Motor proficiency and emotional/behavioural disturbance in autism and Asperger's disorder: another piece of the neurological puzzle?

The relationship of motor proficiency with emotional/behavioural disturbance, autistic symptoms and communication disturbance was investigated in children diagnosed with autism and Asperger's disorder (AD). The Movement Assessment Battery for Children was used as a measure of motor impairment, and the Developmental Behavioural Checklist was used as a measure of emotional/behavioural disturbance in the following groups: AD (n?=?22), high functioning autism (HFA) (n?=?23), LFA (n?=?8) and typically developing children (n?=?20). The HFA group had more difficulty with motor items, such as ball skills and balance, than did the AD group. There were significant positive correlations between impairments in motor proficiency (in particular ball skills and balance) and emotional/behavioural disturbance, autistic symptoms and communication disturbance. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that there are qualitative and quantitative differences in the motor profile between autism and AD. In addition, the association between motor proficiency impairment and emotional/behavioural disturbance in autism and AD emphasizes the importance for screening of co-occurring emotional/behavioural symptoms in individuals with motor difficulties. These findings have implications for the potential use of adjunct motor measures in the diagnosis and definition of autism spectrum disorders.     

Information retrieval with semantic memory model

Psycholinguistic theories of semantic memory form the basis of understanding of natural language concepts. These theories are used here as an inspiration for implementing a computational model of semantic memory in the form of semantic network. Combining this network with a vector-based object-relation-feature value representation of concepts that includes also weights for confidence and support, allows for recognition of concepts by referring to their features, enabling a semantic search algorithm. This algorithm has been used for word games, in particular the 20-question game in which the program tries to guess a concept that a human player thinks about. The game facilitates lexical knowledge validation and acquisition through the interaction with humans via supervised dialog templates. The elementary linguistic competencies of the proposed model have been evaluated assessing how well it can represent the meaning of linguistic concepts. To study properties of information retrieval based on this type of semantic representation in contexts derived from on-going dialogs experiments in limited domains have been performed. Several similarity measures have been used to compare the completeness of knowledge retrieved automatically and corrected through active dialogs to a “golden standard”. Comparison of semantic search with human performance has been made in a series of 20-question games. On average results achieved by human players were better than those obtained by semantic search, but not by a wide margin.     

Does the A-not-B error in adult pet dogs indicate sensitivity to human communication?

Recent dog-infant comparisons have indicated that the experimenter's communicative signals in object hide-and-search tasks increase the probability of perseverative (A-not-B) errors in both species (Topál et al. 2009). These behaviourally similar results, however, might reflect different mechanisms in dogs and in children. Similar errors may occur if the motor response of retrieving the object during the A trials cannot be inhibited in the B trials or if the experimenter's movements and signals toward the A hiding place in the B trials ('sham-baiting') distract the dogs' attention. In order to test these hypotheses, we tested dogs similarly to Topál et al. (2009) but eliminated the motor search in the A trials and 'sham-baiting' in the B trials. We found that neither an inability to inhibit previously rewarded motor response nor insufficiencies in their working memory and/or attention skills can explain dogs' erroneous choices. Further, we replicated the finding that dogs have a strong tendency to commit the A-not-B error after ostensive-communicative hiding and demonstrated the crucial effect of socio-communicative cues as the A-not-B error diminishes when location B is ostensively enhanced. These findings further support the hypothesis that the dogs' A-not-B error may reflect a special sensitivity to human communicative cues. Such object-hiding and search tasks provide a typical case for how susceptibility to human social signals could (mis)lead domestic dogs.     

Psychometric properties and concurrent validity of two exercise addiction measures: A population wide study

ObjectivesThe existence of exercise addiction has been examined in numerous studies. However, none of the measures developed for exercise addiction assessment have been validated on representative samples. Furthermore, estimates of exercise addiction prevalence in the general population are not available. The objective of the present study was to validate the Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI; Terry, Szabo, & Griffiths, 2004), and the Exercise Dependence Scale (EDS; Hausenblas & Downs, 2002b), and to estimate the prevalence of exercise addiction in general population.DesignExercise addiction was assessed within the framework of the National Survey on Addiction Problems in Hungary (NSAPH), a national representative study for the population aged 18–64 years (N = 2710).Method474 people in the sample (57% males; mean age 33.2 years) who reported to exercise at least once a week were asked to complete the two questionnaires (EAI, EDS).ResultsConfirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) indicated good fit both in the case of EAI (CFI = 0.971; TLI = 0.952; RMSEA = 0.052) and EDS (CFI = 0.938; TLI = 0.922; RMSEA = 0.049); and confirmed the factor structure of the two scales. The correlation between the two measures was high (r = 0.79). Results showed that 6.2% (EDS) and 10.1% (EAI) of the population were characterized as nondependent-symptomatic exercisers, while the proportion of the at-risk exercisers were 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively.ConclusionsBoth EAI and EDS proved to be a reliable assessment tool for exercise addiction, a phenomenon that is present in the 0.3–0.5% of the adult general population.     

Modeling body state-dependent multisensory integration

The brain often integrates multisensory sources of information in a way that is close to the optimal according to Bayesian principles. Since sensory modalities are grounded in different, body-relative frames of reference, multisensory integration requires accurate transformations of information. We have shown experimentally, for example, that a rotating tactile stimulus on the palm of the right hand can influence the judgment of ambiguously rotating visual displays. Most significantly, this influence depended on the palm orientation: when facing upwards, a clockwise rotation on the palm yielded a clockwise visual judgment bias; when facing downwards, the same clockwise rotation yielded a counterclockwise bias. Thus, tactile rotation cues biased visual rotation judgment in a head-centered reference frame. Recently, we have generated a modular, multimodal arm model that is able to mimic aspects of such experiments. The model co-represents the state of an arm in several modalities, including a proprioceptive, joint angle modality as well as head-centered orientation and location modalities. Each modality represents each limb or joint separately. Sensory information from the different modalities is exchanged via local forward and inverse kinematic mappings. Also, re-afferent sensory feedback is anticipated and integrated via Kalman filtering. Information across modalities is integrated probabilistically via Bayesian-based plausibility estimates, continuously maintaining a consistent global arm state estimation. This architecture is thus able to model the described effect of posture-dependent motion cue integration: tactile and proprioceptive sensory information may yield top-down biases on visual processing. Equally, such information may influence top-down visual attention, expecting particular arm-dependent motion patterns. Current research implements such effects on visual processing and attention.     

Modeling body state-dependent multisensory integration

The brain often integrates multisensory sources of information in a way that is close to the optimal according to Bayesian principles. Since sensory modalities are grounded in different, body-relative frames of reference, multisensory integration requires accurate transformations of information. We have shown experimentally, for example, that a rotating tactile stimulus on the palm of the right hand can influence the judgment of ambiguously rotating visual displays. Most significantly, this influence depended on the palm orientation: when facing upwards, a clockwise rotation on the palm yielded a clockwise visual judgment bias; when facing downwards, the same clockwise rotation yielded a counterclockwise bias. Thus, tactile rotation cues biased visual rotation judgment in a head-centered reference frame. Recently, we have generated a modular, multimodal arm model that is able to mimic aspects of such experiments. The model co-represents the state of an arm in several modalities, including a proprioceptive, joint angle modality as well as head-centered orientation and location modalities. Each modality represents each limb or joint separately. Sensory information from the different modalities is exchanged via local forward and inverse kinematic mappings. Also, re-afferent sensory feedback is anticipated and integrated via Kalman filtering. Information across modalities is integrated probabilistically via Bayesian-based plausibility estimates, continuously maintaining a consistent global arm state estimation. This architecture is thus able to model the described effect of posture-dependent motion cue integration: tactile and proprioceptive sensory information may yield top–down biases on visual processing. Equally, such information may influence top–down visual attention, expecting particular arm-dependent motion patterns. Current research implements such effects on visual processing and attention.     

On the recognition of emotional vocal expressions: motivations for a holistic approach

Human beings seem to be able to recognize emotions from speech very well and information communication technology aims to implement machines and agents that can do the same. However, to be able to automatically recognize affective states from speech signals, it is necessary to solve two main technological problems. The former concerns the identification of effective and efficient processing algorithms capable of capturing emotional acoustic features from speech sentences. The latter focuses on finding computational models able to classify, with an approximation as good as human listeners, a given set of emotional states. This paper will survey these topics and provide some insights for a holistic approach to the automatic analysis, recognition and synthesis of affective states.     

Development of decision making: sequential versus integrative rules

Decisions can be made by applying a variety of decision-making rules-sequential rules in which decisions are based on a sequential evaluation of choice dimensions and the integrative normative rule in which decisions are based on an integration of choice dimensions. In this study, we investigated the developmental trajectory of such decision-making rules. In the Gambling Machine Task, participants choose between options that differ in three dimensions: frequency of loss, amount of loss, and certain gain. The task was administered to 231 children and adolescents (age range=8-17 years). Latent group analysis of their performance allowed precise classification of the underlying decision rules. The majority of participants used sequential decision rules, and the number of evaluated dimensions in these rules increased with age. Integrative rule use decreased with age. We discuss these results in light of traditional developmental theories and fuzzy trace theory.     

Linguistic labels: Conceptual markers or object features?

Linguistic labels affect inductive generalization; however, the mechanism underlying these effects remains unclear. According to one similarity-based model, SINC (similarity, induction, naming, and categorization), early in development labels are features of objects contributing to the overall similarity of compared entities, with early induction being similarity based. If this is the case, then not only identical but also phonologically similar labels may contribute to the overall similarity and thus to induction. These predictions were tested in a series of experiments with 5-year-olds and adults. In Experiments 1-5 participants performed a label extension task, whereas in Experiment 6 they performed a feature induction task. Results indicate that phonological similarity contributes to early induction and support the notion that for young children labels are features of objects.     

Enhanced recognition and recall of new words in 7- and 12-year-olds following a period of offline consolidation

Recent studies of adults have found evidence for consolidation effects in the acquisition of novel words, but little is known about whether such effects are found developmentally. In two experiments, we familiarized children with novel nonwords (e.g., biscal) and tested their recognition and recall of these items. In Experiment 1, 7-year-olds were then retested on either the same day or the following day to examine changes in performance after a short delay compared with a longer delay that included sleep. Experiment 2 used two age groups (7- and 12-year-olds), with all participants being retested 24h later. The 12-year-olds accurately recognized the novel nonwords immediately after exposure, as did the 7-year-olds in Experiment 2 (but not in Experiment 1), suggesting generally good initial rates of learning. Experiment 1 revealed improved recognition of the novel nonwords after both short (3- to 4-h) and longer (24-h) delays. In contrast, recall was initially poor but showed improvements only when children were retested 24h later, not after a 3- to 4-h delay. Similar improvements were observed in both age groups despite better overall performance in 12-year-olds. We argue that children, like adults, exhibit offline consolidation effects on the formation of novel phonological representations.