Executive abilities in children with congenital visual impairment in mid-childhood

The role of vision and vision deprivation in the development of executive function (EF) abilities in childhood is little understood; aspects of EF such as initiative, attention orienting, inhibition, planning and performance monitoring are often measured through visual tasks. Studying the development and integrity of EF abilities in children with congenital visual impairment (VI) may provide important insights into the development of EF and also its possible relationship with vision and non-visual senses. The current study investigates non-visual EF abilities in 18 school-age children of average verbal intelligence with VI of differing levels of severity arising from congenital disorders affecting the eye, retina, or anterior optic nerve. Standard auditory neuropsychological assessments of sustained and divided attention, phonemic, semantic and switching verbal fluency, verbal working memory, and ratings of everyday executive abilities by parents were undertaken. Executive skills were compared to age-matched typically-sighted (TS) typically-developing children and across levels of vision (mild to moderate VI [MVI] or severe to profound VI [SPVI]). The results do not indicate significant differences or deficits on direct assessments of verbal and auditory EF between the groups. However, parent ratings suggest difficulties with everyday executive abilities, with the greatest difficulties in those with SPVI. The findings are discussed as possibly reflecting increased demands of behavioral executive skills for children with VI in everyday situations despite auditory and verbal EF abilities in the typical range for their age. These findings have potential implications for clinical and educational practices.     

An attentional approach to study mental representations of different parts of the hand

The aim of this study is to investigate whether the fingers are represented separately from the palm. An exogenous spatial orientation paradigm was used where participants had to detect a tactile stimulus that could appear on the palm, the middle finger or the ring finger of the left hand. The tactile target was preceded by a non-predictive cue using different stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOA). We observed a Facilitation Effect in the palm and Inhibition of Return (IOR) for fingers using a short cue-target SOA, whereas the IOR was found in fingers and palm in long cue-target SOA. Also we observed a ‘Cue above Target’ effect (facilitation effect when the Cue had appeared distal to the target location in a vertical line) at the long SOA. Together, we suggest that the general pattern of results supports the proposed hypothesis about the different mental representation of fingers and palms, but with a considerable and hierarchical interrelation between them.     

An Investigation of the Relationships of Rorschach Scores,Patterns, and Behavior to Coping and Defense Mechanisms

Relationships were studied between formal Rorschach scores and a set of coping and defense mechanisms which had been rated on the basis of intensive interviews conducted with normal adult subjects. A preliminary study showed that IQ was related to a number of Rorschach scores, so that it was subsequently controlled. The character of the initial results and the attributes of coping functions suggested a second investigation which defined the Rorschach variables more globally. The results of this study very generally follow common expectancies in regard to M, M: FM, and W: M, but A, F extended, and F: Fk + Fc do not follow such trends. Global Rorschach attitudes were found to relate better to coping mechanisms than formal scores.     

Defining Compulsive Behavior

Neuropsychology Review - Compulsive tendencies are a central feature of problematic human behavior and thereby are of great interest to the scientific and clinical community. However, no consensus...     

Face perception: A very special issue

The perception of a face allows us to recognize the person, infer his or her emotional state, better understand what the person is saying, and derive general information, such as age and gender. This unique visual stimulus has generated a wealth of research, and subsequently theoretical and methodological debate. This special issue brings together 16 original papers that show the extraordinary diversity and fruitfulness of the approaches now being pursued. They are aimed at understanding different aspects of face perception in populations ranging from healthy children to adults with brain lesions and with techniques covering the entire spectrum from paper‐and‐pencil tests to functional brain imaging. Together, these contributions provide an insightful overview of the current state of research on face perception and exemplify the questions that dominate the field. To one such question, whether ‘face perception’ is a special issue in the broad field of the cognitive neurosciences, the answer is clearly yes!     

Applications of ERP and fMRI techniques to developmental science

Event‐related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging are both measures of functional brain activation that have been applied to developmental questions. However, the two measures are not identical and reflect different aspects of neuronal function at a physiological level. There is increasing interest in using these methods in combination because of the complementary information they provide about brain activation. ERPs provide more detailed information about the timing of neural activity, while fMRI provides more detailed information about its spatial location. Thus, their combined use may provide more detailed spatio‐temporal information than either method alone. In this paper, we review the basic principles of ERP and fMRI and present selected studies from our own work to illustrate their strengths for studies of development. In addition, we discuss the potential benefits and special challenges of the combined use of electrophysiological and functional MRI techniques.     

Systematic variability in the quality of moral action, as defined in two formulations

Whether the often-reported, low level correlations among moral scores for different situations are due to systematic variations in both contexts and persons' functioning was investigated within two moral systems: Kohlberg's (1981) and an interactional formulation (Haan, 1978). The sample was 119 university students, members of 15 naturally existing friendship groups. First they were individually interviewed; then, as friendship groups, they took part in five sessions of about 3 hr each; 10 groups played moral games, whereas 5 groups discussed hypothetical dilemmas. The students were reinterviewed individually, soon after the five sessions, and again 3-4 months later. Thus eight moral scores were secured for each moral system. Measures of characteristic ego functioning and friends' sociometric evaluations were obtained before the sessions along with situationally evoked ego functioning and the groups' functioning during the sessions. Inconsistent moral performance occurred according to both systems, but variations could be attributed to systematic situational effects of contextual stress, contents of dilemmas, and operational style of friendship groups, and to individual differences in the students' characteristic and situationally evoked ways of resolving conflict. Differences between the two systems in the effects of ego strategies were most striking.     

Seeing red primes tomato: evidence for comparable priming from colour and colour name primes to semantically related word targets

There is ample evidence that an independent processing stream exists that subserves the perception and appreciation of colour. Neurophysiological research has identified separate brain mechanisms for the processing of wavelength and colour, and neuropsychological studies have revealed selective colour disorders, such as achromatopsia, colour agnosia, and colour anomia. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether the perception of colour may, despite its independent processing, influence other cognitive functions. Specifically, we investigate the possibility that the perception of a colour influences higher order processes such as the activation of semantically related concepts. We designed an associative priming task involving a colour prime (e.g. a red patch or the word RED) and a lexical decision response to a semantically related (‘tomato’ vs. ‘timato’) or unrelated (‘grass’ vs. ‘griss’) word target. The results of this experiment indicate that there is comparable facilitation of accessing colour-related semantics through the perception of a colour or the reading of a colour name. This suggests that colour has a direct effect on higher order level, cognitive processing. These results are discussed in terms of current models of colour processing.