Assessment and treatment of rumination in a young man with autism

After a pretreatment screening analysis suggested that rumination by a 19‐year‐old man with autism was maintained by automatic reinforcement, we evaluated his preference for three snack foods and the frequency of his rumination after consuming each. Rumination was more common after eating high‐preference foods. We then examined noncontingent access to a type of lollipop (i.e., a Ring Pop?) to decrease rumination. The Ring Pop? reduced rumination to moderately low levels. Next, to further decrease rumination, we added a reprimand, which reduced rumination to near zero levels. Finally, we evaluated the reprimand by itself, which resulted in a reduction in rumination roughly equivalent to that produced by the Ring Pop?. Results are discussed in terms of the source of reinforcement for rumination and the behavioral mechanisms responsible for intervention effects.     

No dual-task practice effect in Alzheimer's disease

Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) requires evidence of progressive decline in cognitive function. However, many tests used to assess cognitive function suffer from considerable practice effects, reducing their reliability. Several studies have reported that the ability to do two things at once, or dual tasking, is impaired in AD, but unaffected by healthy ageing. The apparent specificity of this impairment suggests that this assessment may be particularly useful in the early diagnosis of AD, but the reliability of this assessment remains unknown. Therefore, this study investigated simultaneous performance of digit recall and tracking tasks across six testing sessions in eight people with AD, eight healthy older adults and eight healthy younger adults. The results found that dual-task performance was unaffected by healthy ageing, but significantly impaired in AD, with no effect of repeated exposure. The absence of any improvements in performance despite increased familiarity with the task's demands suggests that not only is the dual-task assessment well suited for monitoring progression over time, but also that dual tasking involves a specific cognitive function which is impaired in the AD brain.     

Working memory in event‐ and time‐based prospective memory tasks: Effects of secondary demand and age

An experiment is reported examining the role of working memory in two laboratory‐based prospective memory (PM) tasks. Participants viewed a film for a later recognition memory task while simultaneously monitoring auditorially presented arithmetic problems for incorrect solutions. The arithmetic verification task was either low demand or high demand. In addition, participants were required either to indicate whenever an animal appeared in the film (event‐based PM task), or whenever 3 min had elapsed (time‐based PM task). PM performance was higher when the arithmetic task was low demand than when it was high demand. Young participants were more successful in both PM tasks than older participants, but only under high demand. Age did not interact with PM task type overall, and the young participants were faster overall in both types of PM task. Taken together, the results indicate that working memory plays an important role in PM tasks.     

Siblings’ Understanding of Teaching in Early and Middle Childhood:‘Watch Me and You’ll Know How to Do It’

This study examined siblings’ knowledge about the teaching concept during naturalistic teaching contexts, wherein children’s communicative interactions were used as a gateway to their social understanding (Turnbull, Carpendale, & Racine, 2009). Participants included 39 sibling dyads (older age group, M_age = 6;4; younger age group, M_age = 4;5) observed for six 90-min sessions at home. Teaching episodes were identified and coded for: a) initiation of teaching (i.e., assumes role or learner requests teaching), b) knowledge states (i.e., knowledge, lack of knowledge, questioning knowledge), c) transfer of knowledge (i.e., learning), and d) teaching strategies (e.g., direct instruction). Children who assumed the teaching role referenced knowledge and questioning knowledge, whereas learners requested teaching by referencing a lack of knowledge. Firstborn learners were more likely to reference knowledge versus second-born learners who referenced a lack of knowledge. Transfer of knowledge occurred when teachers referenced knowledge. When learners referenced knowledge states, teachers were more likely to use direct instruction, demonstration, and negative feedback. Results underscore the developmental significance of sibling teaching and demonstrate a novel approach to studying children’s social understanding in the teaching context (Turnbull et al., 2009).     

Beyond the abstract—concrete dichotomy: Mode of acquisition,concreteness, imageability,familiarity, age of acquisition,context availability,and abstractness norms for a set of 417 Italian words

The main objective of this study is to investigate the abstract-concrete dichotomy by introducing a new variable: the mode of acquisition (MoA) of a concept. MoA refers to the way in which concepts are acquired: through experience, through language, or through both. We asked 250 participants to rate 417 words on seven dimensions: age of acquisition, concreteness, familiarity, context availability, imageability, abstractness, and MoA. The data were analyzed by considering MoA ratings and their relationship with the other psycholinguistic variables. Distributions for concreteness, abstractness, and MoA ratings indicate that they are qualitatively different. A partial correlation analysis revealed that MoA is an independent predictor of concreteness or abstractness, and a hierarchical multiple regression analysis confirmed MoA as being a valid predictor of abstractness. Strong correlations with measures for the English translation equivalents in the MRC database confirmed the reliability of our norms. The full database of MoA ratings and other psycholinguistic variables may be downloaded from http:// brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental or www.abstract-project.eu.     

Language functioning after bilateral prefrontal leukotomy

Three groups of patients with orbital frontal lesions secondary to leukotomy were compared to psychiatric and normal control groups on a series of tasks involving language. The results indicated that chronic orbital frontal lesions, at least in the patients in this study, do not affect language as defined by the tasks used in the study. The frontal lobes, when implicated in language, appear to require dorsal-lateral or medial cortical involvement.     

Age,working memory,and the Tower of London task

The current study explores the role of three components of working memory in age differences in an executive task, the Tower of London (TOL). The TOL task is sensitive to frontal lobe damage, and is widely used to measure planning ability. Dual tasks were used to test the involvement of the phonological loop (articulatory suppression), visuospatial buffer (pattern tapping), and central executive (random generation) in age effects on the TOL. Older adults showed greater reliance than young on domain-specific verbal and spatial memory components in performing the TOL. In terms of executive function, qualitatively different interference patterns were seen in young and old participants. However, the validity of using random generation tasks to assess executive function in older populations can be questioned. For older participants, performing the TOL loads all components of working memory, whereas for the younger participants the TOL more specifically loads executive functioning.