Memory impairment and Benign Epilepsy with centrotemporal spike (BECTS): A growing suspicion

Benign Epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS) is considered a benign type of epilepsy; nevertheless a significant number of children present clear and heterogeneous cognitive deficits such as memory disturbances. Thus far, evidence about memory impairment has been less than conclusive. To clarify the quality of memory functioning in BECTS children, an analysis of existing findings has been conducted trying to identify the type of memory deficits and their underlying factors. Short- and long-term declarative memory are impaired in BECTS children, with both verbal and non-verbal material; co-occurrence of attentional, linguistic and behavioral disturbances is reported. In children with continuous spikes and waves during the slow-wave sleep pattern the normal downscaling of slow-wave activity is absent, disrupting plastic brain processes of sleep-related memory consolidation. In BECTS children, NREM sleep interictal epileptiform discharges (IED) may interfere in the dialogue between temporal and frontal cortex, causing declarative memory deficits: the role of NREM sleep IED acquires a special importance, leading to methodological guidance and suggesting aims for future researches in the field of childhood neuroscience.     

Societal Threat to Safety,Compensatory Control,and Right‐Wing Authoritarianism

We analyzed directly and indirectly the relationships between societal threat to safety, perceived control, and the increase in right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) in two studies. In Study 1 (national sample of the Italian population, N = 1,169), we performed a longitudinal analysis structured into three waves (January 2003, September 2004, and January 2005). A moderated regression analysis showed that RWA increased from 2003 to 2005 as a function of perceived societal threat to safety more among low‐ than among high RWA scorers. In experimental Study 2 (Italian university students, N = 131) a moderated mediation model showed loss of perceived control to mediate the relation between societal threat to safety and the increase in RWA, but among low authoritarians only. Limitations, implications, and possible developments of this research are discussed.     

Effects of negative content on the processing of gender information: An event-related potential study

Previous research on emotion in language has mainly concerned the impact of emotional information on several aspects of lexico-semantic analyses of single words. However, affective influences on morphosyntactic processing are less understood. In the present study, we focused on the impact of negative valence in the processing of gender agreement relations. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read three-word phrases and performed a syntactic judgment task. Negative and neutral adjectives could agree or disagree in gender with the preceding noun. At an electrophysiological level, the amplitude of a left anterior negativity (LAN) to gender agreement mismatches decreased in negative words, relative to neutral words. The behavioral data suggested that LAN amplitudes might be indexing the processing costs associated with the detection of gender agreement errors, since the detection of gender mismatches resulted in faster and more accurate responses than did the detection of correct gender agreement relations. According to this view, it seems that negative content facilitated the processes implicated in the early detection of gender agreement mismatches. However, gender agreement violations in negative words triggered processes involved in the reanalysis and repair of the syntactic structure, as reflected in larger P600 amplitudes to incorrect than to correct phrases, irrespective of their emotional valence.     

ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese elementary to middle school textbooks

In this article, we introduce ESCOLEX, the first European Portuguese children’s lexical database with grade-level-adjusted word frequency statistics. Computed from a 3.2-million-word corpus, ESCOLEX provides 48,381 word forms extracted from 171 elementary and middle school textbooks for 6- to 11-year-old children attending the first six grades in the Portuguese educational system. Like other children’s grade-level databases (e.g., Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971; Corral, Ferrero, & Goikoetxea, Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1009–1017, 2009; Lété, Sprenger-Charolles, & Colé, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 156–166, 2004; Zeno, Ivens, Millard, Duvvuri, 1995), ESCOLEX provides four frequency indices for each grade: overall word frequency (F), index of dispersion across the selected textbooks (D), estimated frequency per million words (U), and standard frequency index (SFI). It also provides a new measure, contextual diversity (CD). In addition, the number of letters in the word and its part(s) of speech, number of syllables, syllable structure, and adult frequencies taken from P-PAL (a European Portuguese corpus-based lexical database; Soares, Comesaña, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, …, Machado, 2010; Soares, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, França, …, Comesaña, in press) are provided. ESCOLEX will be a useful tool both for researchers interested in language processing and development and for professionals in need of verbal materials adjusted to children’s developmental stages. ESCOLEX can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.     

Functional mapping of left parietal areas involved in simple addition and multiplication. A single‐case study of qualitative analysis of errors

All electrostimulation studies on arithmetic have so far solely reported general errors. Nonetheless, a classification of the errors during stimulation can inform us about underlying arithmetic processes. The present electrostimulation study was performed in a case of left parietal glioma. The patient's erroneous responses suggested that calculation was mainly applied for addition and a combination of retrieval and calculation was mainly applied for multiplication. The findings of the present single‐case study encourage follow up with further data collection with the same paradigm.     

The Care and Development of Children Living in Contexts of Poverty

Human development is determined by both genetic and environmental factors, especially during early childhood. Recently, research has indicated that the circumstances surrounding poverty can significantly influence children’s development. In this study, we aimed to measure the developmental level of children living in low-income, rural areas in northern Colombia. A total of 629 children (aged 0–5 years) were assessed using the Battelle Developmental Inventory. Results indicated that 17?% of the participants had a general developmental delay for their age group. This was especially true for scores on cognitive development (35.5?%) and communication (21.5?%). Moreover, the number of children with developmental delay increased at 6 months of age and continued to increase after 1 year in the communication and cognitive domains. The findings of this study suggest that impoverished social contexts—such as the one studied herein—offer opportunities that favor the development of the social domain, but restrict the development of the cognitive domain. Therefore, to promote cognitive development, individuals within children’s environment need to actively and intentionally stimulate them. Thus, there is a need for interventions that will improve environmental conditions; especially those that will help parents improve their caregiving practices and train educational staff to recognize and respond to the stimulation needs of children, especially those developmental domains that are affected by the environment.     

Reply to My Critics: (Re-)Defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - In (Re-)Defining Racism, I offer the first comprehensive examination of the philosophical literature on racism and argue for a new methodological approach that I...     

Social attention across borders: A cross-cultural investigation of gaze cueing elicited by same- and other-ethnicity faces

The gaze-cueing effect is a robust phenomenon which illustrates how attention can be shaped by social factors. In four experiments, the present study explored the interaction between the ethnic membership of the participant and that of the face providing the gaze cue. Firstly, we aimed to further investigate the differential impact of White, Black, and Asian faces on the gaze-cueing effect in White individuals. Secondly, we aimed to explore, for the first time, the impact of faces belonging to different ethnicities on gaze cueing in Chinese participants. The results allowed to rule out alternative accounts and showed that White participants exhibit a gaze-cueing effect for White and Asian faces, but not for Black faces, consistent with previous studies. As regards Chinese participants, the overall findings suggested a stronger gaze-cueing effect for White faces than for Asian faces. The results are discussed with reference to differences in the perceived social status of the various groups, pointing to the need of taking into account different cultural contexts.     

A follow-up study on students attending a university counselling service in Northern Italy

The aims of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness of a university counselling service in Northern Italy, to assess the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of students who used counselling service, and to assess the psychological conditions of the students who ended the counselling after a 4 month follow-up period. The study involved 100 students, who filled out the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), the Brief COPE Inventory, and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). The results showed that who received counselling were positively affected by this experience. The areas of benefit were psychological well-being, coping behaviours, ability to positively reframe problems and less sense of guilt. Additional studies are needed to identify which factors influence the outcomes of university counselling services in Italy. These studies would be important to evaluate the services rendered, upgrade the skills of counsellors and visualise priority areas of need.