Stuttering following brain damage

This paper describes the neurological, language, and speech status of seven brain-damaged patients with symptoms of cortical stuttering. We compare data from our seven patients to data presented on other brain-damaged stutterers, review theories of cortical stuttering's etiology, advance alternative hypotheses about mechanisms underlying such dy sfluencies, and compare cortical stuttering to stuttering in childhood.     

How Not to Apply to College

Samples of letters written by college students are excerpted to demonstrate the deterioration of students' writing skills. The relative unimportance many college students and graduates attach to the art of writing letters of inquiry is emphasized. A checklist is provided to assist students in preparing letters requesting information from colleges and universities.     

Why grown-ups cry

Adults appear to cry only during a “recovery” phase following a period of arousal. Depending on the perturbation that caused the arousal, the first phase is sometimes described by them in positive terms (e.g., excitement, anticipation) and sometimes in negative terms (loss, threat). However, the tears always seem to be associated with tension reduction and signify that a second event has permitted the system to shift into recovery. In this sense, all tears can be thought of as “tears of joy” they follow the same mechanism regardless of the tone of the initiating circumstances. To provide evidence for this point of view the responses of 11 individuals (including 2 filmmakers) toThe Miracle Worker were analyzed. Their responses supported the hypothesis that crying occurs when a psychological barrier or perturbation “disappears”—it signifies recovery and adaptation rather than the continuation of distress or arousal.     

Ideas that handicap therapy with young people

A review is done of ideas that handicapped therapists, particularly therapists of young people defined as schizophrenic, and were abandoned over the last twenty years. It is suggested that therapists currently seek theories that lead to success and avoid theories that lead to failure. The criteria for an effective theory of therapy are offered. Past ideas and theories are described in terms of meeting the criteria. Included in the review of unfortunate ideas for the therapy of mad young people are the organic theory, the psychodynamic theory, and those aspects of systems theory and double bind theory which were not helpful. How therapists recovered from these ideas is discussed. A contemporary theory of family oriented theory which meets more of the criteria of an effective theory of therapy is suggested.This paper, in a somewhat different form, was presented at the meeting Beyond the Double Bind in March, 1977. It will also appear as a chapter in a forthcoming book on the therapy of disturbed young people.     

Responsive supervision of the psychiatric resident and clinical psychology intern

The joy of common work between student and supervisor, the excitement of discovery, the struggle with doubt, self-depreciation and despair, the opening up of new horizons, the aesthetic experience of fresh perspectives both given and received make the reciprocal teaching learning process one of depth and sharing among those most cherished in human experience (1, p. 363).     

AN EVALUATION OF TWO METHODS FOR INCREASING SELF-INITIATED VERBALIZATIONS IN AUTISTIC CHILDREN

Three children with autism and mental retardation were treated for deficits in self-initiated speech. A novel treatment package employing visual cue fading was compared with a graduated time-delay procedure previously shown to be effective for increasing self-initiated language. Both treatments included training multiple self-initiated verbalizations using multiple therapists and settings. Both treatments were efffective, with no differences in measures of acquisition of target phrases, maintenance of behavioral gains, acquisition with additional therapists and settings, and social validity.     

Two-component arterial blood pressure conditional response in rat

The objective of these experiments was to quantify the pattern of change in arterial blood pressure (BP) during a discriminative aversive classical conditioning paradigm in rat using a new “high resolution” computer analysis. Sprague-Dawley rats (n=5) were restrained in a soft, conical cloth pouch and conditioned using a 6 sec. pulsed tone (CS+) followed by a 0.5 sec. tail shock; a steady tone, never followed by shock, served as a CS-. BP peaked at 16.4±6.5 mm Hg (mean±SD) above control at 1.5±0.1 sec. after onset of CS+. This “first component” (“C₁”) also occurred during CS- (12.1±3.8 mm Hg), although the magnitudes of the two were significantly (p<0.05) different. Another group of rats (n=8) was treated identically except the tones were 15 seconds long. The conditional BP response consisted of two components. C₁ was reminiscent of that seen using the short tone: for CS+ a peak of 13.6±5.6 mm Hg at 1.5 sec. or, for CS-, of 10.0±4.3 at 1.3 sec. (p<0.05). In CS+ trials BP peaked again (“C₂,” 7.4±2.5 mm Hg) at 8.3±1.2 sec. There was no statistically significant C₂ for CS- trials, clearly demonstrating discrimination between tones. The unconditional BP response in both groups consisted of two large, closely spaced peaks in BP. Respiration was recorded in 3 additional rats. After shock delivery these subjects often showed a sudden shift between (1) a regular respiratory pattern with moderate chest excursion and (2) apneic episodes interspersed with single, deep breaths. This latter pattern was associated with large, low frequency fluctuations in BP. Continued development of the rat conditioning paradigm is especially warranted because of the ability to record sympathetic nerve activity in intact, awake subjects and the large number of readily available genetic strains, which model human pathological states.     

Tonal strength and melody recognition after long and short delays

In a continuous-running-memory task, subjects heard novel seven-note melodies that were tested after delays of 11 sec (empty) or 39 sec (filled). Test items were transposed to new pitch levels (to moderately distant keys in the musical sense)and included exact transpositions (targets), same-contour lures with altered pitch intervals, and new-contour lures. Melodies differed in tonal strength (degree of conformity to a musical key) and were tonally strong, tonally weak, or atonal. False alarms to same-contour lures decreased over the longer delay period, but only for tonal stimuli. In agreement with previous studies, discrimination of detailed changes in pitch intervals improved with increased delay, whereas discrimination of more global contour information declined, again only for tonal stimuli. These results suggest that poor short-delay performance in rejecting same-contour lures arises from confusion that is based on the similarity of tonality between standard stimuli and lures. If a test item has the same contour and a similar tonality to a just-presented item, subjects tend to accept it. After a delay filled with melodies in other tonalities, the salience of key information recedes, and subjects base their judgments on more detailed pattern information (namely, exact pitch intervals). The fact that tonality affects judgments of melodic contour indicates that contour is not an entirely separable feature of melodies but rather that a melody with its contour constitutes an integrated perceptual whole.