Reading Lips and Learning Sounds: The Effect of Visual Cue Saliency on Phonological Production in a Second-Language

While L2 production is widely understood to show traces of L1 interference and general cue availability, the role of visual cue strength on L2 production is previously unstudied. As such, this experiment compares the production of 10 L2 Italian speakers’ intervocalic /p/ - /pp/ and /k/ - /kk/ contrasts, to see if the more visible labial pair is produced more distinctly than its less visible velar counterpart. Participants read an adapted excerpt of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and a subsequent word list. After compensating for following vowel effects within a subset, intermediate and advanced participants were found to produce more distinct labial than velar pairs; an effect most evident in advanced participants. Furthermore, this thesis discusses a potential asymmetry between the behavior of visible and non-visible gestures produced across different places of articulation, suggesting further research into the potential influence of varying visual cue strengths in L2 production.Master of Art

Senior Recital: Alexander Sifuentes, oboe

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Sifuentes studies oboe with Elizabeth Koch Tiscione.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1529/thumbnail.jp

Development and initial validation of an inconsistent responding scale for the youth psychopathic traits inventory

The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) is widely used in research, but there currently exist no means to identify potentially invalid protocols resulting from careless or random responding. We describe the development of an inconsistent responding scale for the YPI using three archival samples of youths, including two from the United States (juvenile justice and middle school) and one from Germany (vocational training school). We first identified pairs of correlated YPI items and then created a total score based on the sum of the absolute value of the differences for each item pair. The resulting scale strongly differentiated between genuine protocols and randomly generated YPI data (n = 1,000) across samples (AUC values = .88–.92). It also differentiated between genuine protocols and those same protocols after 50% of the original YPI items were replaced with random data (AUCs = .77–.84). Scores on this scale also demonstrated fairly consistent patterns of association with theoretically relevant correlates

Development and initial validation of an inconsistent responding scale for the youth psychopathic traits inventory

The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) is widely used in research, but there currently exist no means to identify potentially invalid protocols resulting from careless or random responding. We describe the development of an inconsistent responding scale for the YPI using three archival samples of youths, including two from the United States (juvenile justice and middle school) and one from Germany (vocational training school). We first identified pairs of correlated YPI items and then created a total score based on the sum of the absolute value of the differences for each item pair. The resulting scale strongly differentiated between genuine protocols and randomly generated YPI data (n = 1,000) across samples (AUC values = .88–.92). It also differentiated between genuine protocols and those same protocols after 50% of the original YPI items were replaced with random data (AUCs = .77–.84). Scores on this scale also demonstrated fairly consistent patterns of association with theoretically relevant correlates

Detecting inconsistent responding on the youth psychopathic traits inventory – short form

The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory – Short Form (YPI-S; van Baardewijk, 2010) is a convenient measure for assessing psychopathy in settings with constraints on resources. However, the YPI-S does not contain a means of detecting careless or random response styles. The present study describes the development and evaluation of an inconsistent responding scale for the YPI-S using five archival samples that vary in language (English, German, Italian, Dutch) and other participant characteristics (juvenile offenders, adolescent students). Inconsistency scores resulting from the new scale effectively distinguished genuine participant responses from randomly generated cases (AUCs = .85 - .90) and from cases in which 50% of original responses were replaced with random data (AUCs = .75 - .82). The associations between the YPI-S and theoretically relevant correlates were reduced among participants exceeding proposed cut-off scores for profile validity compared with associations among more consistent respondents

Examination of the triarchic assessment procedure for inconsistent responding in six non-English language samples

The Triarchic Assessment Procedure for Inconsistent Responding (TAPIR; Mowle et al., 2016) was recently developed to identify inattentiveness or comprehension difficulties that may compromise the validity of responses on the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM; Patrick, 2010). The TAPIR initially was constructed and cross-validated using exclusively English-speaking participants from the United States; however, research using the TriPM has been increasingly conducted internationally, with numerous foreign language translations of the measure emerging. The present study examined the cross-language utility of the TAPIR in German, Dutch, Swedish, and Italian translations of the TriPM using 6 archival samples of community members, university students, forensic psychiatric inpatients, forensic detainees, and adolescents residing outside the United States (combined N = 5,404). Findings suggest that the TAPIR effectively detects careless responding across these 4 translated versions of the TriPM without the need for language-specific modifications. The TAPIR total score meaningfully discriminated genuine participant responses from both fully and partially randomly generated data in every sample, and demonstrated further utility in detecting fixed “all true” or “all false” response patterns. In addition, TAPIR scores were reliably associated with inconsistent responding scores from another psychopathy inventory. Specificity for a range of tentative cut scores for assessing profile validity was modestly reduced among our samples relative to rates previously obtained with the English version of the TriPM; however, overall the TAPIR appears to demonstrate satisfactory cross-language generalizability

The Nalp3 inflammasome is essential for the development of silicosis

Inhalation of crystalline silica and asbestos is known to cause the progressive pulmonary fibrotic disorders silicosis and asbestosis, respectively. Although alveolar macrophages are believed to initiate these inflammatory responses, the mechanism by which this occurs has been unclear. Here we show that the inflammatory response and subsequent development of pulmonary fibrosis after inhalation of silica is dependent on the Nalp3 inflammasome. Stimulation of macrophages with silica results in the activation of caspase-1 in a Nalp3-dependent manner. Macrophages deficient in components of the Nalp3 inflammasome were incapable of secreting the proinflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-18 in response to silica. Similarly, asbestos was capable of activating caspase-1 in a Nalp3-dependent manner. Activation of the Nalp3 inflammasome by silica required both an efflux of intracellular potassium and the generation of reactive oxygen species. This study demonstrates a key role for the Nalp3 inflammasome in the pathogenesis of pneumoconiosis