Parent-adolescent disagreement regarding psychopathology in adolescents from the general population as a risk factor for adverse outcome

This study investigated whether parent-adolescent disagreement regarding adolescents' behavioral and emotional problems predicted adverse outcome. A Dutch sample of 15- to 18-year-olds was prospectively followed across a 4-year interval. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL: T. M. Achenbach, 1997) and Youth Self-Report (YSR; T. M. Achenbach, 1991b) were administered at initial assessment, and the following signs of poor outcome were assessed 4 years later: police/judicial contacts, expulsion from school/job, suicidal ideation, unwanted pregnancy, suicide attempts, deliberate self-harm, referral to mental health services, report of having a behavioral or emotional problem, and feeling the need for professional help without actually receiving help. Twenty CBCL syndrome scores, 23 YSR syndrome scores, and 16 discrepancy scores were significant predictors of poor outcome. It was concluded that to determine the prognosis of psychopathology in adolescents, discrepancies between informants may be important.     

The force of symmetry revisited: symmetry-to-noise ratios regulate (a)symmetry effects

Freyd and Tversky's [Am. J. Psychol. 97 (1984) 109] data suggested that human observers tend to overestimate relatively high levels of symmetry (symmetry effect), and tend to underestimate relatively low levels of symmetry (asymmetry effect). However, on the basis of their holographic approach to visual regularity, van der Helm and Leeuwenberg [Psychol. Rev. 103(3) (1996) 429] predicted that, at any level of symmetry, both symmetry and asymmetry effects may occur as a consequence of correct estimates of symmetry-to-noise ratios. This prediction was tested in two experiments, with tasks and stimuli similar to those in Freyd and Tversky's study. First, subjects had to judge whether a noisy symmetry is more similar to a slightly more symmetrical variant or to a slightly less symmetrical variant. Second, for every pair of stimuli in such a triadic comparison, subjects had to judge which stimulus is the more symmetrical one. The results from both experiments show that the occurrence of (a)symmetry effects indeed depends on symmetry-to-noise ratios.     

Grammatical language impairment and the specificity of cognitive domains: relations between auditory and language abilities

Grammatical-specific language impairment (G-SLI) in children, arguably, provides evidence for the existence of a specialised grammatical sub-system in the brain, necessary for normal language development. Some researchers challenge this, claiming that domain-general, low-level auditory deficits, particular to rapid processing, cause phonological deficits and thereby SLI. We investigate this possibility by testing the auditory discrimination abilities of G-SLI children for speech and non-speech sounds, at varying presentation rates, and controlling for the effects of age and language on performance. For non-speech formant transitions, 69% of the G-SLI children showed normal auditory processing, whereas for the same acoustic information in speech, only 31% did so. For rapidly presented tones, 46% of the G-SLI children performed normally. Auditory performance with speech and non-speech sounds differentiated the G-SLI children from their age-matched controls, whereas speed of processing did not. The G-SLI children evinced no relationship between their auditory and phonological/grammatical abilities. We found no consistent evidence that a deficit in processing rapid acoustic information causes or maintains G-SLI. The findings, from at least those G-SLI children who do not exhibit any auditory deficits, provide further evidence supporting the existence of a primary domain-specific deficit underlying G-SLI.     

Backward-compatibility effects with irrelevant stimulus-response overlap: the case of the SNARC effect

In 3 dual-task experiments, the relationship between primary-task response (R1) and secondary-task response (R2) was varied. In general, R1-left responses were faster when followed by the word one, and right responses were faster when followed by the word two. This backward-compatibility (BWC) effect indicated (a) that activation of R2 was not delayed until R1 selection was completed, and (b) that activation of the vocal responses was accompanied by the automatic activation of magnitude codes, known to be associated with spatial left-right codes (spatial-numerical association of response codes [the SNARC effect]). These findings supported the hypotheses (a) that BWC effects persist even with irrelevant R1-R2 overlap, (b) that the SNARC effect is based on associations between magnitude and spatial representations underlying response processing, and (c) that the production and perception of magnitudes relies on common codes.     

Additive factors analysis of inhibitory processing in the stop-signal paradigm

This article reports an additive factors analysis of choice reaction and selective stop processes manipulated in a stop-signal paradigm. Three experiments were performed in which stimulus discriminability (SD) and stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) were manipulated in a factorial fashion. In each experiment, the effects of SD and SRC were assessed first for going and next for stopping. Two experiments yielded the anticipated additive relation between SD and SRC for going but stopping appeared to be insensitive to the SD manipulation. Increasing the SD demands in the third experiment by using a different display resulted in a significant (over-additive) interaction between SD and SRC for going and a non-significant (under-additive) interaction for stopping. The pattern of results that emerged from this set of experiments was interpreted to suggest that going and stopping are both similar and different. They are similar in that distinct stages can be identified in both going and stopping but they are also different, as selective stopping seems to be less sensitive to discrimination manipulations relative to going.     

Horse-race model simulations of the stop-signal procedure

In the stop-signal paradigm, subjects perform a standard two-choice reaction task in which, occasionally and unpredictably, a stop-signal is presented requiring the inhibition of the response to the choice signal. The stop-signal paradigm has been successfully applied to assess the ability to inhibit under a wide range of experimental conditions and in various populations. The current study presents a set of evidence-based guidelines for using the stop-signal paradigm. The evidence was derived from a series of simulations aimed at (a) examining the effects of experimental design features on inhibition indices, and (b) testing the assumptions of the horse-race model that underlies the stop-signal paradigm. The simulations indicate that, under most conditions, the latency, but not variability, of response inhibition can be reliably estimated.     

The duration of response inhibition in the stop-signal paradigm varies with response force

In a previous study, we have found that the speed of stopping a response is delayed when response readiness is reduced by cuing the probability of no-go trials [Acta Psychol. 111 (2002) 155]. Other investigators observed that responses are more forceful when the probability to respond is low than when it is high (e.g. [Quart. J. Exp. Psychol. A 50 (1997) 405]). In this study, the hypothesis was tested that low probability responses are more forceful than high probability responses and that these responses are more difficult to stop. Subjects performed on a choice reaction task and on three tasks with respectively 100%, 80%, and 50% response probabilities. Stop signals were presented on 30% of the trials, instructing subjects to withhold their response. Response force on non-signal (go) trials and the duration of response inhibition on signal (stop) trials increased as response probability decreased. This pattern of findings was interpreted to support the hypothesis predicting that stopping is more difficult when response readiness is low than when it is high.     

Interidentity amnesia for neutral,episodic information in dissociative identity disorder

Interidentity amnesia is considered a hallmark of dissociative identity disorder (DID) in clinical practice. In this study, objective methods of testing episodic memory transfer between identities were used. Tests of both recall (interference paradigm) and recognition were used. A sample of 31 DID patients was included. Additionally, 50 control subjects participated, half functioning as normal controls and the other half simulating interidentity amnesia. Twenty-one patients subjectively reported complete one-way amnesia for the learning episode. However, objectively, neither recall nor recognition scores of patients were different from those of normal controls. It is suggested that clinical models of amnesia in DID may be specified to exclude episodic memory impairments for emotionally neutral material.     

What response times tell of children's behavior on the balance scale task

Analysis of accuracy of responses to balance scale problems gives a global idea of the cognitive processes that underlie problem-solving behavior on this task. We show that response times (RTs) provide additional detailed information about the kind and duration of these processes. We derive predictions about the RTs from Siegler's (1981) model for the balance scale task, including the counterintuitive prediction that young adults are slower than children in solving particular balance scale problems. The predictions were tested in a study in which 191 6- to 22-year-old participants were presented with a computerized balance scale task. RTs were analyzed with regression models. In addition to qualitative differences between items, we also modeled quantitative differences between items in the regression models. Analyses supported the predictions and provided additional knowledge on the rules. Rule II was reformulated as a rule that always involves the encoding, but not always the correct application of the distance cue. RTs provided evidence for the use of a buggy-rule and not an addition-rule. Finally, a relation between rule inconsistency and increased RT was found.     

Coping with phonological assimilation in speech perception: evidence for early compensation

The pronunciation of the same word may vary considerably as a consequence of its context. The Dutch word tuin (English, garden) may be pronounced tuim if followed by bank (English, bench), but not if followed by stoel (English, chair). In a series of four experiments, we examined how Dutch listeners cope with this context sensitivity in their native language. A first word identification experiment showed that the perception of a word-final nasal depends on the subsequent context. Viable assimilations, but not unviable assimilations, were often confused perceptually with canonical word forms in a word identification task. Two control experiments ruled out the possibility that this effect was caused by perceptual masking or was influenced by lexical top-down effects. A passive-listening study in which electrophysiological measurements were used showed that only unviable, but not viable, phonological changes elicited a significant mismatch negativity. The results indicate that phonological assimilations are dealt with by an early prelexical mechanism.