bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Fight and the Fiddle in Twentieth-Century African American Poetry
Authors: Ford Karen Jackson
Published: February 2013

This article focuses on the history of African American poetry. It shows that the tensions between traditional and alternative forms do not represent mutually exclusive political and aesthetic commitments but rather the key defining dialectic of black poetry in the United States. The progress of African American poetry is not strictly linear. Its free-styling motion has made a circle of words that continually surpass the boundaries that do violence to poetic form and cultural identity. It also reveals what one learns from “reading the poetry”: that the poems have known this all along.
Asian American Poetry
Authors: Park Sojung
Published: February 2013

The early poetry written by Asians in the United States was the work of immigrant laborers and foreign students—roles that often merged into each other, with migrant workers who composed their verse in rare moments of contemplation, in which they schooled themselves in the art of verse, and scions of wealthy families who found themselves serving as houseboys to fund their studies. Recognition of their work relied on their mastery of English, both for American publication and for their eventual recuperation within the Asian American movement, whose activist artists were second-generation immigrants who developed their American voices often at the expense of their parents' languages. This article considers four key moments and approaches in Asian American poetry—modernism, activism, mainstream, and avant-garde—through readings of influential and emblematic poems.
“The Pardon of Speech”
Authors: Kalaidjian Walter
Published: February 2013

This article focuses on the relationship between poetry and psychoanalysis. Beginning with Freud, the modern analyst and modern poet share a vexed but reciprocal investment in exploring the unconscious. In this vein, the “psychoanalysis of modern poetry” reads as a double genitive: signifying poetry's paradoxical status both as the literary object of clinical analysis and as a forceful agent of psychic revelation. Unlike analysis, however, poetry offers neither a science of nor cure for the anxieties, neuroses, and psychoses of social modernity. Rather, as an envoi of the unconscious, poetry gives testimony to the latter's mystery and enigma in the linguistic registers of what Jacques Lacan describes as “the pardon of speech”.
The Intertwined Histories of Personality and Social Psychology
Authors: Pettigrew Thomas F. , Cherry Frances
Published: February 2013

The histories of personality and social psychology have been closely intertwined for more than a century. But there have been several critical differences that have at times acted to separate the two fields. One such divergence involved their models of humans—whether largely irrational (the personality emphasis) or largely rational (the social emphasis). This difference has now subsided with their joint acceptance of a “bounded rationality.” More important has been their difference in focus—the microlevel of the person versus the mesolevel of the group and situation. But now both fields largely agree on interaction models that include both the person and the situation. We trace these tensions between the two fields across six diverse eras: (1) Origins through World War I (1890–1919); (2) Early Developments (1920–1935); (3) War Influences (1936–1950); (4) Structural Differentiation and Slow Acceptance (1951–1965); (5) Dual Crises (1966–1985); and (6) Coming Back Together Again (1986–present).
Neuroscience Approaches in Social and Personality Psychology
Authors: Amodio David M. , Harmon-Jones Eddie
Published: February 2013

Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary approach to studying the mind and behavior, noted for its appreciation for the dynamic interactions of situational and dispositional processes as they relate to neural and biological mechanisms. In this chapter, we describe the methodological approach of social neuroscience and review research that has applied this approach to address the interplay of the person and situation in the domains of social cognition, attitudes, emotion and motivation, intergroup relations, and personality. We provide critical discussion of how neuroscience may contribute to classic questions in personality and social psychology, and we describe how the social neuroscience approach promotes the integration of dispositional and situational accounts of the mind and behavior.
Evolutionary Perspectives
Authors: Gangestad Steven W.
Published: February 2013

Evolutionary perspectives on human behavior are almost as old as the science of psychology itself. Functionalists such as James, Dewey, and Angell, however, lacked explicit evolutionary theories and methodologies to inspire generative research programs, and their movement dissipated. Today, a new brand of functionalism has emerged, one that draws its inspiration from massive developments in evolutionary biology in the past half-century. This chapter has several aims. First, it offers an overview of evolutionary biology as applied to human psychology. Second, it discusses the concept of an ecological niche, and addresses the critical issue of the nature of the niche that humans entered and defined. This niche has the unusual feature that individuals’ fitness was highly dependent on their ability to attract, form, and maintain cooperative coalitions with others and, hence, to harness the competencies of others to their own competencies. Third, it describes several broad, evolution-inspired proposals about human social behavior, which illustrate how evolutionary perspectives offer integrative understandings of psychological phenomena and generate new research programs. Fourth, it addresses individual differences from an evolutionary perspective. Rather than representing alternatives to social or cultural perspectives, evolutionary perspectives offer means by which to construct a personality and social psychology that is foundationally integrative.
From Help-Giving to Helping Relations
Authors: Nadler Arie
Published: February 2013

This chapter surveys social psychological research on help-giving and helping relations from the 1950s until today. The first section reviews research on help-giving and considers the conditions under which people are likely to help others: The personality dispositions that characterize helpful individuals and the motivational and attributional antecedents of helpfulness. The second section reviews research on helping relations, which transcends the help-giving perspective by looking at the long-term consequences of help on helpers and receivers and by examining help in the context of enduring and emotionally significant relationships, such as in families, communities, and organizations. Research on helping relations has shown that because independence is key to positive personal and collective identity, people are often reluctant to seek or receive needed help, and that in the long term, help can increase psychological and physical well-being for helpers but can discourage self-reliance for recipients. The third section analyzes helping from an intra- and intergroup perspective, considering how the provision of help can advance helpers’ reputations within a group or promote positive social identity of ingroups relative to outgroups. Help is conceptualized as a negotiation between the fundamental psychological needs for belongingness and independence. Conceptual and applied implications are discussed.
Personality and Social InteractionInterpenetrating Processes
Authors: Mendoza-Denton Rodolfo , Ayduk Özlem , Leitner Jordan B.
Published: February 2013

A central tenet of social constructivist approaches to personality is that people’s social relationships determine the development, structure, and expression of personality. This view has been difficult to reconcile with a widely accepted view among researchers and lay perceivers alike that personality consists of internal, characteristic dispositions that supersede particular relationships. Research within the social cognitive tradition provides an opportunity to integrate these ideas by suggesting that (1) behavioral variability across situations is stable, and is an important expression of the personality system; and (2) the stability and predictability of behavioral variability is readily discovered when situations are categorized in interpersonal terms. We describe a recent theoretical framework proposing a culturally and interpersonally bound personality system (Mendoza-Denton & Mischel, 2007) that accounts for the ways in which people’s behavior is attuned to the interpersonal context, and review several lines of research that are consistent with the principles of this general framework.
Personality and Social Contexts as Sources of Change and Continuity Across the Life Span
Authors: Stewart Abigail J. , Deaux Kay
Published: February 2013

This chapter provides a framework designed to address how individual persons respond to changes and continuities in social systems and historical circumstances at different life stages and in different generations. We include a focus on systematic differences among the people who experience these changes in the social environment — differences both in the particular situations they find themselves in and in their personalities. Using examples from research on divorce, immigration, social movement participation, and experiences of war, we make a case for an integrated personality and social psychology that extends the analysis across time and works within socially and historically important contexts.
Work and OrganizationsContextualizing Personality and Social Psychology
Authors: Day David V. , Schleicher Deidra J.
Published: February 2013

This chapter addresses the relevance of personality and social psychology to the central life domain of work and organizations. We begin with a general discussion of how the field of organizational psychology is distinct from, yet has been informed by, theory and research in personality and social psychology, distinguishing between horizontal and vertical theory borrowing in this regard. We then summarize research on four key organizational topics that have particularly strong theoretical and empirical records for integrating across personality and social psychology: person-environment fit, job attitudes, leadership, and teams. Within each of these organizational research areas we discuss examples of horizontal and vertical theory borrowing as well as new theoretical frameworks with the potential to contribute to the fields of personality and social psychology.
Epidemiology of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Adults
Authors: Breslau Naomi
Published: February 2013

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was established in 1980, when it was incorporated in the DSM-III. The PTSD definition brackets a distinct set of stressors—traumatic events—from other stressful experiences and links it causally with a specific response, the PTSD syndrome. Explicit diagnostic criteria in DSM-III made it feasible to conduct large-scale epidemiological surveys on PTSD and other psychiatric disorders, using structured diagnostic interviews administered by nonclinicians. Epidemiologic research has been expanded from Vietnam veterans, who were the center of DSM-III PTSD study, to civilian populations and postwar regions worldwide. This chapter summarizes information on the prevalence estimates of PTSD in U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War, soldiers returning from deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, and civilian populations. It outlines research findings on the course of PTSD, risk factors, comorbidity with other psychiatric disorders, and the risk for other posttrauma disoders. It concludes with recommendations for future research.
Family Models of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Authors: Monson Candice M. , Fredman Steffany J. , Dekel Rachel , Macdonald Alexandra
Published: February 2013

This chapter reviews the extant literature on the interpersonal aspects of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with a focus on couple and family models of PTSD. Topics include the association of PTSD with a variety of family relationship problems in a range of traumatized populations. The role of relevant interpersonal constructs in the development and maintenance of PTSD (e.g., social support, attachment) and the psychological effects of PTSD symptoms on family members and their relations are discussed. In addition, models that take into account a range of relationship variables and the likely bi-directional association between individual and family functioning in PTSD are presented. Future directions for theory and research, as well as the clinical implications of this work are outlined.
Assessing Trauma-related Symptoms in Children and Adolescents
Authors: March Sonja , De Young Alexandra , Dow Belinda , Kenardy Justin
Published: February 2013

The literature concerning the assessment of posttrauma reactions is well developed for adults, but this is not so for children and adolescents, especially young children. This chapter covers some key trauma-assessment issues in the child and adolescent population, which includes derivation and validation problems, the influence of developmental factors, applicability of current diagnostic classification, and the use of multiple informants. The range of available assessment measures is then reviewed, including semi-structured and self-report measures of posttraumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, and dissociation. Available screening measures and physiological measures are also reviewed. Directions for future work in this area are made.
Assessment of PTSD in Non-Western Cultures: The Need for New Contextual and Complex Perspectives
Authors: Droždek Boris , Wilson John P. , Turkovic Silvana
Published: February 2013

Posttraumatic psychological impacts to non-Western populations cannot be assessed and understood solely within a biomedical paradigm and described primarily by the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder. Instead, a more holistic assessment framework is critical. This chapter presents such a holistic assessment framework that incorporates clinical, psychological, and psychometric perspectives. In assessment of trauma populations, a contextual framework has to be applied. Psychological consequences should be approached as a spectrum of changes to individual psychosocial processes and patterns of adjustment. Assessment procedures should be culture sensitive and the instruments applied should address survivors’ cultural realities and historical experiences within the disaster or trauma experience itself. The context of the traumatic event within a cultural matrix is essential to an accurate diagnostic picture, and this endeavor requires special knowledge of cultural differences in everyday life, traditions of daily living, and cultural community-based approaches for healing and recovery.
Community-based Early Intervention with Trauma Survivors
Authors: Ruzek Josef I.
Published: February 2013

The numbers of individuals affected by frequently occurring traumatic events such as accidents and assaults, as well as large-scale traumas such as war and disaster, call for systematic, comprehensive community-based responses to manage mental health consequences of such exposure. Comprehensive early response by the community to its trauma-exposed members requires integration of several key response components. Communities should develop immediate response services, educate the affected community, reach out to survivors, engage in efficient early identification of those at risk, implement community-wide early intervention counseling services, monitor those at risk, train and support providers, monitor the well-being and needs of the affected population, and provide additional large-community interventions and programs. These services should encompass both trauma survivors and their family members and should target a range of potential negative outcomes, including posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse, and impairments in functioning. Increased attention should be given to training and supporting providers, integration of online interventions into community-based service delivery, and program monitoring and evaluation. Those who serve sexual assault survivors, crime victims, deployed military personnel, physically injured assault and motor vehicle accident survivors, and disaster-affected groups can potentially learn much from one another, and efforts should be under taken to ensure that “cross-fertilization” of perspectives can occur in the service of creating integrated and comprehensive community-based responses to trauma.
Prevention and Early Intervention Programs for Children and Adolescents
Authors: Brymer Melissa J. , Steinberg Alan M. , Watson Patricia J. , Pynoos Robert S.
Published: February 2013

This chapter provides a review of basic concepts essential to understanding the nature and role of factors that may mediate or moderate the relationship between traumatic stress and a broad range of outcomes. Such intervening factors, including risk, vulnerability, protective, and resilience factors, can be conveniently accommodated within the categories of child intrinsic factors, family factors, and community ecology factors. Community-level and individual/family early interventions for children and adolescents after trauma are critically reviewed. Although many of these early interventions hold promise, a good deal more methodologically sound research using standardized measures is needed. Increase knowledge of risk, vulnerability, and resilience factors can facilitate the development of enhanced evidence-based early and intermediate interventions, clinical treatments, public policy, and trauma-informed services for traumatized children and their families across stages of recovery.
Treating Trauma-related Symptoms in Children and Adolescents
Authors: Deblinger Esther , Pollio Elisabeth , Neubauer Felicia
Published: February 2013

The significant impact of trauma on children is well documented. This chapter focuses on trauma-specific treatments for children and adolescents that have at least one randomized controlled trial in which one or more standardized outcome measures of trauma symptoms were used. These treatments address varying traumas, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, exposure to violence or loss, medical trauma, and disasters. Many of the treatments demonstrate promising results, but the research is often hampered by methodological limitations. The efficacy of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) has been documented in over 17 scientific studies, including 10 randomized trials. A more detailed description of TF-CBT is presented in the chapter. Also discussed are future research directions, including specific scientific questions, to advance our knowledge about trauma treatment for children and adolescents.
A Compatibilist Reply to the Consequence Argument
Authors: Kapitan Tomis
Published: February 2013

This article provides a reply to the Consequence Argument. It notes that the argument's soundness depends upon how one interprets modal notions such as power or ability (to bring something about) and avoidability (the power to do otherwise). It explores these “practical modalities,” and shows how different interpretations of them yield different versions of the Consequence Argument. It examines some familiar compatibilist responses to the argument, including those based on conditional analyses of the ability to do otherwise and the response of David Lewis. An adequate response, the article argues, must identify an ability to act that is adequate for moral responsibility, yet invalidates the Consequence Argument.
Revisionist Accounts of Free Will: Origins, Varieties, and Challenges
Authors: Vargas Manuel
Published: February 2013

This article deals with another kind of free-will theory, revisionism, that is comparatively new and has come into prominence only in the past decade. Rather that denying we have free will, revisionists with incompatibilist intuitions, who come to believe that an incompatibilist free will is impossible, would instead conclude that free will was not exactly what they previously thought it to be (i.e., it is not incompatibilist). They would, in effect, revise their view of free will in a compatibilist direction, rather than denying free will altogether. The article provides an informative account of the origin of revisionist views of this kind in recent philosophy and a useful taxonomy of kinds of revisionist views. It concludes with a discussion of future challenges for revisionist approaches to free will and moral responsibility.
Intuitions about Free Will, Determinism, and Bypassing
Authors: Nahmias Eddy
Published: February 2013

This article draws on experimental studies of folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility conducted in the past decade. It questions the claims of many philosophers that most ordinary persons have incompatibilist intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. In the studies, various deterministic scenarios are presented to undergraduate students who have not studied philosophy. In these scenarios, studies found that, although some students expressed incompatibilist intuitions, a majority expressed compatibilist intuitions, agreeing that agents could be free and morally responsible in these presumably deterministic scenarios. This article further argues that determinism seems to be a threat to free will and moral responsibility because it is often connected with something else that ordinary persons do take to be a threat to free will and moral responsibility. It calls this threat bypassing.
Too Much of a Good Thing? Trade-offs in Promotion and Prevention Focus
Authors: Scholer Abigail A. , Higgins E. Tory
Published: February 2013

Different kinds of motivational orientations provide distinctive ways of perceiving the world, dealing with life's inevitable slings and arrows, regulating challenges and opportunities, and creating success. In this chapter, we explore these differences in the two motivational systems outlined in regulatory focus theory: the promotion and prevention systems (Higgins, 1997). In particular, we discuss these systems in terms of the trade-offs in each; what are the benefits and costs of a strong promotion focus? What are the advantages and drawbacks of a strong prevention focus? We explore the trade-offs of each system with regard to three significant aspects of self-regulation and motivation: emotional experiences, the balance between commitment versus exploration, and performance. We conclude by discussing the importance of constraints on these systems for effective self-regulation and by suggesting avenues for future research.
Curiosity and Motivation
Authors: Silvia Paul J.
Published: February 2013

Curiosity is an old, intriguing, and vexing construct in the psychology of motivation. This chapter reviews the major strands of thought on curiosity and motivation: (1) curiosity as a motive to reduce negative states, such as uncertainty, novelty, arousal, drive, or information gaps; (2) curiosity as a source of intrinsic motivation that fosters learning and exploring for their own sakes; and (3) curiosity as a stable motivational difference between people that leads to differences in knowledge, goals, achievement, and experience. The scope of psychological thought on curiosity defies a simple integration, but it offers inspiration for researchers curious about why people learn and explore in the absence of obvious external rewards.
Interest and Its Development
Authors: Renninger K. Ann , Su Stephanie
Published: February 2013

This chapter focuses on interest as a cognitive and affective motivational variable that develops and can be supported to develop. Interest and interest development as described by Hidi and Renninger's (2006) Four-Phase Model of Interest Development are (a) defined and then (b) contextualized in light of other conceptualizations that focus on specific aspects of interest (such as emotion, experience, task features, value, and vocational interest) and issues pertaining to the operationalization and measurement of interest. Following this, research addressing the development of interest is overviewed, with particular attention to (a) the triggering of interest in both earlier and later phases of interest, (b) maintaining interest once it has been triggered, (c) fluctuations in interest, and (d) shifts between phases in the development of interest. Finally, a Punnett square is employed to suggest next steps and open questions in the study of interest development.
Unconscious Goal Pursuit: Nonconscious Goal Regulation and Motivation
Authors: Aarts Henk , Custers Ruud
Published: February 2013

Experimental research in psychology has discovered that human goal pursuit originates and unfolds in the unconscious. Our behavior is directed and motivated by goals outside of conscious awareness in the current situation or environment. In this chapter we review past and current research that examines these goal-priming effects. Our review is organized around two themes. The first theme deals with research that analyzes how people control their goal pursuit in the absence of conscious awareness, and it examines goal pursuit as automated behaviors resulting from habits as well as flexible behaviors that occur when habitual responding is not adequate to attain goals. The second theme concerns the quest to understand the unconscious source of human goal pursuit, and it explores recent work that considers the fundamental role of positive affect in reward processing and implicit motivation.
The Gendered Body Project: Motivational Components of Objectification Theory
Authors: Roberts Tomi-Ann , Waters Patricia L.
Published: February 2013

In this chapter, we attempt to explore the motivational questions that arise when we view the psychology of women through the lens of objectification theory, which highlights the centrality of appearance concerns, or “body projects,” for girls and women today. We examine theoretical perspectives on what motivates the sexual objectification of women, considering the ways this treatment may reflect an adaptive evolutionary mating strategy, may serve as a tool for the maintenance of patriarchal power, or may lend existential “protection” against the creaturely, death reminders that women's bodies provide. We then investigate both developmental processes and situational/contextual features that motivate girls and women to internalize a sexually objectifying view on their physical selves. And, finally, we review evidence that self-objectification, though motivating in itself, carries significant consequences for their health and well-being.
Relatedness Between Children and Parents: Implications for Motivation
Authors: Pomerantz Eva M. , Cheung Cecilia Sin-Sze , Qin Lili
Published: February 2013

A significant goal in many countries around the world is promoting children's motivation so that ultimately they achieve at their full potential. There is much evidence supporting the idea that parents play a significant role in either facilitating or undermining children's motivation. The focus of this chapter is on how relatedness between children and their parents shapes the development of children's motivation as well as achievement. Three sets of ideas about how relatedness between children and their parents contributes to children's motivation are reviewed. An integration of the three is provided to highlight key themes as well as suggest key directions for future research.
Moods of Energy and Tension That Motivate
Authors: Thayer Robert E.
Published: February 2013

Moods are perfect barometers of physiological and psychological functioning. Two biopsychological dimensions, Energetic and Tense Arousal, are keys to understanding moods. These dimensions interact under different activating conditions to form four complex moods that range from calm energy (pleasurable mood associated with full attentional focus, happiness, optimism, favorable athletic performance, and self-control) to tense tiredness (bad mood associated with depression, negative perception of problems, yielding to unwanted urges such as sugar snacking or smoking). Two other complex moods include tense energy (moderately positive state that combines vigor with moderate tension) and calm tiredness (ideal for restful sleep). Energetic and tense arousal are associated with many kinds of motivational processes, including various strategies of self-regulation (best strategy combines relaxation techniques, exercise, and cognitive control). Important to these moods are natural processes such as health, sleep, diet, diurnal energy cycles, movement (exercise), and stress. These moods are mediated by general bodily arousal states.
Motivation in Education
Authors: Wigfield Allan , Cambria Jenna , Eccles Jacquelynne S.
Published: February 2013

In this chapter we discuss the nature of children's achievement motivation and how it develops over the school years. We focus on the competence-related belief, value, goal, interest, and intrinsic aspects of motivation that have been emphasized in much of the research on motivation. We then discuss how different aspects of classroom and school practices influence motivation, and how teacher–student relationships and peer relationships impact students’ motivation. We next consider how school transitions influence students’ motivation, describing important differences in the structure and organization of schools at different levels of schooling. In the final section we describe some recent intervention work to boost children's motivation in different ways. Suggestions for future research include how students’ motivation varies in different classroom contexts, the need to study motivation in diverse groups of children, methodological issues with respect to studying motivation, what other kinds of further motivation intervention studies are needed, and how work on motivation can inform educational policy.
Youth Motivation and Participation in Sport and Physical Activity
Authors: Weiss Maureen R. , Amorose Anthony J. , Kipp Lindsay E.
Published: February 2013

Sports and physical activities are ubiquitous achievement contexts for children and adolescents worldwide. Motivation to initiate, continue, and sustain physical activity involvement is important for ensuring positive developmental and healthy outcomes. In this chapter we synthesize and consolidate theory-driven knowledge about determinants and outcomes of youth motivation and participation in sport and physical activity. First, we discuss relevant theoretical frameworks for understanding youth motivation in the physical activity domain. Second, we review empirical research on social-contextual factors and individual differences related to youths’ desire to continue physical activity and opportunities for accruing the many benefits from such participation. Finally, based on our review of literature, we offer several avenues for future research that address gaps in the knowledge base about mechanisms of influence on youths’ motivation and participation in physical activity.
Evolutionary psychology in the round
Authors: Dunbar Robin , Barrett Louise
Published: February 2013

This article makes two general points on evolutionary psychology. First, the evolutionary approach enjoins a broad disciplinary perspective to the subject. Second, an evolutionary view does not commit to any particular assumptions about the genetic determination of behaviour. Indeed, learning, and by extension cultural transmission, play an especially important role in the behaviour of humans, and one will never be able to understand human behaviour without understanding culture and the way it influences what humans do. The important consideration in the present context is that the theory of evolution provides a framework within which a diverse range of intellectual questions can be integrated. The significance of this is well illustrated by the role it has played within biology. Evolutionary psychology, the article argues, is not a new and separate sub-discipline within psychology, but rather a framework theory that allows psychology's many diverse sub-disciplines to be integrated into a unitary whole.
Group-level evolutionary processes
Authors: Wilson David Sloan
Published: February 2013

This article summarises the common language of multi-level selection theory. Every student of evolution learns that natural selection is based on relative fitness. It doesn't matter how well a trait enhances survival and reproduction, as long as it does so better than alternative traits. Traits that decrease absolute fitness can evolve if they decrease the fitness of everyone else even more. Traits that increase absolute fitness can fail to evolve if they increase the fitness of everyone else even more. Whenever a large population is subdivided into groups, relative fitness in the total population can be divided into two components: relative fitness among individuals within single groups; and relative fitness among groups within the larger population. The fact that the group as a whole suffers from resource overexploitation is irrelevant because natural selection is based only on relative fitness.
Homologizing the mind
Authors: Rendall Drew , Notman Hugh , Vokey John R.
Published: February 2013

Evolution plays a central role in the design of all living things, producing a diversity of extraordinary adaptations. The details of evolutionary design can only be fully understood in a historical context, within the broader perspective it offers on how design solutions to recent specific environmental pressures are critically shaped by species' history — that is, by the requirement that they be integrated with the myriad pre-existing physical, physiological, and solutions of behaviour to other adaptive challenges that species' history entails. In short, organisms are a blend of adaptive potential and historical inertia; the degrees of freedom are not infinite and so what is evolutionarily possible over most timeframes depends critically on the starting conditions. This article outlines these frameworks and highlights broad conceptual weaknesses in them.
Risk and decision-making
Authors: Winterhalder Bruce
Published: February 2013

`This article provides a brief survey of the analysis of outcome risk: what it is, in what circumstance it is important, what the analytical tools are for describing and analysing it, what examples demonstrate the utility of these tools, and what inferences can be drawn from a risk-sensitive approach to behaviour. It also summarises empirical evidence bearing on these ideas. A risk-sensitive analysis of a particular behaviour entails two steps: first, each possible option for the behaviour must be associated with a frequency distribution of its odds. A particular choice of cultivars for one particular field will result in a certain frequency distribution of yields, say of barley. Then each outcome, or in this case each yield, must be assigned a value which might be measured as fitness, utility or some other currency of relevance. Each yield of barley has a certain fitness value to the peasant family engaged in subsistence endeavour.
Ecological and socio-cultural impacts on mating and marriage systems
Authors: Low Bobbi S.
Published: February 2013

This article explores how human mating and marriage systems are affected by conditions of ecology, by cultural practices, and by the interactions of these two forces. Given the great diversity in marriage rules and rules about association and sexual conduct across societies, it would be easy to throw up one's hands and regard these patterns as somehow ‘purely cultural’. There are, however, often (sometimes non-obvious) influences of the distribution, abundance, and predictability of resources that shift the likelihood of success and persistence for different cultural systems. Thus, cultural and genetic changes over time seem to be inevitably linked, and marriage rules lie at the heart of this phenomenon. However, defining ‘culture’ in a way useful to hypothesis testing is difficult, and culture and genetics change in different ways.
Human evolution and social cognition
Authors: Schaller Mark , Park Justin H. , Kenrick Douglas T.
Published: February 2013

Many aspects of human cognition — especially the processes that define the conceptual territory of social cognition — are adapted to the recurrent problems and opportunities posed by these other members of ancestral human populations. So, to understand social cognition fully and deeply, it is useful — perhaps even essential — to employ scientific strategy. First, it is important to identify the set of fitness-relevant ‘problems’ recurrently posed by human social environments. Second, one should employ an evolutionary cost-benefit analysis to deduce plausible cognitive adaptations that would have helped ‘solve’ those problems. When considered in an evolutionary light, human social cognition is not merely one domain of inquiry within the small scientific province of social psychology; it is instead a topic of relevance to any scientist who cares about the evolution and behavioural ecology of mammals in general.
Shamans, yogins and indigenous psychologies
Authors: Crook John H.
Published: February 2013

This article offers a brief account of the processes of world-view, particularly in selected representatives of the ‘ancient matrix’, and indicates how they may change as the second and third of Michail Bakhtin's phases impact upon them. The forms of religion found in hunter-gatherer societies of the ‘ancient matrix’ are commonly described as ‘shamanic’. Although they vary considerably in form and function, such cultures share several key attributes in common. Members of the society participate in a common understanding or world-view from which they draw an understanding of themselves in relation to their perception of the universe. Shamans usually have a deep knowledge of natural history and/or a sensitive appreciation of their social system and the personal tendencies of community members. Interpretation of social conflict on a ‘cosmological’ level removed from actual social process amounts to an appeal to a neutral world transcending actual interpersonal conflict or sickness.
Ethnic nepotism as heuristic: risky transactions and public altruism
Authors: Salter Frank
Published: February 2013

Kin selection, the popular name given to William Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness, has been successful in predicting variation in human altruism shown towards kin of different proximity. Kin-selection theory interprets the behavioural universal of nepotism to be a product of evolutionary history. In that theory, the rigors of natural selection meant that altruism — including the unreciprocated giving of resources to another individual — was only viable when practiced between close kin. The theory of evolution underlying ethnic nepotism is not well developed. There are two main approaches. The first is to portray ethnic nepotism as a literal extension of the family variety, with shared homologies in emotions, psychological mechanisms, and releasers (such as perceived attacks on the group). The second approach is to allow for ethnic and kin motivation to be different.
Syntactic parsing
Authors: van Gompel Roger P. G. , Pickering Martin J.
Published: February 2013

A crucial part of understanding a sentence is to construct its syntactic structure. Without this, it would be very difficult for language users to determine that sentence with different word orders. The processes involved in constructing syntactic structures during language comprehension are commonly referred to as parsing or syntactic processing. Sentence processing theories can roughly be divided into interactive accounts, in which all relevant information can be used immediately; and modular accounts, in which some information can be used immediately but some cannot. Modular models assume that the mind consists of modules which perform very specific processes. In contrast, interactive accounts assume that the processor immediately draws upon all possible sources of information during sentence processing, including semantics, discourse context, and information about the frequency of syntactic structures. In addition to the above, this article discusses syntax and semantics, lexical frequency, discourse effects, working memory capacity, structural complexity, and adoption of ungrammatical syntactic structures.
Connectionist principles in theories of speech production
Authors: Goldrick Matthew
Published: February 2013

In psycholinguistics, speech production refers broadly to the processes mapping a message the speaker intends to communicate onto its form. If a speaker wishes to tell someone “The picture I'm looking at is an animal—a feline pet”, these processes allow the speaker to generate the spoken form “cat”. Psycholinguistic theories have focused on “formulation processes”: the construction/retrieval of a plan to produce an utterance. This plan specifies the phonological structure of the utterance. Subsequent articulatory/motoric processes execute this plan, producing the actual movements of the speech organs. Since the mid-1980s, connectionist architectures have served as the dominant paradigm for characterizing theories of formulation processes. This article examines how two connectionist principles (localist representations and spreading activation) have influenced the development of speech production theories. It discusses the use of these principles in framing theories of speech production and shows how the principles have been used to account for three sets of empirical observations. The article also examines distributed representations, focusing on learning and processing as well as learning and syntactic priming.
Brain-imaging studies of language production
Authors: Indefrey Peter
Published: February 2013

This article adopts the production model of Levelt to discuss brain imaging studies of continuous speech. Conclusions about the involvement of brain regions in processes of language production are mainly drawn on the basis of the presence or absence of processing components of speaking in certain experimental tasks. Such conclusions are largely theory independent, because differences between current models do not concern the assumed processing levels but the exact nature of the information flow between them. In a second step, the article tests some of these conclusions by comparing the few available data on activation time courses of brain regions and independent evidence on the timing of processes in language production. It also discusses brain regions involved in word production, conceptually driven lexical selection, phonological code (word form) retrieval, phonological encoding, phonetic encoding and articulation, self-monitoring, whether the hemodynamic core areas are necessary for word production, and bilingual language production.
Language production in aphasia
Authors: Berndt Rita Sloan
Published: February 2013

Aphasia is a condition in which previously normal and literate users of a language suffer a disruption in the operation of language processes, including language production, as the result of a focal brain lesion. Aphasic language production, which can differ from normal speech in a variety of different ways, highlights the number and complexity of the elements that constitute normal language. Aphasic speakers may exhibit marked reductions in fluency, may have enormous difficulty producing words to express meaning, may produce fragmented utterances interrupted by numerous pauses, and may produce words that do not express what they intended to say. This article describe the many forms that aphasic language production can take and interprets them within the context of psycholinguistic models of normal language production. First, it discusses language components subject to disruption in aphasia, including fluency, sentence structure, and word retrieval. The article then examines the clinical classification of the aphasias, a model of sentence production, resource limitations in aphasic sentence production (temporal window hypothesis), effects of poor verb retrieval on sentence production, and fluent aphasias.
Word learning
Authors: Koenig Melissa A. , Woodward Amanda
Published: February 2013

Children pay special attention to people's intentional cues when learning new words, but it is possible to learn and recognize words in the absence of such cues. Word learning constitutes a “special” problem precisely because words constitute complex collections of properties. A word is a symbol. It is a linguistic unit with syntactic, morphological, and phonological properties. A word is a social convention. It is a type of intentional action that refers to a meaningful concept. This article explores children's acquisition of the essential properties of words, focusing both on the challenge of acquisition and on the generative effects of acquisition for further learning. Recent work has begun to explore the earliest roots of word knowledge, and has revealed that even at the dawn of word learning, young children bring to bear their knowledge not only of speakers' intentions but also their knowledge of the conventional and contrastive nature of linguistic symbols, the link between names and conceptual categories, and the probabilistic correspondences between syntax and semantics.
History of the Research on Case
Authors: Blake Barry J.
Published: February 2013

Current western methods of analysing language follow a tradition that can be traced back to the Greeks, who developed criteria for determining word classes and terminology for describing word classes and grammatical categories. One of the main criteria was case, which for the Greeks was a system of word forms that signified relationships in sentences. The main word class to exhibit case forms was the noun, which for the Alexandrine Greeks included the adjective. Other word classes to show variation for case were pronouns, articles, and participles. In ancient Greece, there were five cases. This article looks at the contributions of the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Modistae to the study of case and grammar, as well as Pāṇini's kāraka theory, and the works of L. Hjelmslev and R. Jakobson. It also traces the history of research on case in regions other than Europe.
Case in Lexical-Functional Grammar
Authors: Butt Miriam
Published: February 2013

The treatment of case has been one of the central concerns within lexical-functional grammar (LFG) since its inception in the late 1970s. LFG separates facts about linear word order and constituency from the functional dependency structure analysis of a clause. A sophisticated analysis of cross-linguistic case patterns only became available as LFG's linking theory (known as lexical mapping theory) evolved. In particular, once it was recognised on the basis of argumentation by Rappaport (1983) that argument structure needed to be posited as a level of representation that was independent of constituent structure, the way was paved for analyses of case to be stated in terms of generalisations over a(rgument)-structure. That is, in terms of generalisations that take both semantic and syntactic factors into account. This article first presents some LFG basics, then briefly charts the development of linking theory and discusses current theories of case. It also considers grammatical relations and grammatical functions, constructive case, and differential case theory. It concludes with a consideration of LFG-based analyses that are couched within optimality theory.