Développement de la précision temporo-motrice et cadences spontanées de jeunes enfants

Fifty children (six to ten years old) were asked to tap a flat surface as regularly as possible with their finger at different semi-spontaneous tempi. Their chosen tapping speed was estimated by each sequence's mean inter-tap interval. The range of chosen speeds widens with age. The just tenable difference (JTD) between inter-tap intervals is proportional to their reference, the mean. The motor-timing precision, estimated through the standard-deviation/mean ratio, clearly improves with age. Children are more precise at faster tempi, not around their “normal” tempo as adults. Our simple semi-spontaneous finger-tapping task could be applied to the clinical evaluation of age-dependent explicit and implicit timing components in motor performance.     

Finding words in a language that allows words without vowels

Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring win in twin because t cannot be a word). However, the constraint would be counter-productive in certain languages that allow stand-alone vowelless open-class words. One such language is Berber (where t is indeed a word). Berber listeners here detected words affixed to nonsense contexts with or without vowels. Length effects seen in other languages replicated in Berber, but in contrast to prior findings, word detection was not hindered by vowelless contexts. When words can be vowelless, otherwise universal constraints disfavoring vowelless words do not feature in spoken-word recognition.     

The Relations Between Traumatic Experiences,Activity, and Cognitive and Emotional Responses Among Palestinian Children

The relations between the level of traumatic experiences, degree of active participation in the Intifada, and cognitive and emotional responses were studied among 108 Palestinian children of 11–12 years of age in the Gaza Strip. The results showed that the more traumatic experiences the children had and the more they participated in the Intifada, the more concentration, attention, and memory problems they had. Traumatic experiences also increased neuroticism and risk-taking, and Intifada participation decreased self-esteem. Children's active participation in the Intifada could not protect children from developing emotional problems, as was originally assumed. The highest level of neuroticism was found among active boys who were exposed to many traumatic experiences.     

Ta‘a and modern legal reform: A rereading

Based largely on court records dating from the Ottoman and modern periods, and focusing on the issue of ta'a (a wife's obedience to her husband), this article argues that nineteenth/twentieth‐century law reform proved a mixed bag for Egyptian women. Egypt's contemporary personal status laws, while based on the Shari'a, differ significantly from gender laws, also based on the Shari'a, that were applied by courts before the reform of laws began in the 1880s. In other words, gender laws have always been legally based on the Shari'a, yet the laws and their application after legal reforms differ significantly from their application before. These differences are consequential enough to warrant calling the Shari'a practiced today ‘a new Sharia’ to differentiate it from what was practiced before.     

Arab communities in Britain: Cleavages and commonalities

Contemporary Arab communities in Britain remain sociologically under‐researched, even though the settlement of some of them can be traced back to the nineteenth century. This article provides some preliminary insights into cleavages and commonalities characterizing Arab communities in the U.K., and argues the need for a research agenda in order to ensure their equitable place in British society. See’ at beginning of page 256.     

Effects of physical and verbal aggression,depression, and anxiety on drinking behavior of married partners: a prospective and retrospective longitudinal examination

In an ethnically diverse sample of 195 married couples, we conducted a latent factor growth analysis to investigate the longitudinal link (4 time points over 4½ years) between marital aggression (physical and verbal aggression self‐ and partner‐reports) and individual internalizing symptoms (depression and anxiety) as they relate to trajectories of alcohol use among husbands and wives. Alcohol use was operationalized as a latent factor with self‐ and partner reports of problem drinking as measured by the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test and the Alcohol Dependence Scale. Verbal aggression by husbands or wives, by itself, has no effect on their alcohol use over time. In conjunction with depression, however, verbally aggressive husbands do have elevated drinking levels. The effects of husbands' and wives' physical aggression on their own and their partners' drinking behavior were also significant. This study is one of the first to examine the change over time in alcohol use for marital partners as related to marital aggression and internalizing symptoms. Our results shed light on areas of marital functioning (aggression, internalizing, alcohol use) that have not been investigated in conjunction with each other in a longitudinal design. Aggr. Behav. 35:296–312, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Mental flexibility as resiliency factor among children exposed to political violence

The research focused on mental flexibility versus rigidity in explaining psychological adjustment in the violent conditions of Intifada, and in more peaceful times 3 years later, among 86 Palestinian children. A picture test based on Brunswik (1949) was applied to measure flexible‐rigid cognitive style, and neuroticism, self‐esteem, emotional disorders, and PTSD were used as outcome variables. Results revealed a moderating role of mental flexibility by showing that children were protected from negative long‐term consequences of traumatic events if their perception indicated mental flexibility. However, in the midst of violence mental flexibility was not associated with good psychological adjustment. Mental flexibility was, in turn, determined by environmental and cognitive factors: The more intelligent and the less exposed to traumatic events children were, the higher mental flexibility they showed.     

Placebo in the investigation of psychotropic drugs,especially antidepressants

The paper presents major ethical, legal and methodological problems related to the use of placebo in mental disorders, especially in depression. It is pointed out that although authoritative groups of experts and numerous publications in the field of psychopharmacology indicate advisability of the double blind design with placebo in clinical trials of antidepressants, in recent years there have been more and more voices questioning legitimacy of this method. Objections of an ethical nature are raised, and reliability of this approach is put into doubt from the methodological viewpoint. These issues are discussed in more detail in the paper. Available alternative solutions should be implemented in psychotropic drug studies. The author shares these objections and doubts of an ethical nature, and believes that the placebo procedure is not a necessity in clinical trials of antidepressants. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “Placebo: Its Action and Place in Health Research Today,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 12–13 April, 2003.     

Counterfactual thinking and posttraumatic stress reactions

Preoccupation with alternative outcomes (counterfactual thinking) is a central component of the ruminations of trauma victims. The questions investigated were whether such thinking should be distinguished from general rumination and whether elements of counterfactual thinking might relate to the process of adjustment. A sample of assault victims was interviewed. They completed a battery of self-report scales and thought-listing procedures. Frequency of counterfactual thinking was closely associated with continuing levels of posttraumatic distress. However, high availability of counterfactuals (as indexed by verbal fluency) was related to potentially adaptive outcomes, such as the generation of behavioral plans. In addition, as expected, levels of different aspects of counterfactual thinking were moderated by metacognitive control strategies as a function of time since the trauma.     

Tactile experience induces c-fos expression in rat barrel cortex

Understanding gene expression that is responsive to sensory stimulation is central to elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying neuronal plasticity. In this study we demonstrate two new methods of stimulating whiskers that provide major sensory input to rat neocortex. In the first paradigm, animals were placed on the top of a cylinder and their vibrissae were brushed by hand. In the second paradigm, animals were placed for a brief period of time into a new, wired cage resulting in vibrissae stimulation when they explored the new environment. Both approaches induced c-Fos expression in barrel cortex corresponding to the stimulated vibrissae, especially in layer IV. Layers II/III and V/VI also showed c-Fos induction, but there were no detectable changes in layer VIb. The majority of c-Fos-expressing cells are probably not inhibitory neurons, because they do not show parvalbumin staining. Both paradigms, in contrast to the previous methods, are simple to use and do not require anesthesia, restraint of animals, or elaborate experimental setups.