Methodological and theoretical issues in neuropsychological assessment

While there are philosophical and theoretical differences between neuropsychologists and behavior therapists, it is suggested that a significant reconciliation can be achieved in regard to assessment and treatment of the brain-damaged patient. While brain damage is often viewed as an irreversible disorder, there is evidence that substantial recovery of function can occur, particularly when adequate retraining is provided. There are practical and empirical considerations that suggest that neuropsychological tests are currently the best tools available for behavioral assessment of brain-damaged patients. However, the results of these tests can be used not only diagnostically but also to identify target behavioral deficits that may be rehabilitated through systematic retraining efforts. Such rehabilitation efforts can be optimally planned, implemented, and evaluated through an alliance between the neuropsychologist, who identifies the ability and deficit pattern, and the behavior therapist, who devises and evaluates the retraining program. It is possible that the successes of behavior therapy in numerous clinical and educational applications can be repeated in the cases of brain-damaged patients. However, such success would appear to be contingent on appreciation of the high degree of specificity often seen in neurological deficit patterns and the great complexities involved in the relationships between brain function and behavior.     

Dissociated deficits of visuo-spatial memory in near space and navigational space: Evidence from brain-damaged patients and healthy older participants

ABSTRACT

Defects confined to spatial memory can severely affect a variety of daily life activities, such as remembering the location of objects or navigating the environment, until now the skills involved have been mostly assessed with regard to the visual domain using traditional pencil and paper tests. Our aim was to test the efficacy of a recently developed psychometric instrument (Walking Corsi Test: WalCT) to assess the specific contribution of spatial memory to the complex task of retrieving route knowledge. The WalCT is a 3×2.5-m version of the well-known Corsi Block-tapping Test (CBT), in which patients are required to memorize (and replicate) a sequence of body displacements. We assessed the ability of left and right brain-damaged patients, as well as healthy young and senior controls, to perform both the CBT and the WalCT. Results showed differences related to age in the healthy individuals and specific functional dissociations in the brain-damaged patients. The double dissociations found in this study demonstrate the importance of having a task able to detect navigational disorders, because virtual reality tasks are often much too difficult for aged brain-damaged patients to perform.     

汉字阅读的联结主义模型

汉字与英语词汇阅读受到相同统计属性的影响,表现出阅读加工的普遍性,汉字独特的形-音对应关系又体现出阅读的语言特异性。模型1建构与英文阅读模型完全相同的计算机模型,设计汉字的字形与语音表征方案,成功模拟出汉字阅读的规则性、一致性效应及其与频率的交互作用,得到与行为实验相同的结果模式;模型2改变声旁独立成字时的字形表征,结果规则性效应消失。模拟结果一方面表明汉字与英语词汇阅读可能具有普遍的加工机制,都是对输入语料的形-音对应关系统计学习的结果;另一方面表明输入语料的不同统计属性可能是汉字阅读的语言特异性来源     

Extending the 3 × 2 achievement goal model to the sport domain: The 3 × 2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire for Sport

In the present research, we sought to extend the 3 × 2 achievement goal model recently proffered in the school domain to the sport domain. We did so by conducting two studies focused on the development and initial validation of the 3 × 2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire for Sport (3 × 2 AGQ-S). Study 1 (n = 679), devised items for the questionnaire and demonstrated that data from the questionnaire nicely fit the proposed 3 × 2 model, showed a better fit to the 3 × 2 model than to alternative models, and indicated that each goal variable had good internal consistency. Study 2 again documented the strong psychometric properties of the measure, and additionally linked the goal variables to other constructs central to the achievement goal literature. The establishment of this measure allows extensive study of the 3 × 2 achievement goal model in the sport domain, and promises to yield deeper insights into the nature of achievement motivation in such contexts.     

Task differences on conservation and transitivity problems

Task differences were assessed with 120 first graders in a 2 × 3 × 3 factorial design combining Socioeconomic level (middle vs lower), Concepts (conservation of length, transitivity of length, and conservation of continuous quantity), and Tasks (three tasks for each concept selected on the basis of frequency of usage). As predicted, task by concept interactions were found on all four task response measures. This finding is consistent with Piaget's concept of horizontal decalage and with Flavell and Wohlwill's competence-performance model, which proposes that intermediate phases of stage transition are characterized by considerable intertask differences and initial and final phases by intertask consistency in performance. The importance of investigating the effects of task variables on multiple dependent measures at various age levels and points in time was emphasized. Concept, task, and socioeconomic class differences were also found on some of the measures.     

Comprehension of Idioms in Turkish Aphasic Participants

Brain damaged participants offer an opportunity to evaluate the cognitive and linguistic processes and make assumptions about how the brain works. Cognitive linguists have been investigating the underlying mechanisms of idiom comprehension to unravel the ongoing debate on hemispheric specialization in figurative language comprehension. The aim of this study is to evaluate and compare the comprehension of idiomatic expressions in left brain damaged (LBD) aphasic, right brain damaged (RBD) and healthy control participants. Idiom comprehension in eleven LBD aphasic participants, ten RBD participants and eleven healthy control participants were assessed with three tasks: String to Picture Matching Task, Literal Sentence Comprehension Task and Oral Idiom Definition Task. The results of the tasks showed that in overall idiom comprehension category, the left brain-damaged aphasic participants interpret idioms more literally compared to right brain-damaged participants. What is more, there is a significant difference in opaque idiom comprehension implying that left brain-damaged aphasic participants perform worse compared to right brain-damaged participants. On the other hand, there is no statistically significant difference in scores of transparent idiom comprehension between the left brain-damaged aphasic and right brain-damaged participants. This result also contribute to the idea that while figurative processing system is damaged in LBD aphasics, the literal comprehension mechanism is spared to some extent. The results of this study support the view that idiom comprehension sites are mainly left lateralized. Furthermore, the results of this study are in consistence with the Giora’s Graded Salience Hypothesis.     

义符启动范式下家族大小和类别一致性对义符语义激活的影响

采用义符启动范式,考察不同加工深度任务中家族大小和类别一致性对义符语义激活的影响。结果发现:在词汇判断中,家族大小影响义符的语义激活,大家族义符的语义不容易激活,小家族义符的语义容易激活。在语义相关判断中,类别一致性影响义符的语义激活,类别一致性高的义符的语义容易激活,并且在错误率上,这一影响受义符的家族大小调节。义符类别一致性影响义符家族效应的作用方向:当类别一致性低时,出现抑制的家族效应;当类别一致性高时,家族效应无影响或表现为促进作用。     

Contrasting Effects of Letter-spacing in Alexia: Further Evidence that Different Strategies Generate Word Length Effects in Reading

The reading behaviour of two alexic patients (SA and WH) is reported. Both patients are severely impaired at reading single words, and both show abnormally strong effects of word length when reading. These two symptoms are characteristic of letter-by-letter reading. Experiment 1 examined the pattern of errors when the patients read large and small words. Further experiments examined the effects of inter-letter spacing on word naming (Experiments 2a and 2b) and the identification of letters in letter strings (Experiment 3). For both patients, letter identification was better for widely spaced letters in letter strings, and this effect was most pronounced for the central letters in the strings. This is consistent with abnormally strong flanker interference in letter identification. However, inter-letter spacing affected word reading behaviour in the two patients in different ways. SA's word reading improved with widely spaced letters; WH's word reading was disrupted. This suggests that these patients adopted different strategies when reading words. We conclude that several reading behaviours can elicit word length effects, and that these different behaviours can reflect strategic adaptation to a common functional deficit in patients. We discuss the implications both for understanding alexia and for models of normal word identification.     

Spontaneous inferential processing while reading interleaved expository texts enables learners to discover the underlying regularities

Recent studies on text sequencing found learning advantages of interleaving over blocking in terms of high‐level inferences. We conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial experiment with college students (n = 117) by manipulating text sequence (interleaved vs. blocked) and self‐questioning activity while reading (spontaneous vs. prompted) between subjects and testing delay (immediately vs. 1‐week delay) within subjects. Results revealed that students are spontaneously engaged in self‐questioning and inferential processing while reading an interleaved text. Students who were spontaneously engaged while reading an interleaved text outperformed their counterparts in all other conditions in the immediate and delayed test on comparative reasoning, inductive reasoning, and memorization of factual details. The learning advantages were mediated by inductive inferences made while reading an interleaved text. Results support the discriminative contrast view that readers are encouraged to discover the underlying regularities when differences and similarities among categories are accentuated by their juxtaposition.     

Always on My Mind: Exploring How Frequent,Recent, and Vivid Television Portrayals Are Used in the Formation of Social Reality Judgments

Prior research has found consistent support for the heuristic processing model of cultivation effects, which argues that cultivation effects can be explained by the availability heuristic. The present study represents an experimental test of the heuristic processing model and tests the impact of frequency, recency, and vividness on construct accessibility and social reality beliefs. 213 students participated in a 2 × 2 × 2 prolonged exposure experimental design varying the frequency of exposure to violent television programs, the level of vividness in the programs, and recency of exposure. Dependent measures were accessibility and social reality beliefs. Results showed that reaction times were largely unresponsive to the independent variables. Although there were no main effects for frequency on social reality beliefs, there was a significant interaction between frequency and vividness on beliefs: People watching vivid violent media gave higher estimates of the prevalence of crime and police immorality in the real world in the 3× viewing condition than those in the 1× viewing condition. In concluding, it is argued that this study has important implications for the heuristic processing model, cultivation theory, and research into vividness effects.     

Fetal brain tissue transplants reduce visual deficits in adult rats with bilateral lesions of the occipital cortex

Fetal brain tissue from the occipital or the frontal cortex was implanted into the damaged occipital cortex of adult rats. The animals receiving grafts of embryonic frontal cortex showed partial restoration of brightness discrimination while recipients given homologous implants of occipital cortex were as impaired as those animals with lesions alone. Neither frontal nor occipital grafts aided in the performance of a pattern discrimination problem; both groups of brain-damaged animals were unable to learn the task. Nonetheless, both groups of animals had viable and enlarged grafts with similar neuronal and glial profiles.     

Useful visual field size for pattern perception

The useful visual field size at each fixation in a pattern was investigated by artificially supplying various visual field sizes on a TV display. The degree of pattern perception was measured in terms of recognition memory for pictures, and the speed of processing pictures was determined as a function of field size. A serious deterioration in the perception of pictures occurred as the visual field was limited to a small area around the fovea (about 3.3° × 3.3°), processing speed becoming extremely slow. Speed increased gradually as visual field size became larger, to reach a certain level beyond which no further increase was observed. The visual field size at this asymptotic speed was called the useful visual field and was found to be about 50% of the entire pattern size. Analysis of eye-movement records demonstrated that in terms of the useful visual field, the scanning characteristics of the eye over the pattern occurred in a heavily overlapping manner to assure good perception of the pattern.     

A probabilistic model of melody perception

This study presents a probabilistic model of melody perception, which infers the key of a melody and also judges the probability of the melody itself. The model uses Bayesian reasoning: For any "surface" pattern and underlying "structure," we can infer the structure maximizing P (structure|surface) based on knowledge of P (surface, structure). The probability of the surface can then be calculated as ∑ P (surface, structure), summed over all structures. In this case, the surface is a pattern of notes; the structure is a key. A generative model is proposed, based on three principles: (a) melodies tend to remain within a narrow pitch range; (b) note-to-note intervals within a melody tend to be small; and (c) notes tend to conform to a distribution (or key profile) that depends on the key. The model is tested in three ways. First, it is tested on its ability to identify the keys of a set of folksong melodies. Second, it is tested on a melodic expectation task in which it must judge the probability of different notes occurring given a prior context; these judgments are compared with perception data from a melodic expectation experiment. Finally, the model is tested on its ability to detect incorrect notes in melodies by assigning them lower probabilities than the original versions.     

The Relationship Between Academic Oral Proficiency and Reading Performance: A Comparative Study Between English Learners and English-Only Students

This study investigates the relationship between oral proficiency and reading proficiency in English-learning children (L2 students) and native English-speaking children (NE students). A set of oral activities measuring students’ academic oral skills in science classes was developed and administered to 61 fourth graders. Both the meaning-related aspects and the formal aspects of the students’ academic oral proficiency were compared between strong and struggling readers and between NE and L2 students. The study thus used a 2 × 2 factorial design (Strong/Struggling Readers × NE/L2 Students). After controlling for the students’ nonverbal analytic and reasoning skills, this study found that strong and struggling readers showed different levels of performance with respect to the meaning-related aspects of oral academic language but not with respect to the formal aspects of language. Conversely, differences between NE and L2 students were found in components related to the formal aspects but not in those related to the meaning aspects of oral language.     

Ships in the Rising Sea? Changes Over Time in Psychologists’ Ethical Beliefs and Behaviors

Beliefs about the importance of ethical behavior to competent practice have prompted major shifts in psychology ethics over time. Yet few studies examine ethical beliefs and behavior after training, and most comprehensive research is now 30 years old. As such, it is unclear whether shifts in the field have resulted in general improvements in ethical practice: Are we psychologists “ships in the rising sea,” lifted by changes in ethical codes and training over time? Participants (N = 325) completed a survey of ethical beliefs and behaviors (Pope, Tabachnick, &; Keith-Spiegel, 1987). Analyses examined group differences, consistency of frequency and ethicality ratings, and comparisons with past data. More than half of behaviors were rated as less ethical and occurring less frequently than in 1987, with early career psychologists generally reporting less ethically questionable behavior. Recommendations for enhancing ethics education are discussed.     

Perceived persuasiveness as a function of response style: Multi-issue consistency over time

This experiment studied the effect of an individual's response style on different issues over a long period of time. A hypothetical situation depicted the repeated responses given by one person on a target issue and on four other issues for one year. The 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design varied consistency of the stimulus person's position on the target issue during the year (consistent or variable); his consistency on other issues during the year (consistent or variable); and social context (alone or dissenting group). Subjects were 155 college students. Results showed an interaction between consistency on the target issue and consistency on other issues for the three dependent measures (p < .001). That is, significantly greater persuasiveness, confidence, and dis-positional causality were attributed to stimulus persons whose opinions were either completely consistent or completely variable on all issues during the year. Results suggest that the consistency of response style across issues—and not the constant advocacy of a specific position–is the crucial factor in the effectiveness of a long-term minority influence.     

The Development of Sensitivity to Sublexical Orthographic Constraints: An Investigation of Positional Frequency and Consistency Using a Wordlikeness Choice Task

The developmental sequence of the types of orthographic knowledge that children acquire early in reading development is unclear. Following findings of skilled reading, the orthographic constraints of positional frequency and feedback consistency were explored with a wordlikeness judgement task for grades 1–3 English-speaking children. The data provide evidence for the early development of sensitivity to positional frequency, but not sound-spelling consistency. However, sensitivity to each type of orthographic structure was predicted by rapid naming and sensitivity to consistency was predicted by phonological awareness. As well, sensitivity to each type of constraint was related to word reading fluency.     

Orthography shapes the perception of speech: The consistency effect in auditory word recognition

Inconsistency in the spelling-to-sound mapping hurts visual word perception and reading aloud (i.e., the traditional consistency effect). In the present experiment, we found a consistency effect in auditory word perception: Words with phonological rimes that could be spelled in multiple ways produced longer auditory lexical decision latencies and more errors than did words with rimes that could be spelled only one way. This finding adds strong support to the claim that orthography affects the perception of spoken words. This effect was predicted by a model that assumes a coupling between orthography and phonology that is functional in both visual and auditory word perception.