Experience as a Free Parameter in the Cognitive Modeling of Language

To account for natural variability in cognitive processing, it is standard practice to optimize the parameters of a model to account for behavioral data. However, variability reflecting the information to which one has been exposed is usually ignored. Nevertheless, most language theories assign a large role to an individual’s experience with language. We present a new way to fit language-based behavioral data that combines simple learning and processing mechanisms using optimization of language materials. We demonstrate that benchmark fits on multiple linguistic tasks can be achieved using this method and will argue that one must account not only for the internal parameters of a model but also the external experience that people receive when theorizing about human behavior

What Are You Really Saying? Verbal Irony Understanding in Children with Social Anxiety Symptoms and Shy Negative Affect

Verbal irony, a form of figurative language, uses the discrepancy between a speaker’s intended meaning and the literal word meanings to achieve social goals. Yet, little research exists on individual differences that may disrupt irony understanding. Verbal irony may challenge shy children, who tend to interpret ambiguous stimuli as being threatening, and who have difficulties with mentalizing in social contexts. This study assessed whether shy children interpret ironic statements differently than do non-shy children. Children (8- to11-year-olds) listened to stories wherein one character made a statement to another character that was a literal or ironic criticism or a literal or ironic compliment. Children appraised the speaker’s belief and communicative intention. Shyness was assessed using self report measures of social anxiety symptoms and shy negative affect. Shy children did not differ from non-shy peers in comprehending speakers’ beliefs. However, shy children rated speakers who made ironic criticisms as being more mean than did children low in shyness. Thus, while understanding that speakers intended to communicate their true beliefs, shy children construed the social meaning of irony differently, indicating difficulties with pragmatics. Such subtle differences in pragmatic understanding may underlie some of the social difficulties facing shy children

Shyness, Verbal Irony Comprehension, and Socio-Emotional Functioning in Middle Childhood

Shy children simultaneously desire to engage in social interactions with their peers and to avoid social situations (particularly novel ones) due to feelings of anxiety and self-consciousness. Although not in itself considered pathological, childhood shyness is a significant risk factor for a number of negative social and emotional outcomes including peer victimization, low perceived friendship quality, loneliness, and symptoms of depression. Previous work finds that pragmatic language skills and aspects of communicative competence influence the relationship between shyness and these negative outcomes. Counterfactual verbal irony, in which the literal meaning of an utterance is directly opposite its intended meaning, is a figurative language form that has been posited to have a number of important social functions. The Tinge Hypothesis, for example, claims that the use of verbal irony mutes the critical tone of ironic criticisms, and simultaneously renders ironic compliments less kind than literal compliments. It has also been shown that shyness is related to children’s ratings of the attitude of ironic speakers, with children who are shyer rating ironic criticisms as being meaner than did less shy children. Building on these findings, and the potential protective role of good communication skills, this dissertation examined relations between verbal irony comprehension, effective communication, and socio-emotional outcomes in shy children aged 8-12 years. Using a series of vignettes and self-report measures, Study 1 revealed that while neither verbal irony comprehension nor socio-communicative skills mediated the relationship between shyness and its associated negative outcomes, verbal irony comprehension moderated the relationship between shyness and symptoms of loneliness and depression. Contrary to predictions, shy children with better verbal irony comprehension had greater loneliness and depression symptoms. Similarly, for girls, better verbal irony comprehension strengthened the relationship between shyness and peer victimization. In contrast, for boys, better verbal irony comprehension and better socio-communicative skills were associated with a reduction in the risk of victimization associated with shyness. Possible explanations for these unexpected findings are discussed. Within the broad aim of examining the interplay between trait shyness and ironic language use, I was also interested in whether shyness influenced children’s perceptions of the communicative intentions and personal characteristics of ironic speakers beyond judging speaker attitudes. In Study 2 children were asked to rate fictional characters on a number of dimensions after reading short vignettes in which the characters interacted with a same-gendered peer using sarcastic or literal criticism or praise. Children generally rated speakers who used verbal irony as being funnier, yet less kind than speakers who made literal remarks. Non-shy participants also indicated that they would be less likely to befriend a speaker who used irony with a shy target, suggesting that non-shy children may feel it is less appropriate to use verbal irony with shy children. Overall, regardless of whether speakers used ironic or literal statements, shy children felt that the speaker was kinder and more popular when they had seen the speaker interacting with a shy target, suggesting that the participants may have been identifying with the targets. Across the two studies, the majority of the findings were consistent with the Tinge Hypothesis, with children rating speakers who made ironic compliments less favourably than those who made literal compliments. In a second part of Study 2, when children were asked to imagine themselves in the vignettes and then indicate the likelihood that they, themselves, would tell the truth, lie, use sarcasm or make a prosocial remark, the findings again followed the Tinge Hypothesis, with sarcasm being favoured over literal criticisms, but literal compliments being favoured over ironic compliments. Girls’ responses were more consistent with this trend, while boys were more likely to choose the less prosocial options, such as literal criticisms, ironic compliments, and lying in positive contexts. These two studies explore the complex relations between shyness, gender, verbal irony comprehension, and social and emotional functioning (Study 1), and children’s perceptions of speakers using verbal irony (Study 2). Many of the findings suggested that for shy children strong verbal irony comprehension and socio-communicative competence were related to poorer social and emotional outcomes. This suggests that targeting skills deficits may not be the route to mitigating the negative social and emotional outcomes associated with shyness. Shyness was not related to perceptions to ironic speakers across many measures, although there was some preliminary evidence that non-shy children thought it was less appropriate to use irony with shy targets. Further research should continue to explore how the risks associated with childhood shyness could be mitigated

An Antithrombin-Heparin Complex Increases the Anticoagulant Activity of Fibrin Clots

Clotting blood contains fibrin-bound thrombin, which is a major source of procoagulant activity leading to clot extension and further activation of coagulation. When bound to fibrin, thrombin is protected from inhibition by antithrombin (AT) + heparin but is neutralized when AT and heparin are covalently linked (ATH). Here, we report the surprising observation that, rather than yielding an inert complex, thrombin-ATH formation converts clots into anticoagulant surfaces that effectively catalyze inhibition of thrombin in the surrounding environment

Shy children's understanding of irony: Better comprehension does not always mean better socioemotional functioning

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Mewhort-Buist, T. A., & Nilsen, E. S., (2019). Shy children’s understanding of irony: Better comprehension does not always mean better socioemotional functioning. Infant and Child Development, 28(3), e2131. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2131, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2131. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.Childhood shyness is a risk factor for negative socioemotional outcomes including loneliness and depression. Childhood shyness has also been found to relate to various aspects of pragmatic language. For instance, shyer children rate ironic criticisms (i.e., where a speaker's intended meaning is the opposite of what is literally said) as meaner than do less shy children. This study examined whether relations between shyness and socioemotional functioning (i.e., loneliness, depression, and peer experiences) in children (9–12 years old; N = 169) were moderated by irony comprehension ability. Using a series of vignettes and self-report measures, it was found that shyer children with better irony comprehension skill reported increased loneliness and depression symptoms, as well as fewer prosocial experiences with peers. Similarly, for girls, better comprehension strengthened the relationship between shyness and peer victimization. In contrast, for shy boys, better irony comprehension was associated with a reduction in peer victimization. Thus, for certain vulnerable populations, having better sociocommunicative skills may not be advantageous

Shy individuals’ interpretations of counterfactual verbal irony

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Metaphor and Symbol on 2017-10-31, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2017.1384275.Counterfactual verbal irony, an evaluative form of figurative language wherein a speaker’s intended meaning is opposite to the literal meaning of his or her words, is used to serve many social goals. Despite recent calls for theoretical accounts to include the factors that influence irony interpretation, few studies have examined the individual differences that may impact verbal irony interpretation. The present study examined whether adults with elevated shyness would generate more negative interpretations of ironic statements. University students with varying degrees of shyness listened to stories (accompanied by comics) wherein one character made literal or ironic criticisms or compliments to another character. Participants then appraised each speaker’s belief and attitude. Self-reported shyness did not predict comprehension of the counterfactual nature of ironic statements. However, shyer adults rated speakers who made ironic compliments as being meaner than did adults low in shyness. Thus, while understanding that ironic speakers intended to communicate their true beliefs, shyer individuals construed the social meaning of irony more negatively. Such interpretive biases may lead shy individuals to more frequently take offense at ironic compliments and experience more negativity in social interactions.Funder 1, This work was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canadian Graduate Scholarship to T. Mewhort-Buist and SSHRC Insight Grant to E. Nilsen

Refining the Law of Practice

The "Law of Practice" - a simple nonlinear function describing the relation-ship between mean response time (RT) and practice - has provided a practicallyand theoretically useful way of quantifying the speed-up that characterizes skill ac-quisition. Early work favored a power law, but this was shown to be an artifact ofbiases caused by averaging over participants who are individually better describedby an exponential law. However, both power and exponential functions make thestrong assumption that the speedup always proceeds at a steadily decreasing rate,even though there are sometimes clear exceptions. We propose a new law that canboth accommodate an initial delay resulting in a slower-faster-slower rate of learning,with either power or exponential forms as limiting cases, and which can account fornot only mean RT but also the eect of practice on the entire distribution of RT.We evaluate this proposal with data from a broad array of tasks using hierarchicalBayesian modeling, which pools data across participants while minimizing averagingartifacts, and using inference procedures that take into account dierences in exi-bility among laws. In a clear majority of paradigms our results supported a delayedexponential law

“Sure I’ll help – I’ve just been sitting around doing nothing at school all day”: cognitive flexibility and child irony interpretation

Successful peer relations in older children depend on proficiency with banter, which in turn frequently involves verbal irony. Individual differences in successful irony interpretation have traditionally been attributed to Theory of Mind. Our premise was that the key factor might in fact be cognitive flexibility, the ability to switch between different perspectives (here: on the same utterance). We also wished to extend the focus of previous irony studies, which have almost exclusively examined Simple Irony, where the literal meaning conflicts with observable physical evidence (e.g. ‘great day for a picnic’ when viewing a downpour). Therefore, we also examined how children interpreted more Complex Irony, where listeners must consider at a deeper level the common ground shared with the speakers (e.g. general knowledge / cultural common ground or information about the particular speaker). In Study 1 we found that for six- to eight-year-olds both cognitive flexibility and Theory of Mind contributed unique variance to Simple Irony interpretation, when statistically controlling for non-verbal reasoning and structural language standardised scores. Neither inhibitory control, working memory nor general knowledge correlated with irony interpretation. Six- to eight-year-olds were at floor for Complex Irony. In Study 2 we found that cognitive flexibility contributed unique variance to how ten- to twelve-year-olds interpreted Complex Irony, while controlling for non-verbal reasoning, structural language and specific knowledge required. We are the first to examine the relationship with cognitive flexibility and conclude it must be taken into account when investigating the relationship between Theory of Mind and irony interpretation

Blink and shrink: The effect of the attentional blink on spatial processing.

The detection or discrimination of the second of 2 targets in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task is often temporarily impaired - a phenomenon termed the attentional blink. This study demonstrated that the attentional blink also affects localization performance. Spatial cues pointed out the possible target positions in a subsequent visual search display. When cues were presented inside an attentional blink (as induced by an RSVP task), the observers' capacity to use them was reduced. This effect was not due to attention being highly focused, to general task switching costs, or to complete unawareness of the cues. Instead, the blink induced a systematic localization bias toward the fovea, reflecting what appears to be spatial compression