A longitudinal study of high scorers on the hypomanic personality scale

Former college students (n = 36) identified by high scores on the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HYP; Eckblad & Chapman, 1986) were compared with control participants (n = 31) at a 13-year follow-up assessment. As hypothesized, the HYP group reported more bipolar disorders and major depressive episodes than the control group. The HYP group also exceeded the control group on the severity of psychotic-like experiences, symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and rates of substance use disorders. HYP group members with elevated scores on the Impulsive-Nonconformity Scale (Chapman et al., 1984) experienced greater rates of bipolar mood disorders, poorer overall adjustment, and higher rates of arrest than the remaining HYP or control participants.     

The role of morphological constituents in reading Finnish compound words

The processing of transparent Finnish compound words was investigated in 2 experiments in which eye movements were recorded while sentences were read silently. The frequency of the second constituent had a large influence (95 ms) on gaze duration on the target words, but its influence was relatively late in processing: A clear effect only occurred on the probability of a third fixation. The frequency of the whole compound word had a similar influence on gaze duration (82 ms) and influenced eye movements at least as rapidly as did the frequency of the second constituent. These results, together with an earlier finding that the frequency of the first constituent affected the first fixation duration, indicate that the identification of these compound words involves parallel processing of both morphological constituents and whole-word representations.     

Occlusion, symmetry, and object-based attention: comment on Behrmann, Zemel, and Mozer (1998)

The validity of M. Behrmann, R. Zemel, and M. Mozer's (1998) finding that object-based attention can be directed toward occluded objects is examined in 3 experiments. In M. Behrmann et al.'s (1998) original study, participants made speeded judgments of whether the numbers of bumps attached to 2 arms of an X shape were the same or different. The 2 sets of bumps belonged either to a single object, 2 different objects, or 2 separated parts of an occluded object. Unfortunately, this objecthood manipulation was confounded by the symmetry of the stimuli. Experiment 1 replicated M. Behrmann et al.'s main results using identical stimuli. Experiments 2a and 2b dissociated objecthood from symmetry. The results suggest that the effects of object-based attention found by M. Behrmann et al. are largely due to symmetry. The stimuli used in M. Behrmann et al. are not appropriate for examining the relation between object-based attention and occlusion.     

Minimal information to determine affine shape equivalence

Participants judged the affine equivalence of 2 simultaneously presented 4-point patterns. Performance level (d') varied between 1.5 and 2.7, depending on the information available for solving the correspondence problem (insufficient in Experiment 1a, superfluous in Experiment 1b, and minimal in Experiments 1c, 2a, 2b) and on the exposure time (unlimited in Experiments 1 and 2a and 500 ms in Experiment 2b), but it did not vary much with the complexity of the affine transformation (rotation and slant in Experiment 1 and same plus tilt in Experiment 2). Performance in Experiment 3 was lower with 3-point patterns than with 4-point patterns, whereas blocking the trials according to the affine transformation parameters had little effect. Determining affine shape equivalence with minimal-information displays is based on a fast assessment of qualitatively or quasi-invariant properties such as convexity/ concavity, parallelism, and collinearity.     

Oculocentric coding of inhibited eye movements to recently attended locations

Results are reported for experiments that examined eye movements directed toward recently cued objects. In 1 experiment participants were slower to initiate saccades toward the earlier location of an object that had been cued, even though the cued object had subsequently moved away from that location. Other experiments involved exploring the reference frame within which the inhibited eye movements are encoded. These experiments revealed that the eye movement that is inhibited is encoded in an oculocentric-rather than an environmental-reference frame. However, simple detection as indexed by manual keypress responses is encoded in an environmental reference frame. The results have implications for inhibition of return, for the link between eye movements and attention, and for the nature of the spatial reference frames in which both covert and overt movements of attention are encoded.     

Articulatory/phonetic sequencing at the level of the anterior perisylvian cortex: a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study

Damage to the anterior peri-intrasylvian cortex of the dominant hemisphere may give rise to a fairly consistent syndrome of articulatory deficits in the absence of relevant paresis of orofacial or laryngeal muscles (apraxia of speech, aphemia, or phonetic disintegration). The available clinical data are ambiguous with respect to the relevant lesion site, indicating either dysfunction of the premotor aspect of the lower precentral gyrus or the anterior insula in the depth of the Sylvian fissure. In order to further specify the functional anatomic substratum of this syndrome, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed during reiteration of syllables differing in their demands on articulatory/phonetic sequencing (CV versus CCCV versus CVCVCV). Horizontal tongue movements and a polysyllabic lexical item served as control conditions. Repetition of the CV and CCCV monosyllables elicited a rather bilateral symmetric hemodynamic response at the level of the anterior and posterior bank of the central sulcus (primary sensorimotor cortex), whereas a more limited area of neural activity arose within this domain during production of lexical and nonlexical polysyllables, significantly or exclusively lateralized toward the left hemisphere. There is neurophysiological evidence that primary sensorimotor cortex mediates the "fractionation" of movements. Assuming that the polysyllables considered are organized as coarticulated higher-order units, the observed restricted and lateralized cortical activation pattern, most presumably, reflects a mode of "nonindividualized" motor control posing fewer demands on "movement fractionation." These findings may explain the clinical observation of disproportionately worse repetition of trisyllabic items as compared to monosyllables in apraxia of speech. The various test materials failed to elicit significant activation of the anterior insula. If at all, only horizontal tongue movements yielded a hemodynamic reaction extending beyond the sensorimotor cortex to premotor areas. Since limbic projections target the inferior dorsolateral frontal lobe, the enlarged region of activation during horizontal tongue movements might reflect increased attentional requirements of this task.     

Phonological and articulatory impairment in Alzheimer's disease: a case series

We demonstrate that phonological and articulatory impairments may occur at presentation or early in the course of Alzheimer's disease, contrary to claims that these aspects of language production are relatively preserved until the final stages of this disease. Six patients with pathologically confirmed Alzheimer's disease (AD) and four patients with clinically diagnosed dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) presented with one of five different clinical profiles: nonfluent progressive aphasia, mixed progressive aphasia, progressive aphasia diagnosed as DAT from neuropsychological assessment, initial amnestic syndrome with prominent phonological errors, and biparietal syndrome. Analysis of their conversational speech, single-word production, and performance of highly familiar series speech tasks such as counting revealed false start errors, phonological paraphasias, and/or articulatory difficulty. Neuropathological changes were located in left perisylvian regions consistent with speech and language impairment but atypical for Alzheimer's disease.     

Asymmetries in a unilateral flanker task depend on the direction of the response: the role of attentional shift and perceptual grouping

Four experiments were conducted using a flanker task with 1 distractor appearing either on the left or right side of a central target. Responses were made on a keyboard aligned parallel to the displays. A larger flanker effect was obtained when the distractor was on the same side as the response. Two factors account for this asymmetry. First, when the flanker and target are identical, the 2 form a group that is assigned a spatial tag, creating a form of the Simon effect on the basis of the compatibility between the response keys and the group. Second, preparation of a lateralized response appears to entail a shift of visual attention in the corresponding direction, thus enhancing processing of the flanker on the response side. Consistent with the 2nd hypothesis, participants were more likely to correctly recognize letters that were briefly presented at the distractor position on the same side as the response.     

Selective preservation of naming from description and the "restricted preverbal message"

We report the case of a patient, LEW, who presents with modality-specific naming deficits. He is seriously impaired in naming pictures of both objects and actions. His naming to auditory verbal definitions and of actions carried out by the experimenter is, however, relatively well preserved. He has no visual perceptual deficits and his access to the semantics of pictures is as good as that to the semantics of spoken words. While LEW is not an optic aphasic patient, his pattern of performance is relevant to the debate that has taken place of the organization of the semantic system. We discuss his case from this perspective and argue that LEW's selective deficits support the multiple semantics position. We also argue that the "preverbal message" level in the speech production model of Levelt (1989) is the equivalent of "verbal semantics." We provide additional constraints and principles to the concept of the preverbal message and we term the system so constrained the "restricted preverbal message." Copyright 2000 Academic Press.     

Is perceptual salience needed in explanations of the isolation effect?

The isolation effect is a well-known phenomenon that has a well-accepted explanation: An item that is isolated on a list becomes perceptually salient, which leads to extra rehearsal that enhances memory for the isolate. To evaluate this hypothesis, the authors isolated an item near the beginning of a list. Immediately after each item was presented for study, participants judged the likelihood of recalling the item. Although the isolation effect occurred, participants did not judge the isolate as being more memorable than the preceding item, suggesting that the isolate was not salient. In a second experiment, participants rehearsed items aloud. Isolation at the beginning of the list did not produce extra rehearsal. By contrast, isolation in the middle of the list produced extra rehearsal; however, even when the isolate did not receive extra rehearsal, an isolation effect was evident. Thus, salience and extra rehearsal are not necessary for producing an isolation effect.