Central auditory processing : III. The “cocktail party” effect and anterior temporal lobectomy

The capacity to selectively attend to only one of multiple, spatially separated, simultaneous sound sources—the “cocktail party” effect—was evaluated in normal subjects and in those with anterior temporal lobectomy using common environmental sounds. A significant deficit in this capacity was observed for those stimuli located on the side of space contralateral to the lobectomy, a finding consistent with the hypothesis that within each anterior temporal lobe is a mechanism that is normally capable of enhancing the perceptual salience of one acoustic stimulus on the opposite side of space, when other sound sources are present on that side. Damage to this mechanism also appears to be associated with a deficit of spatial localization for sounds contralateral to the lesion.     

Programmed stuttering therapy for children: Comparison of four establishment programs

Four different establishment programs (programmed traditional, delayed auditory feedback, pause, and gradual increase in length and complexity of utterance) for improving the fluency of school-age children who stutter were compared. The programs were carried out by eight public school clinicians with 16 children (eight elementary and eight junior-senior high school) in their respective schools. All four programs produced important improvement in the speech fluency of the 16 children. All the children demonstrated transfer of fluency to extratraining settings. The delayed auditory feedback program required the least therapy hours, but it was difficult for the clinicians to operate correctly. The gradual increase in length and complexity of utterance programs produced the best overall results. The transfer and maintenance programs provided for additional generalization and permanency of fluency. Follow-up revealed that the children continued their increased level of fluency.     

Age and cohort effects on personality factor scores across sexes and racial/ethnic groups

Substantial differences exist across ethnic groups and sexes in generational changes in status among groups residing in Hawaii. Despite these generational differences across groups, age differences in personality are remarkably consistent across sexes and racial/ethnic groups, and the few Sex x Age, Ethnicity x Age or Sex x Ethnicity x Age interactions account for little variance in scores. It is concluded that age/generational differences in personality factor scores in these populations result from age and not, to any major degree, from cohort effects.     

Recognition memory for pictures as a function of poststimulus interval: an empirical clarification of existing literature

Shaffer and Shiffrin (1972) found no effect of the duration of a blank poststimulus interval on recognition memory for visual scenes. The majority of subsequent studies, however, have found a positive relationship between interval duration and recognition accuracy. The present experiments were conducted to clarify these contradictory outcomes. Experiment 1 determined that Shaffer and Shiffrin's results are replicable with the method that they used in which stimulus durations and poststimulus-interval durations vary randomly within the study list. Experiments 2-3 showed that this random intermixing of durations is the critical factor that results in poststimulus interval having no effect. The results were interpreted in terms of a voluntary rehearsal process that is abandoned when there is uncertainty regarding the time of onset and offset of the stimuli.     

A critical evaluation of some commonly-employed methods for the assessment of type a coronary-prone behaviour

Type A coronary-prone behaviour has been repeatedly associated with an increased incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) amongst middle-aged men and women. This association appears to be independent of other standard CHD risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and elevated serum cholesterol levels. This paper presents normative and correlational data for a number of commonly-employed self-report measures of Type A behaviour and the structured interview. These data replicate U.S. findings that self-report measures tend to correlate only moderately with the Structured-Interview method of assessment of Type A behaviour. The implications of these data for researchers attempting to assess Type A behaviour, especially with limited resources, are discussed.     

Mouse killing in rats induced by lesions of the medial hypothalamus or medial accumbens: short-term preoperative exposure to a mouse does not suppress the killing

Rats were either exposed or not exposed to a mouse in their living cage for a 48-hr period. At the end of this time a bilateral lesion was made in the medial accumbens region or in the medial hypothalamus. When tested 2 days postoperatively, the killing frequency among rats that had been exposed to mice preoperatively was not significantly lower than that of rats that were not preoperatively exposed. The ineffectiveness of preoperative experience in suppressing the mouse killing induced by medial accumbens and medial hypothalamic lesions is similar to that found previously with dorsal-median raphe lesions and olfactory bulb lesions and is in contrast to the ease with which preoperative experience prevents mouse killing induced by septal lesions and serotonergic lesions induced by 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine.     

Can attention give a left-ear advantage for verbal stimuli?

Three independent groups of 8 subjects listened monaurally to a randomized list of 50 common and 50 rare words and responded ‘yes’ to rare words. Responses were analyzed for correct identifications of rare words. A 50:50 group heard an equal number of words in right and left ears and gave a small but non-significant right-ear superiority. A 66:34 group heard nearly twice as many words in the right ear as the left and gave a significant right-ear superiority. A 34:66 group heard nearly twice as many words in the left ear as the right and gave a significant left-ear superiority. Responses were also analyzed according to signal-detection theory. Implications are discussed for theories of ear advantages.     

Reconstruction of preverbal experiences

Only a few analysts (Deutsch, 1947, 1952; Braat?y, 1954) have systematically tried to investigate how nonverbal behavior may be derived from events and experiences from the preverbal phase of development. Their approaches to the analysis of such behavior differ. Extracts of an analysis are used to illustrate basic technical and theoretical questions with regard to the possibility of making use of nonverbal material to reconstruct preverbal experiences. It is inferred that the analyst's visual observations of the patient's nonverbal behavior may be a cue to significant events and trauma from the preverbal period. Besides, the specific visual imagery of the patient that, in this case, emerged just after the appearance of nonverbal behavior, may be a valuable source of data for analytic reconstruction.