Retention of verbal information by rehearsal in relation to the fluency of verbal output in aphasia

The purpose of the present study was to determine if aphasic subject groups differentiated by the fluency of their verbal output employed rehearsal as a strategy for maintaining verbally coded information in primary memory. A task based upon the Brown-Peterson paradigm was administered to 10 fluent aphasic patients, 10 nonfluent aphasic patients, 10 right-brain-damaged patients, and 10 nonneurological patients. The findings indicate that the nonfluent aphasic patients did not rehearse the verbal information while the fluent aphasic, right-brain-damaged, and nonneurological patients did rehearse. In addition, both fluent and nonfluent aphasic patients encoded significantly less information into the memory system initially and performed worse on the task overall than right-brain-damaged and nonneurological patients.     

Processing of faces by patients with unilateral hemisphere lesions. I. Dissociation between judgments of facial affect and facial identity

In this study, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) subjects performed significantly worse than LHD and NHD controls across a series of seven facial identity and facial affect tasks. Even when the patient groups were statistically equated on a measure of visuoperceptual ability, the RHD group remained impaired on three emotional tasks--naming, picking, and discriminating emotional faces. These findings suggest that the defects shown by RHD patients on facial affect tasks cannot be solely attributed to defects in visuoperceptual processing and that the right-hemisphere superiority for processing facial affect exists above and beyond its superiority for processing facial identity.     

Alexia and agraphia with spared spelling and letter recognition abilities

A patient with alexia and agraphia had intact spelling and comprehension of spelled words and used a letter-naming strategy to read and write. We propose that there is a graphemic area important for distinguishing graphemic features and for programming movements used in writing. In this patient this area was not functioning or did not have access to the area of visual word imagés. Therefore, he used an ideographic letter-naming strategy to verbally circumvent his disability and gain access to the area of visual word images.     

Mirror-reading in right- and left-handers

In mirror-reading, words are read from right to left and letters are read in a reverse right-to-left orientation. In one experiment we compared the ability of normal right- and left-handed subjects to mirror-read and found that the left-handers made fewer errors and could read mirror print more rapidly. In a second experiment we attempted to learn whether there is a hemifield superiority for reading mirror words and whether there are any differences between left- and right-handers in a hemifield. We found that although both right- and left-handers more rapidly detected mirror words projected to the left visual half-field, there were no differences between groups. However, in the right visual half-field, the performance of left-handers was superior to that of the right-handers. The results of the hemifield study suggest that left-handers may be superior at reading mirror words because they can more easily reverse their scanning pattern.     

Spelling dyslexia: A form of cross-cuing

A patient with spelling dyslexia maintained the ability to write, spell, and pronounce spelled nonsense words and words that require knowledge of orthographic rules of language. He was unable to perform grapheme-phoneme conversions except after naming the letter involved. We propose that he uses a letter-naming strategy to circumvent the disconnection of visual areas from the area of visual word images and that his letter-naming strategy represents a compensatory cross-cuing strategy.     

Ear asymmetries on a selective attentional task

To ascertain whether there are ear-hemisphere asymmetries of selective attention, signal stimuli (tonal sequences) were presented monaurally with and without complex maskers (music and speech). The right ear-left hemisphere was more disrupted by language maskers; the left ear-right hemisphere was more disrupted by music maskers. These results suggest that there are hemispheric asymmetries of selective attention and that the ear hemisphere that usually processes a class of stimuli has greater difficulty filtering out those stimuli than does the nonspecialized hemisphere.     

Recognition and discrimination of emotional faces and pictures

In order to learn whether patients with right-hemisphere disease (RHD) had a deficit in their ability to discriminate and comprehend emotional faces and pictures, we studied nine patients with RHD, nine patients with left-hemisphere disease (LHD), and nine controls. The subjects were presented with six picture tests that comprised either emotional faces or emotional scenes. Their task was either to denote (name or choose) an emotion or to discriminate (same, different) between two faces or emotions. Patients with RHD performed significantly worse than subjects with LHD when asked to discriminate between faces, to discriminate between emotional faces, and to name emotional scenes. There was also a trend for the RHD group to be more impaired than the LHD group when asked to name the emotional face or choose the emotional face. Except for the facial and emotional discrimination tests, the LHD patients also performed worse than controls.     

Defects of immediate memory in Broca's and conduction aphasia

It has been suggested that the repetition defect seen in conduction aphasia is caused by an auditory immediate memory defect. The purposes of this study were the following: to ascertain whether the finding of an auditory immediate memory defect in conduction aphasia could be replicated, to ascertain whether Broca's aphasics have a similar type of immediate memory defect, and to ascertain whether a relationship exists between immediate memory and comprehension of spoken language. Digits were either spoken or presented visually to Broca's and conduction aphasics. An analysis of span scores reveals that within each group there were no significant differences between the modes of presentation or the response modes. There were no significant differences between the aphasic groups. Comprehension of spoken language significantly correlated with digit span scores.     

The development of handedness and dichotic ear listening asymmetries in relation to school achievement: A longitudinal study

To assess the development of dichotic ear asymmetries and handedness, 208 male school children were evaluated in kindergarten and at Grades 2 and 5 (ages 66, 92, and 130 months of age, respectively) with a dichotic listening task and a hand preference test. The Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT) also was administered at each of the three grade levels. There was significant variability in handedness scores over time only for those subjects whose scores at initial testing, that is, in kindergarten, identified them as non-right-handers. Both right and left handers had a significant increase in dichotic listening scores over time; however, only right handers had a significant right ear advantage at each evaluation. Regression analyses showed that combined hand preference scores and ear recall scores at each probe when combined accounted for almost 44% of the variance in WRAT achievement scores at Grade 5. Ear asymmetry scores, however, were not predictive of school achievement.     

Within-modal and cross-modal reliabilities of two laterality tests

Sixteen right handers were given four tests of a dichotic listening recall task (concrete words) and a visual half-field recall task (letters). There was a significant right ear and right visual half-field superiority for the four test sessions, with improvement in recall scores over sessions. Pearson correlations for each ear on the four dichotic tests ranged from .74 to .90. Correlations on the visual half-field scores, however, were significant only after the first session. Analysis of stability in lateral preferences across modalities revealed stable and reliable performance, particularly in the last two testings, where 81.3% of the subjects had a right-sided asymmetry. Cross-modal correlations, however, were not significant. Implications regarding predictions of speech laterality are discussed in the light of these findings.     

Audiences' reactions to self-enhancing,self-denigrating,and accurate self-presentations

Subjects in three experiments evaluated hypothetical actors whose claims about either an upcoming or past performance and whose performances were system-atically varied from very positive to very negative. Positive, self-enhancing claims were effective in generating favorable evaluations when either the claim was congruent with the performance or the subjects were unaware of how the actor performed. In general, accurate self-presentations were most favorably evaluated, especially when the claim occurred after the performance. The two exceptions to the preference for accurate self-presenters occurred when (a) the actor modestly underestimated a clearly superior prior performance by claiming to have done “only” well or all right, in which case he/she was evaluated more favorably than an accurate but seemingly boastful actor who claimed to have done extremely well, and (b) the actor self-deprecatingly predicted an inferior performance, in which case he/she was disliked even when accurate. Disclaimers about the importance of the performance (e.t., “I did well, but it's no big deal”) were seen as boastful rather than modest and decreased evaluations. The results mirror many of the tactics used by actor-subjects in past experiments, suggesting that people generally vary their self-presentations in optimal fashion to create the most favorable possible impression on the audience.     

Olfactory dysfunction in man: anatomical and behavioral aspects

We reviewed studies examining the olfaction of patients with brain damage for the purpose of discerning correlations between disordered structure and function. Patient samples included those with neurological disorders and neurosurgical interventions and recording of spontaneous or elicited neuronal activity. Brain areas involved in olfaction include the olfactory bulbs, the orbitofrontal and medial temporal cortices, the thalamus, and the amygdala. Despite recent advances in olfactory anatomy, understanding of how these structures are related to olfactory detection, discrimination, and recognition continues to be limited. Inadequate localization of brain lesions and lack of comprehensive behavioral assessment have thus far prevented a detailed account of the organization of olfaction in the human brain.     

Focal changes in cerebral blood flow produced by a test of right-left discrimination

A sensorimotor control activation task was used to isolate the focal cerebral blood flow changes resulting from the visual and cognitive processing of a right-left discrimination task. Eleven normal right-handed males participated. The sensorimotor control task produced significant bilateral increases in flow in most cortical channels. Significant bilateral parieto-occipital activation was found for the right-left discrimination task over and above the flow changes produced by the sensorimotor control task. The left occipital flow increase resulting from the right-left discrimination task was found to be negatively related to task performance. An inverse relationship was also found between WAIS Performance IQ and the blood flow change in the left parietal channel. These results suggest areas for further testing concerning potential individual differences in cognitive processing during the performance of a right-left discrimination task.     

Visuospatial competency, handedness, and cerebral dominance

The present study addressed the question of Levy's (1974, Psychobiological implications of bilateral assymetry. In S. Dimond &; J. G. Beaumont, Hemispheric function in the human brain, NY: Halstead. Pp. 121–183.) proposal that left handers would have lowered spatial skills relative to verbal skills. In the first part of the study, performance on the PMA (visuospatial subtest) and WAIS Block Design subtest were compared between right and left handed high school and college samples. No support could be found for deficient visuo-spatial performance in the left handers. In the second part of the experiment, no relative impairment of visuospatial skills was found when subjects were classified into predicted speech dominance groups on the basis of a dichotic listening task and/or a visual half-field task. An extreme groups comparison of the most left dominant and most right dominant groups again yielded no significant differences in visuo-spatial performance. Finally, the relationship between degree of speech lateralization and visuo-spatial skills was examined. Only partial support for differences in cerebral organization for speech in left handers was found in the college sample.     

Relative efficacy of different encoding structures and judgment topics in a cued-recall task

Existing research on the relative efficacy of the self as an encoding structure applies more to the self as an object than as a cognitive structure that guides the organization of incoming information. In order to provide a task that would be more directly relevant to encoding, subjects were asked to watch an interview of a resident assistant (RA) candidate by the housing department and to attend throughout to how similar the candidate's presentation was to the one they themselves or a typical RA would have given in the situation. Furthermore, judgments of similarity were divided into personality, ability, and nonverbal style. The dependent variable was a surprise cued-recall task, administered 20 min after the videotaped interview had ended. Consistent with prediction, subjects instructed to encode from a self-perspective exhibited better recall than those instructed to encode from a typical RA perspective. Also, as predicted, subjects who judged personality or ability similarity recalled more of the interview than those who judged nonverbal style similarity. Enhanced recall from the self-encoding perspective was consistent across all three types of judgments (personality, ability, nonverbal style), suggesting that the self is an efficient processing structure across a variety of diverse judgment topics.     

Children's reasoning about the causes of human behavior

Three studies examined young children's ability to predict how certain internal and external conditions affect behavior. Study 1 included 136 children from early preschool, late preschool, kindergarten, and second grade. A forced choice procedure revealed that even the youngest group could predict the effect of various internal-personal causes (e.g., interest, intelligence) and external-situational causes (e.g., rewards, adult pressure). Older preschoolers and second graders considered these internal causes more powerful than these external causes. With the same procedure, in Study 2 the 16 preschoolers predicted that both physical characteristics (e.g., strength, energy level) and the internal-personal characteristics of Study 1 affect performance in athletic activities. In addition, they considered the physical causes more important. Study 3 examined more complex types of causal reasoning. Younger preschoolers responded randomly but older preschoolers combined two causes to create a greater effect than one cause and used an external cause to enhance, rather than discount, an internal cause. The discussion focused on the cognitive development underlying developmental differences in the ability to predict behavior on the basis of one or two causes.