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While mindfulness has been found to increase well-being, the association between mindfulness and meaning in life has received relatively little attention. The present study examined the hypothetical positive relationship between mindfulness and meaning in life alongside the mechanism underlying the relationship. Specifically, guided by the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory, a serial mediation model testing openness to experience and curiosity as the mediators for the connection was proposed. Undergraduate student participants (N = 1267) from four countries (Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, & Taiwan) responded to a battery of tests consisting of the Mindful Awareness and Attention Scale, the Big Five Inventory Openness Scale, the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II, and the Meaning in Life scale. Based on a correlation analysis, the four variables were positively correlated with one another in the whole sample except for the relationship between mindfulness and curiosity. Furthermore, the mediation analysis supports the positive correlation between mindfulness and the presence of meaning in life indirectly via openness and then curiosity while controlling search for meaning in life. Such pattern is consistent across the four samples. Overall, the findings offer cross-cultural evidence on the positive association between mindfulness and meaning in life and shed light on the underlying processes. Therefore, mindfulness practices have potential applications in achieving meaningful lives., Author(s): Chee-Seng Tan [sup.1] [sup.2] , Intan Hashimah Mohd Hashim [sup.3] , Kai-Shuen Pheh [sup.1] [sup.2] , Chris Pratt [sup.4] , Min-Huey Chung [sup.5] , Anggi Setyowati [sup.6] Author Affiliations: [...]

This study explored the relationship between religiosity and contextual work performance and offered empirical evidence for the mediating role of faith at work, meaning making and work engagement. Participants included 246 employees of Orthodox Christian faith, from various occupational domains. A path analysis testing both direct and indirect effects of religiosity, faith at work, meaning making and work engagement on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) was conducted, and the proposed model demonstrated a good fit. The study advances the idea that individual religious beliefs that are upheld and manifested in work settings could generate meaning and sense to work, which further could lead to positive work-related attitudes (i.e., work engagement) and finally to higher reported levels of an aspect of contextual performance (i.e., OCB)., Author(s): Ioana David [sup.1] , Dragoò Iliescu [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.5100.4, 0000 0001 2322 497X, Department of Psychology, University of Bucharest, , Bucharest, Romania Religiosity in the workplace is [...]

This study aims to examine how authentic leadership (a source external to the individual) and self-efficacy (an internal resource) shape experiences of meaning in work. In addition to examining the individual impact of the above factors on work meaningfulness, the study examines the role of self-efficacy as a mediator and a moderator of the relationship between authentic leadership and work meaningfulness. The sample comprised 350 employees from public and private sector manufacturing firms in India. Process (Hayes 2013 (See CR33)) was used to test the hypotheses with the aid of SPSS 24. Self-efficacy and authentic leadership proved to be important predictors of employees' perceived sense of meaningfulness in work. In addition to the direct pathway, authentic leadership was found to infuse meaning in work indirectly through self-efficacy. Further, self-efficacy moderated the influence of authentic leadership on work meaningfulness in a way that the effect strengthened with decreasing values of self-efficacy. By accommodating multiple sources and mechanisms, representing both situational and personal factors, the study contributes to comprehensive understanding of how and under what conditions work meaningfulness can be increased. Identifying, selecting, and developing employees with authentic leadership qualities is likely to benefit organizations in terms of fostering positive psychological capacities of employees and improving perceived meaningfulness of work. However, leadership goes unnoticed for the employees with high self-efficacy., Author(s): Richa Chaudhary [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.459592.6, 0000 0004 1769 7502, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, , 801106, Patna, Bihar, India Introduction > [...]

Synchronicity refers to the psychological process of meaningful coincidences. Despite its deep roots in early psychological theory, little systematic scientific research has been conducted on synchronicity experiences as an everyday phenomenon. This study is an exploratory qualitative attempt to characterize experiences of meaningful coincidences through a bottom-up approach. Based on a phenomenological analysis of indepth interviews of 45 adults, the findings suggest a dynamic model of three major building blocks (REM): receptiveness (R) or increased attention and openness to feelings and cognitions and to the external environment; viewed as a precondition for an exceptional encounter (E), a sudden unexpected event that echoes an inner feeling or thought, commonly evoking memorable and distinctive emotions; and meaning detecting (M), a conscious process of connecting the event to oneself while revalidating a sense of coherence, purpose and control in life. Findings also point to the multidimensional and complex nature of synchronicity experiences and reveal some positive outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and study limitations and directions for future research are suggested., Author(s): Pninit Russo-Netzer [sup.1] [sup.2] , Tamar Icekson [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.18098.38, 0000 0004 1937 0562, Department of Counseling and Human Development, University of Haifa, , Haifa, Israel (2) [...]

This study investigates the mediating role of psychological meaningfulness among social job resources (i.e., coworkers and supervisor support), vigor, and emotional exhaustion in a nursing context. In spite of progress in understanding which organizational influence affects nurses' vigor and emotional exhaustion, the psychological mechanisms assumed to underlie the associations have not been fully explored. The sample for this study consisted of 171 nurses from Spanish hospitals (54.4 %) and Primary Care Centers (45.6 %). The mediation model was tested using the bootstrapping procedure. Our findings confirmed that psychological meaningfulness fully mediates the impact of social job resources on vigor at work. Moreover, psychological meaningfulness partially mediated the impact of social job resources on emotional exhaustion. Results suggest that meaningfulness plays an important role in the connection between job resources, vigor, and emotional exhaustion. The findings contribute to our understanding of the psychological processes that can explain how job resources contribute to the energetic aspect of burnout and engagement among nurses. Providing nurses with more social job resources, such as coworker and supervisor support, could activate their levels of personal meaningfulness and thus enhance their levels of well-being at work., Author(s): Luis Manuel Blanco-Donoso [sup.1] , Eva Garrosa [sup.1] , Bernardo Moreno-Jiménez [sup.1] , Elton Carlos de Almeida [sup.2] , Sonia María Villela-Bueno [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) Faculty of Psychology, [...]

Most research supports a non-selective (or exhaustive) account of activation whereby multiple meanings of a word are initially activated (Degani and Tokowicz Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 1266-1303, 2010 (See CR17)). But what happens to the non-selected meaning of an ambiguous word (e.g., bark) and how is the decision made to select one meaning over the other? A great deal of research by Gernsbacher and colleagues (e.g., Gernsbacher and Faust 1991a (See CR29)) suggests that the non-selected meaning is 'discarded' via active suppression. The present paper examines meaning-selection in ambiguous words using a word to elicit meaning context (rather than a sentence). Additionally, a manipulation of cognitive load (Experiment 2) was employed to examine these processes. Results support a suppression account of meaning selection. An updated conceptualization of ambiguity resolution is proposed., Author(s): Lynne N. Kennette[sup.1] [sup.2] , Lee H. Wurm[sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) Durham College, 2000 Simcoe Street N, L1H 7 K4, Oshawa, ONCanada (2) Wayne State University, 5057 Woodward Ave, [...]

One of the central concerns in theories of reading skills is the role of phonology in access to word meaning. The present study focused on this issue in Chinese to examine the extent to which phonology affects Chinese character recognition. Two naming experiments were conducted with a phonologically mediated semantic priming paradigm, and the relative frequencies of semantic associates of the targets and their homophones were manipulated systematically. Analyses showed that a semantic associate produced robust priming on target naming at 57- and 250-msec. stimulus onset asynchronies, but only the low frequency homophones of high frequency semantic associates facilitated target naming at a 250msec. stimulus onset asynchrony. These results indicate the role of phonology is neither obligatory nor efficient in access to Chinese character meaning, contradicting the key assumptions of the lexical constituency model. A revised parallel access model that emphasizes visual access to semantics is suggested as a more plausible account. DOI 10.2466/11.22.28.PR0.107.6.899-913

Three experiments investigated facilitation in synonym decisions as a function of prior synonym decision trials that were either identical or semantically related. Experiment 1 demonstrated that semantically related prime trials produced less facilitation than identical prime trials, but facilitation from both persisted over 14 intervening trials. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that word meaning retrieval without meaning comparison in prime trials was sufficient for persistent facilitation in semantically related targets, and meaning comparison was necessary for repetition priming to show greater facilitation than semantic priming. Results suggest that semantic priming in this task may solely reflect strength changes in abstract semantic representations, whereas repetition priming may reflect additional non-declarative memory for operations performed in prime events. Keywords: semantic priming, long-term priming, memory activation DOI: 10.1037/a0021039

Effects of the number of meanings (NOM) and the relatedness of those meanings (ROM) were examined for Japanese Katakana words using a lexical-decision task. In Experiment 1, only a NOM advantage was observed. In Experiment 2, the same Katakana words produced a ROM advantage when Kanji words and nonwords were added. Because the Kanji nonwords consisted of unrelated characters whereas the Kanji words consisted of related characters, participants may have used the relatedness of activated meanings as a cue in making lexical decisions in this experiment, artificially creating a ROM advantage for Katakana words. Consistent with this explanation, no ROM effect for Katakana words was observed in Experiment 3 when the Kanji nonwords consisted of characters with similar (i.e., related) meanings. These results pose a further challenge to the position that the speed of semantic coding is modulated by ROM for ambiguous words. Keywords: a number-of-meaning effect, a relatedness-of-meaning effect, a lexical decision task DOI: 10.1037/a0020475

The meaning maintenance model asserts that following a meaning threat, people will affirm any meaning frameworks that are available. Three experiments tested (a) whether people affirm alternative meaning frameworks after reading absurdist literature, (b) what role expectations play in determining whether absurdities are threatening, and (c) whether people have a heightened need for meaning following exposure to absurdist art. In Study 1, participants who read an absurd Kafka parable affirmed an alternative meaning framework more than did those who read a meaningful parable. In Study 2, participants who read an absurd Monty Python parody engaged in compensatory affirmation efforts only if they were led to expect a conventional story. In Study 3, participants who were exposed to absurdist art or reminders of their mortality, compared to participants exposed to representational or abstract art, reported higher scores on the Personal Need for Structure scale, suggesting that they experienced a heightened need for meaning.

Interest in meaning and meaning making in the context of stressful life events continues to grow, but research is hampered by conceptual and methodological limitations. Drawing on current theories, the author first presents an integrated model of meaning making. This model distinguishes between the constructs of global and situational meaning and between 'meaning-making efforts' and 'meaning made,' and it elaborates subconstructs within these constructs. Using this model, the author reviews the empirical research regarding meaning in the context of adjustment to stressful events, outlining what has been established to date and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of current empirical work. Results suggest that theory on meaning and meaning making has developed apace, but empirical research has failed to keep up with these developments, creating a significant gap between the rich but abstract theories and empirical tests of them. Given current empirical findings, some aspects of the meaning-making model appear to be well supported but others are not, and the quality of meaning-making efforts and meanings made may be at least as important as their quantity. This article concludes with specific suggestions for future research. Keywords: meaning making, stress, trauma, cognitive processing, worldviews DOI: 10.1037/a0018301

Four experiments explored whether 2 uniquely human characteristics--counterfactual thinking (imagining alternatives to the past) and the fundamental drive to create meaning in life--are causally related. Rather than implying a random quality to life, the authors hypothesized and found that counterfactual thinking heightens the meaningfulness of key life experiences. Reflecting on alternative pathways to pivotal turning points even produced greater meaning than directly reflecting on the meaning of the event itself. Fate perceptions ('it was meant to be') and benefit-finding (recognition of positive consequences) were identified as independent causal links between counterfactual thinking and the construction of meaning. Through counterfactual reflection, the upsides to reality are identified, a belief in fate emerges, and ultimately more meaning is derived from important life events. Keywords: counterfactual thinking, meaning, benefit-finding, rate perceptions, narrative identity DOI: 10.1037/a0017905

Despite previous findings, Klin, Ralano, and Weingartner (2007) found transfer benefits across unrelated passages. After processing an ambiguous phrase in Story A that was biased toward its sarcastic meaning, readers were more likely to interpret the identical phrase in Story B as sarcastic, even though it contained no disambiguating information. In the present experiments, we found both repetition effects (a benefit for the lexical items) and meaning selection effects (a benefit for the selected meaning of the phrase) with short delays between Stories A and B; with longer delays, only repetition effects were found. Whereas decreasing the elaboration of the phrase eliminated both effects, moving the disambiguating context from before to after the phrase eliminated meaning selection effects only. We conclude that meaning selection effects, which are based on conceptual overlap, are more sensitive to context changes and less robust than repetition effects, which are based on both perceptual and conceptual overlap.

The ability to make sense of events in one's life has held a central role in theories of adaptation to adversity. However, there are few rigorous studies on the role of meaning in adjustment, and those that have been conducted have focused predominantly on direct personal trauma. The authors examined the predictors and long-term consequences of Americans' searching for and finding meaning in a widespread cultural upheaval--the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001--among a national probability sample of U.S. adults (N = 931). Searching for meaning at 2 months post-9/11 was predicted by demographics and high acute stress response. In contrast, finding meaning was predicted primarily by demographics and specific early coping strategies. Whereas searching for meaning predicted greater posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms across the following 2 years, finding meaning predicted lower PTS symptoms, even after controlling for pre-9/11 mental health, exposure to 9/11, and acute stress response. Mediation analyses suggest that finding meaning supported adjustment by reducing fears of future terrorism. Results highlight the role of meaning in adjustment following collective traumas that shatter people's fundamental assumptions about security and invulnerability. Keywords: meaning, adjustment, terrorism, coping behavior, mental health

The terror management theory that nostalgia is a meaning-providing structure that helps individuals to live with the knowledge of certain death is examined. The findings support the hypothesis that nostalgia acts as a buffer against the effects of mortality salience on death-thought accessibility.

The activation--selection model (ASM) of determining the meaning of an ambiguous word is unique in that it is able to account for the long-term effects of meaning selection without an explicit mechanism for suppressing the representation of the nonselected meaning. The model assumes that a meaning is selected when a threshold number of attributes associated with that particular meaning are activated. When a meaning is selected, the ASM assumes that the weights of the attributes that are associated with the chosen meaning are increased. This two-phase process (transient activation followed by long-term weight changes) provides a mechanism by which meaning selection at one time can affect meaning selection at a much later time. The ASM can explain the results of the presently reported experiments, in which the meaning selected for a homophone presented in an unbiased context is affected by multiple previous presentations of the homophone in different contexts. In particular, although participants who are initially oriented toward the secondary meaning of a homophone show an increased proportion of dominant responses when next primed by the dominant meaning of the homophone, the proportion of dominant responses decreases to below baseline levels when the homophone is later presented in a neutral context, indicating the lasting influence of the initial secondary meaning context.

The theory of structuration (ST) has been systematically developed by British social theorist Anthony Giddens for over two decades now. His 1976 book New Rules of Sociological Method provided an [...]

Counseling psychologists often work with clients to increase their well-being as well as to decrease their distress. One important aspect of well-being, highlighted particularly in humanistic theories of the counseling process, is perceived meaning in life. However, poor measurement has hampered research on meaning in life. In 3 studies, evidence is provided for the internal consistency, temporal stability, factor structure, and validity of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), a new 10-item measure of the presence of, and the search for, meaning in life. A multitrait-multimethod matrix demonstrates the convergent and discriminant validity of the MLQ subscales across time and informants, in comparison with 2 other meaning scales. The MLQ offers several improvements over current meaning in life measures, including no item overlap with distress measures, a stable factor structure, better discriminant validity, a briefer format, and the ability to measure the search for meaning. Keywords: meaning in life, purpose in life, measurement, scale construction, well-being

SUMMARY. In the present paper I shall first summarize Popper's criticism of the traditional method of definition, and then go on to comment critically on his own views on the [...]

In this project we examined the effect of adult age on visual word recognition by using combined reaction time (RT) and accuracy methods based on the Hick--Hyman law. This was necessary because separate Brinley analyses of RT and errors resulted in contradicting results. We report the results of a lexical decision task experiment (with 96 younger adults and 97 older adults). We transformed the error data into entropy and then predicted RT by using entropy values separately for exposure duration (thought to influence peripheral processes) and word frequency (thought to influence central processes). For exposure duration, the entropy--RT functions indicate that older adults show higher intercepts and slopes than do younger adults, suggesting an encoding decrement for older adults. However, for word frequency, older adults show higher intercepts but not steeper slopes than younger adults. Older adults thus show a peripheral processing decrement but not a central processing decrement for lexical decision.

A discussion of modularity in language production processes, with special emphasis on processes for retrieving words and building syntactic structures for a to-be-uttered sentence, is presented. The authors' 1st goal was to assess the extent to which information processing is encapsulated between different processing stages. In particular, they assessed whether the input from one processing stage to the next is minimal and whether the flow of information in the system is strictly unidirectional. On the basis of the reviewed evidence, they conclude that both assumptions have to be revised. Their 2nd goal was to propose an alternative framework that does not assume strict encapsulation but that maintains multiple levels of integration for production.

Children's reasoning about the stability of human psychological characteristics was investigated in relation to the obligatory distinction between the Spanish verb, forms ser and estar (which convey different information about the stability of characteristics) and the corresponding English form to be. Participants (85 bilingual children, ages 6 to 10 years) were interviewed to determine (a) whether the ser/estar distinction is relevant to reasoning about the stability of human characteristics and (h) whether beliefs about the stability of psychological characteristics relate to differences in the use of ser and estar to describe and explain social events. Children treated ser and to be as more likely than estar to convey the stability of psychological characteristics. Children who tended to endorse stable views of psychological characteristics were especially likely to use the ser form in their descriptions and explanations.

I report results from two studies investigating the social meanings of nonverbal behaviors. Both adapt theory and empirical methods from the tradition of affect control theory. The first study measures affective meanings of dozens of nonverbal behaviors independent of any situational context. In the second study I systematically pair the nonverbal behaviors with other behaviors to see how they combine in respondents' perceptions to create new affective meanings. The main findings of these two are studies are (1) that single nonverbal elements have distinct meanings and create distinct impressions among observers; (2) that nonverbal behaviors combine as predicted with other behaviors to create modified impressions of events; and (3) that the role played by nonverbal behaviors is as important as the role of other behaviors in forming overall affective responses.

A validation study of the English version of the 28-item Life Regard Index--Revised was undertaken with a sample of 91 participants from the general population. All previous studies of the Index have examined the Dutch version. The test-retest reliabilities at 8 wk. for the total Index (r =.87), Framework (r =.82), and Fulfillment (r =.81) subscales were very high Cronbach alphas were .92, .83, and .87, respectively. A significant restriction of range was observed at the high-meaning end of the scale. Factor analysis only weakly supported the theorized two-factor structure. A very high disattenuated correlation between the Framework and Fulfillment subscales was observed (r =.94). The Index appeared to have adequate evidence supporting its concurrent and discriminant validity when compared with measures of hopelessness, spiritual well-being, and other measures of personal meaning. A significant positive association was found between the index and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (r =.38). The Index was also significantly associated with sex (women scoring higher) and marital status (divorced people scoring lower). Revisions of the English version may address the restriction of range problem by employing a 5-point rating scale, instead of the current 3-point scale, or by adding more discriminating items. Further factor-analytic studies with larger samples are needed before conclusions can be drawn regarding this scale's factor structure.

Research presented utilizes the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems framework to explore executive function, focusing on subjects asked to spontaneously generate numbers. Topics addressed include human information processing, and findings suggest that in executive function there is a distinction between implicational and propositional processing.

The philosophic concepts of Edmund Hesserl are analyzed. He believed that intentions shaped our reactions. Phenomenology is the study of human reaction to various things that happen and is tied in with what is intended.

This article examines the way adolescents describe what it means to reach adulthood. A content analysis of adolescents' descriptions of the meaning of adulthood revealed five dominant themes that include increased responsibility, social power, physical development, behavioral maturity, and adult privileges.

Research on immigrant health emphasizes that the elderly are more vulnerable than other age groups in many immigrant populations. This study describes the meanings of health, illness, and disease for Iranian elderly immigrants in Sweden and their relationships with life disruptions. Analysis of interviews using an interpretive-phenomenological method illustrates that the participants experience health as continuity and balance in life. Any disruption of this balance creates a sense of illness that is only partially related to the emergence of disease. Participants did not view health and disease as polarized. Rather, disease is just one component among many that may disrupt the experience of health. Health is perceived as a sense of well-being, can be achieved in spite of disease, and can be disrupted even in the absence of disease. This description of the meaning of health, disease, and illness contrasts with the Western biomedical perspective and is similar in its holism to various non-Western medical systems and complementary approaches. This knowledge can foster more culturally sensitive care.

A comprehensive quantitative review of published randomized controlled outcome studies of grief counseling and therapy suggests that such interventions are typically ineffective, and perhaps even deleterious, at least for persons experiencing a normal bereavement. On the other hand, there is some evidence that grief therapy is more beneficial and safer for those who have been traumatically bereaved. Beginning with this sobering appraisal, this article considers the findings of C. G. Davis, C. B. Wortman, D. R. Lehman, and R. C. Silver (this issue) and their implications for a meaning reconstruction approach to grief therapy, arguing that an expanded conception of meaning is necessary to provide a stronger basis for clinical intervention.

Three assumptions guiding research and clinical intervention strategies for people coping with sudden, traumatic loss are that (a) people confronting such losses inevitably search for meaning, (b) over time most are able to find meaning and put the issue aside, and (c) finding meaning is critical for adjustment or healing. We review existing empirical research that addresses these assumptions and present evidence from a study of 124 parents coping with the death of their infant and a study of 93 adults coping with the loss of their spouse or child to a motor vehicle accident. Results of these studies indicate that (a) a significant subset of individuals do not search for meaning and yet appear relatively well-adjusted to their loss; (b) less than half of the respondents in each of these samples report finding any meaning in their loss, even more than a year after the event; and (c) those who find meaning, although better adjusted than those who search but are unable to find meaning, do not put the issue of meaning aside and move on. Rather, they continue to pursue the issue of meaning as fervently as those who search but do not find meaning. Implications for both research and clinical intervention are discussed.

In a sample of 347 university students and community residents, measures of meaningfulness, self-esteem, internal locus of control, positive social relationships and optimism were given to predict subjective well-being, i.e., measures of happiness, life satisfaction, and affect balance. Correlations, canonical correlations, and structural equation modeling supported the hypothesis that meaningfulness is a significant mediator between personality variables and subjective well-being.

Previous studies have indicated that adolescents understand the concept of meaning in life and can apply it to their lives. In this study we examined how religious adolescents differ in their self-reports of meaning in life compared to adolescents previously studied. It is expected that adolescents in a Christian community more frequently attribute their meaning in life to beliefs than will adolescents in the non-Christian population. 81 adolescents from a religious summer camp reported commitment to a belief as their strongest personal meaning more frequently than any other category when reported in a free-response essay format, whereas no adolescents in the previous study reported belief as their strongest meaning.

An argument is presented for making meaning a central dependent variable in psychological science. Principles of operant psychology are then interpreted as providing a basic foundation for a science of meaning. The emphasis here is on the generality of basic operant concepts, where learning is a process of meaning making that is governed largely by natural contingencies; reinforcement is an organic process in which environment-behavior relations are selected, defined here as a dialectical process of meaning making; and reinforcers are experiential consequences with acquired, ecologically derived meanings. The author concludes with a call for a more interdisciplinary science of psychology, focusing on the individual in society.

The authors present a new approach to culture and cognition, which focuses on the dynamics through which specific pieces of cultural knowledge (implicit theories) become operative in guiding the construction of meaning from a stimulus. Whether a construct comes to the fore in a perceiver's mind depends on the extent to which the construct is highly accessible (because of recent exposure). In a series of cognitive priming experiments, the authors simulated the experience of bicultural individuals (people who have internalized two cultures) of switching between different cultural frames in response to culturally laden symbols. The authors discuss how this dynamic, constructivist approach illuminates (a) when cultural constructs are potent drivers of behavior and (b) how bicultural individuals may control the cognitive effects of culture.

Many researchers claim that attribution of meaning to movement is based prevalently on the properties of the kinetic pattern. Using a constant kinetic pattern, the present study examined the possible influence of shape, size, luminance, and hue of the moving objects on the attribution of meaning. A significant influence of the shape and luminance of the moving objects on the expressivity of the kinetic pattern was found. This influence is probably due to the fact that the kinetic conditions were not unequivocal and specific and so easily influenced by some figural properties. The hue and size of the moving objects seemed instead to have little importance in the attribution of meaning to movement. The need for further investigation to assess the influence of the properties of the kinetic pattern on the perception of a mechanical, intentional, or expressive event is suggested.

14 Japanese college students were requested to judge as quickly and as accurately as possible whether two Japanese words, one written in syllabic hiragana and the other written in logographic kanji, were pronounced the same or not. More errors and longer latencies were observed when two words were phonologically different but semantically related than when they were phonologically different and semantically unrelated. This finding is interpreted as demonstrating that the connection between kanji and meaning is stronger than that between kanji and phonology.

This study investigated whether finding meaning in response to an HIV-related stressor was associated with changes in immune status and health. Forty HIV-seropositive men who had recently experienced an AIDS-related bereavement completed interviews assessing cognitive processing and finding meaning after the loss and provided blood samples for a 2- to 3-year follow-up. AIDS-related mortality over an extended follow-up was determined from death certificates. As predicted, men who engaged in cognitive processing were more likely to find meaning from the loss. Furthermore, men who found meaning showed less rapid declines in CD4 T cell levels and lower rates of AIDS-related mortality (all ps < .05), independent of health status at baseline, health behaviors, and other potential confounds. These results suggest thai positive responses to stressful events, specifically the discovery of meaning, may be linked to positive immunologic and health outcomes.

The interactive influence of verb complement preferences and noun phrase semantic fit on resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity was investigated in an eye movement experiment. The present semantic fit manipulation included noun phrases that fit well as direct objects of the verbs that they followed and noun phrases that were possible but less likely direct objects of the verbs in question. This contrasted with existing research on the use of verb complement preferences and semantic fit during sentence processing, in which processing of noun phrases that are possible direct objects has been compared with processing of noun phrases that are not possible direct objects of the verbs that they follow. Verb complement preference information and noun phrase semantic fit interacted at early stages of on-line sentence processing. Implications of these results for interactive and structural models of sentence processing are discussed.

What are the roles of structural features and historical descriptions in categorization processes and the assignment of meaning to artifacts, natural kinds, proper names, famous pieces of art, and everyday objects? Experiment 1 compared structural features with historical descriptions for natural kinds and artifacts. Experiment 2 added names of famous people, and Experiment 3, names of famous artifacts and natural kinds. Experiment 4 assessed the role of history for famous pieces of art and everyday objects. In each experiment, subjects evaluated whether a particular description could be a certain thing or person. The description was anomalous with respect to physical description, history, both, or neither. We found thai both physical descriptions and histories matter in the categorization of the studied objects and that histories are particularly important for names, especially of people, and for pieces of art. We also found that historical information plays a significant role in categorizing everyday objects., Suppose you are given a penny that was made with dies stolen from the U.S. mint so that it looks exactly like a Lincoln penny, when it was actually made [...]

The role of assembled phonology in visual word recognition was investigated using a task in which participants judged whether 2 words (e.g., PILLOW-BEAD) were semantically related. Of primary interest was whether it would be more difficult to respond 'no' to 'false homophones' (e.g., BEAD) of words (BED) that are semantically related to target words than to orthographic controls (BEND). (BEAD is a false homophone of BED because - EAD can be pronounced/[Epsilon]d/.) In Experiment 1, there was an interference effect in the response time data, but not in the error data. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment in which a parafoveal preview was provided for the 2nd word of the pair. A 3rd experiment ruled out explanations of the false homophone effect in terms of inconsistency in spelling-to-sound mappings or inadequate spelling knowledge. It is argued that assembled phonological representations activate meaning in visual word recognition.

Personal Projects Analysis (B. R. Little, 1983) was adapted to examine relations between participants' appraisals of their goal characteristics and orthogonal happiness and meaning factors that emerged from factor analyses of diverse well-being measures. In two studies with 146 and 179 university students, goal efficacy was associated with happiness and goal integrity was associated with meaning. A new technique for classifying participants according to emergent identity themes is introduced. In both studies, identity-compensatory predictors of happiness were apparent. Agentic participants were happiest if their goals were supported by others, communal participants were happiest if their goals were fun, and hedonistic participants were happiest if their goals were being accomplished. The distinction between happiness and meaning is emphasized, and the tension between efficacy and integrity is discussed. Developmental implications are discussed with reference to results from archival data from a sample of senior managers.

Subjects in an experiment who were presented with lists of words that were semantically related to non-presented critical words frequently and erroneously recalled the non-presented critical word in a free recall test conducted after each list's presentation. Some researchers have attributed this false memory effect to a theory which suggests that when subjects encode words, they activate semantic associates to those words. The results of two false memory experiments are evaluated, where lists used contained items the subjects would not be abe to recognize.

Behavioral experiments and a connectionist model were used to explore the use of featural representations in the computation of word meaning. The research focused on the role of correlations among features, and differences between speeded and untimed tasks with respect to the use of featural information. The results indicate that featural representations are used in the initial computation of word meaning (as in an attractor network), patterns of feature correlations differ between artifacts and living things, and the degree to which features are intercorrelated plays an important role in the organization of semantic memory. The studies also suggest that it may be possible to predict semantic priming effects from independently motivated featural theories of semantic relatedness. Implications for related behavioral phenomena such as the semantic impairments associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are discussed.

Five experiments were designed to examine whether subjects attend to different aspects of meaning for familiar and unfamiliar words. In Experiments 1-3, subjects gave free associations to high- and low-familiarity words from the same taxonomic category (e.g., seltzer:sarsparilla; Experiment 1), from the same noun synonym set (e.g., baby:neonate; Experiment 2), and from the same verb synonym set (e.g., abscond:escape; Experiment 3). In Experiments 4 and 5, subjects first read a context sentence containing the stimulus word and then gave associations; stimuli were novel words or either high- or low-familiarity nouns. Low-familiarity and novel words elicited more nonsemantically based responses (e.g., engram:graham) than did high-familiarity words. Of the responses semantically related to the stimulus, low-familiarity and novel words elicited a higher proportion of definitional responses [category (e.g., sarsparilla:soda), synonym (e.g., neonate:newborn), and coordinate (e.g., armoire:dresser)], whereas high-familiarity stimuli elicited a higher proportion of event-based responses [thematic (e.g., seltzer:glass) and noun:verb (e.g., baby:cry)]. Unfamiliar words appear to elicit a shift of attentional resources from relations useful in understanding the message to relations useful in understanding the meaning of the unfamiliar word.

Whether seen as a product of symbolic operations or as a neural-network emergent, meaning is largely conceived as an internally generated epiphenomenal process. Little attention is given to the active role of meaning. The basic hypothesis presented here is that the generation of meaning is, in itself, an organizing process shaping reality, while the mind is, in its turn, shaped by a reality endowed with meaning. Extending a basic connectionist premise, we might view the mind as a network organized in semantic constellations, generated by the interplay of experience, genetic constraints and cultural context. This network, which we will call the noo-semantic field, reflects an ongoing conceptualization and valuing process; it constitutes the totality of a person's cognitive/affective dynamics, and serves as the basic interpretational framework. It is postulated, however, that the noo-semantic field is also the source of a projective process imprinting information and order upon the outer world. The effects of this process range from the everyday creation of 'world-three' objects, to an ongoing, but far subtler 'impregnation' of the environment with meaning. This dynamic generates a semantic dimension in objects themselves - an eco-semantic field of an allopoietic nature. The two facets of global semantic interaction are engaged in a circular dynamic. Perception of a novel object activates and reorganizes internal constellations, while, simultaneously, the emergent meaning-clusters are injected into the eco-semantic field of the external object, thus changing its organization and status in consensual reality. The modified eco-semantic field, in turn, will be 'retrojected' into the psyche, starting a new loop, until eventually, this mind/object inter fiction stabilizes. It is proposed that this semantic synergy primarily implicates events or objects relevant to the noo-semantic field - especially those of our immediate environment. This leads to the concept of 'local universe' as being, for an individual, that part of phenomenal reality imprinted and shaped by his/her noo-semantic field; thus, the way in which the local universe is organized tends to reflect the person's own worldview and set of values. Analogous semantic dynamics come into play at a collective level. Groups sharing common beliefs, aims, activities, etc. can be viewed as a collective noo-semantic field creating its own local universe. Thus the group consciousness also shapes events and objects within its local universe - the more coherent the group, the stronger the shaping of reality. The model hypothesizes that the semantic structure of the local universe will tend to allow for the occurrence of specific events while diminishing the likelihood of others. This could be seen as the dynamic underlying synchronicities or 'chance' series. Several parameters relevant to this informing and 'blending' of reality can be identified, including the psychological and cognitive traits correlated to psi performance in laboratory research, as well as the depth-psychological dynamics observed in psychoanalytical studies. KEYWORDS: semantic fields/meaning/connectionism/self-organization