Neighborhood effects in visual word recognition: Facilitatory or inhibitory?

In five experiments, in which subjects were to identify a target word as it was gradually clarified, we manipulated the target's frequency of occurrence in the language and its neighborhood size—the number of words that can be constructed from a target word by changing one letter, while preserving letter position. In Experiments 1–4, visual identification performance to screen-fragmented words was measured. In Experiments 1 and 2, we used the ascending method of limits, whereas Experiments 3 and 4 presented a fixed-level fragment. In Experiment 1, there was no relation between overall accuracy and neighborhood size for-words-between three and six letters in length. However, more errors of commission (guesses) were made for high-neighborhood words and more errors of omission (blanks) were made for low-neighborhood words. Letter errors within guesses occurred at serial positions having many neighbors, and these positions were also likely to contain consonants rather than vowels. In Experiment 2, a smallfacilitatory effect of neighborhood size on bothhigh- and low-frequency words was found. In contrast, in Experiments 3 and 4, using the same set of words,inhibitory effects of neighborhood size, but only for low-frequency words, were found. Experiment 5, using a speeded identification task, showed results parallel to those of Experiments 3 and 4. We suggest that whether neighborhood effects are facilitatory or inhibitory depends on whether feedback allows subjects to disconfirm initial hypotheses that the target is a high-frequency neighbor.     

Are families supported to come to terms with an autism diagnosis? A service evaluation of referrals to family therapy for young people with autism in one NHS trust

Young people with autism are increasingly being referred for family therapy (FT) owing to impaired family functioning, but few studies have investigated the support families receive following a diagnosis through specific NHS Trusts. This study examined (1) the proportion of autism cases referred for FT in one Trust and (2) the post-diagnostic support families received. Participants (n = 144; 9.5–19.3 years) were FT referrals between 2019–2020. Autism diagnostic status and the support families received from FT, from the neurodevelopmental (ND) service which specialises in autism, and for co-occurring conditions [e.g., cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)] was extracted retrospectively from routine data. Forty FT referrals met autism criteria: several families did not receive FT; few were provided with support from the ND service; and if CBT was offered, no adaptations for autism were noted. Families received insufficient support following a diagnosis through this Trust. Implications include improving post-diagnostic support for families in practice.     

The causal role of phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge in learning to read: combining intervention studies with mediation analyses

There is good evidence that phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge are reliable longitudinal predictors of learning to read, though whether they have a causal effect remains uncertain. In this article, we present the results of a mediation analysis using data from a previous large-scale intervention study. We found that a phonology and reading intervention that taught letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness produced significant improvements in these two skills and in later word-level reading and spelling skills. Improvements in letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness at the end of the intervention fully mediated the improvements seen in children's word-level literacy skills 5 months after the intervention finished. Our findings support the conclusion that letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness are two causal influences on the development of children's early literacy skills.     

An Approach to Examining the Proximal and Intermediate Outcomes of an Intensive Family Preservation Program

This study examined the effects of the Boys Town In-Home Family Program (BT-IHFP) on parenting skills, family functioning, and child behavior for at-risk families involved with child protective services. The BT-IHFP is designed as a home-based, family-centered alternative to out-of-home placement with the goal of improving family functioning, keeping families together, and preventing further involvement with child protective services. The model uses a hands-on cognitive-behavioral approach, promotes family engagement, provides 24/7 services to families, and links families to community resources. While it is essential to examine ultimate, long-term outcomes such as family preservation, it is also important to investigate the proximal and intermediate outcomes that address the key changes in behavior that support successful long-term outcomes. The goals of this study were to (1) examine the pre-post change of proximal and intermediate outcomes and (2) examine if improvements in parenting skills, parental roles, and parental stress (proximal outcomes) will be related to improvements in child behavior at home, child behavior at school, and family functioning (intermediate outcomes). Inspecting intake and discharge data for 44 families, 94% were intact at discharge and significant pre-post improvements were found in proximal and intermediate outcomes. These findings suggest that this six-week intensive BT-IHFP holds promise for teaching at-risk families skills to promote positive family functioning.     

Interpretation of instructions: A source of individual differences in analogical reasoning

Two studies were conducted to identify individual differences in the effect of instruction on strategies used to solve figural/numerical analogies. In Study 1, students aged 9, 11, 13, and 19 years were given incomplete instructions and then were assessed for (a) consistent use of an appropriate rule for solving analogies and (b) the type and number of stimulus attributes that are incorporated in those analogical rules. Use of an analogical rule increased with age and corresponded to higher scores on a psychometric test of reasoning within each age group. In Study 2, analysis of verbal protocols was used to identify the strategies of some 9- and 11-year-olds who showed a peculiar pattern of responding in Study 1. These children attended to relevant attributes but used systematic nonanalogical rules to solve problems. When provided with more specific instructions, most of these children adopted an analogical rule but failed to incorporate relevant attributes. Results indicate that selection or construction of task-relevant solution strategies from incomplete instructions may partially account for differential performance on tests of analogical reasoning.     

What Makes Susie Cry? A Symptom-Context Study of Family Therapy

The aim of this investigation was to examine the context of recurrent crying episodes during family therapy sessions. We tested the relative contribution of social versus individual intrapsychic variables within a 10-session, videotaped, structural family therapy. Segments of therapy before crying episodes when compared with control (non-crying) segments were found to have higher levels of the following variables: involvement with others in the room, rejection, and concern about supplies. Two family variables were also higher before crying episodes: family discussion about patient, and patient receives hostility. A stepwise discriminant function analysis using these variables indicated that family discussion about the patient was most important in signaling onset of crying. The results are discussed in terms of individual and family theories of symptom formation as illuminated through this case study.     

Reaction times for comparisons of successively presented visual patterns: Evidence for serial self-terminating search

Two-choice classification RTs were collected for eight conditions designed to vary the number of comparisons necessary between one or two visual patterns in perception and one or two in short-term memory (STM). Overall RT data supported both a serial self-terminating and parallel self-terminating model with distributed search times, while rejecting corresponding exhaustive models. Precise predictions for the parallel model proved difficult to derive; however, the serial model predicted the fine detail of the data surprisingly well. RTs suggested that Ss searched through all stimuli in memory first and that stimuli in both memory and perception were searched from right to left. Comparison times between identical stimuli were estimated to be longer than comparison times between different stimuli. Error rates increased with the number of hypothesized comparisons; predicted error rates, based on independence of rates within stages, also increased but failed to predict the empirical error rates very well.     

Objective and subjective complexity measures for a new population of patterns

A method of generating two-element matrix patterns having varying degrees of internal constraint is described. The method was used to generate a set of 9 × 9 matrix patterns of black and white squares in approximately equal proportion, ranging from very simple to very complex. Three sets of objective complexity measures were developed, the first two within,the framework of information theory and the third based on symmetry and grouping of identical elements. Multiple regression between the objective measures and subjective complexity scale values obtained in three separate experiments indicated that one of the information measures was uniformly superior in predicting subjective complexity.