Automaticity: a new framework for dyslexia research?

The performance of a group of 23 13-year-old dyslexic children was compared with that of same-age controls on a battery of tests of motor balance. A dual-task paradigm was used--subjects performed each test twice, once as a single task, and once as a dual task concurrently with a secondary task. Two alternative secondary tasks were used, the classic counting-backwards task and an auditory choice reaction task. Both secondary tasks were calibrated for each subject to ensure that their performance on the secondary task alone fell between pre-specified performance criteria. In all single-task conditions there was no difference between the performance of the two groups. By contrast, in 19 out of the 20 tests performed under dual-task conditions, the dyslexic group were significantly impaired, whereas the controls showed no impairment, thus resulting in significantly better performance by the control group than the dyslexic group. The sole exception was that the dyslexic children were not impaired on the easiest balance condition with the choice reaction task. Under the dual-task conditions the dyslexic children also performed worse than the controls on the secondary task. It is very hard to accommodate the findings within the traditional framework of a deficit specific to lexical skills. One plausible explanation of the results is that, unlike the controls, the dyslexic children need to invest significant conscious resources for monitoring balance, and thus their performance is adversely affected by any secondary task which serves to distract attention from the primary task. This need for "conscious compensation" suggests that for dyslexic children the skill of motor balance is poorly automatized. It is possible, therefore, that many of the reading deficits of dyslexic children are merely symptoms of a more general learning deficit--the failure to fully automatize skills.     

Can a temporal processing deficit account for dyslexia?

In this comment, we argue that although Farmer and Klein (1995) have provided a valuable review relating deficits in nonreading tasks and dyslexia, their basic claim that a “temporal processing deficit” is one possible cause of dyslexia is somewhat vague. We argue that “temporal processing deficit” is never clearly defined. Furthermore, we question some of their assumptions concerning an auditory temporal processing deficit related to dyslexia, and we present arguments and data that seem inconsistent with their claims regarding how a visual temporal processing deficit would manifest itself in dyslexic readers. While we agree that some dyslexics have visual problems, we conclude that problems with reading caused by the visual mechanisms that Farmer and Klein postulate are quite rare.     

Forebrain emotional asymmetry: a neuroanatomical basis?

There is considerable psychophysiological evidence to indicate that the left and right halves of the human forebrain differentially associate with particular emotions and affective traits. A neurobiological model is needed. Here I propose that forebrain emotional asymmetry is anatomically based on an asymmetrical representation of homeostatic activity that originates from asymmetries in the peripheral autonomic nervous system. This proposal builds on recent evidence indicating that lateralized, higher-order re-representations of homeostatic sensory activity provide a foundation for subjective human feelings. It can subsume differing views of emotion and the forebrain because it suggests that emotions are organized according to the fundamental principle of autonomic opponency for the management of physical and mental energy.     

Are parental personality traits a basis for mate selection?

Both psychoanalytic views of attachment and evolutionary theories of imprinting suggest that mates may be preferentially chosen to resemble one’s parents. Using data from a large Dutch study of twins and their families, we tested these hypotheses with regard to personality traits from the Five-Factor Model. Little evidence of parent/spouse similarity was found, although women did tend to select a husband who resembled their parents with regard to Openness to Experience. This effect may be due to the influence of Openness on their social worlds, rather than to their experiences in early childhood.     

Do differences in brain activation challenge universal theories of dyslexia?

It has been commonly agreed that developmental dyslexia in different languages has a common biological origin: a dysfunction of left posterior temporal brain regions dealing with phonological processes. Siok, Perfetti, Jin, and Tan (2004, Nature, 431, 71-76) challenge this biological unity theory of dyslexia: Chinese dyslexics show no deficits in posterior temporal brain regions but a functional disruption of the left middle frontal gyrus. Here, I will argue that these data do not challenge universal cognitive theories of dyslexia according to which weaknesses in the ability to process the phonological features of language are at the origin of dyslexia.     

Surface dyslexia: A regression effect?

Although the disorder of acquired surface dyslexia is considered as a pathological syndrome in the psycholinguistic and neuropsychological literature, it may also be conceived of as part of a general regression in functioning consequent upon brain damage. Data on some of the identified features of surface dyslexia were obtained from normal children learning to read and adult subjects, in order to examine the hypothesis that the symptoms are similar to the behavior of unskilled readers, suggesting regression as a more parsimonious explanation for the disorder. Attention is also drawn to problems in quantifying its major feature--the "regularity" effect.     

Do dyslexia and stuttering share a processing deficit?

This study assessed the prevalence of childhood stuttering in adults with dyslexia (AWD) and the prevalence of dyslexia in adults who stutter (AWS). In addition, the linguistic profiles of 50 AWD, 30 AWS and 84 neurotypical adults were measured. We found that 17 out of 50 AWD (34 %) reported stuttering during childhood compared to 1 % of the neurotypical population. This was moderated by the severity of dyslexia: People with mild dyslexia showed a lower prevalence rate (15 %) of childhood stuttering than those with severe dyslexia (47 %). In addition, we observed that 50 % of the AWS (n = 30) fulfilled the diagnostic criteria of dyslexia, even though they had never been diagnosed as dyslexic. Compared to neurotypical adults, phonological working memory, awareness, and retrieval were similarly reduced in AWS and AWD. The findings supports the view that stuttering and dyslexia may share a phonological deficit.     

The personal-group discrepancy: Is there a common information basis for personal and group judgment?

In contrast to motivational accounts of the personal-group discrepancy, results from this article suggest that the discrepancy is explained by aggregating different sets of comparison outcomes for either personal or group ratings. Results from a longitudinal study with East German (the minority group) and West German (the majority group) samples confirm the personal-group discrepancy and support our approach. First, social comparisons influenced evaluations of economic situation at both group and personal levels. Second, ratings of group versus personal economic situation were based on different sets of comparisons. Third, the mean structure of both sets of comparison outcomes mirrored the personal-group discrepancy. Fourth, an interaction between personal-group discrepancy and group status supported the authors' suggestions-concerning the direction of the discrepancy.     

Mental imagery and dyslexia: a deficit in processing multipart visual objects?

Dyslexic and normal control subjects memorized simple line patterns inside a grid and subsequently judged whether an "X" would have fallen on the pattern had it been present in an empty grid. The patterns were letters and novel shapes. The grids were presented to the left visual field, to the right visual field, or in central vision. Dyslexic subjects had difficulty generating images of multipart patterns, but this deficit was limited to letters. The findings suggest that dyslexics may have selective difficulty integrating visual information stored in long-term memory.     

Self-analysis: a fool for a patient?

In this paper I first reviewed the scanty publications on the subject of self-analysis. Although it was recommended by Freud as early as 1910 for every analyst, self-analysis turns out to have many pitfalls and to be quite a complicated and controversial procedure. There is no agreement on the proper technique of self-analysis in the literature, nor is there any discussion of the determinants of the particular choice of technique of self-analysis that is employed, nor even of the reasons why some analysts do not engage in it at all. Using clinical data gathered from written material of many years of self-analysis following the termination of a successful training psychoanalysis, I have attempted to elucidate some of the problems posed by this procedure. These problems are in some ways similar to formal psychoanalysis, but are in some ways contingent on the fact that it is basically a different technique. It is a solitary occupation and therefore suffers from the dangers of disintegration into autism, narcissism, and obsessional rumination. There is no living presence of an analyst to serve either as a transference figure or to make interpretations and stimulate the production of material. The identification with the analyst's analyzing function is far from simple in self-analysis because of the complex nature of the various internalizations of the analyst that take place over years of a formal training analysis. Thus, Ticho (1967) is correct when she claimed that self-analysis is a skill that the analysand has to acquire by himself or herself. An important phase of the beginning of self-analysis involves the working through of the separation from the psychoanalyst and the re-evaluation of the analyst and the analytic process. This results in a heightened sense of independence and autonomy, increased cohesion of the self, and maturation--which is manifested by greater autonomous ego functioning, a more mature sense of identity, and continued transformations of narcissism which highly valuable goals, on the basis of the data I have presented, can be approached through the process of self-analysis. Above all this stands the most important goal of self-analysis, the understanding of one's countertransference reactions. This is especially important in the treatment of seriously disturbed patients who become disruptive, and thus get labeled borderline, often as a response to unconscious countertransference manifestations from the analyst which are then experienced in the self-object transference as failures in empathy.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Emergence from brain architectures: a new cognitive science?

The way in which artificial intelligence has developed over the last 50 years has had a major role in shaping cognitive science as it is today. This has generated computational models of behaviour. The connectionist revival of the 1980s added a tinge of neurodynamics to this. Here I suggest that some post-connectionist work in artificial intelligence is turning towards an understanding and formalisation of the mechanisms of brain architectures which contribute to an emergence of cognition providing a closer link between brain mechanisms and experienced brain states. This even addresses the neurological basis of consciousness.     

Is dyslexia a visual perceptive disorder? New empirical data

Several studies have shown that a phonological deficit is the origin of developmental dyslexia, because dyslexics have important difficulties in mapping orthographic to phonological codes. However, visual criteria are still used for the diagnosis of dyslexia and to develop methods of intervention. This study attempts to determine whether there are visual problems in dyslexic children. To this aim, dyslexic children and children without reading difficulties, matched by chronological age, participated in two experiments. One study was based on the Reversal test and the other was a visual decision task in which participants had to decide whether two letters were the same or different. There were 40 pairs of letters, to measure reaction times and mistakes. The results showed that dyslexics had similar performance to controls in the detection of different visual stimuli. Developmental dyslexics do not appear to have visual perceptual problems, but a particular difficulty to retrieve the phonological code of graphemes.     

Memory reactivations during sleep: a neural basis of dream experiences?

Newly encoded memory traces are spontaneously reactivated during sleep. Since their discovery in the 1990s, these memory reactivations have been discussed as a potential neural basis for dream experiences. New results from animal and human research, as well as from the rapidly growing field of sleep and dream engineering, provide essential insights into this question, and reveal both strong parallels and disparities between the two phenomena. We suggest that, although memory reactivations may contribute to subjective experiences across different states of consciousness, they are not likely to be the primary neural basis of dreaming. We identify important limitations in current research paradigms and suggest novel strategies to address this question empirically.     

Is eye movement dysfunction a biological marker for schizophrenia? A methodological review

There is a high prevalence of eye movement dysfunction (EMD) in persons with schizophrenia and their first-degree relatives. Studies addressing the prevalence, stability, familial transmission, and psychological correlates of EMD in persons from both psychiatric and general populations offer suggestive evidence that this abnormality may serve as a biological marker for schizophrenia. Although these findings are promising, their significance for elucidating the diagnostic bandwidth, pathophysiology, and genetics of this disorder remains to be determined. More precise characterization of ocular motility, perhaps when used in conjunction with global measures of pursuit adequacy, may be essential for clarifying the pathophysiological and genetic significance of EMD for schizophrenia. Recent research efforts are beginning to identify particular abnormalities that could serve as more specific biological markers for schizophrenia.