Acquired dyslexia in Spanish: a review and some observations on a new case of deep dyslexia

Readers and writers of Spanish use an orthography that is highly transparent. It has been proposed that readers of Spanish can rely on grapheme-phoneme correspondences, alone, to access meaning or phonology from print. In recent years, a number of case studies have yielded evidence inconsistent with this idea. We review these studies with particular focus on those that report evidence for reading based on direct lexical mappings between print, orthographic representations, and meaning or phonology. We report a new case of acquired literacy impairment in Spanish, MJ, who presents a pattern of preserved abilities and deficits symptomatic of deep dyslexia. The patient is unable to read nonwords, but can read a substantial number of words. Her reading is characterized by the production of semantic, visual, and derivational errors. We argue that MJ has a deficit in her lexical selection ability, common to both her reading and her naming problems. We propose that MJ, and the other cases we review, demonstrate that lexical reading is adopted by skilled readers even in a transparent language.     

Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education in the Hispanic World: A Response

We concentrate on four questions among the many posed by this special collection of papers on Pragmatism and the Hispanic world. They are, first, what took pragmatism beyond the borders of the United States and into the Hispanic world? Next, what are the ideas of Dewey (or pragmatism) that have had the greatest impact on Hispanic culture? Third, what are the past and present obstacles that has kept the Hispanic world from using pragmatism to deal with many of their educational and social problems? Finally, why does pragmatism still hold great promise and potential for the Hispanic world?     

Mother-infant relationships in baboons (Papio hamadryas): predictors of differences and discontinuities in developmental pathways

This study uses hierarchical linear regression modeling to analyze sources of variation in the developmental pathways of mother-infant relationships and to search for behavioral discontinuities. The data come from 23 mother-infant dyads of baboons (Papio hamadryas), whose interactions were recorded longitudinally during the infants' 1st year of life. The infant's sex and the mother's age and reproductive experience accounted for part of the variation observed in the developmental pathways of 11 of 20 behavioral measures analyzed; however, some of them did so only in some periods but not in others. The authors proposed that this can reflect the occurrence of reorganizations or discontinuities in the mother-infant relationship that can be related to important life events such as the mother's resumption of sexual activity.     

Differential activity profile of cAMP-dependent protein kinase isoforms during long-term memory consolidation in the crab Chasmagnathus

The isoforms of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) show distinct biochemical properties and subcellular localization, suggesting different physiological functions, and conferring the fine-tuning between the activation of cAMP-PKA cascade and the cellular response. The critical role of PKA in memory and synaptic plasticity has been extensively demonstrated both in vertebrates and invertebrates, but the role of PKA isoforms is a matter of debate. Here we present experimental data showing differential PKA activation profiles after two different experiences: an instance of associative contextual learning (context-signal learning) and a single exposure to a novel context, both in the learning and memory model of the crab Chasmagnathus. Differences were found in the temporal course of activation and in the involvement of PKA isoforms. We found increased PKA activity immediately and 6 h after context-signal training correlating with the critical periods during which pharmacological inhibition of PKA disrupts memory formation. In contrast, PKA activity increased immediately but not 6 h after single exposure to a novel context. The amounts of PKA I and PKA II holoenzymes were analyzed to determine changes in holoenzyme levels and/or differential activation induced by both experiences. Results indicate that context-induced PKA activation is at least in part due to PKA II, and that PKA activation 6 h after context-signal learning coincides with an increase in the total level of PKA I. Considering the higher sensitivity of PKA I to cAMP, its increment can account for the PKA activation found 6 h after training and is proposed as a novel mechanism providing the prolonged PKA activation during memory consolidation.     

Development of a school-wide behavior program in a public middle school: an illustration of deployment-focused intervention development, stage 1

School-wide behavior management systems can improve academic performance and behavior in middle schools, and they should have positive effects on students with ADHD. Unfortunately, evidence-based, school-wide behavior management systems have not been widely adopted because of problems with feasibility, acceptability, and sustainability. The Deployment-Focused Model of Intervention Development and Testing has been proposed as a promising method of bridging the gap between research and practice settings. A key aspect of the model is to involve the persons most likely to deliver the service (e.g., teachers) in the intervention development process from the very beginning. To illustrate this process, the authors describe the planning and implementation of a school-wide program designed to improve behavior in a public middle school.     

Vocal learning in birds and humans

Vocal learning is the modification of vocal output by reference to auditory information. It allows for the imitation and improvisation of sounds that otherwise would not occur. The emergence of this skill may have been a primary step in the evolution of human language, but vocal learning is not unique to humans. It also occurs in songbirds, where its biology can be studied with greater ease. What follows is a review of some of the salient anatomical, developmental, and behavioral features of vocal learning, alongside parallels and differences between vocal learning in songbirds and humans.     

Psychometric appraisal of Eysenck's revised Psychoticism scale: a cross-cultural study

Psychometric characteristics of Eysenck's revised P scale were studied in a cross-cultural research. The Spanish version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R) was administered to a Spanish sample of 527 males and 583 females. Maximum-likelihood factor analyses of the item intercorrelations and Direct Oblimin rotations of the extracted factors were carried out separately for males and females. The results revealed four factors identified as psychoticism (P), extraversion (E), neuroticism (N) and dissimulation/conformity (L). Internal consistency and test–retest reliability coefficients were satisfactory and very similar to the ones found in the original study. Skewness and kurtosis of the P scale distribution were closer to normal than on the original British revised P scale.     

Psychosocial predictors of delay of first sexual intercourse by adolescents.

This investigation predicted adolescents' delay of intercourse onset from attitudes, social norms, and self-efficacy about refraining from sexual intercourse. Age, gender, ethnicity, and parental education were also examined as predictors and moderators of the relationships among the 3 psychosocial determinants and onset. The participants (N = 827), part of a cohort initially surveyed in the 9th grade, reported at baseline that they had never engaged in intercourse. The multivariable proportional hazards regression model suggested that adolescents with more positive attitudinal and normative beliefs, as well as those with a parent who graduated from college, were less likely to engage in intercourse in the follow-up period (up to approximately 2 years). Interventions that include an objective to delay onset may benefit from addressing psychosocial determinants, especially attitudes and norms about sexual intercourse.     

Inferior olive lesions impair concurrent taste aversion learning in rats.

Taste aversion learning can be established according to two different procedures, concurrent and sequential. For the concurrent task, two different taste stimuli are offered at the same time, one associated with simultaneous intragastric administration of an aversive stimulus and the other associated with physiological saline. This discrimination is learned by sham-lesioned control animals and by animals with lesions in the cerebellar cortex but not by rats lesioned in the inferior olive. At the same time, animals with lesions in the inferior olive and sham-lesioned animals achieve sequential learning when the gustatory stimuli are offered individually during each daily session. The results obtained show that electrolytic lesions in the inferior olive impair acquisition of concurrent learning and are analyzed in terms of an anatomical system consisting of the vagus nerve, inferior olive, and cerebellum, which differentiates between the two modalities of taste aversion learning, concurrent and sequential.