Some relationships between adaptation and electromyographic activity at laryngeal and masseter sites in stutterers

Cumulative integrated electromyographic (EMG) activity was recorded from laryngeal and masseter sites from ten stutterers during a five trial oral adaptation sequence. Results showed more activity at the laryngeal site than the masseter site. While significant reductions in EMG activity were not found, patterns were shown to be related to the subjects' dysfluency patterns over trials. Results were interpreted as suggesting that reduced muscle activity and adaptation (when they occur) are artifacts of other behavioral modifications resulting from overt motor practice.     

The ear’s versus the eye’s potential to assess characteristics of numeric data: Are we too visuocentric?

A single experiment studied how effectively information about the central tendency, variability, and shape of numeric data distributions could be conveyed to statistically knowledgeable subjects. The data were summarized by visual histograms, auditory histograms that coded numeric value as pitch on the musical scale, and five-note auditory analogues of a box-whisker display that coded the minimum, quartile, and maximum scores as musical notes. Regression and multidimensional scaling analysis of judgments of dissimilarity between distributions showed that auditory depiction provides a highly effective means of conveying information about distributional characteristies. Auditory depicition may be a useful alternative to traditional visual graphics.     

Controlled recall of verbal material in temporal lobe epilepsy

This study used a guided process‐dissociation procedure to examine the contribution of controlled and automatic uses of memory to a cued‐recall task in 24 patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE: 12 left‐sided; 12 right‐sided), and 12 neurotypical controls. In an inclusion task, participants attempted to complete three‐letter word stems using previously studied words, in an exclusion task they aimed to avoid using studied words to complete stems. Patients with left TLE produced fewer target completions under inclusion conditions. Completion rates were not significantly different under exclusion conditions. Estimates derived from process dissociation calculations, confirmed that the cued‐recall deficit in left TLE patients arose entirely from impairment in controlled memory processes. There were no group differences in the estimates of automatic processes. Recognition judgements of stems corresponding to studied words did not differ between the groups. Overall the results support the view that controlled and automatic memory processes are mediated by separable neural systems. Hippocampal and related structures within the left MTL are more important than corresponding right hemisphere structures for the controlled retrieval of verbal material. In contrast, the findings from this study do not suggest that the left and right temporal lobes make a differential contribution to automatic memory processing. The theoretical and clinical relevance of these findings are discussed.     

The frequency and effect on outcome of different types of interpretation in psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral group psychotherapy

The therapeutic effects of interpretations by both therapists and other clients were recorded by observers in three cognitive-behavioral and three psychodynamic groups over a period of thirty one-and-one-half-hour group therapy sessions. There was no significant difference in the overall frequency of interpretations made in the two different therapy modalities; however, there was the expected difference in the types of interpretations made. Cognitive-behavior therapists and group members tended to interpret patterns of behavior or impact on others more frequently than did psychodynamic therapists and group members; while psychodynamic therapists and group members made more historical cause interpretations. However, contrary to expectations, both therapy modalities made more interpretations of patterns of present behavior than any other type. When these interpretations were converted into problem statements that were sent to outside raters after the termination of the groups, the outside raters judged that clients improved most when interpretations of a pattern of behavior were made; next most when interpretations of impact on others were made; and did not improve when interpretations of motive were employed in either modality.     

The effect of redundant stimulus elements on visual discrimination as a function of element heterogeneity,equal discriminability,and position uncertainty

Garner and Lee (1962) showed no gain in visual discrimination accuracy with addition of redundant stimulus elements. Eriksen and Lappin (1965) showed a substantial gain. One experiment reported here indicates that the discrepancy is not due to the fact that the earlier experiment used heterogeneous stimulus elements. A second experiment indicated that the gain in discrimination accuracy does occur when the additional stimulus elements have the same discriminability as the original elements. It also showed that position uncertainty itself has no effect on the gain with redundant elements, but is a convenient procedural device for maintaining fixation and thus equal element discriminability. Three models of perceptual independence fit the data.     

The effect of stimulus element redundancy on speed of discrimination as a function of state and process limitation

The effect of spatially repeated stimulus elements on the speed of discrimination, measured in a sorting task, was determined under conditions of low stimulus visibility (state limitation) and high stimulus similarity (process limitation). A significant increase in speed of sorting stimuli was found when the stimuli were state limited but not when process limited, even though base speeds were the same in both cases. It is concluded that element redundancy will improve discrimination performance only when the need for the improvement is a state limitation.     

Aphasic adults' use of heuristic and structural linguistic cues for sentence analysis

Eight aphasic adults with relatively preserved auditory comprehension and 12 normal adults were tested for their ability to analyze sentences in which the functional relations between the verb and nouns was either directly reflected by word order expectancies, or marked by a functor or non-NVN word order. The subjects' task was to designate the agent of each sentence. Results indicated that aphasics utilize word order expectancies but are impaired in their ability to exploit functors and particularly, word order markers for sentence analysis. Results are discussed in terms of aphasics' use of heuristic versus structural linguistic cues for interpreting sentences.     

Intentional versus unintentional use of contingencies between perceptual events

In three experiments we studied human ability to use statistical contingencies between visual stimuli (flankers and targets) to improve performance in a letter-digit classification task. We compared the performance of explicitly informed subjects with that of subjects who were told nothing of the contingencies. Simultaneous presentation of flankers and targets (Experiment 1) produced evidence of unintentional contingency use by both informed and uninformed subjects. When stimuli on trialn predicted target stimuli on trialn+1 (Experiment 2) there was no evidence of unintentional processes, but informed subjects showed strong evidence of using intentional prediction strategies. When flanker onset preceded target stimuli presentation (Experiment 3), evidence of contingency use by both informed and uninformed subjects was found, but the data illustrated qualitative differences in response style (e.g., speed-accuracy tradeoffs) between the two groups. Intentional and unintentional uses of contingencies between perceptual events are qualitatively distinct with respect to the time frame in which they can be applied and the performance patterns they produce. Finally, we argue that the unintentional processes studied here are implicit in nature.