Quality home visits: Activities to promote meaningful interactions

Examination of and support for specific practices that promote high-quality home visiting are essential as family support programs continue to expand across the country. The current study used direct observation of 91 home visits across 41 home visitors to examine relations among interaction partners, content of the interactions, the home-visitors’ activities, and quality of home-visitors’ practices and family-members’ engagement within programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program. More time spent in triadic interactions focused on child-related content, as measured by the Home Visit Rating Scale-Revised, was related to higher quality of family engagement in home visits, as measured with the Home Visit Observation Rating Scales. Time spent in adult-focused interactions and administrative tasks, however, was related to lower quality of home-visiting practices and family engagement. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

A challenge to current models of past tense inflection: the impact of phonotactics

Is past tense production better modelled by a Single Mechanism or a Words and Rules model? We present data concerning a phenomenon that has not been considered by either model-regular past tense verbs with contrasting phonotactics. One set of verbs contains clusters at the inflected verb end that also occur in monomorphemic words ('monomorphemically legal clusters', MLC) whereas the other has clusters that can only occur in inflected forms ('monomorphemically illegal clusters', MIC). We argue that if children apply a morphological rule, phonotactics will not affect performance. Conversely, if children store past tense forms, they will perform better on verbs with MLCs because these clusters are more frequent. We investigated three populations--typically developing children, Grammatical-SLI (G-SLI) and Williams Syndrome (WS)--using past tense elicitation tasks. In Experiment 1 we reanalyse data from van der Lely and Ullman [van der Lely, H. K. J. & Ullman, M. (2001). Past tense morphology in specifically language impaired and normally developing children. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16: 177-217] and show that G-SLI children perform better on MLC verbs, whereas for typically developing children phonotactics do not affect performance. In Experiment 2 we replicate these findings in new groups of G-SLI and typically developing children. In Experiment 3 we reanalyse data from Thomas et al. [Thomas, M. S. C., Grant, J., Barham, Z., Gsodl, M., Laing, E., Lakusta, L., Tyler, L.K., Grice, S., Paterson, S. & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2001) Past tense formation in Williams Syndrome. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16: 143-176] and show that phonotactics do not affect performance in individuals with WS. We argue that the results elucidate the underlying nature of morphology in these populations, and are better accommodated within a Words and Rules model of past tense acquisition.     

Clinical and anatomical correlates of apraxia of speech

In a previous study (Dronkers, 1996), stroke patients identified as having apraxia of speech (AOS), an articulatory disorder, were found to have damage to the left superior precentral gyrus of the insula (SPGI). The present study sought (1) to characterize the performance of patients with AOS on a classic motor speech evaluation, and (2) to examine whether severity of AOS was influenced by the extent of the lesion. Videotaped speech evaluations of stroke patients with and without AOS were reviewed by two speech-language pathologists and independently scored. Results indicated that patients with AOS made the most errors on tasks requiring the coordination of complex, but not simple, articulatory movements. Patients scored lowest on the repetition of multisyllabic words and sentences that required immediate shifting between place and manner of articulation and rapid coordination of the lips, tongue, velum, and larynx. Last, all patients with AOS had lesions in the SPGI, whereas patients without apraxia of speech did not. Additional involvement of neighboring brain areas was associated with more severe forms of both AOS as well as language deficits, such as aphasia.     

Cell phone use and visual attention

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate how much cell phones and just speaking (similar to speaking to someone in the car vs a hands-free cell phone task) interfere with visual attention skills as might be required in a driving situation. Influence of cell phones on attention has been noted but little research has been completed. Licensed adult drivers were divided into three groups (ns = 15) with all subjects taking the Connors Continuous Performance Test II. Group 1 performed without any distractions: those in Group 2 performed with someone in the same room talking to them: Group 3 engaged in a cell phone conversation during the task. Overall, there were substantial differences among groups on all variables, but primarily between the control group and the two experimental groups. While the cell phone group had lower mean scores than the talking group overall, the differences were not significant. Thus, while cell phones were distracting to visual attention functions on the Connors task, they were not more distracting than a similarly active conversation without a cell phone.     

The warpy thoughts scale: a new 20-item instrument to measure dysfunctional attitudes

Cognitive theories of psychopathology propose that specific negative cognitive schema held by individuals can increase their likelihood of experiencing depressive episodes. While it has been argued that such dysfunctional attitudes are state measures that occur primarily during periods of depression, a range of research has supported the view that holding dysfunctional attitudes is ongoing, persisting prior to and following depressive episodes. To date, the need for a parsimonious measure of dysfunctional attitudes has not been well addressed. Using data provided by 4545 participants in a free on-line cognitive behavioural therapy program, MoodGYM, we have developed the Warpy Thoughts Scale (WTS), a 20-item instrument measuring dysfunctional attitudes. This scale provides 3 first order factors (Relationships, Achievements and Entitlements) and a higher order factor, Warpy Thoughts, from which a Warpy Thoughts score can be obtained. Confirmatory factor analyses on this model indicated that it provides robust results for men and women and for individuals in a wide range of ages. WTS scores were moderately correlated with levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms (0.39 and 0.40, respectively) and explained up to one-fifth of the variance of these mental health measures. Further validation of the WTS against other measures of dysfunctional thoughts is required.     

Is problem solving dependent on language?

There has been a long-standing debate in the fields of philosophy and cognitive science surrounding the relationship of language to cognition, but the exact nature of this relationship is still unclear (Sokolov, 1968/1972). In the current study, we explored the role of language in one aspect of cognition, namely problem solving, by administering the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) to stroke patients with varying degrees of language impairment (Experiment 1) and to normal participants under conditions of articulatory suppression (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, there was a significant correlation between performance on the WCST and language measures such as comprehension and naming. Demonstrating the specificity of this result, we also found a significant relationship between language performance and another test of problem solving, the Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices, but no relationship between language and a test of visuospatial functioning. In Experiment 2, normal participants were significantly impaired on the WCST under conditions of articulatory suppression, relative to a baseline condition. Together, these findings suggest that language plays a role in complex problem solving, possibly through covert language processes.     

Context extinction and associative learning in Lymnaea

Aerial respiratory behavior in the pond snail Lymnaea was operantly conditioned so that snails learned not to perform aerial respiration in a hypoxic environment. Snails were trained in either the standard context (no food odorant) or a carrot (food-odorant) context. An operant training procedure of two 45-min training sessions with a 1-h interval between the sessions followed by a third 45-min training session 18 h later was sufficient to produce associative learning and long-term memory (LTM) that persisted for at least 5 days. If, however, following the third operant training session snails received three 45-min extinction training sessions, with each extinction session separated by at least a 1-h interval, LTM was not observed when tested the following day. That is, the memory was extinguished. Extinction, however, did not occur if the context of the extinction training was different from the context of the associative training. That is, in the snails trained in the standard context, extinction did not occur if the extinction training sessions were performed in the food-odorant context and vice versa.     

The Psychophysiology of Social Action: Facial Electromyographic Responses to Stigmatized Groups Predict Antidiscrimination Action

We introduced facial electromyography as a tool for predicting advantaged group members' engagement in antidiscrimination action on behalf of a disadvantaged outgroup. Heterosexual men's corrugator supercilii (brow “frowning” muscles) activity while viewing videos of male–male and male–female couples interacting was measured. Corrugator (negative affect) response to male–male versus male–female targets, but not self-reported attitudes toward gay men, predicted number of flyers calling for action to reduce antigay violence and discrimination that participants privately took to distribute. Our discreet behavioral measure mirrored real-life collective action possibilities such as voting against laws prohibiting same-sex marriage in the privacy of one's voting booth.     

Tool-use and the left hemisphere: What is lost in ideomotor apraxia?

Impaired tool related action in ideomotor apraxia is normally ascribed to loss of sensorimotor memories for habitual actions (engrams), but this account has not been tested against a hypothesis of a general deficit in representation of hand-object spatial relationships. Rapid reaching for familiar tools was compared with reaching for abstract objects in apraxic patients (N = 9) and in a control group with right hemisphere posterior stroke. The apraxic patients alone showed an impairment in rotating the wrist to correctly grasp an inverted tool but not when inverting the hand to avoid a barrier and grasp an abstract object, and the severity of the impairment in tool reaching correlated with pantomime of tool-use. A second experiment with two apraxic patients tested whether barrier avoidance was simply less spatially demanding than reaching for a tool. However, the patient with damage limited to the inferior parietal lobe still showed a selective problem for tools. These results demonstrate that some apraxic patients are selectively impaired in their interaction with familiar tools, and this cannot be explained by the demands of the task on postural or spatial representation. However, traditional engram theory cannot account for associated problems with imitation of novel actions nor the absence of any correlated deficit in recognition of the methods of grasp of common tools. A revised theory is presented which follows the dorsal and ventral streams model ( Milner & Goodale, 2008) and proposes preservation of motor control by the dorsal stream but impaired modulating input to it from the conceptual systems of the left temporal lobe.     

Color preferences in infants and adults are different

Adults commonly prefer blues most and greenish yellows least, but these hue preferences interact with lightness and saturation (e.g., dark yellow is particularly disliked: Palmer & Schloss (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107:8877–8882, 2010)). Here, we tested for a similar hue-by-lightness interaction in infant looking preferences, to determine whether adult preferences are evident early in life. We measured looking times for both infants and adults in the same paired-comparison task using all possible pairs of eight colors: four hues (red/yellow/green/blue) at two lightness levels (dark/light). The adult looking data were strikingly similar to other adults’ explicit preference responses, indicating for the first time that adults look longer at colors that they like. Infants showed a significant hue-by-lightness interaction, but it was quite different from the adult pattern. In particular, infants had a stronger looking preference for dark yellow and a weaker preference for light blue than did adults. The findings are discussed in relation to theories on the origins of color preference.