Orthography as a handicap? A direct comparison of spelling acquisition in Danish and Icelandic

Spelling of cross-linguistically very similar nonwords was compared in 115 Danish and 77 Icelandic children (primarily 3rd and 4th graders). Danish children made more errors than Icelandic children on word medial consonant doublets and on word initial consonant clusters, even when the groups compared were matched on simpler spelling tasks. These results suggest that the acquisition of phonemic encoding skills is slower in "deep" orthography such as Danish than in more "transparent" orthography such as Icelandic. The effect of orthography was expected for consonant doublets because of the relatively more complex sound-letter correspondences in Danish. For consonant clusters, however, sound-letter correspondences are perfectly regular in both languages. The study thus points to the conclusion that even the mastery of regular sound-letter correspondences may be delayed in deep orthography.     

An empirical look at the Defense Mechanism Test (DMT): reliability and construct validity

Although the Defense Mechanism Test (DMT) has been in use for almost half a century, there are still quite contradictory views about whether it is a reliable instrument, and if so, what it really measures. Thus, based on data from 39 female students, we first examined DMT inter-coder reliability by analyzing the agreement among trained judges in their coding of the same DMT protocols. Second, we constructed a "parallel" photographic picture that retained all structural characteristic of the original and analyzed DMT parallel-test reliability. Third, we examined the construct validity of the DMT by (a) employing three self-report defense-mechanism inventories and analyzing the intercorrelations between DMT defense scores and corresponding defenses in these instruments, (b) studying the relationships between DMT responses and scores on trait and state anxiety, and (c) relating DMT-defense scores to measures of self-esteem. The main results showed that the DMT can be coded with high reliability by trained coders, that the parallel-test reliability is unsatisfactory compared to traditional psychometric standards, that there is a certain generalizability in the number of perceptual distortions that people display from one picture to another, and that the construct validation provided meager empirical evidence for the conclusion that the DMT measures what it purports to measure, that is, psychological defense mechanisms.     

Parenting, achievement strategies and satisfaction in ice hockey

The aim of this study is to understand adolescent players' satisfaction as a function of parenting styles, players' achievement strategies, and their norm breaking behavior. Finnish 14- and 16-year-old ice-hockey players (n=1018) completed a questionnaire measuring their achievement strategies (SAQ; Nurmi, Salmela--Aro & Haavisto, 1995 b), as well as scales of norm breaking and satisfaction, prepared for the present study. The parents (n=979) filled in scales measuring their parenting styles (CRPR; Pulkkinen, 1996) and attitudes towards norm breaking. Results revealed that players from authoritative families who showed a high level of mastery-orientation expressed high satisfaction in playing ice hockey. Results also showed negative associations between authoritative parenting and both task irrelevant and norm breaking behavior. Parents with parental stress and those with authoritarian parenting styles showed positive attitudes to norm breaking behavior, and players from authoritarian and parental stress homes showed norm breaking behavior in ice hockey. There was no association between norm breaking behavior and player satisfaction. Our results contribute to the planning of a coaching system that serves more educational and developmental purposes, and that encourages the desire to play ice hockey as a hobby.     

The recall of missing items

In two experiments, we studied the recall of missing items. Short lists of common words were presented once and were followed immediately by a random permutation of all but one of the presented items. The task of the subject was to recall the missing item--that is, the item present in the study set but missing from the probe set. Experiment 1 replicated the high accuracy with five-item lists originally reported by Yntema and Trask (1963) and showed that the latencies were quite short (about 750 msec). Experiment 2 varied list length unpredictably and showed that accuracy was a function of both list length (four, five, or six items) and serial position. Latency was again quite short but was essentially independent of list length and serial position. It was possible to simulate most of the effects with the power set model with no free parameters (i.e., parameters that varied with the experimental manipulations). The results seemed to be more consistent with a direct access model (the power set model of TODAM; Murdock, 1995) than with a simple search or serial-scanning model.     

Characteristics of auditory agnosia in a child with severe traumatic brain injury: a case report

We present a case that is unusual in many respects from other documented incidences of auditory agnosia, including the mechanism of injury, age of the individual, and location of neurological insult. The clinical presentation is one of disturbance in the perception of spoken language, music, pitch, emotional prosody, and temporal auditory processing in the absence of significant deficits in the comprehension of written language, expressive language production, or peripheral auditory function. Furthermore, the patient demonstrates relatively preserved function in other aspects of audition such as sound localization, voice recognition, and perception of animal noises and environmental sounds. This case study demonstrates that auditory agnosia is possible following traumatic brain injury in a child, and illustrates the necessity of assessment with a wide variety of auditory stimuli to fully characterize auditory agnosia in a single individual.     

How much attention does an event file need?

Attentional requirements for the spontaneous integration of stimulus and response features were analyzed. In line with previous findings, carrying out a prepared response to the onset of a stimulus created bindings between the response and the features of that stimulus, thereby impairing subsequent performance on mismatching stimulus-response combinations. Findings demonstrate that a stimulus gets bound to a response even if its presence is neither necessary nor useful for the task at hand, it follows rather than precedes the response in time, it competes with a task-relevant stimulus, and if the response is suppressed--but only if the stimulus appears close to the response's eventual execution or abandonment. A multiple-integration model is suggested that assumes that the integration of stimulus features in perception and of response features in action planning are local processes that are independent of stimulus-response integration, which presumably is triggered by the success of the perception-action episode.     

Testing comprehension abilities in users of British Sign Language following CVA

Recent imaging (e.g., MacSweeney et al., 2002) and lesion (Hickok, Love-Geffen, & Klima, 2002) studies suggest that sign language comprehension depends primarily on left hemisphere structures. However, this may not be true of all aspects of comprehension. For example, there is evidence that the processing of topographic space in sign may be vulnerable to right hemisphere damage (e.g., Hickok, Say, Bellugi, & Klima, 1996), and the influence of iconicity on comprehension has yet to be explored. In this study, comprehension testing was conducted with 15 signers with unilateral brain damage, and with elderly Deaf controls. Four tests were administered: a test of iconic and non-iconic noun comprehension, a test of verb and sentence comprehension, a test of locative sentence comprehension, and a test of classifier comprehension. All tests were administered in British Sign Language (BSL), a language that has only recently been explored with lesioned signers (see Atkinson, Marshall, Thacker, & Woll, 2004; Marshall, Atkinson, Thacker, Woll, & Smulevitch, 2004; Marshall, Atkinson, Woll, & Thacker, in press). People with left hemisphere damage were impaired relative to controls on all tests. Those with right hemisphere damage performed well in the first two tests, but were impaired on locative sentences and classifiers. Neither group showed any effect of iconicity. The results shed further light on the laterality of sign language comprehension.     

The respective role of low and high spatial frequencies in supporting configural and featural processing of faces

One distinctive feature of processing faces, as compared to other categories, is thought to be the large dependence on configural cues such as the metric relations among features. To test the role of low spatial frequencies (LSFs) and high spatial frequencies (HSFs) in configural and featural processing, subjects were presented with triplets of faces that were filtered to preserve either LSFs (below 8 cycles per face width), HSFs (above 32 cycles per face width), or the full frequency spectrum. They were asked to match one of two probe faces to a target face. The distractor probe face differed from the target either configurally, featurally, or both featurally and configurally. When the difference was at the configural level, performance was better with LSF faces than with HSF faces. In contrast, with a featural difference, a strong performance advantage was found for HSF faces as compared to LSF faces. These results support the dominant role that LSFs play in the configural processing of faces, whereas featural processing is largely dependent on HSFs.     

Selective and nonselective transfer: positive and negative priming in a multiple-task environment

Processing of a probe stimulus can be affected either positively or negatively by presenting a related stimulus immediately before it. According to structural accounts, such effects occur because processing of the prime activates or inhibits the mental representation of the probe before it is presented. In contrast, transfer-appropriate processing accounts suggest that success in processing a probe depends on resources made available by earlier experiences of related stimuli. The authors manipulated the similarity between the prime and probe on color, lexical status, and orthographic structure, requiring either lexical decision or color identification on each. The authors observed a complex pattern of positive and negative transfer that cannot easily be explained through activation-inhibition of mental structures. Instead, that pattern provides evidence in favor of transfer-appropriate processing.