Assessing Phonemic Fluency in Multilingual Contexts: Letter Selection Methodology and Demographically Stratified Norms for Three South African Language Groups

Because of their global clinical utility, phonemic fluency tests are frequently incorporated into neuropsychological assessment batteries. However, in heterogeneous societies their use is complicated by the lack of careful attention to using letters of equivalent difficulty across languages, and the paucity of norms stratified by relevant sociodemographic variables. In accordance with the International Test Commission's guidelines for adaptation of test material in multilingual contexts, this study provides (1) an internationally replicable methodological template for selecting appropriate letter sets; (2) empirical evidence to substantiate the equivalence of a letter set across three languages; (3) a template for evaluating the relative impact of sociodemographic variables on phonemic fluency; and (4) appropriately stratified norms for the letter set SBL (English and Afrikaans) / IBL (Xhosa) in a sample (N = 512) of urban participants (7–25 years with 1–17 years of education) from the Cape Town region of the Western Cape province of South Africa.     

Applying evidence to support ethical decisions: Is the placebo really powerless?

Using placebos in day-to-day practice is an ethical problem. This paper summarises the available epidemiological evidence to support this difficult decision. Based on these data we propose to differentiate between placebo and “knowledge framing”. While the use of placebo should be confined to experimental settings in clinical trials, knowledge framing — which is only conceptually different from placebo — is a desired, expected and necessary component of any doctor-patient encounter. Examples from daily practice demonstrate both, the need to investigate the effects of knowledge framing and its impact on ethical, medical, economical and legal decisions. 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.     

Merging the senses into a robust percept

To perceive the external environment our brain uses multiple sources of sensory information derived from several different modalities, including vision, touch and audition. All these different sources of information have to be efficiently merged to form a coherent and robust percept. Here we highlight some of the mechanisms that underlie this merging of the senses in the brain. We show that, depending on the type of information, different combination and integration strategies are used and that prior knowledge is often required for interpreting the sensory signals.     

Freud–Ferenczi correspondence,revisited

Abstract

The article gives an overview of what Freud and Ferenczi had to say in their correspondence about their own relationship, and how they dealt with problems that arose between them. It includes a list of short selected quotes from the correspondence.     

Cognition,construction of knowledge,and teaching

The existence of objective knowledge and the possibility of communicating it by means of language have traditionally been taken for granted by educators. Recent developments in the philosophy of science and the historical study of scientific accomplishments have deprived these presuppositions of their former plausibility. Sooner or later, this must have an effect on the teaching of science. In this paper I am presenting a brief outline of an alternative theory of knowing that takes into account the thinking organism's cognitive isolation from reality. This orientation was proposed by Vico at the beginning of the 18th century, disregarded for two hundred years, and then propounded independently by Piaget as a developmentally grounded constructivist epistemology. The paper focuses specifically on the adaptive function of cognition, Piaget's scheme theory, the process of communication, and the subjective perspective on social interaction. In the concluding section it then suggests some of the consequences the shift of epistemological presuppositions might have for the practice of teaching.The only truly ubiquitous factor in cognitive developments — be it in the history of science or in the ontogeny of mind — are of a functional, not a structural kind.Piaget and Garcia, 1983, p. 38I am indebted to Jack Lochhead and John Clement for their helpful critical comments on the draft of this paper. The work that led to it was supported in part by NSF Grants to IBR. University of Georgia, and SRRI, University of Massachusetts.     

Family tree matters

The present paper investigates the form and structure of the psychoanalytic 'family tree', concentrating on the analysands of Sándor Ferenczi and Otto Rank, and their impact on contemporary psychoanalysis.     

Interpreting the WISC-R subtest scores of reading impaired children—a structural approach

The problem of characterising more specifically the cognitive requirements involved in subtests from standardised measures of intelligence represents a main problem in the research on exceptional populations. A new way of classifying tests of mental abilities is presented. Rather than focusing on the content of a given test, the present classification system focuses on their structures. The classification system is applied to the WISC-R (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Revised, Wechsler, 1974). It will be used to interpret the IQ-profiles of a clinically defined sample of reading impaired children (N=82). The basic finding of the study is that the structural complexity of a subtest influences the tests results of reading impaired children. This influence is interpreted as a consequence of poor procedural knowledge; i.e., poor knowledge about how to organise complex sets of data. It is suggested that teaching of metacognitive strategies could be an aid for reading impaired children.