This study investigates the effects of verb aspect on legal judgments. In three experiments, that were presented in French to French speakers, participants received a scenario about a case of HIV transmission, in which the actions of the person referred to as responsible for the transmission were described using imperfective or perfective aspect. Furthermore, in experiment 1, the accused was portrayed as aware (versus unaware) of his HIV status, and in experiment 2, he was portrayed as having (versus not having) a previous criminal record. In experiment 3, the lexical verbs used to describe his behavior made the accused a high volitional agent (versus low volitional). Participants read the report and then made judgments on intentionality, expressed feelings toward the accused and ascribed him a blame and sentence. Results revealed that imperfective descriptions resulted in higher perceived intentionality, higher blame attribution, more dislike and higher sentence. But they also showed that these effects of imperfective versions occurred primarily when the accused was portrayed as knowing his seropositivity (experiment 1), having a criminal record (experiment 2) and when the volition of his behavior was attenuated (experiment 3). These findings provide novel insights about how language subtleties can impact perceptions of criminal intentionality and its related judgments.

The aim of our study was to analyse utterances about important groups and social phenomena in Poland in terms of the themes identified by Winiewski et al. (2017) as characteristic of hate speech. The face-to-face study involved 200 people (98 women and 102 men) who described seven selected photographs. Their utterances (N = 1400) were analysed using the method of competent judges. Although the content of hateful speech found in the study was low (56 cases), of the seven social groups that were described by the subjects, two appear to arouse more negative emotions and encourage a greater loss of restraint: people with obesity and Catholic clergy. In future research, it would be useful to pay particular attention to these two social groups in the context of their negative evaluation and its psychological determinants.

This study examines the effects of gender identity cues in email signatures on outcomes of misgendering, trait perceptions, social exclusion, and language use and how these effects are moderated by transphobia. Using a 3 x 2 between-subjects design, cisgender participants (N = 354) read and responded to a forwarded email containing gender identity cues in the signature block with varying pronouns (they/them, she/her, and he/him) and the trans flag emoji (present or absent). There were significant outcomes for social exclusion and language use but not misgendering or trait perceptions. Higher exclusion was associated with they/them and she/her pronouns. The trans flag emoji interacted with transphobia to reduce the use of power-related language as transphobia increased. Further, email signatures including the trans flag emoji directly influenced use of netspeak, or highly informal online language (e.g., u r gr8). Theoretical implications of transphobia and bias toward gender identity cues are discussed alongside practical implications.

Children’s books are a useful tool to enhance mentalization since they usually contain multiple references to mental states, thus providing potential opportunities to mentalize. Studying the factors that influence mentalization is fundamental since this ability is essential for children´s socioemotional development. An exploratory study was designed to analyze mental state language (MSL) in storybooks for 3- and 4-year-old children in Chile and compare MSL use by writers of different nationalities and sexes. The sample consisted of 40 books from male and female writers from Chile and Spain. Our results showed that the most referred mental references were desires, cognitions, and emotions. Differences were found according to the writers’ nationality for cognitions, as well as in the interaction between nationality and gender for references to desires and cognitions. Our results imply that books differ in frequency and type of references to mental states, according to the cultural background of the writer.

Although evidence concerning how cognitive task complexity influences task performance abound, its impact on emotional variables remains underexamined. Besides, previous research has mainly treated emotions as stable individual difference variables. To address these limitations and following complex dynamic systems theory, this research adopted an idiodynamic approach to investigate fluctuations in Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety (FLSA) and Foreign Language Speaking Enjoyment (FLSE) among four female intermediate-level English learners under two cognitively different speech production conditions: using single-word vocabulary (less complex) and phrasal verbs (PVs, more complex). Results of per-second self-ratings revealed that vocabulary knowledge and cognitive load level triggered fluctuations in FLSA and FLSE quite differently. Interestingly, speakers reported high levels of both anxiety and enjoyment while using PVs. This finding can shed more light on the dynamics of FLSA and FLSE in foreign language classrooms. Implications for considering dynamics of emotional variables in oral task design is discussed.

The study of overgeneralization provides evidence for understanding the factors that influence the application of previously acquired linguistic patterns in a novel way by children. According to the literature, frequency plays an important role in overgeneralization. For instance, overgeneralization of morphemes is less likely to occur to high frequency verbs. The aim of this study is to determine whether the elements the child retrieves to create a verbal morphological overgeneralization are of greater frequency than the target elements of their previous speech and the input. It consists of a high-density longitudinal study of a middle-class child (1;11,24-2;02,24), whose utterances were recorded daily for three months. Elements retrieved by the child to create a verbal overgeneralization were compared against the target elements of their previous speech and the input using non-parametric tests. According to the results obtained, it can be said that overgeneralized forms are associated with equal frequency patterns in the child’s speech.

Affect labeling involves describing emotional experiences using words. It is not known how different aspects of emotional experience influence affect labeling. The primary objective of this study was to compare the number of affective labels generated in emotional situations varying in valence and motivational intensity. Given that previous studies suggest that women are more capable in describing their emotional experiences, we also considered gender differences in generating affective labels. Additionally, we investigated whether inhibitory control influences the number of generated affective labels. Participants (N = 72) were instructed to generate affective labels in anger, sadness, and happiness. They also completed a color-word Stroop task with negative priming. Our results revealed that the motivational intensity of the emotions significantly influenced the generation of labels in women. A similar trend, though non-significant, was observed in men. No relationship between inhibitory control and the number of generated labels was found.

Characterizing false information based on linguistic analysis is important to understand the factors that affect the proliferation of fake news in the media. Previous work has identified some linguistic regularities that suggest a trend towards decreased complexity, polarization and sentiment in false information. This study is aimed at identifying linguistic differences between real and fake news using a corpus of annotated media news in Spanish via the automatic analysis of linguistic cues using dictionaries of lexical norms. We focus on lexical aspects of complexity, familiarity and sentiment. Consistent with previous results, we found that fake news are associated with lower cognitive loads, reflected by reduced sentence complexity, and increased lexical familiarity and imaginability. Moreover, and consistently with previous results, the analysis revealed that fake news are associated with more polarized emotional content.

This study explores the potential of a communicative-metacognitive intervention (CMI) in enhancing self-actualisation. Conducted as an extra-curricular project with linguistic majors, the CMI was designed to equip them with soft skills essential for contemporary employers (ManpowerGroup, 2021). Throughout the project, participants were encouraged to embrace the principles of person-centred communication (Motschnig & Nykl, 2014), and engage in metacognitive reflection (Frith, 2012), which was expected to facilitate group interaction. Empirical data came from 43 students: 28 participants in the CMI and 15 non-participants. Self-actualisation measurement prior to and after the intervention was based on participants’ responses to the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI; Shostrom, 2016), and triangulated with insights from 11 semi-structured interviews, subjected to thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Our outcomes demonstrate that the CMI triggered significant changes in the areas of Inner-Directedness, Existentiality, Self-Regard, Self-Acceptance, and Capacity for Intimate Contact, and, overall, had a facilitative effect on participants’ self-actualisation.

Can three little words improve a person’s public speaking performance? Brooks (2014, Study 2) predicted and found that college students who were instructed to say aloud “I am excited” before delivering a stressful 2-3 min speech reported feeling more excited but not less anxious, compared to participants who were instructed to say “I am calm.” As Brooks also predicted, independent judges rated the performance of the “excited” group as better than the “calm” group across four indices (persuasive, competent, confident, persistent), and the “excited” group had longer speech duration. In a direct replication and extension, we found nearly identical results for self-report, but no differences between conditions on any observer ratings of performance, nor on an additional indirect measure of anxiety (Emotional Stroop). We discuss why this minimal reappraisal intervention affected self-report but did not result in observable improvements in public speaking.