A Plan Recognition Model for Subdialogues in Conversations

Previous plan-based models of dialogue understanding have been unable to account for many types of subdialogues present in naturally occurring conversations. One reason for this is that the models have not clearly differentiated between the varoius ways that an utterance can relate to a plan structure representing a topic. In this paper we present a plan-based theory that allows a wide variety of utterance-plan relationships. We introduce a set of discourse plans, each one corresponding to a particular way that an utterance can relate to a discourse topic, and distinguish such plans from the set of plans that are actually used to model the topics. By incorporating knowledge about discourse into a plan-based framework, we can account for a wide variety of subdialogues while maintaining the computational advantages of the plan-based approach.     

Exploring collaborative problem solving in adulthood

Collaborative problem solving occurs in situations in which two or more individuals cooperate in appraising, representing, and solving a variety of cognitive tasks. Collaborative groups are the context for much everyday cognitive activity in adulthood. Collaboration has been explored as a means through which older adults may maintain high levels of performance, perhaps compensating for individual-level cognitive and neurological decline. This study explored the effects of collaboration (group size) and adult age on solving both fixed- and unrestricted-alternatives 20 Questions tasks. Younger (M=24.3 years) and older (M=67.9 years) adults were randomly assigned to one of three homogeneous group size conditions: individuals, dyads, and tetrads. Results indicated some dissociation between individual-level performance (poorer for older adults) and collaborative performance (better for older adults). For the fixed-alternatives task, older adults produced more of the relatively inefficient hypothesis-scanning questions than did younger adults. In contrast, older collaborative groups produced more of the efficient constraint-seeking questions than hhpothesis-scanning questions, and an amount equivalent to that of younger adults. Overall performance for the difficult unrestricted-alternatives task was less efficient for both younger and older adults. The roles of task type, group characteristics, and adult age are discussed.     

Intersections Between Nativity, Ethnic Density, and Neighborhood SES: Using an Ethnic Enclave Framework to Explore Variation in Puerto Ricans’ Physical Health

Although past research has demonstrated a “health disadvantage” for Puerto Rican adults, very little is known about correlates of health among this group. Given Puerto Ricans’ unique experiences of migration and settlement, an ethnic enclave framework that integrates nativity, ethnic density, and neighborhood SES may offer insight into factors influencing Puerto Ricans’ health. This study uses a sample of 449 adult mainland- and island-born Puerto Ricans living in New York City and Chicago. The data, collected as a part of the MIDUS Survey of Minority Groups, are stratified by neighborhood ethnic density and neighborhood SES, allowing for the examination of the individual and joint influences of neighborhood characteristics on physical health. Results revealed that ethnic density and neighborhood SES were not independently or interactively related to physical health for mainland-born Puerto Ricans. However, the interaction between ethnic density and neighborhood SES was related to self-reported health, functional limitations, and health symptoms for island-born Puerto Ricans. Island-born Puerto Ricans living in ethnically dense, low SES neighborhoods reported worse health than island-born Puerto Ricans living in other types of neighborhoods. This may be a result of isolation from resources both within and outside the neighborhood.     

Trajectories and predictors of developmental skills in healthy twins up to 24 months of age

Background

Low birth weight and low 5-min Apgar scores have been associated with developmental delay, while older maternal age is a protective factor. Little is known about trajectories and predictors of developmental skills in infant twins, who are generally born with lower birth weights, lower Apgar scores and to older mothers.

Methods

Developmental skills were assessed at 3, 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months using the Ages and Stages Questionnaires in 152 twins from the Birmingham Registry for Twin and Heritability Studies. Multilevel spline and linear regression models (adjusted for gestational age, gender, maternal age) were used to estimate developmental trajectories and the associations between birth weight, maternal age and Apgar scores on developmental skills.

Results

Twins performed worse than singletons on communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving and personal-social skills (p < 0.001). Twins caught up around 6 months (score within −1 standard deviation of norm), except on gross motor skills, which did not catch up until after the age of 12 months. A one-year increase in maternal age was significantly associated with decreases in gross motor and personal–social z-scores of up to −0.09, whereas one unit increases in Apgar score increased z-scores up to 0.90 (p < 0.01).

Conclusions

Healthy twins should be considered at a higher risk for developmental delay. Whether these results are comparable to preterm singletons, or whether there are twin-specific issues involved, should be further investigated in a study that uses a matched singleton control group.     

The sociology of regulation: the case of psychotherapy and counselling and the experience of the arts therapies

ABSTRACT

This article draws on insights from the sociology of professions to explore the regulatory debate in the psychotherapy and counselling field contrasted with the regulation of arts therapists (art, drama and music therapists). A partial explanation is offered, illustrating the applicability of theory to these groups, but with adaptations to reflect the modern context in which professions and regulation now exist.     

Speaking of feelings affects,language, and psychoanalysis

For a surprising number of analysands, many with above‐average intelligence and facility with language, words do not adequately capture or convey emotion or symbolize experience. This often subtle difficulty can have a powerful impact on the ability to verbally communicate emotions, process affect, and utilize traditional psychoanalytic interventions. Analysands with these problems therefore often have difficulty using analysis to explore and understand their own experience, yet the reasons for such difficulties are often not recognized by either analyst or analysand. In this article, I suggest that the concept of alexithymia can provide a valuable tool for understanding this gap between affects and language and, in its broadest interpretation, can aid therapists in their pursuit of meaningful approaches to the analytic process. Using the concept as a starting point, I describe and illustrate an approach in which paying attention to apparently insignificant aspects of an analysand's experience gradually helps analysands identify and explore personal symbols and meanings in their lives.     

Word Mapping and Executive Functioning in Young Monolingual and Bilingual Children

The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparing performance of 162 children who belonged to one of two age groups (approximately 3- and 4.5-year-olds) and one of three language groups on a series of tasks examining executive control and word mapping. The children were monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, or bilinguals who spoke English and one of a large number of other languages. Monolinguals obtained higher scores than bilinguals on a receptive vocabulary test and were more likely to demonstrate the mutual exclusivity constraint, especially at the younger ages. However, bilinguals obtained higher scores than both groups of monolinguals on three tests of executive functioning: Luria's tapping task measuring response inhibition, the opposite worlds task requiring children to assign incongruent labels to a sequence of animal pictures, and reverse categorization in which children needed to reclassify a set of objects into incongruent categories after an initial classification. There were no differences between the groups in the attentional networks flanker task requiring executive control to ignore a misleading cue. This evidence for a bilingual advantage in aspects of executive functioning at an earlier age than previously reported is discussed in terms of the possibility that bilingual language production may not be the only source of these developmental effects.     

Concurrent Relations Between Perspective-Taking Skills,Desire Understanding,and Internal-State Vocabulary

Recent studies suggest that there appears to be a similar developmental sequence in the understanding of mental states in both internal-state language and in standard theory-of-mind tasks. These findings suggest possible developmental relations between children's ability to talk and think about the mind. Two experiments investigated the concurrent relations between internal-state vocabulary and theory-of-mind abilities in 30-month-old toddlers. In Experiment 1, children's internal-state language vocabulary was significantly and specifically related to their concurrent understanding of others' visual and emotional perspectives and was less strongly related to desire understanding. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings by examining the link between internal-state vocabulary and visual perspective-taking and comprehension of own versus other's desire, controlling for general verbal skills. Children with a more developed internal-state vocabulary performed better on perspective-taking tasks. These findings suggest that labeling and reasoning about mental states are related abilities at the early stages of theory-of-mind development.     

Effects of Stimulus Color,Pattern, and Practice on Sex Differences in Mental Rotations Task Performance

Redundant color information improved performance for both sexes on the Shepard Mental Rotations Task (MRT; Shepard & Metzler, 1971). Absolute score gains for women were larger than those for men; therefore, relative improvement was greater. Substantial practice effects, also favoring women, were apparent in both studies. Study 1 showed that redundant color improved performance by 0.25 SD. Study 2 demonstrated that redundant black-and-white pattern information did not have any effect; a second visuospatial channel, redundant color, was a critical factor in improving scores of men and women on difficult mental rotations tasks.     

Countering Perfectionism in Research on Clinical Practice. III: Implications for Randomized Designs of the Presence of Uncontrolled Interactions and Spontaneous Changes

In a crossover study, we took pre-test, post-first-treatment, and post-second-treatment measures of self-expressiveness (assertiveness) and of acute emotional distress while we successively trained different groups of students in assertiveness and group therapy exercises. Our (unfulfilled) expectations were straightforward: We thought that assertiveness training would produce specific improvement in self-expression measures with little impact on overall distress and that group therapy would produce specific improvement in general distress with little impact on assertiveness. Both treatments improved assertiveness and decreased distress. The fact that our treatments had impure effects enhanced the likelihood of Type II statistical errors and compromised the effectiveness of our design. In addition, quite surprisingly, assertiveness training selectively improved the mental health of women students, and group therapy selectively improved the assertiveness of men students more than the alternative treatment did. This interaction between gender and randomly administered experimental treatment procedures raises serious, generally important questions about the logic of statistically controlled experimentation that relies on randomization to eliminate the effects of uncontrolled, but relevant, variables.