The effect of stress on the linguistic generalization of bilingual individuals

Spanish-English coordinate bilinguals were subjects in a GSR linguistic conditioning experiment using strong and mild buzzer conditions and spoken stimuli. Each subject was randomly assigned to one of two lists of words and one of two levels of buzzer sounds. A Spanish word from the Spanish list and an English word from the English list functioned as a conditioned word (CS). The lists were Spanish and English words related semantically and phonemically and unrelated to the CS. Generalization was studied under conscious and unconscious conditions. We found that both buzzer conditions resulted in significantly greater GSR responses to semantic and phonemic words than to words unrelated to the CS. Generalization to semantic words was not significantly greater than to phonemic words. There was a tendency toward greater phonemic than semantic generalization in the strong buzzer condition. The opposite was observed regarding the mild buzzer. The results were the same in both lists and languages. Under a conscious and unstressful condition, generalization to semantic words was found to be more prominent than to phonemic words. This suggests that under normal condition semantic generalization is mediated by conscious cognition. We concluded that strong emotion produces an increase in phonemic, as compared to semantic, generalization in both languages. Hence, primitivization of the subjects' cognitive and linguistic functioning is assumed to have occurred. These results are important in understanding the deleterious effect that stressful situations may have on linguistic functioning and cognition in bilinguals.     

Dissociations of writing and praxis: Two cases in point

For normal writing it is essential that both motoric and linguistic competence be present; disruption of one or the other of these faculties may result in qualitatively different types of agraphia. Two right-handed patients became agraphic after left hemisphere lesions; pure apraxic agraphia in the absence of limb apraxia developed in one patient and pure linguistic agraphia in association with severe ideomotor limb apraxia in the other. The performance of these patients not only serves to illustrate the dissociation between the motoric and linguistic faculties that underlie writing but also confirms that ideomotor limb apraxia and apraxic agraphia are distinct and dissociable entities.     

Category-Specific Naming Deficit for Medical Terms after Dominant Thalamic/Capsular Hemorrhage

Postmortem, retrograde degeneration, and electrical stimulation studies have implicated the anterior pulvinar in language processing. We examined a patient who, after a hemorrhage affecting the dominant pulvinar and internal capsule, exhibited a circumscribed anomia for medical items and conditions. No other language disturbance was noted. Five category-specific word lists, matched for word frequency, were administered in a naming-to-definition format. Results indicated that the patient exhibited a significant category-specific naming deficit for medical items and conditions compared to matched control subjects. Although medical item lists were found to differ from nonmedical item lists in imageability and abstractness, B.C.'s category-specific deficit did not seem to be caused by word frequency, concept familiarity, imageability, or abstractness. Nor could the patient's performance be explained on the basis of deficits in broader semantic classifications (i.e., animate vs inanimate or man-made vs natural). The patient was unable to retrieve medical items even when given phonemic cues for those he could not name. Findings indicate that subtotal damage in the dominant pulvinar may create category-specific deficits.     

Apraxia in a patient with atypical cerebral dominance

Liepmann postulated that the left hemisphere of right-handed persons contains the "movement formulas" that control purposeful skilled movements of the limbs on both sides of the body. Accordingly, in right-handers apraxia should follow damage to the left hemisphere, whereas right hemisphere damage should not lead to apraxia. Although this is generally true, we recently examined a right-handed man who after a right hemispheric stroke became aphasic and apraxic with his nonparalyzed right hand. Our observations suggest that the right hemisphere of this right-handed man made a critical contribution to the planning and execution of skilled movements. This case provides evidence that right-handers should not be considered a homogeneous group in terms of cerebral motor dominance and that contrary to Liepmann's postulate, hemispheric dominance for the control of skilled movements does not entirely determine handedness.     

Phonological alexia with optic and tactile anomia: a neuropsychological and anatomical study

We describe a patient with phonological alexia caused by a small hemorrhage in the posterior-inferior portion of the left temporal lobe. The lesion induced a highly selective impairment of phonological reading without concomitant oral language deficits other than anomia for objects presented in the visual and tactile modalities. We propose that an intact dorsal pathway from inferior visual association areas to Wernicke's area via the angular gyrus could mediate reading by the lexical route, while damage to a ventral pathway disrupted the patient's ability to read nonwords. We suggest further that although visually and tactually presented objects could be recognized and both verbally and nonverbally identified, they could not be named because of a disconnection from the area of word representations.     

Catching up with wonderful women: The women‐are‐wonderful effect is smaller in more gender egalitarian societies

Inequalities between men and women are common and well‐documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies—there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women‐are‐wonderful effect—that women are evaluated more positively than men overall—is also common. Cross‐cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self‐reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women‐are‐wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.     

Enhancing Initial Parental Engagement in Interventions for Parents of Young Children: A Systematic Review of Experimental Studies

Low rates of participation in parenting interventions may undermine their effectiveness. Although a wide range of strategies to engage parents in interventions are described in the literature, little is known about which engagement strategies are most effective in enhancing parental engagement. This systematic review explores effective engagement strategies to encourage initial parental engagement (recruitment, enrolment, and first attendance) in parenting interventions for parents of children aged 2–8 years old. This review was conducted based on the guidelines of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Higgins and Green 2011) and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (Moher et al. 2009). Electronic systematic searches from January 1996 to August 2017 were conducted in PsycINFO, Scopus, ProQuest Social Sciences Journals, CINAHL, and PubMed databases. Eight studies met the inclusion criteria representing 1952 parents from four different countries. Of the engagement strategies tested in included studies (monetary incentive, setting, testimonial, advertisement, and engagement package), three strategies (advertisement, incentive, and engagement package) showed a significant effect on a stage of engagement, but none across stages. The low methodological quality of the selected studies limits their generalisability and thus provides limited evidence regarding effective engagement strategies to increase recruitment, enrolment, and first attendance rates in parenting interventions. There is a need for further, more methodologically rigorous, research evidence regarding how to engage parents more effectively in the early stages of parenting interventions.