Hostile attributional tendencies in maltreated children

The hostile attributional tendencies of maltreated children in elementary school across key relationship figures (i.e., parents, teachers, and peers), the relation between children's hostile attributional tendencies and the frequency and severity of maltreatment, and the role of children's hostile attributions of their parents in mediating the relation between maltreatment and children's hostile attributions of unfamiliar peers were examined. The sample consisted of 44 maltreated and 56 nonmaltreated children (females = 51) of mixed ethnicity. Subjects were administered a 20-item measure of attributional processes. The results indicated that relative to nonmaltreated children, physically abused boys were more likely to attribute hostile intentions to a variety of relationship figures, including their parents, an unfamiliar teacher, their best friend, and unfamiliar peers. A positive relation was also found between the frequency of physical abuse and hostile attributional tendencies among males. Finally, support was found for the role of children's hostile attributions of their mothers in mediating the relation between physical abuse and children's hostile attributions of unfamiliar peers. The results support a link between physical abuse and hostile attributional tendencies in children in early elementary school.     

Cortical localisation of the visual and auditory word form areas: a reconsideration of the evidence

In this paper we examine the evidence for human brain areas dedicated to visual or auditory word form processing by comparing cortical activation for auditory word repetition, reading, picture naming, and environmental sound naming. Both reading and auditory word repetition activated left lateralised regions in the frontal operculum (Broca's area), posterior superior temporal gyrus (Wernicke's area), posterior inferior temporal cortex, and a region in the mid superior temporal sulcus relative to baseline conditions that controlled for sensory input and motor output processing. In addition, auditory word repetition increased activation in a lateral region of the left mid superior temporal gyrus but critically, this area is not specific to auditory word processing, it is also activated in response to environmental sounds. There were no reading specific activations, even in the areas previously claimed as visual word form areas: activations were either common to reading and auditory word repetition or common to reading and picture naming. We conclude that there is no current evidence for cortical sites dedicated to visual or auditory word form processing.     

Technology for independence: a community-based resource center

Despite the prominence of the disability civil rights model--with its values of inclusion and empowerment--the majority of social and policy research conducted to date has not sufficiently included the perspective of persons with disabilities in the research process and as uniquely qualified researchers themselves. This article describes a new project, "Technology for Independence: A Community-Based Resource Center" (CBRC). Over a five-year period, the CBRC will attempt to enhance community and consumer-directed disability organizations to design, implement, and disseminate research that promotes access to and use of assistive technology (AT). The CBRC will use strategies such as leadership training, participatory action research, technical assistance, web-assisted training, and annual symposia. A primary goal of the CBRC is to increase the capacity of community organizations to conduct research on AT that is scientifically rigorous and relevant to disability services, policy, and law.     

Environmental support promotes expertise-based mitigation of age differences on pilot communication tasks

The authors investigated whether expertise is more likely to mitigate age declines when experts rely on environmental support in a pilot/Air Traffic Control (ATC) communication task. Pilots and nonpilots listened to ATC messages that described a route through an airspace, while they referred to a chart of the airspace. They read back (repeated) each message and then answered a probe question about the route. In a preliminary study, participants could take notes while listening to the messages and performing the read-back and probe tasks. In Experiment 1, opportunity to take notes was manipulated. Note taking determined when expertise mitigated age differences on the read-back task. With note taking, read-back accuracy declined with age for nonpilots but not for pilots. Without note taking, similar age-related declines occurred for pilots and nonpilots. Benefits of expertise, younger age, and note taking occurred for probe accuracy, but mitigation did not occur. The findings suggest that older adults take advantage of a domain-relevant form of environmental support (note taking) to maintain performance on some complex tasks despite typical age-related declines in cognitive ability.     

Now you feel it, now you don't: frontal brain electrical asymmetry and individual differences in emotion regulation

Recent theoretical accounts of emotion regulation assign an important role in this process to the prefrontal cortex, yet there is little relevant data available to support this hypothesis. The current study assessed the relation between individual differences in asymmetric prefrontal activation and an objective measure of uninstructed emotion regulation. Forty-seven participants 57 to 60 years old viewed emotionally arousing and neutral visual stimuli while eyeblink startle data were collected. Startle probes were also presented after picture presentation to capture the persistence or attenuation of affect following the offset of an emotional stimulus. Subjects with greater relative left-sided anterior activation in scalp-recorded brain electrical signals displayed attenuated startle magnitude after the offset of negative stimuli. This relation between resting frontal activation and recovery following an aversive event supports the idea of a frontally mediated mechanism involved in one form of automatic emotion regulation.     

The joint WAIS-III and WMS-III factor structure: development and cross-validation of a six-factor model of cognitive functioning

During the standardization of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (3rd ed.; WAIS-III) and the Wechsler Memory Scale (3rd ed.; WMS-III) the participants in the normative study completed both scales. This "co-norming" methodology set the stage for full integration of the 2 tests and the development of an expanded structure of cognitive functioning. Until now, however, the WAIS-III and WMS-III had not been examined together in a factor analytic study. This article presents a series of confirmatory factor analyses to determine the joint WAIS-III and WMS-III factor structure. Using a structural equation modeling approach, a 6-factor model that included verbal, perceptual, processing speed, working memory, auditory memory, and visual memory constructs provided the best model fit to the data. Allowing select subtests to load simultaneously on 2 factors improved model fit and indicated that some subtests are multifaceted. The results were then replicated in a large cross-validation sample (N = 858).     

Posthypnotic suggestion and the modulation of Stroop interference under cycloplegia

Recent data indicate that under a specific posthypnotic suggestion to circumvent reading, highly suggestible subjects successfully eliminated the Stroop interference effect. The present study examined whether an optical explanation (e.g., visual blurring or looking away) could account for this finding. Using cyclopentolate hydrochloride eye drops to pharmacologically prevent visual accommodation in all subjects, behavioral Stroop data were collected from six highly hypnotizables and six less suggestibles using an optical setup that guaranteed either sharply focused or blurred vision. The highly suggestibles performed the Stroop task when naturally vigilant, under posthypnotic suggestion not to read, and while visually blurred; the less suggestibles ran naturally vigilant, while looking away, and while visually blurred. Although visual accommodation was precluded for all subjects, posthypnotic suggestion effectively eliminated Stroop interference and was comparable to looking away in controls. These data strengthen the view that Stroop interference is neither robust nor inevitable and support the hypothesis that posthypnotic suggestion may exert a top-down influence on neural processing.     

Complementarity of Linguistic and Prosodic Processes in the Intact Brain

Despite considerable speculation in the research literature regarding the complementarity of functional lateralization of prosodic and linguistic processes in the normal intact brain, few studies have directly addressed this issue. In the present study, behavioral laterality indices of emotional prosodic and traditional linguistic speech functions were obtained for a sample of healthy young adults, using the dichotic listening method. After screening for adequate emotional prosody and linguistic recognition abilities, participants completed the Fused Rhymed Words Test (FRWT; Wexler & Halwes, 1983) and the Dichotic Emotion Recognition Test (DERT; McNeely & Netley, 1998). Examination of the difference in ear asymmetries for these measures within individuals revealed a complementary pattern in 78% of the sample. However, the correlation between laterality quotients for the FRWT and DERT was near zero, supporting Bryden's model of "statistical" complementarity (e.g., Bryden, 1990).     

Content Analysis of Cognitive Bias: Development of a Standardized Measure

The purpose of this research was to develop a standardized content analytic measure of cognitive bias as conceptualized in Beck's (1987) cognitive theory of depression. In a pilot study it was determined that a written stimulus format was preferable to an audiotaped stimulus format with respect to comprehensibility. Valence and expectancy ratings collected in this pilot study also served as the basis for selection of items for the final measure, balancing positive and negative, expected and unexpected events. In study 2 open-ended written responses to questions about the main cause of each event, and the justifications for these attributions, were coded for indices of bias, defined (as in Cook & Peterson, 1986) as justifications that fail to cite covariation of the ascribed cause with the effect. Cognitive bias scores in Study 2 showed internal consistency (positive item-remainder correlations) and high interrater reliability. As predicted, justifications of attributions for expected events were more biased and less rational than were justifications of attributions for unexpected events.     

Perceptual asymmetry differences between major depression with or without a comorbid anxiety disorder: a dichotic listening study.

Predictions that anxious and nonanxious depression would differ in perceptual asymmetry (PA), as well as in sensitivity for perceiving emotional words, were evaluated using dichotic listening tasks. A total of 149 patients having a major depressive disorder (51 with and 98 without an anxiety disorder) and 57 healthy controls were tested on fused-word and complex tone tasks. The anxious and nonanxious depression groups showed a consistent difference in PA across tasks; that is, the anxious group had a larger left-ear advantage for tones and a smaller right-ear advantage for words when compared with the nonanxious group. There was no group difference in sensitivity for perceiving emotional words. Patients having an anxious depression appear to have a greater propensity to activate right than left-hemisphere regions during auditory tasks, whereas those having a nonanxious depression have the opposite hemispheric asymmetry.