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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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2011

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Articles 1 - 15 of 15

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Effect Of Language On Economic Behavior: Evidence From Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, And Retirement Assets, Keith M. Chen Aug 2011

The Effect Of Language On Economic Behavior: Evidence From Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, And Retirement Assets, Keith M. Chen

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Languages differ widely in the ways they encode time. I test the hypothesis that languages that grammatically associate the future and the present, foster future-oriented behavior. This prediction arises naturally when well-documented effects of language structure are merged with models of intertemporal choice. Empirically, I find that speakers of such languages: save more, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese. This holds both across countries and within countries when comparing demographically similar native households. The evidence does not support the most obvious forms of common causation. I discuss implications for theories of intertemporal choice.

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The Intention-To-Cause Bias: Evidence From Children's Causal Language, Paul Muentener, Laura Lakusta Jun 2011

The Intention-To-Cause Bias: Evidence From Children's Causal Language, Paul Muentener, Laura Lakusta

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The current study explored causal language in 3.5- to 4-year-old children by manipulating the type of agent (human acting intentionally or unintentionally, or inanimate object) and the type of effect (motion or state change) in causal events. Experiment 1 found that the type of agent, but not the type of effect, influenced children's production of causal language. Children produced more causal language for intentionally caused events than for either unintentionally- or object-caused events, independent of the type of effect. Experiment 2, which tested children's judgments of descriptions for the events, found a similar pattern. Children preferred causal descriptions more for …

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Language-Specific Tuning Of Audiovisual Integration In Early Development, Juliana Flynn May 2011

Language-Specific Tuning Of Audiovisual Integration In Early Development, Juliana Flynn

Honors Scholar Theses

According to the perceptual narrowing hypothesis, older infants look longer towards speech in a native language than towards a non-native language. We presented speech in English, Spanish, and mis-matched English and Spanish speech, and recorded looking-time towards the speech. Results suggest that the synchrony of speech plays a strong role in infants' attention to speech, whereas nativeness of language does not.

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Cognitive Relatives Yet Moral Strangers?, Judith Benz-Scharzberg, Andrew Knight Apr 2011

Cognitive Relatives Yet Moral Strangers?, Judith Benz-Scharzberg, Andrew Knight

Animal Welfare Collection

This article provides an empirically based, interdisciplinary approach to the following two questions: Do animals possess behavioral and cognitive characteristics such as culture, language, and a theory of mind? And if so, what are the implications, when long-standing criteria used to justify differences in moral consideration between humans and animals are no longer considered indisputable? One basic implication is that the psychological needs of captive animals should be adequately catered for. However, for species such as great apes and dolphins with whom we share major characteristics of personhood, welfare considerations alone may not suffice, and consideration of basic rights may …

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Talking Masturbation: Men, Women, And Sexuality Through Playful Discourse, Geoffrey Evans-Grimm Apr 2011

Talking Masturbation: Men, Women, And Sexuality Through Playful Discourse, Geoffrey Evans-Grimm

Honors Projects

This study seeks to understand the relationship between talking about masturbation and masturbation as an everyday practice in the United States. This essay is arranged in terms of a number of overlapping sections that converge to offer a clearer interpretive context for a discussion of the results of the questionnaire and interview data. The first part of my essay is an attempt to make sense of the cultural history and to situate conceptions about masturbation and attempts to regulate it up to present day. Then, as a gendered talk, it is necessary to engage in a theoretical discussion of gender …

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Library Impact Statement For 2011-03 Frn 200x Experiential French: Interviews And Reviews Mar 2011

Library Impact Statement For 2011-03 Frn 200x Experiential French: Interviews And Reviews

Library Impact Statements

Library Impact Statement submitted in response to new course proposal for FRN 200X Experiential French: Interviews and Reviews. New course was supported with no need for additional resources.

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2011-02 Library Impact Statement For Chn 315/316 Intensive Advances Composition And Conversation I And Ii Feb 2011

2011-02 Library Impact Statement For Chn 315/316 Intensive Advances Composition And Conversation I And Ii

Library Impact Statements

Library Impact Statement submitted in response to new course proposal for CHN 315/316 Intensive Advanced Composition and Conversation I and II. New course was supported with no need for additional resources.

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On The Need For Embodied And Dis-Embodied Cognition, Guy Dove Jan 2011

On The Need For Embodied And Dis-Embodied Cognition, Guy Dove

Faculty Scholarship

This essay proposes and defends a pluralistic theory of conceptual embodiment. Our concepts are represented in at least two ways: (i) through sensorimotor simulations of our interactions with objects and events and (ii) through sensorimotor simulations of natural language processing. Linguistic representations are “dis-embodied” in the sense that they are dynamic and multimodal but, in contrast to other forms of embodied cognition, do not inherit semantic content from this embodiment. The capacity to store information in the associations and inferential relationships among linguistic representations extends our cognitive reach and provides an explanation of our ability to abstract and generalize. This …

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Timing In The Performance Of Jokes, Salvatore Attardo, Lucy Pickering Jan 2011

Timing In The Performance Of Jokes, Salvatore Attardo, Lucy Pickering

Faculty Publications

The notion of timing in humor is often mentioned as a very significant issue, and yet very little has been written about it. The paper reviews the scant literature on the subject and narrows down the definition of timing as comprising pauses and speech rate. The discussions of timing in the literature see it either as a speeding up or slowing down of speech rate. Using data collected from twenty joke performances, we show that speakers do not significantly raise or lower their speech rate at and around the punch line. The other common assumption is that punch lines are …

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Resolutions And Their Incongruities: Further Thoughts On Logical Mechanism, Christian F. Hempelmann, Salvatore Attardo Jan 2011

Resolutions And Their Incongruities: Further Thoughts On Logical Mechanism, Christian F. Hempelmann, Salvatore Attardo

Faculty Publications

This paper is a contribution to the study of the resolution of incongruities in humor. We reject some criticisms of logical mechanisms and analyze three different types of incongruities in humorous texts: completely backgrounded, backgrounded, and foregrounded. Only the latter are addressed by logical mechanisms. We identify a mechanism of “incongruity shifting” which may be a candidate for “deep” logical mechanism (along the lines of “parallelism” in Attardo et al. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 15: 1–44, 2002). We finally discuss the similarities between Oring's (Engaging humor, University of Illinois Press, 2003) “appropriate incongruity” theory and our approach, which …

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The Word And Words In The Abrahamic Faiths, Larry Poston, Linda Poston Jan 2011

The Word And Words In The Abrahamic Faiths, Larry Poston, Linda Poston

Bible & Religion Educator Scholarship

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are “word-based” faiths. All three are derived from texts believed to be revealed by God Himself. Orthodox Judaism claims that God has said everything that needs to be said to humankind—all that remains is to interpret it generation by generation. Historic Christianity roots itself in “God-breathed scriptures” that are “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” Islam’s Qur’an is held to be a perfect reflection of the ‘Umm al-Kitab – the “mother of Books” that exists with Allah Himself. In addition, both Christianity and Islam share the concept of “The Word” – a concept …

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Latino Students’ Perceptions Of The Academic Library, Dallas Long Jan 2011

Latino Students’ Perceptions Of The Academic Library, Dallas Long

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Library use is strongly linked with student persistence in higher education, and Latino students have lower rates of academic library use and proficiency than other racial/ethnic groups of students. This study explores Latino undergraduate students’ perceptions of the academic library and library staff and identifies the conditions which impede or facilitate the students’ use of the library. Using a multiple case study design, this study describes the experiences and perceptions of undergraduate students who identify as Latino and attend a four-year public research-intensive university in the Midwest. The findings suggest that Latino students use the library through the influence of …

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Morphological Typology, Andrew R. Hippisley Jan 2011

Morphological Typology, Andrew R. Hippisley

Linguistics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Supporting Interaction And Collaboration In The Language Classroom Through Computer Mediated Communication, Mariolina Pais Marden, Jan Herrington Jan 2011

Supporting Interaction And Collaboration In The Language Classroom Through Computer Mediated Communication, Mariolina Pais Marden, Jan Herrington

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes the design and implementation of a technology supported learning environment that enabled interaction and collaboration between a group of sixteen intermediate and advanced level university students of Italian and a group of seven Italian native speaker facilitators. For one semester students and facilitators worked together to complete two authentic tasks and interacted with each other through the communication tools and resources of an online learning management system. These resources included both asynchronous and synchronous communication tools such as an online threaded class discussion forum, a group discussion forum, chat and email. This paper discusses the theoretical underpinnings …

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Cross Linguistic Differences In The Immediate Serial Recall Of Consonants Versus Vowels, Elizabeth M. Kissling Jan 2011

Cross Linguistic Differences In The Immediate Serial Recall Of Consonants Versus Vowels, Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

The current study investigated native English and native Arabic speakers’ phonological short term memory (PSTM) for sequences of consonants and vowels. PSTM was assessed in immediate serial recall tasks conducted in Arabic and English for both groups. Participants (n=39) heard series of 6 CV syllables and wrote down what they recalled. Native speakers of English recalled the vowel series better than consonant series in English and in Arabic, which was not true of native Arabic speakers. An analysis of variance showed that there was an interaction between first language (L1) and phoneme type. The results are discussed in light of …

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