of the inappropriate lewd words which indicates his intolerance against their men who enjoyed many scientific abilities in the different scientific fields and finally we see through our study that Al-Thehebi breaks the approach that he must be adhered to, and conquers his doctrine or religion at the expense of history and used words that he used in such a way that indicates his intolerance.

Semantic associates create retroactive interference on an independent recall task

Semantic similarity between stimuli can cause false memories, but the extent to which it causes retroactive interference in recall has been less explored. Here, subjects learned unique locations for “critical” words that reliably produce false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Next, subjects centrally viewed words that were semantically associated with half of the critical words. Finally, subjects retrieved the critical word locations (to test recall) and distinguished them from previously unseen words (to test recognition). We found spatial memory impairments for critical words whose semantic associates were shown (vs. not shown), suggesting that semantic material caused retroactive interference, even on a test of unrelated content (i.e., spatial versus semantic). This effect was present in three experiments when the interfering information was presented shortly before spatial recall, but not after a one-hour delay between associate learning and test or after swapping the order of the spatial and associate phases. Moreover, impairments occurred whether or not subjects were aware of the semantic relatedness between critical and associate words and consistently occurred when the associates had low-to-moderate strength in predicting the critical words. By contrast, swapping the order of the two learning phases increased critical word recognition in a manner that scaled linearly with associate-to-critical word strength. These findings suggest that memory impairments can occur solely via semantic associates on an independent task where all relevant responses are freely available; in this way, they cannot be attributed to any conventional account of retroactive interference.