Relationship quality of persons with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome

In the field of sleep disorders, the quality of couple relationship is arousing increasing attention, given its implications for quality of life and treatment adherence. The aim of the present study was to evaluate relationship quality in a sample of treated or untreated patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome. Eighty-seven patients were recruited in a hospital-based Centre for Sleep Medicine. Subjects were administered the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) to evaluate relationship quality, and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Apnoea-hypopnoea indexes (AHI) were collected through nocturnal polysomnography or home testing with a portable monitoring device. Although the DAS average scores were similar to local normative values, relationship quality was significantly lower in the untreated patients when compared with the ones treated. The ESS scores showed a negative correlation with many DAS scores, whereas no significant correlation emerged for AHI. Such data suggest a significant impact of perceived sleep apnoea symptoms on marital satisfaction, even though in the absence of striking differences between the whole sample and the general population.     

Individual and Collective Posttraumatic Growth in Victims of Natural Disasters: A Multidimensional Perspective

This study set out to incorporate the collective dimensions of posttraumatic growth and examined the construct and predictive validity of The Individual and Collective Posttraumatic Growth Scale (ICPTGS). Participants were 332 volunteers who had experienced the earthquake on February 27, 2010, in Chile. Analysis allowed us to confirm a multidimensional structure composed of four dimensions: individual, spiritual, communal growth, and societal growth. Additionally, we identified association among ICPTGS, perceived emotional impact, and social well-being. This study emphasizes that positive changes resulting from the exposure to collective disasters can be perceived also at the collective or community level.     

Planning maximally smooth hand movements constrained to nonplanar workspaces

The article characterizes hand paths and speed profiles for movements performed in a nonplanar, 2-dimensional workspace (a hemisphere of constant curvature). The authors assessed endpoint kinematics (i.e., paths and speeds) under the minimum-jerk model assumptions and calculated minimal amplitude paths (geodesics) and the corresponding speed profiles. The authors also calculated hand speeds using the 2/3 power law. They then compared modeled results with the empirical observations. In all, 10 participants moved their hands forward and backward from a common starting position toward 3 targets located within a hemispheric workspace of small or large curvature. Comparisons of modeled observed differences using 2-way RM-ANOVAs showed that movement direction had no clear influence on hand kinetics (p < .05). Workspace curvature affected the hand paths, which seldom followed geodesic lines. Constraining the paths to different curvatures did not affect the hand speed profiles. Minimum-jerk speed profiles closely matched the observations and were superior to those predicted by 2/3 power law (p < .001). The authors conclude that speed and path cannot be unambiguously linked under the minimum-jerk assumption when individuals move the hand in a nonplanar 2-dimensional workspace. In such a case, the hands do not follow geodesic paths, but they preserve the speed profile, regardless of the geometric features of the workspace.     

Threaded cognition: an integrated theory of concurrent multitasking

The authors propose the idea of threaded cognition, an integrated theory of concurrent multitasking--that is, performing 2 or more tasks at once. Threaded cognition posits that streams of thought can be represented as threads of processing coordinated by a serial procedural resource and executed across other available resources (e.g., perceptual and motor resources). The theory specifies a parsimonious mechanism that allows for concurrent execution, resource acquisition, and resolution of resource conflicts, without the need for specialized executive processes. By instantiating this mechanism as a computational model, threaded cognition provides explicit predictions of how multitasking behavior can result in interference, or lack thereof, for a given set of tasks. The authors illustrate the theory in model simulations of several representative domains ranging from simple laboratory tasks such as dual-choice tasks to complex real-world domains such as driving and driver distraction.     

Public awareness and knowledge of stuttering in Rio de Janeiro

This study reports the results of an investigation of public awareness and knowledge of stuttering in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A total number of 606 street recruited respondents answered questions on various aspects of stuttering, including prevalence, onset, gender distribution, occurrence in different cultures, cause, treatment, intelligence, and hereditariness. The questionnaire used was a Portuguese version of the one by [Van Borsel, J., Verniers, I. & Bouvry, S. (1999). Public awareness of stuttering. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 51, 124–132]. Although, stuttering is a disorder which is known to a majority of the participants, knowledge appears to be limited for certain aspects. Knowledge also differs among subgroups of participants according to gender, age and educational level. Comparison of the results of the current study with similar studies conducted in Belgium and in Shanghai, China shows several similarities but also some differences.

Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (1) discuss public awareness and knowledge of stuttering in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; (2) discuss the differences in knowledge according to gender, age and educational level and; (3) discuss similarities and differences with comparable studies run in Belgium and Shanghai, China.     

On the nature of nonverbal working memory fractionation: a case of selective spatial short-term memory deficit in a child

Several lines of research on adult subjects demonstrate a visual/spatial fractionation of nonverbal working memory (WM), while behavioral studies on normal children support the idea of a static/dynamic distinction. In the present paper, we report a child (Z.M.) who failed on nonverbal WM tasks. To verify the nature of his defect, we carried out two experiments: in Experiment 1, Z.M. failed on spatial WM tasks but not on visual WM tasks and was not affected by the static/dynamic format of stimulus presentation; in Experiment 2, this visual/spatial dissociation was extended to the imagery domain. These results are best accounted for within the visual/spatial fractionation of WM and confirmed the role of WM in mental imagery. Clinical and rehabilitative implications of the present findings are also discussed.     

Action-dependent perceptual invariants: from ecological to sensorimotor approaches

Ecological and sensorimotor theories of perception build on the notion of action-dependent invariants as the basic structures underlying perceptual capacities. In this paper we contrast the assumptions these theories make on the nature of perceptual information modulated by action. By focusing on the question, how movement specifies perceptual information, we show that ecological and sensorimotor theories endorse substantially different views about the role of action in perception. In particular we argue that ecological invariants are characterized with reference to transformations produced in the sensory array by movement: such invariants are transformation-specific but do not imply motor-specificity. In contrast, sensorimotor theories assume that perceptual invariants are intrinsically tied to specific movements. We show that this difference leads to different empirical predictions and we submit that the distinction between motor equivalence and motor-specificity needs further clarification in order to provide a more constrained account of action/perception relations.