Verbal labelling and learning strategies in normal and severely subnormal children

The effects of verbal labelling of colours in a simple colour sorting task were examined in an experiment in which the subjects were severely subnormal and normal children of equivalent mental age levels. It was found that the effects of verbal labelling are relatively specific with severely subnormal subjects in comparison to their normal controls. It was also shown that this effect can be explained in terms of the relative independence with which the two responses in a sorting discrimination are learned by severely subnormal subjects both with and without verbalization.     

Attention and hemispheric differences in reaction time during simultaneous audio-visual tasks

The effect of different types of competing auditory tasks on laterality differences in visual perception was investigated. Right-handed subjects were presented with digits which occurred randomly in the left or right visual fields. They responded vocally to previously specified digits in a go, no-go reaction time situation. In the absence of any competing auditory task, digits presented in the right visual field were processed more quickly. This visual field difference in reaction time was in the same direction while subjects performed a secondary musical task. However, when a secondary verbal task had to be performed, digits in the left visual field received faster responses. The results support the view that the right hemisphere is capable of some language functions, and that hemispheric differences in performance have at their basis a quantitative asymmetry, which can be reversed even in normal subjects by overloading their limited capacity.     

Modification of symptomatic verbal behaviour of mental patients

The clinically significant verbal behaviour exhibited by three mental patients was systematically manipulated by controlling the reaction of ward staff to the patients' verbalizations. When social reinforcement was made dependent upon symptomatic verbal responses, these responses increased in frequency. Withholding social reinforcement (extinction) resulted in a decrease in the frequency of symptomatic verbal responses. These techniques are now being used in the modification of verbal behaviour of schizophrenic patients.     

Typicality effects in artificial categories: is there a hemisphere difference?

In category classification tasks, typicality effects are usually found: accuracy and reaction time depend upon distance from a prototype. In this study, subjects learned either verbal or nonverbal dot pattern categories, followed by a lateralized classification task. Comparable typicality effects were found in both reaction time and accuracy across visual fields for both verbal and nonverbal categories. Both hemispheres appeared to use a similarity-to-prototype matching strategy in classification. This indicates that merely having a verbal label does not differentiate classification in the two hemispheres.     

Verbal ability and mental processing speed

The notion that verbal ability is related to mental processing speed was examined using tasks that systematically varied in semantic content. Subjects' reaction times were measured in five tasks involving arrow matching, physical identity word matching, or taxonomic identity word matching. The findings indicated that matching tasks using different decision rules and different stimuli were all related to verbal ability. In fact, reaction time for subjects required to judge whether two arrows pointed in the same direction was the best predictor of verbal ability. One explanation of the results is that speed of information processing (a general factor) may be the important component of verbal ability which is measured by seemingly different matching tasks.     

Qualitative evaluation of divergent thinking in patients with schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia show deficits across a broad spectrum of neurocognitive domains. In particular, deficits in verbal fluency are common. Verbal fluency tests are neuropsychological tests that assess frontal lobe function or executive function but also assess divergent thinking. However, few studies have considered the impairment of verbal fluency from the viewpoint of divergent thinking. To consider the structure of divergent thinking, not only verbal assessments but also non-verbal assessments are indispensable. We administered several fluency tests, the idea fluency test, the design fluency test, and word (letter and category) fluency tests to 26 patients with schizophrenia and 26 healthy control subjects to evaluate divergent thinking in both groups and assessed their responses qualitatively. An acceptable minimal level of intelligence was maintained in the patient group. Although attention and executive functioning were relatively preserved in the subjects with schizophrenia, they demonstrated significant deficits in divergent thinking and had particular difficulty in producing ideas and designs requiring concept flexibility, a conversion of viewpoint, originality, or novelty. Research on deficits in divergent thinking in patients with schizophrenia may contribute to the development of cognitive and behavioral rehabilitation programs.     

Verbal self-correction behaviors of fluent and nonfluent aphasic subjects

This investigation examined the use of six explicitly defined verbal self-correction behaviors by fluent and nonfluent aphasic subjects of high and low verbal ability, and by subjects further classified into six groups according to type of aphasia (Broca's, Anomic, Wernicke's etc.). Aphasic groups, on the average, generated some type of verbal self-correction effort on more than half of their initially erroneous responses, and the proportions of these efforts did not differ between aphasic patient groups. Significant differences in self-correction success were found, however, between groups classified according to fluency and severity, as well as among the six groups based on type of aphasia. In the former case, distinctions in self-correction skill favored high-verbal-ability groups regardless of fluency classification. In the latter instance, the subgroups typically formed by less severely impaired patients (Anomic and Broca's) had significantly higher proportions of successful self-correction behaviors than those comprised of individuals with more severe involvement (Wernicke's and Broca's plus severely limiting apraxia of speech). Between-group differences for specific types of self-correction behaviors occurred rarely, but those which were found could be related to characteristics of the particular aphasic groups under consideration. Verbal self-correction behavior is discussed as a behavioral reaction to an erroneous response or dissatisfaction with the quality of an intended response. These behaviors are viewed as indicators of the intactness of an aphasic individual's self-monitoring system, and of his tolerance for responses that are qualitatively limited by his verbal deficits.     

Verbal ability and mental processing speed

The notion that verbal ability is related to mental processing speed was examined using tasks that systematically varied in semantic content. Subjects’ reaction times were measured in five tasks involving arrow matching, physical identity word matching, or taxonomic identity word matching. The findings indicated that matching tasks using different decision rules and different stimuli were all related to verbal ability. In fact, reaction time for subjects required to judge whether two arrows pointed in the same direction was the best predictor of verbal ability. One explanation of the results is that speed of information processing (a general factor) may be the important component of verbal ability which is measured by seemingly different matching tasks.     

The course of adult experiences of abuse in patients with borderline personality disorder and Axis II comparison subjects: a 10-year follow-up study

The first objective of this study was to assess the rates of adult experiences of verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse reported by borderline patients and Axis II comparison subjects over 10 years of prospective follow-up. The second objective was to determine time-to-cessation, recurrence, and new onset of each type of abuse. The Abuse History Interview (AHI) was administered to 290 borderline patients and 72 Axis II comparison subjects at baseline. The AHI Follow-up Version (AHI-FUV) was administered at five contiguous follow-up waves. Over 10 years of follow-up, the rates of all four types of abuse declined significantly for borderline patients. For borderline patients, rates of cessation were high for all types of abuse (>90%). However, recurrences and new onsets of verbal and emotional abuse were relatively common (>60%). Contrastingly, they were relatively uncommon for physical and sexual abuse (<30%), suggesting that verbal and emotional abuse represent more stable forms of abuse.     

Cognitive anxiety: a method of content analysis for verbal samples

The work of such psychologists as Kelly, McReynolds, Epstein, and Lazarus suggested the need for a measure of cognitive anxiety and provided a definition of that construct. A method of content analysis of verbal samples was devised and found to have adequate interjudge reliability. Normative data for five groups of subjects were provided. The validity of the measure as representative of a reaction to being unable to anticipate and integrate experience meaningfully was demonstrated in (a) the higher scores of groups of subjects who were currently coping with new experiences than those who were not, (b) the significant correlation of its scores with a state rather than trait anxiety measures, (c) the variability of its scores over time as observed in a generalizeability study, and (d) the higher scores of subjects when they were dealing with experiences for which meaningful anticipation was relatively difficult.     

Effects of Role Assignment and Verbal Interaction on Accuracy and Overconfidence in Interpersonal Judgment1

In an experiment designed to test the effects of role assignment and verbal interaction on accuracy and overconfidence in interpersonal judgment, subjects estimated the questionnaire responses of a randomly assigned partner and assessed their confidence in each estimate. Ninety-five subjects were assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (role vs. no-role) by 2 (verbal interaction vs. no-interaction) design. Results indicated that accuracy was positively related to the weight subjects gave to their own responses in estimating the other person's responses, and both role assignment and verbal interaction caused subjects to give less weight to their own responses. Because they gave less weight to their own responses, subjects in the role conditions were less accurate than those in the no-role conditions, and this reduction in accuracy resulted in greater overconfidence and worse calibration. Practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Reaction times of severe Broca's aphasics to monaural verbal stimuli

Reaction times of nine subjects with severe Broca's aphasia were measured to verbal stimuli presented monaurally to their left or right ears. The aphasic subjects showed left-ear advantages in reaction times to verbal stimuli, paralleling dichotic findings among aphasic patients. The results are interpreted as consistent with right-hemisphere language processing.     

Verbal mediation and memory for novel figural designs: a dual interference study

To the extent that all types of visual stimuli can be verbalized to some degree, verbal mediation is intrinsic in so-called "visual" memory processing. This impurity complicates the interpretation of visual memory performance, particularly in certain neurologically impaired populations (e.g., aphasia). The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative contributions of verbal mediation to recognition memory for visual stimuli that vary with respect to their amenability to being verbalized. In Experiment 1, subjects attempted to verbally describe novel figural designs during presentation and then identify them in a subsequent recognition memory test. Verbalizing these designs facilitated memory. Stimuli that were found to be easiest or most difficult to verbalize at the group level were retained for the second study. In Experiment 2, subjects evidenced superior recognition memory for the relatively easy to verbalize items. This advantage was attenuated in subjects who performed a concurrent verbal interference task during encoding, but not in those who performed an analogous visual interference task. These findings provide evidence that impoverished verbal mediation disproportionately impedes memory for visual material that is relatively easy to verbalize. Implications for the clinical assessment of visual memory are discussed.     

Implicit learning of new verbal associations

Implicit learning of a series of new verbal associations was studied in four experiments. The first two experiments demonstrated that learning of a repeating sequence of verbal stimuli may occur without awareness, but only when the stimulus-response mapping requires an attention-demanding activity: Subjects who were unaware of the sequence learned when instructed to categorize the stimuli, but not when instructed simply to read them. However, in both situations, unaware subjects performed no better than untrained control subjects in expressing their knowledge of the sequence explicitly. In Experiments 3 and 4, subjects showed implicit learning when the task involved either motor responses to verbal stimuli or verbal responses to spatially arranged stimuli. These findings are discussed in terms of the conditions under which implicit learning can be obtained. First, they demonstrate implicit learning of a set of new associations in the verbal domain. Second, the data suggest that attention is important in implicit learning. Finally, the degree of interitem organization that is familiar preexperimentally seems to partially determine the amount of implicit learning.     

Testing beyond words: Using tests to enhance visuospatial map learning

Psychological research shows that learning can be powerfully enhanced through testing, but this finding has so far been confined to memory tasks requiring verbal responses. We explored whether testing can enhance learning of visuospatial information in maps. Fifty subjects each studied two maps, one through conventional study, and the other through computer-prompted tests. For the tests, the subjects were repeatedly presented with the same map with one feature deleted (e.g., a road or a river), and they tried to covertly recall the missing feature and its location. Subjects’ map drawings after 30 min were significantly better for maps learned through tests in comparison with maps learned through the same amount of time devoted to conventional study. These results suggest that the testing effect is not limited to the types of memory that require discrete, verbal responses, and that utilizing covert retrievals may allow the effect to be extended to a variety of complex, nonverbal learning tasks.     

The role of stimulus-based and response-based spatial information in sequence learning

In 4 experiments, relational structures were independently varied in stimulus and response sequences in a serial reaction time task. Moreover, the use of spatial and symbolic stimuli and responses was varied between experiments. In Experiment 1, spatial stimuli (asterisk locations) triggered spatial responses (keystrokes); in Experiment 2, spatial stimuli triggered symbolic responses (verbal digit naming); in Experiment 3, symbolic stimuli (digits) triggered keystrokes; and in Experiment 4, digits triggered verbal responses. The results showed that there is a remarkably stronger effect of relational structures in spatial sequences than in symbolic sequences, irrespective of whether stimulus or response sequences are concerned. This suggests that learning is particularly effective for sequences of spatial locations. It is argued that spatial learning is a critical determinant for the debate on perceptual and motor learning.     

Working Memory Effects of Gap-Predictions in Normal Adults: An Event-Related Potentials Study

The current study examined the relationship between verbal memory span and the latency with which a filler-gap dependency is constructed. A previous behavioral study found that low span listeners did not exhibit antecedent reactivation at gap sites in relative clauses, in comparison to high verbal memory span subjects (Roberts et?al. in J Psycholinguist Res 36(2):175-188, 2007), which suggests that low span subjects are delayed at gap filling. This possibility was examined in the current study. Using an event-related potentials paradigm, it was found that low span subjects have an onset latency delay of about 200?ms in brain responses to violations of syntactic expectancies after the gap site, thus providing a time course measure of the delay hypothesized by previous literature.     

Stimulus-dominance effects and lateral asymmetries for language in normal subjects and in patients with a single functional hemisphere

The assessment of language laterality by the dichotic fused-words test may be impaired by interference effects revealed by the dominant report of one member of the stimuli-pair. Stimulus-dominance and ear asymmetry were evaluated in normal population (48 subjects of both sex and handedness) and in 2 patients with a single functional hemisphere. Results show that in normals the number of stimulus-dominated responses is five times higher than in patients, and is negatively correlated to the index of laterality. It is suggested that dichotic stimuli may interfere one with another during the subcortical acoustic processing and at cortical level, when competing for verbal output. Subcortical interference accounts for stimulus-dominance in the single-hemisphere patients. In normal subjects, the dichotic discrimination is disturbed mainly during the hemispheric cross-talk needed for the oral-verbal processing of dichotic inputs. The frequency of 'interhemispheric' interference, as well as the extents of ear asymmetry, may both depend on differences in the processing stage of the competing inputs, and then they may be influenced by differential verbal skills of LH and RH. Very unequal levels of verbal analysis of the dichotic stimuli may hinder reciprocal interference during the hemispheric cross-talk thus yielding large ear asymmetries associated to small dominance effects.     

Naming reaction times to tachistoscopically presented pictures: some evidence of right hemisphere encoding

The present study measured naming reaction times by normal subjects to unilaterally presented picture stimuli. Significant differences in picture-naming reaction time did not exist between left and right visual-field stimulations. The right hemisphere in the intact brain is capable of generating a verbal label for pictured stimuli. A psychological model suggests that a possible processing synergy between the two hemispheres may be tied to spatial processing and elementary linguistics.