Journal of Psycholinguistic Research最新文献

This note reflects on the accomplishments and teachings of Bernie Maskit. Bernie was an expert problem solver, an incredible teacher, and a person who built bridges to faraway lands that connected different people, cultures, and ideas.

Clinician-researcher collaboration can delineate what clinicians from many theoretical perspectives are actually doing when they perform the specialized communication process called psychotherapy. This paper illustrates the power of connecting clinical data with measures derived from Multiple Code Theory in identifying important clinical processes and presents an invitation to clinicians to offer their own recorded contributions. I trace my journey to the Referential Activity Research Group as a clinician, that culminated with my offering a video recording of a twenty-five session brief psychotherapy to the clinician-researcher collaboration. To illustrate the yield of the collaboration, a brief orientation to the patient and three perspectives on the treatment are presented: an overview trajectory of the case, the flow of themes in a target session, and how the measures identified key moments in the target session that led to further collaboration and new measures.

Differential processing between the grammatical classes, i.e., nouns and verbs, has been studied across various linguistic disciplines in different languages, but not Arabic. The present study explores predictors of bare single nouns and bare single verbs in Gulf Arabic through a picture-naming paradigm. Aspects specific to the morpho-phonology of the language (CV skeleton, vocalic pattern) have been investigated for their roles in noun and verb retrieval. A picture-naming paradigm was carried out with 64 healthy native speakers of Gulf Arabic where participants named 282 line drawings representing nouns, and 154 line drawings representing verbs to generate naming latencies for the nouns and verbs in question. Linear regression models were fitted to analyse the relationship between grammatical class and naming latencies as well as morphological features and naming latencies. Verbs, which are more morphologically complex than nouns, were found to have higher naming latencies. Both CV skeleton and vocalic pattern impacted naming latencies and can account for the difference between verb and noun production. The results are discussed in relation to the non-concatenative morphology framework for Semitic languages.

This summary paper provides a brief review of major contributions in a group of papers that were collected to honor the work of Bernard Maskit, who died in March 2024. Professor Maskit was a mathematician who contributed major theoretical and methodological advances in the study of multiple code theory and the referential process. Each of the papers in this issue incorporate applications of his ideas and the new measures that he developed. The applications include basic epistemological ideas, linguistic findings, and innovative approaches to psychotherapy theory and research. Plans for future theoretical and applied research directions are discussed.

Referential process (RP) refers to how nonverbal experiences are translated into verbal forms, and it has been proposed as a foundational framework for understanding psychotherapeutic change (Bucci, 1993; Bucci, Maskit, & Murphy, 2016; Bucci, 2013). While most of the prior research has examined RP in the context of psychodynamic psychotherapy and single-case designs, the current study examined RP in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) for 40 depressed clients. The Discourse Attributes Analysis Program (DAAP; Maskit, Bucci, & Murphy, 2012) was employed to evaluate discourse attributes within 80 session transcripts. Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) was used to analyze the data. There was a higher occurrence of affect words in EFT transcripts and a higher occurrence of reflection words in CBT transcripts reflecting each approach's theory of change. The results of the study highlighted the therapists' ability to effectively connect to their experiences and articulate themselves clearly to clients. Among the highest client-rated sessions, therapists of good outcome clients used more concrete, imagistic, specific, and clear language compared to therapists of poor outcome clients. Therapists of the good outcome group had higher WRADM (weighted referential activity mean) scores ((β =.018, p =.006) and WRADHP (weighted referential activity high proportion) scores (β =.059, p =.008). Moreover, clients' session ratings increased as therapists' WRADM (β = 15.08, p =.017) and WRADHP (β = 4.12, p =.032) increased. Contrary to the hypotheses, clients' WRADM, WRADHP, and WRAD/WRRL did not differ between highest and lowest-rated sessions, nor did they predict clients' session ratings. Clients in the two outcome groups also did not differ in terms of how much they symbolized and then reflected on their experiences. Clinical, theoretical, and measurement implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

This study examined differences in clinical process-as measured via pause length and frequency, and language-style-between in-person and Zoom treatment formats in the psychodynamic treatment of a man with a diagnosis of Body Dysmorphic Disorder. While the COVID-19 pandemic saw the widespread adoption of remote videoconferencing software across a range of talk therapy formats, differences in clinical process between Zoom and in-person treatment formats still have not been widely investigated. This study examined turn-taking dynamics in therapy, a development with ramifications for clinical process as conceptualized via the Referential Process construct of Multiple Code Theory. This study is the first application of the new T-DAAP, the Time-based Discourse Attributes Analysis Program, which analyzes transcripts using measures of Referential Process functions-Arousal, Symbolizing, and Reflecting/Reorganizing-in terms of elapsed time rather than standard methods based on word count. Differences in number and length of pauses, and Referential Process measures (WRAD and WRRL) were compared between 8 in-person and 8 Zoom sessions from the Spring of 2020. Mean pause length was significantly lower in the Zoom condition than in the in-person condition, for both participants, for both within-, and between-speakers pauses. The patient also showed a larger number of turn-taking pauses, and a higher level of Reflection in the Zoom condition, while other Referential Process measures remained largely consistent for the two participants. Ramifications for the understanding of clinical process were explored.