Fixation accuracy and perceptual asymmetry for consonants

Fixation accuracy was related to perception of laterally presented consonants. Small left-eye fixation inaccuracy influenced perceptual performance of 8 men and 8 women.     

Relation between musical aptitude and intelligence among mentally retarded, advantaged, and disadvantaged subjects

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in scores of 59 mentally retarded adults (mild, moderate, severe, or profound), 133 advantaged, and 130 disadvantaged (low income) children in Grades 1, 2, 3 on the Primary Measures of Music Audiation. Test-retest reliabilities for the Tonal and Rhythm subtests were .81 and .86, respectively, for the retarded group. Analysis of variance indicated that the mildly retarded children performed significantly better than other groups of retarded children on these two tests. 2 x 3 analyses of variance indicated that third graders from both advantaged and disadvantaged groups performed significantly better than the first or second graders on both subtests and that advantaged children performed significantly better than the disadvantaged. However, disadvantaged children made greater gains, especially for third graders, than the advantaged.     

The status of epileptic patients in a developing African country: northwest Ethiopia

Of 1240 first-time consultations in the neuropsychiatric clinic of the Gondar College of Medical Sciences in an eleven-month period during 1985 and 1986, 152 patients came seeking relief from seizures. This paper deals with the origins and background of diagnostic, differential diagnostic, and therapeutic problems, and with problems of social rehabilitation. While in such a tradition-bound society certain hypotheses continue to have an unfavorable effect, there are unmistakable signs of positive change against a background of rapid social change. Conclusions are drawn for the better management of epileptic patients in developing countries.     

Learned helplessness in the cockroach (Periplaneta americana)

For 3 consecutive days cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) were exposed to either escapable, inescapable, or no shock in an escape task. Twenty-four hours later they were tested in a shuttlebox escape task. There were reliable differences between escapable and inescapable animals and between inescapable and control animals in both escape latencies and the number of failures to escape.     

Fragile X speech phonology in Finnish

Fragile X syndrome is a recently discovered relatively common syndrome linked with an anomaly of the X chromosome and causing handicaps of cognitive development especially in males. In the present phonological analysis we will discuss the sound patterns of two Finnish fragile X speakers, a five (borderline intelligence)- and an eight (mildly mentally retarded)-year-old boy. The fragile X syndrome is not necessarily linked with any anomalies of speech organs. The subjects could produce all Finnish speech sounds in isolated test words. However, in the present samples of connected speech they exhibited general dysphonology. What is noteworthy is that their phonological error patterns resembled each other to a great extent. Among the common features were the tendencies to substitute and omit phonemes. As for vowels, our results showed about one-half of the errors to be omissions. Labiality and quantity oppositions were quite resistant to substitution. Most substitution errors of place of consonants occurred in dentals. As for the feature of manner, /r/ and /s/ were the phonemes most prone for substitution. A tendency toward spirantization or /h/ sation was common for both patients. The number of additions was clearly lower than has been reported for English-speaking developmentally dyspraxic children and also for Finnish Broca's aphasics. The speech problems of our patients seemed to indicate higher level motor encoding problems of linguistic information rather than peripheral articulatory deficits.