bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Epidemiology of Acute Stress Disorder and Other Early Responses to Trauma in Adults
Authors: Biggs Quinn M. , Guimond Jennifer M. , Fullerton Carol S. , Ursano Robert J. , Gray Christine , Goldenberg Matthew , Reissman Dori , McCarroll James E. , Santiago Patcho , Tyler Mary P.
Published: February 2013

Acute stress disorder (ASD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by exposure to a traumatic event followed by symptoms of re-experiencing, avoidance, hyper-arousal, peritraumatic dissociation, and impairment in functioning. ASD's time-limited duration (two days to one month) makes it distinct from but related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is diagnosed after one month. ASD's brief duration has contributed to a dearth of large-scale, population-based studies. Smaller studies have sought to determine rates of ASD after specific events in select populations; others have focused on ASD's role in predicting PTSD. Much can be learned from existing epidemiological studies. ASD's prevalence varies from 3% in a population of accident victims to 59% in female sexual assault victims. Female gender is a key risk factor; marital status, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status have also been associated with ASD in some studies. Comorbidities include depressive and anxiety disorders and substance use disorders.
Traumatic Stress in Older Adults
Authors: Cook Joan M. , Biyanova Tatyana , Elmore Diane L.
Published: February 2013

This chapter focuses on older adult trauma survivors. Information is presented on prevalence of acute stress disorder (ASD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); course, functional impairment, suicide risk, and health care utilization in older adults with PTSD; and the impact of demographic factors such as gender, ethnicity, and race on PTSD in older individuals. In general, rates of ASD and PTSD are lower in older adults compared to other age groups. PTSD in older adults has been linked to suicidal ideation and attempts, functional impairment, physical health, and increased healthcare utilization. Although delayed onset of PTSD has been empirically verified in some military samples with World War II veterans and younger adult civilians, it is rare in the absence of any prior symptoms and might more accurately be labeled “delayed recognition.” More information on trauma and PTSD in diverse populations of older adults is needed, such as racial and ethnic minorities, those with severe physical or mental impairment, noncommunity-residing groups, and those from nonindustrialized countries.
Biological Contributions to PTSD: Differentiating Normative from Pathological Response
Authors: Yehuda Rachel , Pratchett Laura , Pelcovitz Michelle
Published: February 2013

Although the majority of the population will be exposed to trauma, only a small minority will subsequently develop either acute stress disorder (ASD) or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Efforts to distinguish those at risk for a pathological response have identified certain peritraumatic responses and neuroanatomical and biological variables as candidate indicators. This chapter reviews what is currently known about biological and neuroendocrine features that have been found to correlate with PTSD in efforts to determine whether PTSD is simply a continuation of a normative, acute response to trauma exposure. In particular, the neuroendocrine literature suggests HPA axis alterations in PTSD that are complex and may reflect preexisting risk factors or pathophysiology of the disorder.
Assessing PTSD Symptoms
Authors: Bovin Michelle J. , Weathers Frank W.
Published: February 2013

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious and prevalent mental disorder that poses a number of significant challenges for accurate assessment and diagnosis. In this chapter we describe some of the most widely used PTSD assessment tools for adult trauma survivors, including structured interviews, self-report measures, and psychophysiological methods. We also discuss several key issues in PTSD assessment, including identifying an index traumatic event for symptom inquiry, linking symptoms to the index event, and detecting exaggerated symptom reporting. We conclude with a brief discussion of future directions for research on PTSD assessment.
Assessing PTSD-related Functional Impairment and Quality of Life
Authors: Holowka Darren W. , Marx Brian P.
Published: February 2013

Previous research has shown that PTSD is associated with impairments in functioning across a variety of domains and decrements in quality of life. In this chapter, we review the literature on the assessment of PTSD-related impairments in functioning and quality of life. We first discuss the importance of assessing PTSD-related impairments in quality of life and functioning. We then review some important methodological concerns related to the assessment of these constructs. Finally, we review some of the most commonly used assessment tools and discuss recent efforts to develop and validate a new assessment tool to assess PTSD-related functional impairment.
Individual Approaches to Prevention and Early Intervention
Authors: Au Teresa M. , Silva Caroline , Delaney Eileen M. , Litz Brett T.
Published: February 2013

This chapter provides an overview of individual and small group-based approaches for prevention and early intervention of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) classification system for preventive interventions of mental disorders (universal, selective, and indicated), we describe individual and small group early interventions and review the effectiveness of these strategies. Specifically, psychological debriefing, psychological first aid, and psychoeducation have been used as selective interventions targeting individuals exposed to trauma with varying degrees of success. However, there is strong empirical support for using cognitive behavioral therapy as an indicated preventive intervention to help symptomatic individuals in the weeks or months following traumatic exposure. A review of the literature also suggests that future research should explore different modes of delivery and devote more attention to determining the best time to intervene after traumatic exposure.
Prevention and Early Intervention Programs for Older Adults
Authors: Strachan Martha , Elwood Lisa S. , Amstadter Ananda B. , Acierno Ron
Published: February 2013

Although older age appears to be a protective factor against developing psychopathology subsequent to trauma exposure, factors associated with the aging process may complicate identification and treatment of PTSD in older persons. This chapter reviews the risk and protective factors associated with posttraumatic stress disorders in older adults, describes research on secondary prevention and early intervention programs for older adults exposed to potentially traumatic events, and provides recommendations for adaptation of extant early traumatic stress treatment programs to meet the needs of older adults.
PTSD Treatment Research: An Overview and Evaluation
Authors: Hamblen Jessica L. , Barnett Erin R. , Hermann Barbara A. , Schnurr Paula P.
Published: February 2013

This chapter provides an overview of key concepts in designing and evaluating clinical trials. Our focus is on randomized controlled trials for PTSD. In the first section we discuss design elements and how they influence the conclusions that can be drawn from a study. Examples from the trauma literature are provided when available to illustrate concepts. In the second section we explore newer developments in PTSD treatment trials. Specifically, we discuss treatment and design considerations related to common comorbid conditions of PTSD, cultural issues in PTSD, and optimizing the delivery of treatments. Our goal is to improve both clinicians and researchers ability to critically review PTSD clinical trials.
Freedom and action without causation: Noncausal theories of freedom and purposive agency
Authors: Pink Thomas
Published: February 2013

This article discusses and defends a noncausalist approach to libertarian free agency. It begins with a brief history of accounts of action and purposiveness in the Aristotelian tradition and late medieval philosophy. The traditional picture of action, the article argues, was radically transformed in modern action theory, beginning with Hobbes. All actions came to be viewed as motivated and caused by prior pro-attitudes (e.g., wants or desires) of the will and the special nature of actions of the will itself (i.e., decisions) was lost. Because decisions, like other actions, had to be caused by prior events, Hobbes opened the door for modern determinist and compatibilist accounts of action and free will. The rest of the article develops a noncausalist account of free agency that retrieves the insights of pre-Hobbesian medieval action theory, according to which decisions of the will are explained in terms of the purposes of agents.
Free Will is not a Mystery
Authors: Ekstrom Laura Waddell
Published: February 2013

This article defends an event-causal libertarian view. To introduce the view, the first half of the article deals with another notion that has been entwined with contemporary debates about free will and has also generated a large recent literature, the notion of autonomy or self-determination. The coherence account of autonomy can be interpreted in compatibilist terms. But the article notes that free agency also requires alternative possibilities and these require indeterminism. It argues that indeterminism can be introduced into the picture of autonomous action by supposing that free actions result by “normal causal processes” from preferences that were “noncoercively formed” and were caused but not determined by the agent's considerations.
Effects, Determinism, Neither Compatibilism Nor Incompatibilism, Consciousness
Authors: Honderich Ted
Published: February 2013

This article expresses the kernel of hard determinism with regard to a certain traditional idea of free will. It argues that the traditional notion of free will requires a power of ultimate “origination” of choices or actions that is incompatible with determinism. And it argues that no such power of ultimate origination could exist in the real world, so that libertarian free will in this traditional sense is impossible. The discussion reviews arguments for these claims. In addition, it expresses belief that determinism in physics is still an open question, despite quantum theory, and that, in any case, human behavior, neural events, and human choices would not be significantly affected by indeterminism in the microworld.
Motivation and the Organization of Human Behavior: Three Reasons for the Reemergence of a Field
Authors: Ryan Richard M.
Published: February 2013

The fact that behavior is typically active, organized, and goal oriented represents one of the wonders of animate nature. Nonetheless, the organization and integrity of behavior can be disrupted by social contexts, implicit primes and motives, or by biological factors. There has been a strong resurgence in empirical research on these topics, as well as recognition of the potency of psychological factors. Three reasons for this resurgence of interest in the psychology of human motivation are reviewed in detail: (1) the theoretical depth and interdisciplinary nature of the field; (2) methodological innovations that have opened up new avenues of inquiry, and (3) the practical importance of motivation research as a translational science and for improving individual and community wellness through empirically supported interventions. Contributions within this volume are illustrative of all these factors, manifesting interdisciplinary depth, sophisticated methods, and practical applicability.
Cybernetic Control Processes and the Self-Regulation of Behavior
Authors: Carver Charles S. , Scheier Michael F.
Published: February 2013

This chapter describes a set of ideas bearing on the self-regulation of action and emotion that has been given labels such as cybernetic and feedback control processes. The ideas have roots in many sources, including the concept of homeostasis and attempts to create mechanical devices to serve as governors for engines. With respect to motivation, these ideas yield a viewpoint in which goal-directed action is seen as reflecting a hierarchy of feedback control processes and the creation and reduction of affect are seen as reflecting another set of feedback processes. The portion of the model devoted to affect is of particular interest in that it generates two predictions that differ substantially from those deriving from other theories. The first is that both approach and avoidance can give rise to both positive and negative feelings; the second is that positive affect leads to coasting, reduction in effort regarding the goal under pursuit. The latter suggests a way in which positive affect is involved in priority management when many goals are in existence at the same time. Recent interest in dual-process models, which distinguish between top-down goal pursuit and reflexive responses to cues of the moment, has caused us to reexamine some of our previous assumptions and to consider the possibility that behavior is triggered in two distinct ways. The chapter closes with a brief consideration of how these ideas might be compatible with other viewpoints on motivation.
On Gains and Losses, Means and Ends: Goal Orientation and Goal Focus Across Adulthood
Authors: Freund Alexandra M. , Hennecke Marie , Mustafić Maida
Published: February 2013

Personal goals guide behavior toward a desired outcome, motivate behavior over time and across situations, provide direction and meaning, and contribute to the acquisition of skills and subjective well-being. The adaptiveness of goals, however, might vary with dimensions such as their orientation toward the achievement of gains, maintenance of functioning, or the avoidance of losses. We argue that goal orientation is most adaptive when it corresponds to the availability of resources and the ubiquity of losses. In line with this argument, younger adults show a predominant orientation toward the promotion of gains, whereas goal orientation shifts toward maintenance and avoidance of loss across adulthood. This shift in goal orientation seems adaptive both regarding subjective well-being as well as engagement in goal pursuit. A second goal dimension that has been largely overlooked in the literature is the cognitive representation of goal pursuit primarily in terms of its means (i.e., process focus) or its ends (i.e., outcome focus). This chapter investigates the antecedents and consequences of goal focus. In particular, it highlights the importance of factors related to chronological age (i.e., the availability of resources, future time perspective, goal orientation, motivational phase) for the preference for and adaptiveness of an outcome or process focus. Finally, we posit that a process focus leads to more adaptive behavioral and affective reactions when people encounter failure during goal pursuit.
Evolved Individual Differences in Human Motivation
Authors: Bernard Larry C.
Published: February 2013

Three social science approaches—evolutionary psychology, behavioral ecology, and behavioral genetics—share the metatheory of evolution. They also suggest several mechanisms that may account for heritable individual differences in personality and motivation, including stabilizing selection, fluctuating selection, trade-offs, balancing selection, life history theory, and behavioral syndromes. These mechanisms are discussed as possible explanations for individual differences in the five-factor model of personality and in a new theory of human motivation. The theory postulates that 15 latent motive dimensions evolved in humans to facilitate behavior in five social domains. Trade-offs that, in combination with fluctuating and balancing selection, might have maintained individual differences in motive phenotypes are described. The reliability and validity of a method to assess individual differences in the strength of these motive dimensions is also discussed.
Advances in Motivation in Exercise and Physical Activity
Authors: Hagger Martin S.
Published: February 2013

Given the considerable epidemiological evidence linking regular physical activity with good health and reduced risk of chronic disease, exercise psychologists have adopted theories and models of motivation to understand the antecedents and processes that give rise to health-related physical activity. These theories are important because they provide the basis for the development and evaluation of interventions aimed at promoting increased physical activity in a largely sedentary population. This chapter reviews three of the leading theories that have been applied in physical activity contexts: the theory of planned behavior, self-determination theory, and achievement goal theory. Advances in research that have aimed to promote better understanding of the factors that underpin motivation in physical activity and the relevant processes are also reviewed, including implementation intentions, the increasing importance of psychological needs, and theoretical integration. In addition, the role of methodological improvements such as the measurement of implicit motivational processes and the need for “gold standard” designs when evaluating physical activity interventions based on these theories are highlighted. It is concluded that future research needs to develop hybrid interventions adopting both motivational and implemental strategies to change physical activity behavior, research should extend knowledge of the relative contribution of implicit and explicit motivational processes on physical activity behavior, and investigations to evaluate physical activity interventions should pay careful attention to design and evaluation.
Evolution of the social brain as a distributed neural system
Authors: Barton Robert A.
Published: February 2013

The many different diverse methods and models of neuroscience are aimed at answering basic questions such as: what are brains for? How are they organised? and How does this organisation support adaptive behaviour? A key biological fact to bear in mind in constructing answers to those questions is that brains have evolved. The key point that this article emphasises, however, is that understanding species differences in cognitive mechanisms requires a close relationship between evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience. The distinctive cognitive attributes of primates, including humans, are widely assumed to relate in some way to their large brains. The key point is this: the intellect of an animal cannot be entirely isolated from the rest of its biology. However, to some extent, all experiments carried out in the laboratory are attempts to do precisely that, in that the point of experiments is to isolate a phenomenon of interest by controlling confounding variables.
Mirror neurons and social cognition
Authors: Rizzolatti Giacomo , Fogassi Leonardo
Published: February 2013

In spite of great progress in neuroscience over the last decade, it would be excessive to claim that neurophysiology can offer a scientific account of social cognition. However, there is little doubt that the discovery of mirror neurons represents an important step towards providing a biological substrate for some of the basic phenomena on which social cognition is built. This article gives a general overview of the properties of mirror neurons, discusses the basic functional role of the mirror neuron system, and examines which cognitive functions are built on top of it. Mirror neurons are a specific set of motor neurons first discovered in area F5 (a part of the ventral premotor cortex) of the macaque monkey. F5 neurons discharge in association with active monkey movements. Some F5 neurons are merely motor neurons. Others also respond to visual stimuli (visuomotor neurons).
Mechanisms of ecological rationality: heuristics and environments that make us smart
Authors: Todd Peter M. , Gigerenzer Gerd
Published: February 2013

This article describes some of the simple heuristics that the human mind has evolved to use in particular circumstances, and the pressures on decision making that may have shaped the contents of the mind's adaptive toolbox. It begins by considering the notion of bounded rationality — the assumption that human cognition is constrained by limits of some sort — and just which types of bounds have been most important in cognitive evolution. It then looks at the components that decision mechanisms are built up from and examines how they enable simple and fast choices to be made. It also presents four main classes of simple heuristics that have been explored in depth: ignorance-based heuristics, one-reason decision mechanisms, elimination strategies, and satisficing search methods. The article considers some of the challenges facing the understanding of simple heuristics and why they can work so well.
Birth order and sibling competition
Authors: Sulloway Frank J.
Published: February 2013

Sibling competition is widespread in the natural world, and sometimes ends in siblicide. Birth order among siblings affects the outcome of such contests, because it is a proxy for disparities in age, size, power, and opportunity. In humans, birth order combines with the prolonged period of childhood dependence on parents to promote differences in parental investment. In addition, siblings often occupy different niches within the family and employ differing tactics in competition with one another. These disparate experiences influence personality, sentiments about the family, patterns of motivation, and attitudes more generally. Birth order has also been implicated in support for, and opposition to, radical social and scientific revolutions. Although the persistence of birth-order effects in adulthood is well established by numerous studies, the extent and magnitude of these effects remains controversial.
The evolutionary ecology of human family size
Authors: Mace Ruth
Published: February 2013

The concentration of reproduction into the central portion of the lifespan means that motherhood involves the expenditure of a great deal of energy. The most likely explanation for how human females achieve this rapid reproduction is with the help of mates and kin. The early termination of reproduction could be an adaptation either to complete the lengthy, child-rearing process without risking early death through maternal mortality, and/or to help daughters with their reproductive careers. Different strategies for optimal reproductive scheduling, and how they depend on the resources available, can be modelled formally using state-dependent optimality theory. However, as the net food supply had not increased and family sizes had increased, childhood malnutrition also went up. This may be a counter-intuitive result for those in the business of supplying much-needed infrastructural development in such areas, but one that can be understood in the light of optimal reproductive scheduling in a natural fertility population.
Kinship and descent
Authors: Cronk Lee , Gerkey Drew
Published: February 2013

This article highlights the ways in which social anthropology and evolutionary biology converge and complement each other. This is made easier by recognizing that each discipline focuses on different but related phenomena. The evolutionary biology of kinship is about the behaviour of organisms towards their kin and the evolved psychology underlying such behaviour. The anthropology of kinship is about the socially transmitted information — in a word, culture — in which behaviour towards kin is embedded. While evolutionary biologists document and analyse nepotistic behaviour, social anthropologists seek to understand and interpret the language, values, and symbols that often distinguish the collective behavioural patterns of one society from another. The evolutionary biologist's position follows logically from the fact that most organisms cannot talk. When dealing with organisms that do have language, this position needs to be supplemented by the anthropological focus on kinship terminology, descent, and alliance.
Individual differences
Authors: Nettle Daniel
Published: February 2013

The enduring differences between individuals have been one of psychology's central concerns over the past one hundred years or more. In the last twenty five years, evolutionary thinking has begun to make a huge impact on psychological explanations, particularly in social and cognitive psychology. However, the integration of evolutionary thinking into the study of individual differences has been more uneven. Evolutionary psychologists were initially more concerned with explaining central tendencies, and species-typical or sex typical patterns of cognition, than they were with the individual variation. Nonetheless, a wave of recent work on humans and other species, including both theory and empirical study, has shed considerable light on how evolution shapes inter-individual variation. This article outlines the key frameworks that we have for explaining distributions of individual differences from an adaptive perspective. The focus is primarily on heritable individual differences, that is, differences underlain by population polymorphisms of particular genes.
Memes
Authors: Aunger Robert
Published: February 2013

The meme is a recently coined name for an old idea: one that explains how culture evolves through a process of inheritance involving bits of information. A meme is thus considered to be analogous to a gene as the unit of cultural, as opposed to genetic, evolution. Some memeticists believe that inheritance is enough to define replication. This article also uses the term ‘imitation’ in the broad sense. However, this is not a definition of imitation which social psychologists would accept. For most psychologists, imitation involves observation of a behavioural model — a figure conspicuously absent when reading a text. This article demonstrates that replication must be something more than just the inheritance of information. The question then is whether cultural reproduction of any type fulfils the criteria for replication.
The evolution of religion
Authors: Bulbulia Joseph
Published: February 2013

This article reviews recent theoretical and experimental work in the cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion, and motivates an adaptationist stance. By ‘religious cognition’ and ‘religiosity’, the article means belief and practice relative to supernatural beings and powers — call them ‘gods’. It suggests that religiosity — god commitment and the behaviour it prompts and that motivate it — bears the hallmark of adaptive design. Adaptive religiosity is more like an achievement than a harmless mistake, as spandrelists urge, or catching a cold, as meme theorists urge. It begins with a serious obstacle to any evolutionary treatment of religion. Science assumes methodological naturalism. The article does not stipulate the gods out of existence. However, it suggests the idea that nature is secular and provides a good explanation from minimal assumptions about the complexity of the world.
Music and cognitive evolution
Authors: Cross Ian
Published: February 2013

This article suggests that several different factors converged to suggest that evolutionary thinking about music was likely to be unfruitful. Over much of the twentieth century, consideration of origins in the study of music moved away from any exploration of music's relationship to biology to re-focus on the historical relationships between contemporary Western musical theory and practice, and Western musical history, or on music's relationships with abstract domains such as mathematics. For both strands of thought, evolution was simply irrelevant to their concerns which were viewed as primarily musicological, focused on the explication of the historical and ontological roots of Western music. Any evolutionary approach to understanding music requires at least an operational definition of what might constitute ‘music’. Music involves patterned action in time, as does dance. Music appears communicative, complex, generative, and representational, as does language. The concept of music is amalgamated with that of dance in many — perhaps the majority of — cultures.
The evolution of language
Authors: Kirby Simon
Published: February 2013

This article discusses the significance of the emergence of language. One of Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry's observations is that, despite their diversity, these transitions have some features in common. In particular, many of the transitions give rise to a new mechanism for the transmission of information. Language, they argue, provides just such a novel mechanism — essentially enabling a system of cultural transmission with unlimited heredity. It is clearly true that language enables the transmission and storage of very complex cultural information. Arguably, it is this aspect of the biological heritage that makes the impact of humans so great, and so unusual. The article argues that human language achieves this by briefly surveying the structural features of language, and the characteristics of language as a biological endowment.
Semantic representation
Authors: Vigliocco Gabriella , Vinson David P.
Published: February 2013

This article explores how word meaning is represented by speakers of a language, reviewing psychological perspectives on the representation of meaning. It starts by outlining four key issues in the investigation of word meaning, then introduces current theories of semantics. Meaning representation has long interested philosophers (since Aristotle) and linguists, in addition to psychologists, and a very extensive literature exists in these allied fields. When considering semantic representation, four fundamental questions to ask are: How are word meanings related to conceptual structures? How is the meaning of each word represented? How are the meanings of different words related to one another? Can the same principles of organisation hold in different content domains? The article also discusses holistic theories of semantic representation, along with featural theories.
Conceptual structure
Authors: Moss Helen E. , Tyler Lorraine K. , Taylor Kirsten I.
Published: February 2013

Concepts lie at the heart of our mental life, supporting cognitive functions from language comprehension and production to reasoning, remembering, and recognising objects. Therefore, the study of the representation and processing of conceptual knowledge has been a central activity across many disciplines, traditionally in the realm of philosophy, and more recently psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and neuroscience. This article examines the role of concepts and conceptual structure in the comprehension and production of language. It considers evidence from beyond the traditional boundaries of psycholinguistics, in particular from cognitive neuropsychology. Brain-damaged patients with deficits in one category or domain of knowledge have provided valuable insights into the nature of conceptual representations, and represent an alternative study population with which to test the claims of psycholinguistically motivated theories of conceptual knowledge. After presenting a brief overview of concepts and meanings, the article focuses on componentiality, feature distinctiveness, feature correlation, and the conceptual structure account and semantic deficits, as well as the speed of intact processing.
The multilingual lexicon
Authors: Dijkstra Ton
Published: February 2013

Although precise numbers are lacking, in the world at large there may be more multilinguals than monolinguals when we define “multilingualism” as the regular use of two or more languages. This prominence of multilingualism in the world has its consequences, of course, for educational systems (for example, with respect to foreign language teaching), but also for psycholinguistic research, because the language processing system might be differently organised in monolinguals and bilinguals. This article discusses structural, process, and context/control issues with respect to the multilingual lexicon, addressing the following questions: How are words stored in the mental lexicon of multilinguals? How does a multilingual retrieve words in reading, listening, and speaking? What is the effect of context and cognitive control on multilingual processing? What models have been proposed to account for the available data? What can cognitive neuroscience contribute to bilingualism? The article also looks at the process of multilingual word recognition, focusing on visual modality, auditory modality, models of bilingual word processing, multilingual word production, and contributions of cognitive neuroscience.
Eye movements and on-line comprehension processes
Authors: Staub Adrian , Rayner Keith
Published: February 2013

Reading is a rather complex process, in which comprehension at a number of levels is essential. This article provides an overview of how different kinds of variable influence eye movements. Because eye movements are a natural part of the reading process, secondary tasks are not needed to make inferences about reading comprehension. Rather, information about where readers fixate in the text and how long they look at different parts of the text provides remarkably reliable data about comprehension at a number of levels. This article first examines the characteristics of eye movements during reading, and then looks at the different eye movement measures that are typically employed in reading research. It also examines the effects of lexical processing, syntactic processing, and discourse processing on eye movements. Thus, the focus is on comprehension at the word level, at the level of syntax, and at the level of higher-level discourse.
Inference processing in discourse comprehension
Authors: Singer Murray
Published: February 2013

Discourse understanding has been systematically studied within the framework of modern cognitive psychology for fewer than forty years. The inferences that accompany discourse comprehension have been a central focus of this field. One reason for this is that virtually every aspect of language comprehension is inferential. This article describes inferential phenomena that involve augmenting explicitly stated discourse ideas with implied concepts and relations. The term “discourse” refers to coherent messages in either of these modalities. In practice, however, a majority of the research has scrutinised reading comprehension. It is also noted that researchers have inspected numerous genres of discourse, including narratives, expositions, recipes, instruction lists, and poetry. The article first discusses the construction-integration model of inference processing in discourse comprehension, coherence and its impact on inference processing, and elaborative inferences.
Neuroimaging studies of sentence and discourse comprehension
Authors: Bornkessel-Schlesewsky Ina , Friederici Angela D.
Published: February 2013

The neural implementation of language and, by extension, the postulated existence of particular “language centers” in the brain has exerted a continuing fascination upon scientists and non-scientists alike for thousands of years. With the advent of neuroimaging methods—and particularly of functional magnetic resonance imaging—during the last decade of the twentieth century, the possibilities of scientific inquiry within this domain have taken on a new dimension. First, neuroimaging techniques allow for a systematic and fine-grained probing of the functional neuroanatomy of language in healthy individuals. Moreover, they provide new avenues of exploration with respect to classical psycholinguistic questions in sentence comprehension, such as the modularity vs. interactivity debate. Neuroimaging studies of language comprehension are thus suited to provide further information not only about the neural substrate of language comprehension but also with respect to its internal organisation. In view of the fact that the overall neural networks subserving language comprehension have, by now, been documented in a large number of studies, this article considers only direct contrasts between language conditions.
Grammatical Encoding
Authors: Ferreira Victor S. , Slevc L. Robert
Published: February 2013

This article describes the state of the field since the most recent prominent reviews of grammatical encoding were published about a dozen years ago. It discusses a consensus view of the general architecture of grammatical encoding. This consensus holds that grammatical encoding consists of two component sets of sub-processes, one which deals with content and another which deals with structure. Each set of sub-processes proceeds through two phases or stages, the first involving selection and the second involving retrieval. The article also examines the “incrementality” or “scope” of grammatical encoding, as well as the factors that influence syntactic choice. Finally, it looks forward to emerging debates in the field that are likely to receive increased attention in the coming years, largely due to the confluence of their central questions with other prominent and topical issues in cognitive science. These debates concern the relationship between grammatical encoding and eye movements, working memory, language disorders, and dialogue.
The perceptual foundations of phonological development
Authors: Curtin Suzanne , Werker Janet F.
Published: February 2013

Phonological development involves learning the organisation of the individual sound units, the syllable structure, the rhythm, and the phonotactics of the native language, and utilising these in both productive and receptive language. The initial work in phonological development focused exclusively on production, with detailed description of the onset of babbling and first words. This article examines how infant speech perception provides a foundation for acquiring the phonological system, and how production data and perception studies together can provide a more complete picture of the course of phonological development. The discussion begins with a review of key empirical findings that show how speech perception provides the foundation for phonological development. It then looks at language-general speech perception capabilities as evident in infants from birth through the first few months of life. The discussion also considers the ways in which the ambient language modifies infant speech perception; phonological and phonetic factors in word segmentation and word form recognition; the role of phonology in early lexical comprehension; and theories and models of phonological development.
Learning to read
Authors: Treiman Rebecca , Kessler Brett
Published: February 2013

A six-year-old child knows the meanings of many spoken words; 10,000 by one estimate. He or she can understand oral questions, commands, and stories. Yet if this same information is presented in written form, the child is hard pressed to decipher it. How do children learn to read, and how do they reach a point at which reading seems as easy and natural as listening? This article considers the development of reading ability, focusing on the development of single-word reading in alphabetic writing systems. It examines how children grasp the idea that writing is related to language, and how they learn about the links between the letters in printed words and the sounds in the corresponding spoken words. First, the article discusses written language and spoken language in children, and then focuses on early learning about relations between writing and language. It also looks at the dual-route model, the single-route model, and the teaching of decoding.
The Case Tier
Authors: Maling Joan
Published: February 2013

This article presents a theory of case assignment based on a hierarchy of grammatical functions. It focuses on the assignment of the syntactic cases nominative and accusative, singling out two phenomena: nominative objects and case alternations on adverbials of duration. A hierarchical as opposed to a structural analysis of nominative case provides a simple account for the occurrence of nominative objects with dyadic verbs which take oblique subjects, a phenomenon found in many genetically unrelated languages including Icelandic, Finnish, and Korean. Less common are languages in which adverbial noun phrases exhibit case alternations. This article reviews a complex array of case patterns focusing on certain adverbials which are sometimes marked accusative, sometimes nominative, depending on other properties of the clauses in which they occur.
Case in Cognitive Grammar
Authors: Luraghi Silvia
Published: February 2013

In cognitive approaches, language is viewed as an integral part in the whole of human cognitive capacities, rather than a separate module. Furthermore, it is assumed that language can be externally motivated. A consequence of this assumption is that meaning is viewed as being pervasive. According to cognitive approaches, grammatical forms are meaningful elements. This assumption is not new to linguistics: historical linguists of the nineteenth century have devoted long discussions to topics such as the meaning of the accusative, etc. This article summarises some assumptions that must be kept in mind in order to understand the CG analysis of case meaning. First, it considers views on grammatical forms common to various cognitive approaches in the framework of earlier research on the same topic, and then looks at the context out of which CG originated. It also discusses relevant assumptions within the CG framework and provides some diachronic evidence for the CG approach to cases. The article considers radial categories, polysemy versus homonymy, trajector-landmark asymmetry, diachrony, and relative markedness.
Syntactic Effects of Morphological Case
Authors: Neeleman Ad , Weerman Fred
Published: February 2013

It is a long-standing though controversial claim that morphological case has syntactic effects. In particular, word order freedom has been argued to be dependent on the presence of overt case markers. Thus, Latin and Classical Greek have both a rich case system and very free word order, while languages like Dutch and English lack both. If there is a connection between morphological case and syntax, this does not only make typological and diachronic predictions of the sort discussed here, but also predictions about language acquisition. This article explores a number of potential effects of morphological case that have to be encoded in grammar. Alongside word order effects, it also considers generalisations that have to do with the form of constituents with particular grammatical functions. For example, quirky subjects (overt subjects that fail to agree with the finite verb in a structure that otherwise has subject-verb agreement) are found exclusively in languages with morphological case.
Case Marking and Alignment
Authors: Bickel Balthasar , Nichols Johanna
Published: February 2013

Alignment is standardly illustrated with ergative vs. accusative coding of subjects as in Basque and Russian. It is the identical versus distinct coding or treatment or behaviour of argument roles that are different at some other level or in some other part of the grammar. Alignment of case marking can be seen as a generalised version of morphological syncretism: the same marker covers different argument roles but, unlike classical syncretism, it does so across all, or nearly all, paradigms. Split-S, or stative-active (or similar terms), is generally taken to be an alignment type on a par with accusative, ergative, etc. This article first considers case marking in the broad sense: morphological cases (whether marked by affixes, clitics, separate case words, ablaut, tone changes, etc.) and adpositions. It also looks at all alignment types involving arguments, including those where arguments are coded as adjuncts or possessors, along with compound verbs and non-lexical conditions.
Case and Voice
Authors: Shibatani Masayoshi
Published: February 2013

Voice refers to the pattern of the form-function correlation along the parameters pertaining to the evolutionary properties of an action. Hence, there are marked voice categories pertaining to the origin of an action, for example, the nature of the agent (spontaneous, passive, causative); those pertaining to the nature of the development of an action, for example, the affectedness of the patient (middle, antipassive); as well as those pertaining to the termination of an action, for example, the affectedness of other entities than the patient (applicatives, external possession). In addition to these conceptual dimensions, voice phenomena are also controlled by the pragmatic factor of discourse relevance (such as inherent and contextual discourse topicality) of the event participants. The notion of transitivity in grammar and discourse is integral to the study of voice. This article examines case and voice, focusing on case in derived constructions. It discusses spontaneous voice, passive and antipassive, antipassive in accusative languages, passive in ergative languages, case hierarchy and verbal voice morphology, and applicative voice.
Case in Aphasia
Authors: Lamers Monique , Ruigendijk Esther
Published: February 2013

Case provides the language user with a rich source of information for conveying meaningful messages in natural language use. Psycholinguistic research has shown that in the intact human language system, the morphologically realised case might help to distinguish the arguments, identify the syntactic function, and trigger certain parsing mechanisms, such as attachment decisions, establishing phrase boundaries, and, thus, providing essential information for comprehension. The question arises if and how a disturbance of the language system as in aphasia affects this ability to use case information. This article starts with a brief introduction to aphasiology, sketching the language problems known to characterise the different aphasic syndromes. It then discusses some important accounts for the aphasic impairment in language comprehension, either directly addressing morphological case in the impaired language system or highly related issues, such as the comprehension of canonical and non-canonical sentences. For production, the emphasis is on cross-linguistic findings on the realisation of case-marked entities such as demonstrative pronouns and pronouns.
Case Polysemy
Authors: Malchukov Andrej L. , Narrog Heiko
Published: February 2013

It is probably true that cases which are restricted to one specific meaning are rarer than cases subsuming several meanings. The origins of these polysemies or syncretisms vary: some are conditioned by phonetic factors, especially pervasive in the situation when a case system collapses, others have a transparent semantic basis. A semantic map is a method of capturing and accounting for regular polysemies of linguistic forms. The semantic map approach has been applied to a number of different domains including case. Although semantic maps were established on the basis of cross-linguistic patterns, it is possible to come up with a plausible map for a single language, provided that this language has several markers, or that different nominals display different types of polysemies. Australian languages are representative of this type of case asymmetry. This article explores the polysemy of case markers and its representation in maps, polysemy patterns and syntactic alignment, grammaticalisation and core case marking, Croft's causal chain model, datives and related functions, comitatives and instrumentals, spatial forms, and case functions.