Influence of age and sex on line bisection: a study of normal performance with implications for visuospatial neglect

Line bisection is an established clinical task used to diagnose visuospatial neglect. To date, few studies have considered the extent to which age and sex as background variables contribute to bisection performance. Both variables affect the neural substrates underlying cognitive processes and hence the behavioural performance of bisection. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of age and sex on normal bisection performance, using three different line lengths to elucidate the influence of these potential contributing factors. Seventy men and 70 women, divided equally into seven age-cohorts between 14 and 80 years, bisected lines. Results indicated clear age- and sex-related differences both in the magnitude and direction of bisection deviations across the three line lengths. Differences are discussed in terms of neural changes across the adult lifespan including hemispheric differences and hormonally mediated changes.     

Indigenization and Beyond: Methodological Relationalism in the Study of Personality Across Cultural Traditions

A brief intellectual history of the indigenization movement in Asia leads to the thesis that the generation of psychological knowledge is culture dependent. Indigenous psychologies go further and insist on viewing a target group from the natives' own standpoint. Psychological decentering underlies conceptions of human existence rooted in Asian intellectual traditions, in particular, relatedness between persons predominates in Confucianism. These conceptions demand new approaches to knowledge generation that signify a paradigmatic shift from methodological individualism to methodological relationalism. An implication is that relationships precede situations in the study of personality and social behavior. We define personality as the sum total of common attributes manifest in, and abstracted from, a person's behavior directly or indirectly observed across interpersonal relationships and situations over time. We rely on the notion that there are identifiable levels of cognition to develop a metatheoretical framework for reconstructing selfhood. Confronting the subject-object dichotomy opens the door to investigations of transcendent consciousness; confronting the self-other demarcation underlying Western theories leads to the construction of self-in-relations.     

Cognition to genes via the brain in the study of conduct disorder

Although a single diagnostic label, conduct disorder, is currently applied to children exhibiting antisocial behaviour, multiple routes to the same behavioural phenomena exist. Morton and Frith's (1995) causal modelling has been fundamentally important in influencing models of cognitive/affective and associated neural differences between callous-unemotional (CU) and reactive/threat-based antisocial behaviour. Current behavioural genetic research is still catching up with the developmental cognitive neuroscience, and very few genetically informative studies differentiate between these two subtypes of antisocial behaviour. Our own work with preadolescent twins suggests that while the CU subtype is genetically vulnerable to antisocial behaviour, the non-CU subtype manifests a primarily environmental aetiology to their antisocial behaviour. Molecular genetic work to date has not differentiated between these two subtypes, and we highlight why it might be of interest to do so. Finally, we discuss how the novel approach of imaging genetics could be harnessed to study genes to cognition pathways for different subtypes of conduct disorder. Uta Frith's contributions to articulating research strategies for developmental disorders are important in conducting and interpreting this work.     

How gender-expectancy affects the processing of “them”

How sensitive is pronoun processing to expectancies based on real-world knowledge and language usage? The current study links research on the integration of gender stereotypes and number-mismatch to explore this question. It focuses on the use of them to refer to antecedents of different levels of gender-expectancy (low–cyclist, high–mechanic, known–spokeswoman). In a rating task, them is considered increasingly unnatural with greater gender-expectancy. However, participants might not be able to differentiate high-expectancy and gender-known antecedents online because they initially search for plural antecedents (e.g., Sanford & Filik), and they make all-or-nothing gender inferences. An eye-tracking study reveals early differences in the processing of them with antecedents of high gender-expectancy compared with gender-known antecedents. This suggests that participants have rapid access to the expected gender of the antecedent and the level of that expectancy.     

Investigating the outcome of the initial assessment at a national transgender health service: Time to review the process?

Background: Globally, there is a lack of a standardized assessment process prior to the initiation of gender affirming medical interventions and consequently there is a discrepancy in this process among different transgender health services.

Aim: The main objective of this study is to investigate the outcome of the initial assessment process at a national transgender health service.

Method: The outcome of people over the age of 17 years, assessed at a large national transgender health service in the United Kingdom during a 2-year period was categorized into: (1) recommendation for cross-sex hormone treatment, or (2) no recommendation for cross-sex hormone treatment. In addition, 200 case notes were reviewed in order to investigate the level of agreement between the two clinicians involved in the assessment process.

Results: During the study period, a total number of 617 people completed their assessment at the service. Following assessment 380 (61.6%) patients were recommended for cross-sex hormone treatment, leaving 237 (38.4%) patients who required a longer assessment period or were discharged. The factors associated with being recommended for cross-sex hormone treatment were having socially transitioned, not smoking, having initiated cross-sex hormones prior to assessment, being older, and assigned male at birth. Out of the 200 case notes reviewed, agreement between assessor 1 and 2 (3 months apart) was found in 88% (n = 176) of the cases.

Discussion: Although the results of the study may not be generalizable to other international centers, questioning the assessment process and the role of the assessors is important to ensure treatment is offered in a timely and efficient manner. The findings from this study suggest that the routine inclusion of two assessors needs to be reviewed.     

Gender gaps in sociopolitical attitudes: a social psychological analysis

This research examined the proposition that differential role occupancy by women and men fosters gender gaps in sociopolitical attitudes. Analyses of the General Social Survey (J. A. Davis & T. W. Smith, 1998) and a community sample showed that women, more than men, endorsed policies that are socially compassionate, traditionally moral, and supportive of equal rights for women and for gays and lesbians. To clarify the sources of these gaps, the research examined (a) similarities between gender gaps and gaps associated with other respondent attributes such as race and parenthood, (b) interactions between respondent sex and other attributes, (c) the temporal patterning of gender gaps, and (d) the mediation of attitudinal gender gaps by 3 ideological variables--commitment to equality, group-based dominance, and conservatism versus liberalism.     

Phonology in the bilingual Stroop effect

In a bilingual Stroop task, we examined between-language interference among proficient Japanese-English bilingual speakers. Participants named ink colors either in Japanese or in English. The Japanese color terms were either phonologically similar to (i.e., loan words) or dissimilar from (i.e., traditional color terms) English color terms. For both response languages, a significant between-language Stroop effect was found despite the orthographic dissimilarity between the languages. The magnitude of the between-language interference was larger with the phonologically similar terms. These findings implicate direct links connecting phonologically similar matching words in the lexicons of proficient bilingual speakers of dissimilar languages and imply that phonological processing in lexical access occurs even when the access is done unintentionally.     

Internal models for bi-manual tasks

Co-ordinated bi-manual actions form the basis for many everyday motor skills. In this review, the internal model approach to the problem of bi-manual co-ordination is presented. Bi-manual coordinative tasks are often regarded as a hallmark of complex action. They are often associated with object manipulation, whether the holding of a single object between the two hands or holding an object in each hand. However, the task of movement and control is deceptively difficult even when we execute an action with a single hand without holding an object. The simplest voluntary action requires the problems of co-ordination, timing and interaction between neural, muscular and skeletal structures to be overcome. When we are making a movement whilst holding an object, a further requirement is that an internal model is able to predict the dynamics of the object that is being held as well as the dynamics of the motor system. There has been extensive work examining the formation of internal models when acting in novel environments. The majority of studies examine uni-lateral learning of a task generally to the participant's dominant hand. However, many everyday motor tasks are bi-manual, and the existing findings regarding the learning of internal models in uni-manual tasks and their subsequent generalization highlights the complexities that must underlie the formation of bi-manual tasks. Our ability to perform bi-manual tasks raises interesting questions about how internal models are specified for co-ordinative actions, and also for how the motor system learns to represent the properties of objects.