Since the early seventies, several studies have suggested that the age at which words are acquired (age of acquisition, or AoA) is an important predictor of the speed and accuracy with which those words can subsequently be processed in adulthood, with words acquired early in life being processed faster and more accurately than words acquired later (e.g., Carroll & White, 1973b).This effect, referred to in the literature as the "age of acquisition" effect (AoA effect), has been reported in many lexical processing tasks including: oral and written picture naming (e.g., Barry, Morrison, & Ellis, 1997;Bonin, Fayol, & Chalard, 2001;Ellis & Morrison, 1998;Morrison, Chappell, & Ellis, 1997;Severens, Van Lommel, Ratinckx, & Hartsuiker, 2005), face naming (e.g., Moore & Valentine, 1998), word naming (e.g., Gilhooly & Logie, 1981Morrison & Ellis, 1995, category instance fluency (Catling & Johnston, 2005;Forbes-McKay, Ellis, Shanks, & Venneri, 2005;Loftus & Suppes, 1972), word completion (Gilhooly & Gilhooly, 1979), visual and auditory lexical decision (e.g., Morrison & Ellis, 1995Turner, Valentine, & Ellis, 1998), naming from definition (Sartori, Lombardi, & Matiuzzi, 2005) or perceptual identification (Lyons, Teer, & Rubenstein, 1978). Moreover, although AoA measures are related to other lexical variables, at least in word naming and lexical decision tasks, AoA effects have been found to be independent of different measures of word frequency, familiarity, imageability and word length (Morrison & Ellis, 2000).The measurement of AoA has been operationalized in two different ways: a "subjective" measure, corresponding to adult ratings of the AoA of different words; and an "objective" measure based on the performance of children of different ages in object naming tasks. Several studies have shown that both measures of AoA are strongly correlated in different languages (e.g., Carroll & White, 1973a; De Moor, Ghyselink, & Brysbaert, 2000;Jorm, 1991;Lyons et al., 1978;Morrison et al., 1997;Pérez & Navalón, 2005;Pind, Jonsdottir, Gissurardottir, & Jonsson, 2000) providing validation for the rating method. Moreover, Bonin, Barry, Méot, and Chalard (2004) showed that the two measures were still significantly correlated when other lexical variables associated with AoA (including conceptual familiarity, word frequency trajectory, cumulative word frequency, imageability and phonological length) were partialled out.All this evidence would seem to suggest that AoA is an important lexical dimension on its own that can be measured in (at least) two different ways and that influences performance on a very diverse set of tasks. However, both of these contentions are still a matter of ongoing theoretical and methodological debate. On one hand, several criticisms have been pointed out to the two AoA measures and a new measure, "frequency trajectory", has been proposed to examine age-limited learning effects (Bonin et al., 2004;Zevin & Seidenberg, 2002). On the other hand, the independence of AoA and of AoA effects have been contested, esp...

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Aggregating snippets from the semantic memories of many individuals may not yield a good map of an individual's semantic memory. The authors analyze the structure of semantic networks that they sampled from individuals through a new snowball sampling paradigm during approximately 6 weeks of 1-hr daily sessions. The semantic networks of individuals have a small-world structure with short distances between words and high clustering. The distribution of links follows a power law truncated by an exponential cutoff, meaning that most words are poorly connected and a minority of words has a high, although bounded, number of connections. Existing aggregate networks mirror the individual link distributions, and so they are not scale-free, as has been previously assumed; still, there are properties of individual structure that the aggregate networks do not reflect. A simulation of the new sampling process suggests that it can uncover the true structure of an individual's semantic memory.

El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo la adaptación y la validación de la Escala de Relación Coparental —erc— en madres portuguesas. La versión original de la medida evalúa las cuatro dimensiones de la coparentalidad del modelo ecológico de la coparentalidad, a través de 7 subescalas. El estudio estuvo compuesto por una muestra de 548 madres en una relación íntima heterosexual y por lo menos un hijo con el actual compañero conyugal, con una edad inferior a 18 años. Probada a través de análisis factorial confirmatorio, la solución factorial final investigada  presentó un ajuste satisfactorio, lo que sugiere la validez de constructo de la erc, χ2 (372) = 828.5, ns, cfi = 0.95, nfi = 0.91 y rmsea = 0.04 (90 % ic = 0.04-0.05). La escala también presentó coeficientes de consistencia interna entre lo satisfactorio y lo elevado en todas las subescalas (α de Cronbach entre 0.70 e 0.94) y valores muy satisfactorios de validez convergente y divergente, obtenidos a través de análisis correlacionales de la erc con otros constructos teóricamente seleccionados. Los resultados dan soporte inicial a la calidad psicométrica de la versión portuguesa de la erc.Palabras clave: coparentalidad, madres, validación, evaluación.

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The results provide novel evidence for the strong associations between clusters of depression and nonspecific somatic symptoms and specific parenting and coparenting problems. Cluster stability across three independent samples suggest that they may be generalizable. The results inform preventive approaches and evidence-based psychotherapeutic treatments.

This study explored the moderating effect of sociosexual orientation on the association between coparenting alliance/coparenting conflict and relationship satisfaction in mothers in a romantic relationship. Sociosexuality is defined as a personality trait that reflects the individual difference in willingness to engage in uncommitted sexual relations. The study examined a community sample of 635 Portuguese mothers with a monogamous heterosexual relationship. Data on coparenting, relationship satisfaction, and sociosexual orientation were collected. The results revealed the moderating effect of sociosexuality on the significant associations between both coparenting alliance and coparenting conflict predicting relationship satisfaction. For the association between coparenting alliance and relationship satisfaction, mothers with a more restricted sociosexual orientation reported the highest levels of satisfaction when their coparenting alliance was high, but the lowest levels of satisfaction when coparenting alliance was low. For the association between coparenting conflict and relationship satisfaction, mothers with a more restricted sociosexual orientation reported the highest levels of satisfaction when their coparenting conflict was low, but the lowest levels when coparenting conflict was high. Together, the results suggest that especially for women with a more restricted sociosexual orientation, coparenting quality explains significant interindividual variability in relationship satisfaction.

Background In typical aging, it is possible to observe a decline in psychomotor domains, such as balance or global and fine motor skills as well as a cognitive and functional decline. Although, it is not clear which psychomotor domains are mostly affected in elderly with dementia and the association with the cognitive and functional level. Objective To identify the correlation between psychomotor, cognitive, and functional skills, and seeking whether there are differences among persons with and without dementia. Design and Methods A total of 120 persons with dementia (ages between 61 and 99 years old; mean age 80.6 ± 7.4) and 377 persons without dementia (ages between 60 and 99 years old; mean age 77.2 ± 8.7) were recruited from nursing homes, day-care centers, and home care. Consenting participants were assessed in psychomotor, cognitive, and functional domains using the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) to assess cognitive impairment, the Barthel Index (BI), and Lawton Index (LI) to identify basic and instrumental activities of daily living and a Portuguese Version of Éxamen Geronto-Psychomoteur (P-EGP) to evaluate psychomotor skills. Results People with dementia showed a higher percentage of cognitive deficit and higher level of dependency in basic and instrumental activities of daily living. Further, findings also showed significant differences in psychomotor domains and total of P-EGP, with exception of Joint Mobilizations of Upper and Lower Limbs. There were moderate to strong correlations between the totals of the scales, and between the totals and domains. Conclusions The population with dementia has higher percentage of cognitive deficit, higher dependency on the performance of basic and instrumental activities of daily living and poorer psychomotor performance, except in joint mobilizations. It was also possible to find strong correlations between the total of P-EGP and the total of cognitive and functional scales. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.