Auditory temporal processing deficits in children with periventricular brain injury

The present study investigated whether auditory temporal processing deficits are related to the presence and/or the severity of periventricular brain injury and the reading difficulties experienced by extremely low birthweight (ELBW: birthweight <1000 g) children. Results indicate that ELBW children with mild or severe brain lesions obtained significantly lower scores on a test requiring auditory temporal order judgments than ELBW children without periventricular brain injury or children who were full-term. Structural equation modeling indicated that a model in which auditory temporal processing deficits predicted speech sound discrimination and phonological processing ability provided a better fit for the data than did a second model, which hypothesized that auditory temporal processing deficits are associated with poor reading abilities through a working memory deficit. These findings suggest that an impairment in auditory temporal processing may contribute to the reading difficulties experienced by ELBW children.     

Dualism and its Importance for Medicine

Cartesian dualism has been viewed by medical theorists to be oneof the chief causes of a reductionist/mechanistic treatment ofthe patient. Although I aver that Cartesian dualism is one culprit for the misapprehension of the genuine treatment of patients in termsof both mind and body, I argue that interactive dualism whichstresses the interaction of mind and body is essential to treatpatients with dignity and compassion. Thus, adequate medical carethat is humanistic in nature is difficult (if not impossible)to achieve without physicians adhering to a dualistic frameworkin which the body and person is treated during illness.     

Perceptions of the parent-adolescent relationship: a longitudinal investigation

A self-report measure of conflict and aspects of warmth in the parent-child relationship was completed by 1,330 11-year-old twins, 1,176 of whom completed the inventory again 3 years later. On average, adolescents' perceptions of the quality of the parent-child relationship declined consistently and moderately between age 11 and age 14. Conflict with parents increased, whereas all aspects of warmth decreased; changes were significantly greater for girls than boys. Variances increased with age, primarily because of increases in the magnitude of genetic effects. Heritability estimates ranged from .09 to .31 at intake and .35 to .45 at follow-up and tended to be higher for boys than girls. Changes in the parent-child relationship are interpreted as reflecting genotype-environment correlation processes whereby adolescents increasingly influence their relationships with their parents.     

Hope,Social Support,and Postpartum Depression: Disentangling the Mediating Effects of Negative Affectivity

We examined the potentially mediating effects of negative affectivity (NA) on the hope–depression relationship among a sample of postpartum women. We also assessed the social support reported by these women and examined the possible mediating effects of NA on the social support–postpartum depression relationship. Correlational analyses of data obtained from women (N = 98) who had given birth in the previous 6 months revealed that NA did not mediate either hope or social support in the prediction of postpartum depression. Hope accounted for a significant degree of variance in postpartum depression. These data suggest that hope has palliative effects among women following childbirth and these effects are not nullified or explained by emotional predispositions.     

Bayesian eggs and Bayesian omelettes: reply to Stern (2005)

In this response to Stern's (2005) discussion of Klugkist, Laudy, and Hoijtink (2005), model inference based on posterior probabilities on the parameter space is discussed. Furthermore, the authors respond to Stern's example in which all possible orderings are included via a short discussion of exploratory versus theory-based modeling. Finally, the authors show that the Bayesian approach is flexible and can deal with many types of constraints. This is illustrated using a model with constraints on the differences between means.     

The role of conceptual recoding in reducing children's retroactive interference

Reductions in children's retroactive interference were examined with conceptual recoding. Children learned two 10-item lists of toys; items on the 2nd list could also be classified as vehicles. Some children were not told about this 2nd category, whereas others were told either at the end of acquisition or just prior to the retention test 24 hr later. The results showed that (a) children benefited from the recoding instruction, (b) younger but not older children failed to benefit from the recoding manipulation when it occurred just prior to the retention test, and (c) recoding reduced retroactive interference primarily through affecting storage processes. These results provide new evidence concerning the importance of making information distinctive in storage in children's retention.