Pronunciation variations in spontaneous speech can be classified into complete changes and partial changes. A complete change is the replacement of a canonical phoneme by another alternative phone, such as ‘b’ being pronounced as ‘p’. Partial changes are variations within the phoneme such as nasalization, centralization and voiced. Most current work in pronunciation modeling for spontaneous Man...

The post-high school transition period is believed to be associated with considerable changes in social networks, yet longitudinal studies documenting these changes are scarce. To address this gap, the current research explored 3 relevant issues. First, changes in participants' relationship characteristics during the transition from high school were examined. Second, the roles of personality tr...

BACKGROUND Research has reported that pregnant women and mothers become forgetful. However, in these studies, women are not recruited prior to pregnancy, samples are not representative and studies are underpowered. AIMS The current study sought to determine whether pregnancy and motherhood are associated with brief or long-term cognitive deterioration using a representative sample and measuri...

We present a model of cultural evolution in which an individual's propensity to engage in social learning is affected by social learning itself. We assume that individuals observe cultural traits displayed by others and decide whether to copy them based on their overall preference for the displayed traits. Preferences, too, can be transmitted between individuals. Our results show that such cult...

A given type of psychotherapy (e.g., psychodynamic) is associated with a set of specific change techniques (e.g., interpreting defenses, identifying relationship themes). Different change techniques can be conceived of as influencing different parts of personality (e.g., interpreting defense increases conscious awareness). An integrated model of personality is presented. Then, change techniques...

The evaluation of individual cognitive change has relied heavily upon the raw change score, defined simply as the difference between follow-up and baseline scores. However, raw changes scores are susceptible to the confounding effects of both regression-to-the-mean and practice effect. The clinical relevance of raw change scores for the older adult is also obscured by normal, age-related cognit...

BACKGROUND Computerized cognitive testing has the potential to be an effective way to assess and monitor cognition in large neuroepidemiological studies. CogState is a game-like computerized test with demonstrated validity and reliability that has shown sensitivity to decline in older individuals over time. This study aimed to evaluate the serial usability of the test specifically within an old...