Do Parents and Overweight,Treatment-Seeking Youth Provide Similar Ratings of Youths’ Psychosocial Functioning and Fatigue?

Patterns of agreement between parent and child ratings of psychosocial functioning and fatigue in children with obesity were examined. Analyses demonstrated moderate agreement for social anxiety in elementary children and small agreement for social anxiety in adolescents. Results of analyses of overall quality of life revealed small agreement in children under the age of 8, large agreement in children ages 8–12, and moderate agreement in adolescents ages 13–18. Overall ratings of fatigue demonstrated moderate agreement both in elementary children and in adolescents. A meaningful relationship was found between each factor measured by a parent and a child. Patterns which were unexpected given the existing literature were found; possible hypotheses explaining these patterns are presented; and the need for further research is highlighted.     

Auditory verb perception recruits motor systems in the developing brain: an fMRI investigation

This study investigated neural activation patterns during verb processing in children, using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Preschool children (aged 4–6) passively listened to lists of verbs and adjectives while neural activation was measured. Findings indicated that verbs were processed differently than adjectives, as the verbs recruited motor systems in the frontal cortex during auditory perception, but the adjectives did not. Further evidence suggested that different types of verbs activated different regions in the motor cortex. The results demonstrate that the motor system is recruited during verb perception in the developing brain, reflecting the embodied nature of language learning and processing.     

Parent-reported executive functioning in young children treated for cancer

It is well known that children treated for cancer are at risk for cognitive and functional impairments. Such research is largely based on studies of late effects in school-aged or older children. However, far less is known about executive function weaknesses in preschool-aged children treated for cancer. Thus, the aim of this study was to examine executive functioning in a clinically referred sample of young oncology patients, and its association with broader domains of functioning. Data from 61 young children with cancer, who were referred for clinical cognitive evaluations, were abstracted and included in this study. Patients were 5.00 years of age (SD = 0.72) at assessment, 54.1% male, and two-thirds (63.9%) had been treated for brain tumors. Most executive functions were significantly discrepant from the mean, with 47.5% of preschoolers having parent-reported working memory concerns within the clinically significant range. There were no differences in executive functioning based on diagnosis or treatment status. Parent-reported executive functioning was strongly correlated with global intelligence and adaptive functioning, with some indices also associated with nonverbal problem solving and pre-academic skills. Ultimately, results indicate the presence of emerging weaknesses in executive functioning in young children with cancer, and add to a growing body of literature highlighting the potential cognitive and behavioral risks associated with a cancer diagnosis in early childhood.     

DeLanda’s ontology: assemblage and realism

Manuel DeLanda is one of the few admitted realists in present-day continental philosophy, a position he claims to draw from Deleuze. DeLanda conceives of the world as made up of countless layers of assemblages, irreducible to their parts and never dissolved into larger organic wholes. This article supports DeLanda’s position as a refreshing new model for continental thought. It also criticizes his movement away from singular individuals toward disembodied attractors and topological structures lying outside all specific beings. While endorsing DeLanda’s realism, I reject his shift from the actual to the virtual.

Response elimination in concurrent and single operant situations with pigeons

Two experiments compared the efficiency and durability of elimination of a free operant resulting from omission (OM) or extinction (EXT) when an alternative to the response undergoing elimination was available. Pigeons were pretrained on concurrent VI (Expt I) before response elimination, durability testing, and extinction testing. Maintenance of one operant by the adventitious reinforcement for not emitting a second operant subjected to OM was demonstrated. Response elimination effects were more durable after OM than EXT. Experiment II compared concurrent and single operant paradigms in response elimination with OM and EXT. Response elimination was more rapid and more durable in the concurrent situation than in the single operant situation, and OM conditions were more durable than EXT conditions.     

Encoding 'regular' and 'random' sequences of views of novel three-dimensional objects

When we look at an object as we move or the object moves, our visual system is presented with a sequence of different views of the object. It has been suggested that such regular temporal sequences of views of objects contain information that can aid in the process of representing and recognising objects. We examined whether seeing a series of perspective views of objects in sequence led to more efficient recognition than seeing the same views of objects but presented in a random order. Participants studied images of 20 novel three-dimensional objects rotating in depth under one of two study conditions. In one study condition, participants viewed an ordered sequence of views of objects that was assumed to mimic important aspects of how we normally encounter objects. In the other study condition, participants were presented the same object views, but in a random order. It was expected that studying a regular sequence of views would lead to more efficient recognition than studying a random presentation of object views. Although subsequent recognition accuracy was equal for the two groups, differences in reaction time between the two study groups resulted. Specifically, the random study group responded reliably faster than the sequence study group. Some possible encoding differences between the two groups are discussed.