It has been widely acknowledged that the choice of Japanese demonstratives (the distal a-series, the medial so-series, and the proximal ko-series) in their anaphoric use is regulated by the rules concerned with the interlocutors’ knowledge of the referent. In crosslinguistic discussions of anaphoric demonstratives, on the other hand, the effect of the interlocutors’ knowledge of the referent ha...

When people selectively forget feedback that threatens the self (mnemic neglect), are those memories permanently lost or potentially recoverable? In two experiments, participants processed feedback pertaining either to themselves or to another person. Feedback consisted of a mixture of positive and negative behaviors exemplifying traits that were both central and peripheral to participants’ sel...

Early studies investigating sign language acquisition claimed that signs whose structures are motivated by the form of their referent (iconic) are not favoured in language development. However, recent work has shown that the first signs in deaf children’s lexicon are iconic. In this paper we go a step further and ask whether different types of iconicity modulate learning sign-referent links. Re...

BACKGROUND Pervasive negative thoughts about the self are central to the experience of depression. Brain imaging studies in the general population have localised self-related cognitive processing to areas of the medial pre-frontal cortex. AIMS To use fMRI to compare the neural correlates of self-referential processing in depressed and non-depressed participants. METHOD Cross-sectional compa...

Spatial scaling is an important prerequisite for many spatial tasks and involves an understanding of how distances in different-sized spaces correspond. Previous studies have found evidence for such an understanding in preschoolers; however, the mental processes involved remain unclear. In the present study, we investigated whether children and adults use mental transformations to scale distanc...

We present a dynamical systems model that captures human perspective-taking behavior in a visuospatial mental rotation task. The task requires participants to interpret an ambiguous request for a visual referent, either by taking their own perspective (egocentric; “the referent is on my right”) or the perspective of the requester (other-centric; “the referent is on your right”). Our primary int...

This paper presents the Referent Model Language. The Referent Model Language has its underpinnings in Set Theory and Linguistics. The paper describes the relevant parts of the foundations, and the respective representation in the modeling language. The paper also discusses the use of such a language in the field of heterogeneous databases. It also includes a presentation and explanation of a me...

© 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 International Association of Applied Psychology. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Blackwell Publishing Ltd Oxford, UK APPS pplied Psychology 0269-994X 14 4 0597 © Int rnational Association for Applied Psychology, 2008 XXX riginal Arti le GENER LISABILITY OF A REF...

This paper considers prediction in language processing by examining the role of the visual context, and specifically, the role of speaker referent gaze on cognitive load. We inspect the anticipatory visual attention during sentence processing together with the cognitive load induced at the points of the gaze cue, and the linguistic referent. Employing a novel measurement of cognitive load the I...

In order to produce a coherent narrative, speakers must identify the characters in the tale so that listeners can figure out who is doing what to whom. This paper explores whether speakers use gesture, as well as speech, for this purpose. English speakers were shown vignettes of two stories and asked to retell the stories to an experimenter. Their speech and gestures were transcribed and coded ...