A clinician survey of speech and non-speech characteristics of neurogenic stuttering

This study presents survey data on 58 Dutch-speaking patients with neurogenic stuttering following various neurological injuries. Stroke was the most prevalent cause of stuttering in our patients, followed by traumatic brain injury, neurodegenerative diseases, and other causes. Speech and non-speech characteristics were analyzed separately for these four etiology groups. Results suggested possible group differences, including site of lesion and influence of speech conditions on stuttering. Other characteristics, such as within-word localization of disfluencies and presence of secondary behaviors were comparable across the etiology groups. The implications of our results for the diagnosis of neurogenic stuttering will be discussed.

Educational objectives: After reading this article, the reader will be able to: (1) provide a concise overview of the main literature on neurogenic stuttering; (2) discuss the speech and non-speech characteristics of neurogenic stuttering; (3) provide an overview of current clinical practices for intervention with neurogenic stuttering patients and their perceived outcome.     

Nonverbal signals speak up: Association between perceptual nonverbal dominance and emotional intelligence

Emotional communication uses verbal and nonverbal means. In case of conflicting signals, nonverbal information is assumed to have a stronger impact. It is unclear, however, whether perceptual nonverbal dominance varies between individuals and whether it is linked to emotional intelligence. Using audiovisual stimulus material comprising verbal and nonverbal emotional cues that were varied independently, perceptual nonverbal dominance profiles and their relations to emotional intelligence were examined. Nonverbal dominance was found in every participant, ranging from 55 to 100%. Moreover, emotional intelligence, particularly the ability to understand emotions, correlated positively with nonverbal dominance. Furthermore, higher overall emotional intelligence as well as a higher ability to understand emotions were linked to smaller reaction time differences between emotionally incongruent and congruent stimuli. The association between perceptual nonverbal dominance and emotional intelligence, and more specifically the ability to understand emotions, might reflect an adaptive process driven by the experience of higher authenticity in nonverbal cues.     

Episodic autobiographical memory in depression: Specificity, autonoetic consciousness, and self-perspective

Autobiographical memory (AM) and the self are closely linked. AM retrieval in depression is characterized by a lack of specificity, suggesting an impairment of episodic AM. Autonoetic consciousness and self-perspective, which are critical to episodic AM, have never been addressed in depression. Twenty-one depressed inpatients and 21 matched controls were given an episodic AM task designed to assess positive and negative memories regarding specificity, autonoetic consciousness (remember/know procedure), and self-perspective (field/observer procedure). For specificity, "remember", and "field" responses, ANOVAs revealed a main group effect and a group x valence interaction. Between groups, patients showed lower scores than controls for positive memories. Within groups, patients showed greater scores for negative memories, and controls showed greater scores for positive memories. There is a global episodic AM impairment of positive memories in depression regarding specificity, autonoetic consciousness, and self-perspective. Our results suggest new cognitive interventions to improve the self-relevance of positive memories in depression.     

The Ebbinghaus illusion modulates visual search for size-defined targets: evidence for preattentive processing of apparent object size

Five search experiments investigated whether the apparent size of objects is, like their retinal size, coded in preattentive vision. Observers searched for a target circle that was either larger or smaller than distractor circles, with both types of test circles surrounded by context circles modulating apparent size (i.e., the Ebbinghaus illusion). The size ratio between the test and the context circles was manipulated in such a way that the test circles were surrounded by, for example, smaller context circles (making the larger target appear even larger) or by larger context circles (making the smaller distractors appear even smaller). Under optimal conditions, the detection reaction times were independent of the number of test circles in the display, and the Ebbinghaus illusion facilitated the detection of the target even in comparison with control conditions without any context circles. This finding is consistent with preattentive, spatially parallel processing of apparent size.     

Who Are the People Reluctant to Participate in Research? Personality Correlates of Four Different Types of Nonresponse as Inferred from Self‐ and Observer Ratings

This article outlines a typology of nonresponse biases that may occur in research based on voluntary participation and presents empirical evidence on the relationships between nonresponse and personality traits. We describe four different types of nonresponse occurring at the recruitment stage, during data collection, and at the stage of recruitment for further research. Personality correlates of all types of nonresponse were investigated using data from an online survey e-mailed to owners of personal Web sites, and observer ratings on the targets' personality were obtained. After reviewing the target persons' Web sites, observers judged complete nonrespondents as less agreeable and less open to experience than respondents. Furthermore, higher extraversion, higher openness to experience, and higher narcissism differentiated volunteers for follow-up research from nonvolunteers in both self- and observer ratings. We found only weak evidence of personality correlates of careless and selective item nonresponse. Findings show that nonresponse biases may have significant implications for representativeness in surveys and personality test norms.     

Destruktivität in Paarbeziehungen

Quarreling couples caught in destructive patterns of communication often cause difficult situations during couple therapy. Such communication patterns range from pure verbal humiliation and insults up to outbursts of violence. In order to remain capable of therapy, psychotherapists must know the underlying mechanisms that provoke and maintain the destructive viscious circles. Moreover, they must have at their disposal the required explanatory ideas and practical intervention strategies for de-escalation and interruption of these destructive patterns.     

Perceptual representation of visible surfaces

Two experiments are reported in which we examined the ability of observers to identify landmarks on surfaces from different vantage points. In Experiment 1, observers were asked to mark the local maxima and minima of surface depth, whereas in Experiment 2, they were asked to mark the ridges and valleys on a surface. In both experiments, the marked locations were consistent across different observers and remained reliably stable over different viewing directions. These findings indicate that randomly generated smooth surface patches contain perceptually salient landmarks that have a high degree of viewpoint invariance. Implications of these findings are considered for the recognition of smooth surface patches and for the depiction of such surfaces in line drawings.     

Estimating local shape from shading in the presence of global shading

In theory, global shading may help with the estimation of local surface structurefrom shading (e.g., in specifying the illuminant direction). Empirically, we do not know whether human observers combine the information given by the local and global shading to estimate local shape. Observers had to indicate the orientation of a local elongated perturbation with or without global shading information provided by a background surface. Our psychophysical results show the following:

1. Observers do not estimate the orientation of the local perturbation more accuratelywith global shading information than they do in the absence of such information.
2. Responses depend dramatically on the inclination between the illuminant direction and the viewing direction. For an inclination of 20°, observers indicate more or less the orientation of the local ridge; however, for an inclination of 40°, they indicate either the direction of the illuminant or an orientation close to the shadow edge of the perturbation. Most subjects show some combination of these behaviors. This behavior is not altered by global shading information.

We conclude that in our paradigm, global shading information does not aid the estimation of local shape.     

Analysis of haptic perception of materials by multidimensional scaling and physical measurements of roughness and compressibility

In this paper, results of a free sorting task of 124 different material samples are analysed using multidimensional scaling. The relevant number of dimensions for haptic perception of materials is estimated to be 4. In addition, the haptic material space is calibrated by means of physical measurements of compressibility and roughness. The relation between objective and perceived compressibility and that between objective and perceived roughness could be described by an exponential function.     

On the Affine Structure of Perceptual Space

Affine geometry is a generalization of Euclidean geometry in which distance can be scaled along parallel directions, though relative distances in different directions may be incommensurable. This article presents a new procedure for testing the intrinsic affine structure of a psychological space by having subjects perform bisection judgments over multiple directions. If those judgments are internally consistent with one another, they must satisfy a theorem first proved by Pierre Varignon around 300 years ago. In the experiment reported here, this procedure was employed to measure the perceived structure of a visual ground surface. The results revealed that observers' judgments were systematically distorted relative to the physical environment, but that the judged bisections in different directions had an internally consistent affine structure. Implications of these findings for other possible response tasks are considered.