Late-Onset Hearing Loss: Strategies for Effective Counseling

Late-onset hearing loss is one of the major chronic conditions experienced by older individuals. The term presbycusis is typically used when describing this condition. Presbycusis refers to many degenerative changes that affect older people's hearing. This article provides practical suggestions for working with persons with this condition.     

RWMODEL II: computer simulation of the Rescorla-Wagner model of Pavlovian conditioning

RWMODEL II simulates the Rescorla-Wagner model of Pavlovian conditioning. It is written in Delphi and runs under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. The program was designed for novice and expert users and can be employed in teaching, as well as in research. It is user friendly and requires a minimal level of computer literacy but is sufficiently flexible to permit a wide range of simulations. It allows the display of empirical data, against which predictions from the model can be validated.     

Visual acuity improvement following fading and feedback training—I. Comparison of myopic and emmetropic volunteers

18 myopes and 18 emmetropes were randomly assigned in pairs to either Fading and Feedback training or a no-treatment control condition. The emmetropes were fitted with plus lenses equivalent to the spherical correction of the paired myope to simulate myopic visual acuity. Extensive visual acuity measures were obtained pre- and post-training. Data analyses indicated significant increases in recognition visual acuity for trained subjects, compared to no-treatment controls. The myopia/emmetropia variable did not interact with training even though there were noticably greater increases in visual acuity for trained myopes compared to the other conditions. Resolution visual acuity did not change as a function of training. These data are discussed in terms of their implications for better understanding the mechanisms responsible for visual acuity increases following behavioural training.     

Relationship between levels of oral and written language in beginning readers

The validity of a test battery, organized by a theoretical framework of levels of language processing and production, was evaluated at the end of kindergarten and theend of first grade. At the end of kindergarten two levels of oral language, phonemic and lexical, and at the end of first grade three levels of oral language, phonemic, lexical, and text, were correlated with word decoding and reading comprehension. At the end of first grade, the combination of phonemic and lexical skills accounted for more variance in both word decoding and reading comprehension than either phonemic or lexical skills alone. The strength of the relationship between specific levels of oral language and specific component reading skills changed after formal reading instruction was introduced. Functional relationships were found between improvement in phonemic skills or lexical skills and improvement in word decoding. Partial correlations between two levels of oral language with a third partialed out (receptive or expressive task requirements held constant) provided evidence for three semiindependent levels of oral language—phonemic, lexical, and text. Because the battery has concurrent and construct validity, school psychologists can use it to monitor beginning readers in order to prevent reading disabilities due to subtle language dysfunctions.     

Reasoning ability in older adults measured through letter and number series

Letter series and number series tests, consisting of items based on identical rules, were administered in a counterbalanced design to 58 persons (46 women and 12 men) between the ages of 61 and 88 years to determine their relative efficacy (relative difficulty and acceptability) as measures of inductive/deductive reasoning ability. Results indicated that letter and number series tests, in which each item in one has a same-rule counterpart in the other, were not equivalent in regard to their relative difficulty or popularity among the elderly. The number series test was significantly (p 0001) easier and more popular than its letter series counterpart. Some of the implications of these findings for assessing reasoning ability in the elderly were specified.     

A Twin and Family Study of the Association Between Immune System Dysfunction and Dyslexia Using Blood Serum Immunoassay and Survey Data

We conducted a study of the association between developmental reading disability (DRD) and immune disorders (ID) using both survey and immunoassay data in two separate samples of families. One sample was made up of twins and their parents and was ascertained through a population-based sampling scheme. The other sample was a set of extended pedigrees selected for apparent autosomal dominant transmission of DRD. We failed to find an association between DRD and ID in either sample, regardless of the method used to assess immune system function. Even though our twin sample provided evidence that both DRD and immune conditions were significantly heritable, there was no evidence for a genetic correlation between ID and DRD nor was there any clear indication that a special subgroup of individuals may be comorbid for these conditions because of genetic reasons. How these negative findings can be reconciled with the developmental hypothesis of Geschwind, Behan, Galaburda, and colleagues, and how they may relate to the gene locus influencing DRD that has been recently located in the HLA region of the short arm of chromosome 6 is discussed.     

Habitual Prospective Memory and Aging: Remembering Intentions and Forgetting Actions

Routine or habitual prospective memory tasks (e.g., taking medication) have the potential for creating confusions regarding whether or not an action has already been performed. We developed a laboratory paradigm for examining the kinds of processes thought to be operating in these kinds of tasks. Younger and older participants were asked to perform an action once and only once on each of 11 trials. The results showed that age and divided attention contributed to both omission and repetition errors. This new paradigm reveals memory failures in a habitual prospective memory task, and the results demonstrate that older adults are particularly susceptible to these memory problems.