Something from nothing: exploring dimensions of children's knowing through the repeated reading of favourite books

Witte‐Townsend and DiGiulio explore some of the dimensions of knowing that children, teachers and parents may engage together during story‐time. They reflect on some of their own long‐term relationships with children and children's books, especially Phoebe Gilman's Gilman P 1992 Something from nothing (New York, NY, Scholastic Inc)  [Google Scholar] Something from nothing (published in 1992) and Simms Taback's Taback S 1999 Joseph had a little overcoat (New York, NY, Viking‐Penguin)  [Google Scholar] Joseph had a little overcoat, published in 1999. The authors probe issues such as why children ask to hear a favourite story over and over and why they suddenly abandon all interest and move on to a new book. They explore the meaning of the silences that sometimes arise during story‐time, pooling around the young listeners as the last words of the book are read. Witte‐Townsend and DiGiulio remind us of the value of literature in the lives of children and they affirm that the reading and re‐reading of favourite stories enables the understanding of complex human issues and contributes significantly to social, emotional and spiritual growth.     

Trauma films, information processing, and intrusive memory development

Three experiments indexed the effect of various concurrent tasks, while watching a traumatic film, on intrusive memory development. Hypotheses were based on the dual-representation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder (C. R. Brewin, T. Dalgleish, & S. Joseph, 1996). Nonclinical participants viewed a trauma film under various encoding conditions and recorded any spontaneous intrusive memories of the film over the following week in a diary. Changes in state dissociation, heart rate, and mood were also measured. As predicted, performing a visuospatial pattern tapping task at encoding significantly reduced the frequency of later intrusions, whereas a verbal distraction task increased them. Intrusive memories were largely unrelated to recall and recognition measures. Increases in dissociation and decreases in heart rate during the film were also associated with later intrusions.     

An evidential support accumulation model of subjective probability

A model of cue-based probability judgment is developed within the framework of support theory. Cue diagnosticity is evaluated from experience as represented by error-free frequency counts. When presented with a pattern of cues, the diagnostic implications of each cue are assessed independently and then summed to arrive at an assessment of the support for a hypothesis, with greater weight placed on present than on absent cues. The model can also accommodate adjustment of support in light of the baserate or prior probability of a hypothesis. Support for alternatives packed together in a "residual" hypothesis is discounted; fewer cues are consulted in assessing support for alternatives as support for the focal hypothesis increases. Results of fitting this and several alternative models to data from four new multiple-cue probability learning experiments are reported.     

Can blindness to response-compatible stimuli be observed in the absence of a response?

Blindness to response-compatible stimuli is the finding that targets are identified less accurately when presented during the planning or execution of a congruent response (e.g., right arrow presented during a right keypress) versus an incongruent response (e.g., right arrow presented during a left keypress). Accounts of this effect suggest the planning and execution of a response are critical to its observation. Five experiments investigated whether a blindness effect would be observed in the absence of a planned response. Results suggest that a planned response is not necessary to observe a content-specific blindness effect and that the blindness effect may actually comprise both an action-related component and a symbolic component that is distinct from the action-planning system.     

The unification of mind: Integration of hemispheric semantic processing

Seventy-six participants performed a visual half-field lexical decision task at two different stimulus onset asynchronies (50 or 750 ms). Word targets were primed either by a highly associated word (e.g., CLEAN-DIRTY), a weakly associated word (e.g., CLEAN-TIDY), or an unrelated word (e.g., CLEAN-FAMILY) projected to either the same or opposite visual field (VF) as the target. In the short SOA, RVF-left hemisphere primes resulted in high associate priming regardless of target location (ipsilateral or contralateral to the prime) whereas LVF-right hemisphere primes produced both high and low associate priming across both target location conditions. In the long SOA condition, contralateral priming patterns converged, demonstrating only high associate priming in both VF locations. The results of this study demonstrate the critical role of interhemispheric transfer in semantic processing and indicate a need to elaborate current models of semantic processing.     

Word associations in deep dyslexia

Deep dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder resulting in the production of semantic errors during oral reading and an inability to read aloud nonwords. Several researchers have postulated that patients with deep dyslexia have both phonological and semantic access impairments but the data supporting these claims are not convincing. In fact, the hallmark feature of deep dyslexia--the semantic errors--strongly implies that these patients can access semantic information from printed words. We test the integrity of the semantic system in two such patients through auditory and visual word association tasks. The data support the notion that semantics remains intact and that the disorder and associated errors arise through a selection impairment related to failure of inhibitory connections in the phonological lexicon.     

Assessment of DSM-IV personality disorders in obsessive-compulsive disorder: comparison of clinical diagnosis, self-report questionnaire, and semi-structured interview

In patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, personality disorders are not many times assessed according to DSM-IV criteria. The purpose of the present study is to examine the prevalence of personality disorders diagnosed according to the DSM-IV in a severely disordered OCD population (n=65) with three different methods of assessing personality disorders (structured interview, questionnaire, and clinical diagnoses). Furthermore, correspondence between these different methods was investigated and their construct validity was examined by relating the three methods to external variables. Each method resulted in a predominance of Cluster C personality disorders, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder had the highest prevalence. However, there was generally low correspondence regarding which patient had which personality disorder. Results concerning the relation of external variables were the most promising for the structured clinical interview.