Speech perception and memory coding in relation to reading ability

Previous work has demonstrated that children who are poor readers have short-term memory deficits in tasks in which the stimuli lend themselves to phonetic coding. The aim of the present study was to explore whether the poor readers' memory dificit may have its origin in perception with the encoding of the stimuli. Three experiments were conducted with third grade good and poor readers. As in earlier experiments, the poor readers were found to perform less well on recall of random word strings and to be less affected by the phonetic characteristics (rhyming or not rhyming) of the items (Experiment 1). In addition, the poor readers produced more errors of transposition (in the nonrhyming strings) than did the good readers, a further indication of the poor readers' problems with memory for order. The subjects were tested on two auditory perception tasks, one employing words (Experiment 2) and the other nonspeech environmental sounds (Experiment 3). Each was presented under two conditions: with a favorable signal-to-noise ratio and with masking. The poor readers made significantly more errors than the good readers when listening to speech in noise, but did not differ in perception of speech without noise or in perception of nonspeech environmental sounds, whether noise-masked or not. Together, the results of the perception studies suggest that poor readers have a perceptual difficulty that is specific to speech. It is suggested that the short-term memory deficits characteristic of poor readers may stem from material-specific problems of perceptual processing.     

Verification of Statements about Story Worlds That Deviate from Normal Conceptions of Time: What Is True aboutEinstein''s Dreams?

College students read chapters from a novel written by Alan Lightman (Einstein's Dreams) and later provided verification judgments on the truth/falsity of test statements. Each chapter described a different fictional village that incorporated assumptions about time that deviate from our normal TIME schema, e.g., citizens knowing exactly when the world will end, time flowing backward instead of forward. These novel assumptions about time provided interesting insights about life and reality. In two experiments, we examined whether readers could accurately incorporate these novel assumptions about time in the fictional story worlds, as manifested in the verification judgments for statements after story comprehension. The test statements included verbatim typical, verbatim atypical, inference typical, and inference atypical information from the perspective of mundane reality that meshes with a normal TIME schema. Verification ratings were collected on a 6-point scale in Experiment 1, whereas Experiment 2 used a signal–response technique in which binary true/false decisions were extracted at −.5, 1.5, 3.5, 5.5, and 10.0 s. The college students were measured on literary expertise, reading skill, working memory span, and reading time. Readers with comparatively high literary expertise showed truth discrimination scores that were compatible with aschema copy plus tagmodel, which assumes that readers are good at detecting and remembering atypical verbatim information; this model predicts better (and faster) truth discrimination for verbatim atypical statements than for verbatim typical statements. In contrast, fast readers with comparatively low literary expertise were compatible with afilteringmodel; this model predicts that readers gloss over (or suppress) atypical verbatim information and show advantages for verbatim typical information. All groups of readers had trouble inferentially propagating the novel assumptions about time in a fictional story world, but the slower readers were more accurate in their verification of the atypical inferences. Aconstruction–integrationmodel could explain the interactions among literary expertise, reading time, and the typicality of test statements.     

Using children's humor to clarify the relationship between linguistic awareness and early reading ability.

This study uses linguistic humor to show that an awareness of only those linguistic units transcribed by the orthography bears a special relation to early reading success. The subjects were 48 second-grade children tested on ten "phoneme/morpheme" riddles which manipulate phonemes and bound morphemes and ten "control" riddles which depend on awareness of other aspects of linguistic structure and "common sense". Each child also received the Word Identification and Word Attack subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Reading ability was significantly related to correct resolution of the phoneme/morpheme riddles but not to correct resolution of the control riddles. PPVT scores were significantly related to performance on both types of riddles but not to reading ability. Thus, while IQ is related to the resolution of riddles in general, reading ability has a special relation to riddles which manipulate phonemes and morphemes, consistent with the morphophonological nature of English orthography.     

Differences Between Australian and Japanese Students in Reported Use of Decision Processes

Decision making is an activity found in all cultures. Although many theoretical models have been developed to explain human decision making, very few have taken the role of culture into account. In this paper the importance of cultural influences on self-reported decision-making styles is examined, with particular emphasis on the dominant cultural pattern (i.e. “group orientation” versus “individual orientation”). Results of a questionnaire study of 743 Japanese and 309 Australian university students are presented. As predicted, Japanese students reported greater use of decision processes or behaviours associated with the involvement and influence of others (“collateral role”), while Australian students reported greater use of decision processes associated with self-reliance and personal ability (“individual role”).     

Spiritual Wellness for Clients With HIV/AIDS: Review of Counseling Issues

The epidemic of HIV/AIDS has resulted in an increasing population of individuals in need of counseling services: persons living with AIDS, as well as family, friends, and caregivers. The relationship between HIV/AIDS clients' counseling and spiritual issues is demonstrated by a review of salient literature. Three broad themes are used: terminal illness issues such as post-death existence and existential meaning of life, religious disenfranchisement from society or families of origin, and multicultural spiritual and religious issues. Practical recommendations for counselors and research implications are included.     

Vicarious and direct counterconditioning of test anxiety through individual and group desensitization

Vicarious and direct desensitization were compared for individual and group treatment of test anxiety. Fifty seventh-graders were assigned by stratified random sampling to the following treatment conditions: direct-individual; vicarious-individual; direct-group; group-observing-group; group-observing-model. Twenty-one eighth-graders served as no-treatment controls. Upon completion of the experimental phase, all subjects were administered a measure of test anxiety and a reading test. As predicted, experimental subjects improved significantly, relative to controls, on both outcome measures; as further expected, the experimental variations did not produce significantly different outcomes among treatment conditions. Neither sex of subject nor assignment to alternative therapists qualified the findings.     

The Development of an Analytic Perspective in the Group Leader: Some Basic Thoughts

Previous experience working with individuals on a one-to-one basis along with previous analytic therapy are important prerequisites for analytic group training. Training must emphasize understanding of group-as-a-whole processes, such as basic assumption life, complex transference manifestations, as well as awareness of one's countertransference toward individuals, subgroups and the group-as-a-whole. Specific concepts derived from object-relations theory such as projective identification are crucial to master. Personal analytic group therapy is recommended.     

THE VIRTUES IN PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICE

Using as a guide Pellegrino and Thomasma's “end-oriented beneficence model” of the virtues in medical practice, the author derives from the cardinal forms of psychiatric treatment a set of virtues particular to this field. Prior work from Jung, Havens and Menzer-Benaron helps to clarify the analysis.