Do alcoholic amnesic patients passively rehearse verbal information?

Recently it has been claimed that alcoholic amnesic patients mainly engage in passive repetitive rehearsal during spontaneous learning and that this contributes to their memory problem. To test this hypothesis further, two experiments were conducted which compared list learning in amnesic patients and normal controls. In Experiment I both groups of subjects were required either to learn a list which was presented five times consecutively with free recall following each presentation, or they were asked to repeat each word out loud as they saw it and carry on doing so until the next word was shown. Five presentation trials were given and free recall was again tested after each presentation. It was predicted that if the amnesics' spontaneous form of learning involved only passive repetition there should be no difference between learning and repetition for this group while the controls should show an impairment in repeating compared to learning. The results showed that both groups of subjects were impaired to the same extent with repeating compared to learning and it was concluded that spontaneous learning was similar in both groups and that neither group merely passively rehearsed during spontaneous learning. A second experiment examined recognition performance of the two groups of subjects after learning or repeating lists of 20 words. Recognition was tested with distractors which were irrelevant, acoustically similar, graphemically similar, or semantically similar to the target word. It was found there were no differences between either of the groups in the pattern of errors made over the different distractor types. It was thus concluded that there was no encoding or rehearsal abnormality in the amnesic group. The possibility of differences between groups of alcoholic amnesics was discussed as well as the putative role of slow cognitive processing in their memory problems.     

Stimulus generalization following extradimensional and intradimensional training in educable retarded children

Five related experiments investigating stimulus generalization following go/no-go discrimination training of educable retarded children are reported. Experiment 1 employed an Extradimensional paradigm in which generalization testing was on the hue dimension following training on an independent (orientation) dimension. Following True discrimination training only 25% of children showed a decremental stimulus generalization gradient on the hue dimension, though all children exhibited flat gradients in Pseudodiscrimination and S+ only control groups. An increase in difficulty of the orientation discrimination in Experiment 2 did not increase the number of decremental gradients. In Experiment 3, children who exhibited decremental gradients in Experiments 1 and 2 underwent further generalization testing with modified stimuli to establish a symmetrical gradient peaked at a hue S+ to be employed in Experiments 4 and 5. In these experiments an Intradimensional paradigm was employed with S+ and S? stimuli drawn from the hue dimension. Excitatory control by S+ and inhibitory control by S? were demonstrated, as were inhibitory consequences of S? such as peak and area shift.     

Similarity of attitudes and constructs in children's friendships

Sex prejudice in children's friendships has frequently been noted. This study examined the role of similarity of attitudes and personal construct ratings in this effect. Subjects were two classes of school children, aged 7–8 and 9–10 years. There were 29 children in each class. Subjects completed an attitude scale, construct rating scale, and sociometric questionnaire. Similarity effects were primarily in the younger children. Boys were more similar to each other in attitudes than were girls, and girls were more similar to each other in construct ratings than were boys (p < .001); there was greater similarity of attitudes and construct ratings in friendship rather than nonfriendship comparison dyads (p < .01). The sociometric data, when compared with sociometric data collected 6 months earlier, showed that these results could not be due to sex differences in the stability of friendships but rather suggested age and sex differences in the informational bases of friendships in middle childhood.     

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.     

The use of expectancy theory in the explanation of turnover in ROTC

A questionnaire was administered to 142 mate students who were enrolled in ROTC and 18 male students who had dropped out of ROTC. Several months later seven of the above 142 subjects dropped out of ROTC. A ratio expectancy theory model was developed from the questionnaire as an operational definition of motivation to remain in ROTC. The results indicated that the 25 dropouts had a significantly lower (p < .001) score on this motivational measure than the 135 subjects who were still enrolled in ROTC, and also that these latter subjects were as strongly attracted to a civilian job as they were to an Army job. The implications of these findings relative to the ability of the Army to attract career officers were discussed.     

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.     

An assessment of cerebral dominance in language-disordered children via a time-sharing paradigm

A time-sharing paradigm was used to assess language lateralization in language-disordered and normal children aged 4–7 years. Several expressive language tasks as well as a vocal, but nonlinguistic, task were administered concurrently with unimanual finger tapping. Dependent variables were percent disruption scores and number of syllables produced per concurrent trial. All language concurrent tasks produced tapping reductions for both hands for both groups. This result contrasts to similar time-sharing studies claiming asymmetrical interference and hence language lateralization in children (N. White & M. Kinsbourne, 1980, Brain and Language, 10, 215–223; J. Obrzut, G. Hynd, A. Obrzut, & J. Leitgeb, 1980, Brain and Language, 11, 181–194). A multiple regression analysis revealed a significant interaction effect differentiating language-disordered from normal children. Normals exhibited a parallel response pattern for speech and tapping (both increased or decreased in rate) under all lateralization conditions. Language-disordered children exhibited an inverse response pattern (e.g., if speech output increased, tapping rate decreased) only under left-hemisphere time-sharing.     

Some neurolinguistic implications of prearticulatory editing in production

This paper argues that a complete model of language production must include a prearticulatory editing component. The function of this component is to monitor planned speech for deviations from the speaker's intention and repair any deviations that are found. It is claimed that adding such an editing component onto a production model fundamentally changes any account of aphasic symptoms using that model. As a case in point it is shown that E. M. Saffran's (1982, British Journal of Psychology, 73, 317-337) argument that agrammatic Broca's aphasia involves a deficit at the functional level of M. F. Garrett's (1975, in G. H. Bower (Ed.). The psychology of learning and motivation, New York: Academic Press) production model is no longer sound when prearticulatory editing processes are considered.     

Clinician's molar and molecular stuttering analyses of expanded and nonexpanded speech

Twenty speech pathologists measured total words and completed molar and molecular stuttering analyses from audio-recorded contrived samples of stuttered speech. Each subject completed a criterion referenced test prior to performing the experimental tasks. Analyses were performed under two conditions: Condition I consisted of samples presented at 100 wpm as recorded (nonexpanded); Condition II consisted of parallel samples recorded at 100 wpm as recorded (nonexpanded condition); Condition II consisted of parallel samples recorded at 100 wpm but presented at 59 wpm via a speech time expander. Results indicate that presentation of expanded samples (Condition II) significantly increased subject accuracy for the specific disfluency form-types word repetitions and part-word repetitions. Similar trends were noted for sound prolongations and hard contacts. Theoretical, experimental, and clinical implications are offered.     

The history of Russian psychoanalysis and the problem of its periodisation

The formation and spread of the psychoanalytic teaching of Sigmund Freud and his followers is one of the most significant events in the life of the spirit in the twentieth century. The recognition of this as an historical fact--irrespective of its relation to Freud and his ideas--assumes of course and need to gain a proper understanding and appropriate interpretation of psychoanalysis in all its dimensions. Generally speaking, the history of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic movement has been researched quite fully, although for a variety of reasons and circumstances there are a number of gaps in it. Perhaps the most important of these is the history of Russian psychoanalysis, which has developed within a country where, at the beginning of the century, Freud's works were translated and published in a most effective and representative way, and where psychoanalytic ideas drew a response both from specialists and among the public at large, although in content and inclination the Russian mentality did not at heart suit a psychoanalytical treatment of man and his culture.     

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.     

The social semantics of Mikhail Pokrovskij and Nikolaj Marr

Criticizing the works of “Western” specialists in semantics, Soviet academician M. M. Pokrovskij (1868–1942) comes to the conclusion that social factors are essential for semantic evolution, while psychological factors constitute an intermediate link between the “external” life of a society and the semantics of the corresponding language. This conception resembles the general explanations of semantic evolution proposed by N. Ja. Marr (1864–1934). Nevertheless, despite a number of common points in the semantic theories of these two researchers, Pokrovskij’s attitude towards Marr was negative: in particular, he disagreed with the thesis of the chronological primacy of Marr’s discoveries in the domain of semantics. The article investigates why Pokrovskij had for a long time constituted an intermediate link between Russian and “Western” “traditions” in the field of semantics.

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.     

Short-term memory deficits in reading disabled children,in the absence of opportunity for rehearsal strategies

Two groups of reading-disabled (RD) children were compared with controls (age- and IQ-matched competent readers), on a serial running memory task. The unknown (to the subject) length of the serial lists coupled with high rates of presentation, made it impossible for the children to use systematic rehearsal strategies in this task. Both groups of RD children performed reliably worse than their controls. From the data, it is argued that the short-term memory deficits exhibited by the RD children should not be attributed to an inability to rehearse, nor to an inability to encode (recognize) items, but rather to an inability to encode serial items in the form of serial phonological patterns.     

Reinforcing fluency in stutterers: An experimental study

Subject-specific periods of fluent reading responses of three adult stutterers were positively reinforced with the presentation of a dime. Subjects were run individually through a sequence of two base rate, two experimental, and two extinction sessions, each session lasting 45 min. Periods of fluent reading responses increased during the experimental condition for each of the three subjects. When the reinforcer was withdrawn during the extinction condition, the frequency of fluent periods showed a decrease. Concomitantly, disfluencies decreased during the experimental condition and they increased during the extinction condition. The clinical implications of fluency manipulation as against disfluency manipulation are discussed.     

The driver behaviour questionnaire in South-East Europe countries: Bulgaria,Romania and Serbia

Using data from three samples and more than 1000 participants, this study have examined the psychometric properties of the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) in three countries from South-East Europe. Differences in driving behaviour between countries were also investigated. Exploratory factor analysis results supported the distinction between errors and violations in all three countries. Furthermore, the positive associations of both errors and violations with self-reported traffic accidents were also consistent in all three samples. In terms of differences in driving behaviour, Romanian drivers scored higher on many error and violation items in comparison to the other two countries. Also, speeding violations were the most common violations in all three countries. Overall, our results provide further support for using the DBQ to measure aberrant (i.e. errors and violations) driver behaviour.     

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.