Coding efficiency in nominal inflection: expectedness and type frequency effects

Since (Zipf, George Kingsley. 1935. The psychobiology of language: An introduction to dynamic philology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Zipf, George Kingsley. 1949. Human behavior and the principle of least effort. Journal of Consulting Psychology 13(3)), it has been known that more frequent lexical items tend to be shorter than less frequent ones, and this association between the length of an expression and its frequency has been applied to various grammatical patterns (syntactic, morphological, and phonological) and related to predictability or expectedness in the typological literature. However, the exact interactions of frequency and expectedness, their effect on shortening, and the mechanisms involved, are still not well understood. This paper proposes the Form-Expectedness Correspondence Hypothesis (fech), taking into account not only the frequency of expressions but their overall structure and distribution, and explores the fech in the domain of nominal inflection from a quantitative perspective.

Coping Dynamics of Consulting Psychology Doctoral Students Transitioning a Professional Role Identity: A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective

To remain relevant and valuable, the psychology profession in South Africa continues to transform and evolve in response to the changing needs of society. Some psychologists embark on development opportunities to advance their professional qualifications and skills. In doing so, they experience identity tensions inherent to professional identity development and transformation. Understanding how psychologists cope with professional identity transition will enable them to develop a self-efficacious service offering and broaden the reach of psychology in the South African context. The aim of this study was to explore the identity work of a group of eight consulting psychology doctoral students to develop a system psychodynamic understanding of their coping dynamics while transitioning to a professional role identity. Students’ self-reflective essays about becoming a consulting psychologist constituted the data protocols for the study and were analysed through hermeneutic phenomenological analysis. Findings describe how students cope with performance and survival anxieties through anti-task behaviour and immature as well as sophisticated psychodynamic defences. The study contributes to the exploration of the coping concept and its manifestation, by proposing defensive coping as a natural dynamic phenomenon in the process of adapting to a transforming professional identity.

On some aspects of practical work with night dreaming

In modern practical psychology, the work with imagination as a whole, and night dreaming in particular, is of considerable importance. Various approaches offer different interpretation of the essence of night dreaming state, and thus, diverse techniques of working with a client. However, the demand for the universal synthetic approach within the framework of psychological aid (consulting psychology, correctional psychology, and (or) nonmedical psychotherapy) is highly relevant in both, theoretical and applied aspect. The author attempt to answer such request based on the experience acquired in the process of rendering practical psychological aid. The object of this study is psychical reality of the recipients of psychological services. The subject is the state of consciousness during sleep of the recipients of psychological services. The main conclusion consists in proving the efficiency of the synthetic approach towards work with night dreaming developed and tested by the author of the article. The scientific and applied novelty of this approach lies in the ability to overcome a range of difficulties faced by the practitioners in the area of depth psychology.