Semantic encoding deficits in a case of traumatic amnesia

A 33-year-old patient was studied neuropsychologically 19 years after sustaining severe head trauma. A recent CT scan showed lesions in the left frontal and right temporal regions. Performance on standard memory tests, both verbal and visuospatial, was extremely poor, although other intellectual functioning was relatively spared. The patient showed some interesting deficits in semantic processing. In a depth of processing task there was no advantage for words where semantic encoding had been induced. Neither was there any release from proactive interference after shifts in semantic categories. Deficits were also observed in short-term memory distractor tasks as well as in cueing tasks. These findings suggest that the cognitive deficits commonly observed in Korsakoff's disease can also be present in other amnesic disorders and may in part be related to cortical and especially frontal lobe atrophy.     

Solving deductive-reasoning problems after unilateral temporal lobectomy

The possible functional role of mental imagery in solving deductive-reasoning problems was investigated. Patients with left or right temporal lobectomies and normal control subjects had 32 different solvable three-term series problems read to them. Almost all subjects in the control and in the right-temporal-lobe groups reported consistent use of imagery in solving these problems, whereas less than half the left-temporal-lobe group reported using such a strategy. Overall, the left-temporal-lobe group was impaired relative to both the right-temporal and control groups. The right-temporal-lobe group was impaired only when the form of the question asked was not congruent with the form of the information in the premises. It was concluded that either (a) the left-temporal-lobe group had an unexpectedly large verbal comprehension deficit, or (b) the form of imagery utilized in solving deductive-reasoning problems is based upon verbal symbolic information, and as such is mediated by the left hemisphere.     

Do children use similar processes to read and spell words?

The use of spelling-sound information in both reading and spelling was evaluated by having children read and spell nonwords and five types of words that differed in terms of their regularity for reading and spelling. The subjects were grade 3 children who had been psychometrically defined as good readers and good spellers (“good”), good readers and poor spellers (“mixed”), or poor readers and poor spellers (“poor”). Results indicated that all children attempted to use spelling-sound correspondences in both reading and spelling, although children in both the mixed and the poor groups had weaker knowledge of these correspondences and were less systematic in their use of them. Furthermore, even though the children in the mixed group had been matched with children in the good group on reading comprehension, the number and type of errors made by the mixed subjects on both the reading and spelling tasks were more similar to those of the poor subjects than to those of the good subjects.     

Processing of visually presented vowels in the cerebral hemispheres

The respective efficiency of the cerebral hemispheres in processing visually presented vowels is discussed and examined in a tachistoscopic experiment with normal subjects. It is suggested that results from dichotic listening experiments cannot be used to predict performance on the same material in the visual modality. The physical characteristics of the stimulus, in both modalities, contribute to the pattern of hemispheric advantage and cannot be ignored in the interpretation of results from dichotic listening and tachistoscopic experiments.     

Visual dominance in inhibitory conditioning in the pigeon

In a conditioned inhibition paradigm (A+, B+, AX?_, pigeons received either of two keylight stimuli reliably followed by food (A+, B+). However, when one of these keylights was accompanied by another stimulus, food did not follow (AX?). For some groups, the putative inhibitor was a tone, whereas for others it was illumination of a red houselight. The birds pecked the A and B stimuli at a high rate. When X was red houselight, the birds pecked A at a much lower rate in the presence of X. When X was a tone, discrimination between A and AX was much poorer. Moreover, in a transfer test, red houselight inhibited responding to the other keylight, B, but tone did not. These results indicate that red houselight becomes a conditioned inhibitor more quickly than tone in appetitive situations, just as red houselight becomes a conditioned excitor more quickly in those situations. These results contradict the assertion that the latter outcome occurs because red houselight is a stronger appetitive excitor than tone at the start of the experiment (the “head start” hypothesis).     

Construct validation of the dependency and self-criticism scales of the depressive experiences questionnaire

S. J. Blatt (Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 1974, 29, 107–157) distinguished between two types of depressive experiences, one characterized by strong dependency needs and the other by self-criticism and guilt. This paper reports a series of validation studies of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ), which was developed to measure individuals' vulnerabilities to these types of experiences (S. J. Blatt, J. P. D'Afflitti, & D. M. Quinlan, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1976, 85, 383–389). The Dependency and Self-Criticism scales were shown to be stable in the face of both a 13-week interval and the receipt of midterm grades. Dependency was associated with conflict concerning the expression of hostility and, in males, feelings of helplessness. Self-Criticism was associated with low self-esteem and high levels of morality-conscience guilt. In a study of behavior in dyadic problem-solving tasks, Dependency in males was found to be negatively related to task leadership, and Self-Criticism in females tended to be negatively related to judged likeability. On the other hand, little support was found for the hypotheses that Dependency would be related to field dependent cognitive style and to the use of primitive defense mechanisms. The results were viewed as supporting the utility of Blatt's distinction between the two types of depression, but a number of anomalous findings indicated a need for further study of the DEQ. The question of the developmental level of the two types of depression, possible sex differences in the correlates of the scales, and the possibility of situational specificity in individuals' responses were identified as the areas most in need of study.     

Perceptual categorization in the cerebral hemispheres

The suggestion of a functional hemispheric dissociation in performing perceptual categorization was examined in two tachistoscopic experiments with normal adults. Subjects were required to match physically identical or similar, but nonidentical, pictures of animals. The first experiment showed no hemispheric difference and indicated that both hemispheres could resort to two different types of categorization process as a function of the simultaneous or delayed mode of presentation of the stimuli. In the second experiment, the viewing conditions were manipulated so as to afford a reduced amount of stimulus energy, and a significant left-visual-field advantage was then obtained. The results are discussed with respect to models of information processing in the cerebral hemispheres, and in relation to impairments in object recognition following brain damage.     

Language processing in bilinguals

The present study investigated the language processing strategies of three subgroups of adult bilinguals with different histories of language acquisition: infant bilinguals whose bilinguality dated from infancy; childhood bilinguals who became bilingual around 5 years of age; and adolescent bilinguals who had become bilingual at secondary school age only. All were completely balanced bilinguals in French and English at the time of testing. The experimental procedure, a language recognition task, required the subjects to indicate, by pressing a response button, whether each of a series of words, presented monaurally through earphones, was French or English. Concomitantly, left and right hemisphere EEG activity was monitored, with measures taken of latency to N₁, latency to P₂, and N₁-P₂ peak-to-peak amplitudes. Results indicated shorter latencies to N₁ in the left than in the right hemisphere for the infant and childhood bilinguals but shorter latencies in the right hemisphere for the adolescent bilinguals. Overall, the N₁ latency was shorter for the adolescent subgroup than for the two other subgroups. There were no RT differences. The findings appear to reflect strategy differences: The adolescent group seemed to rely more on a right hemisphere-based, possibly more gestalt-like or melodic strategy, while the early bilinguals relied more on a left hemisphere-based, possibly semantic or analytic type of strategy. The results are discussed in terms of previous research on bilingual subtypes and general forms of language processing among bilinguals.     

Hemispheric functions in the processing of agent-patient information.

Left and right hemisphere processing capabilities for pictorial information about agent (performer of an action) and patient (recipient of an action) relations were assessed in a tachistoscopic study. Subjects were presented pictures in either the right or the left visual field depicting an agent-action-patient event. They were asked to locate which side of the drawing contained the agent and, in separate trials, which side contained the patient. Reaction times to locate the agent were significantly faster than to locate the patient, regardless of the field of presentation. The results are discussed in terms of a general nonlinguistic processing constraint that favors agent information. It is suggested that this processing asymmetry may underlie syntactic asymmetries regarding the expression of agents and patients in language.     

Differential cerebral involvement in the cognitive functioning of bilinguals

The cognitive processing strategies of two groups of French-English bilinguals were studied by means of an auditory Stroop test designed to evaluate cerebral hemispheric involvement. An “early bilingual” group were bilingual before the age of 5, and a “late bilingual” group were bilingual after the age of 10. Stimuli were words uttered in pitches that were related to word meanings either congruently (as in the word “high” uttered in a high pitch) or incongruently (the word “haute” uttered in a low pitch). In one condition, subjects were to differentiate low from high pitches, disregarding meaning, while in a second condition, they were to disregard pitch and respond to word meanings. Measures of field independence were also taken. Results of data analyses suggest that male early bilinguals—the most field independent subgroup—process meaning efficiently in both cerebral hemispheres, but process pitch better in the right hemisphere. However, male late bilinguals and female bilinguals, both early and late, process meaning more rapidly in the right cerebral hemisphere and pitch equally rapidly in both hemispheres. The findings are interpreted as reflecting hemisphere-based strategy and sex differences in information-processing by the two bilingual groups.     

Inquiry method effects on performance in a simulated business environment

The dialectical inquiry (DI) and devil's advocate (DA) techniques have been offered as two options for providing information to the decision maker. Several prior studies have not resolved the relative advantages between these two “inquiry methods.” This paper reports two studies that involve a business simulation task and an inquiry method manipulation. In the first study with student subjects as decision makers, the DA advice was more useful than the DI advice in a situation wherein plant and work force expansions were frequent. In the second study with experienced managers, very few expansion decisions were made, and the nature of DA or DI advice made no significant difference. Instead, a recommendation to engage in a high profit margin, low volume strategy proved useful in some conditions.     

Automatic access of the meanings of ambiguous words in context: Some limitations of knowledge-based processing

Five experiments are described on the processing of ambiguous words in sentences. Two classes of ambiguous words (noun-noun and noun-verb) and two types of context (priming and nonpriming) were investigated using a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) priming paradigm. Noun-noun ambiguities have two semantically unrelated readings that are nouns (e.g., PEN, ORGAN); noun-verb ambiguities have both noun and verb readings that are unrelated (e.g., TIRE, WATCH). Priming contexts contain a word highly semantically or associatively related to one meaning of the ambiguous word; nonpriming contexts favor one meaning of the word through other types of information (e.g., syntactic or pragmatic). In nonpriming contexts, subjects consistently access multiple meanings of words and select one reading within 200 msec. Lexical priming differentially affects the processing of subsequent noun-noun and noun-verb ambiguities, yielding selective access of meaning only in the former case. The results suggest that meaning access is an automatic process which is unaffected by knowledge-based (“top-down”) processing. Whether selective or multiple access of meaning is observed largely depends on the structure of the ambiguous word, not the nature of the context.     

Acquisition and use of spelling-sound correspondences in reading

The acquisition and use of knowledge concerning the spelling-sound correspondences of English were evaluated by having children read words and nonwords that contained regular and homographic spelling patterns. Regular spelling patterns are associated with a single pronunciation (e.g., -UST as in MUST); homographic patterns have multiple pronunciations (e.g., -OSE as in HOSE, DOSE, LOSE). Analyses of errors, latencies, and pronunciations provided evidence for two complementary developmental processes: good beginning readers rapidly learn to recognize high-frequency words from visual input alone, while at the same time they are expanding and consolidating their knowledge of spelling-sound correspondences. Younger and poor readers rely more on phonological information in word decoding, as evidenced by their particular difficulty reading homographic spelling patterns. Poor readers do not appear to use a radically different strategy for reading words: their perfomance is similar to that of younger, good readers.     

Development of the concepts of energy conservation and entropy

Development of the concepts of energy conservation and entropy was studied in children between 5 and 15 years of age. Energy conservation, as illustrated by the operation of double and colliding pendulums, was not well understood until about 15 years of age. Understanding of entropy was dependent on the particular apparatus used. When illustrated by the gradual mixing of rolling marbles of different colors, entropy was understood by 9- to 15-year-olds. But when illustrated by the eventual equalization of water levels in two interconnected containers, entropy was not well understood until about 15 years of age. Errors on a problem used to illustrate the conservation concept could often be characterized by the misapplication of the entropy concept and vice versa.     

A stimulus-compounding assay of conditioned inhibition and excitation

Rats were trained in an operant discrimination involving two panel lights, A and B. Group CI (Conditioned Inhibition) was trained to lever press in the presence of A (S+), and not in the presence of the compound AB (S?). The opposite contingencies held in Group CE (Conditioned Excitation). Response rates were higher in Group CE than in Group CI, especially to the positive stimulus. However, the groups acquired the discrimination at comparable rates. In a separate phase of the experiment, a tone (C) was separately trained in the absence of the lights to control responding. All seven possible combinations of A, B, and C were then presented randomly during extinction. The inhibitory effect of B on C in Group CI was comparable in magnitude to the excitatory effect of B on C in Group CE. B's effect on C was not altered by the presence or absence of A, regardless of whether A was inhibitory or excitatory. The symmetry between CI and CE revealed by the stimulus-compounding test may be partly artifactual.     

A dissociation of right and left hemispheric effects for recognizing emotional tone and verbal content

Emotionally intoned sentences (happy, sad, angry, and neutral voices) were dichotically paired with monotone sentences. A left ear advantage was found for recognizing emotional intonation, while a simultaneous right ear advantage was found for recognizing the verbal content of the sentences. The results indicate a right hemispheric superiority in recognizing emotional stimuli. These findings are most reasonably attributed to differential lateralization of emotional functions, rather than to subject strategy effects. No evidence was found to support a hypothesis that each hemisphere is involved in processing different types of emotion.     

The logical and empirical bases of conservation judgements

It is argued that conservation judgements are based on a particular combination of logical necessity and empirical belief. The empirical belief is that a given transformation will not alter a particular quantity (Elkind's conservation of identity). The logical aspect is a transitive deductive argument containing an initial equivalence of two quantities and the conservation of identity belief as premises which lead to the conclusion of maintained equivalence (Elkind's conservation of equivalence). In two experiments, it is shown that conservation of identity beliefs can be manipulated in subjects who have long since developed the capacity for transitive deductive inference. Untrained 10 year olds were unaware of how sublimation acts to alter certain quantities over particular transformations of shape. And untrained adults incorrectly believed that both the area and perimeter of a closed figure would be conserved over transformations which elongated the figure. Both groups of subjects could be trained in the correct conservation of identity beliefs and this affected their conservation of equivalence judgements in predicted ways. It is suggested that the locical aspect of conservation is developmentally stable and that the empirical aspect varies widely across problems and individuals because of its dependence on relevant experience.     

Joint independent random utility models where one of the choice structures satisfies the strict utility model

It is known that one cannot construct an independent joint random utility model for which both the preference and aversion probabilities satisfy the strict utility model. Given this result, it is natural to ask what kind of relations are possible in such contexts. Here, for instance, we demonstrate that if a structure of preference and aversion probabilities are generated by a common independent random utility model, and if the preference probabilities satisfy the strict utility model, then the preference and aversion probabilities are related by what is known as the strong acceptance condition. We also prove an appropriate converse of this result. Finally, an example is given of a process (other than the random utility model) that is compatible with the assumption that a structure of preference and aversion probabilities satisfies a common strict utility model.