This study extended the research on the scaffolding provided by mothers while reading picture books with their children from a focus on conversational styles related to labeling to a focus on those related to agents and actions to clarify the process by which language develops from the one-word to the syntactic stage. We clarified whether mothers decreased the degree of scaffolding in their ini...

Around 75% of civilians have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lives, and this number is considerably higher in many parts of the world, as well as in military veterans and first responders. Of those exposed to trauma, 15-25% will develop Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  PTSD extracts enormous economic, health, and quality of life cost. Thus, it is critical to underst...

This paper models employment relationship as a repeated principal-agent problem with private evaluation. The efficient contracts exhibit correlated movements between lagged wage and current effort that are consistent with the positive feedback between pay and morale in practice. Low morale therefore is an integral part of a well-functioning relationship. (JEL: C73, D82, J41, L14 )

The paper discusses a set of verbal prefixes which, when added to a verb together with a reflexive morpheme, change the verb’s meaning always in the same manner. The prefixes form a sequence according to the degree of intensity with which they modify the verbal action. We present the process of verb intensification in three Slavic languages, namely Czech, Slovak and Russian.

university-industry collaboration (uic) creates highly skilled and productive business graduates for meeting demand of industry, globalization, knowledge economy, and job market at home and abroad. in coping with ongoing acute competitive pressures of the information edge, higher education curricula of business needs to be intellectually planned, through collaboration between university and ind...

I consider competitions in which, conditional on winning or losing, the effort exerted by a competitor does not necessarily decrease his payoff. This happens, for example, in competitions for promotions in which workers are intrinsically motivated, and in research and development races in which better performance implies a higher payoff from winning. I characterize players’ equilibrium payoffs ...

Evidence of overproduction of sputum, the essential diagnostic feature of chronic bronchitis, is usually sought in epidemiological surveys by questionnaire. This approach is inevitably subjective. A valid objective sign of sputum production would be of value, both as an independent index of chronic bronchitis and as a supplement to the history. Elmes, Dutton, and Fletcher (1959) introduced the ...

Vocabulary acquisition is one of the most challenging obstacles language learners must overcome. This is especially true for students wishing to study in overseas universities, where comprehension of academic texts is required. This dissertation evaluates the vocabulary teaching component of an intensive English teaching programme for students intending to enter universities in the U.S. It firs...

This paper suggests and discusses an answer to the following question: What distinguishes causal from non-causal or coincidental cooccurrences? The answer derives from Elizabeth Anscombe’s idea that causality is a highly abstract concept whose meaning derives from our understanding of specific causally productive activities (e.g., pulling, scraping, burning), and from her rejection of the assum...