Language in autism and specific language impairment: where are the links?

It has been suggested that language impairment in autism is behaviorally, neurobiologically, and etiologically related to specific language impairment (SLI). In this article, the authors review evidence at each level and argue that the vast majority of data does not support the view that language impairment in autism can be explained in terms of comorbid SLI. The authors make recommendations for how this debate might be resolved and suggest a shift in research focus. They recommend that researchers concentrate on those aspects of language impairment that predominate in each disorder rather than on those comparatively small areas of potential overlap.     

Models of competence in solving physics problems

We describe a set of two computer-implemented models that solve physics problems in ways characteristic of more and less competent human solvers. The main features accounting for different competences are differences in strategy for selecting physics principles, and differences in the degree of automation in the process of applying a single principle. The models provide a good account of the order in which principles are applied by human solvers working problems in kinematics and dynamics. They also are sufficiently flexible to allow easy extension to several related domains of physics problems.     

CAN SPATIAL TRAINING ERASE THE GENDER DIFFERENCES ON THE WATER-LEVEL TASK?

Spatial training has been only modestly effective at improving the performance of adolescents and adults on the water-level task. Based on previous findings with the task, a self-discovery training procedure was developed that involved having participants proceed from easier to more difficult problems along a dimension of increasingly greater competing perceptual cues. The training was effective in (a) eliminating the gender differences on the drawing task, and (b) significantly improving females' knowledge of the physical (invariance) principle, although not to the level of males. Training effects did not transfer to a related spatial task.     

Effects of language experience on the perception of American Sign Language

Perception of American Sign Language (ASL) handshape and place of articulation parameters was investigated in three groups of signers: deaf native signers, deaf non-native signers who acquired ASL between the ages of 10 and 18, and hearing non-native signers who acquired ASL as a second language between the ages of 10 and 26. Participants were asked to identify and discriminate dynamic synthetic signs on forced choice identification and similarity judgement tasks. No differences were found in identification performance, but there were effects of language experience on discrimination of the handshape stimuli. Participants were significantly less likely to discriminate handshape stimuli drawn from the region of the category prototype than stimuli that were peripheral to the category or that straddled a category boundary. This pattern was significant for both groups of deaf signers, but was more pronounced for the native signers. The hearing L2 signers exhibited a similar pattern of discrimination, but results did not reach significance. An effect of category structure on the discrimination of place of articulation stimuli was also found, but it did not interact with language background. We conclude that early experience with a signed language magnifies the influence of category prototypes on the perceptual processing of handshape primes, leading to differences in the distribution of attentional resources between native and non-native signers during language comprehension.     

Distressed Mothers and Their Infants Use a Less Efficient Timing Mechanism in Creating Expectancies of Each Other’s Looking Patterns

The prediction of events and the creation of expectancies about their time course is a crucial aspect of an infant's mental life, but temporal mechanisms underlying these predictions are obscure. Scalar timing, in which the ratio of mean durations to their standard deviations is held constant, enables a person to use an estimate of the mean for its standard deviation. It is one efficient mechanism that may facilitate predictability and the creation of expectancies in mother-infant interaction. We illustrate this mechanism with the dyadic gaze rhythm of mother and infant looking at and looking away from each other's faces. Two groups of Hi- and Lo-Distress mothers were created using self-reported depression, anxiety, self-criticism and childhood experiences. Lo-Distress infants (controls) used scalar timing 100% of the time, about double that of Hi-Distress infants. Lo-Distress mothers used scalar timing about nine times as much as Hi-Distress mothers. The diminished use of scalar timing patterns in Hi-Distress mothers and infants may make the anticipation of each other's gaze patterns more difficult for both partners.     

Eknath Easwaran’s Mantram and Passage Meditation as Applied Indian Psychology: Psycho-Spiritual and Health Effects

We review the life and legacy of Eknath Easwaran (1910–1999) from the perspective of modern and Indian Psychology. A Kerala-born professor of English literature, Easwaran in 1959 travelled to the USA where he taught a system of eight spiritual practices known as passage meditation (PM). Its characteristic features include its meditative focus on memorized inspirational passages and using mantram repetition as a primarily “portable” practice throughout the day. The PM method is distinctive in emphasizing the principle, otherwise neglected in the modern psychology of meditation, that “we become what we meditate on”—a principle that possesses a basis in traditional Indian sources that include the Vedas, Puranas, Adi ?a?kara, and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Two major programs of empirical research have evaluated Easwaran’s practices, each publishing multiple randomized controlled trials. We summarize findings from (i) studies of the full PM program, and (ii) studies of the Mantram Repetition Program (MRP), based on three of the eight PM points. Randomized evidence links each program to reduced stress, improved mental health, improved mindfulness, and increases in various spiritual measures. We describe ways that PM/MRP empirical research has reflected Indian Psychology perspectives, and suggest that Easwaran’s legacy enriches Indian Psychology with added value in at least three ways: emphasizing the importance of the choice of meditative focus, offering universally framed support for devotional (bhakti) orientations to spirituality, and supplying tools for improving how spiritual diversity is addressed in modern institutions such as health care, schools, and other organizations.     

Weeds on the Ruins: Agency,Compromise Formation,and the Quest for Intersubjective Truth

Using Kundera's metaphor of “weeds on the ruins” to examine the impact of organized destruction of memory on the survival of a people, this paper explores the role of symptoms in negotiating a relational “compromise formation” by tracing their evolution as signifiers of previously dissociated intersubjective knowledge. It suggests that recent theorizing on the mutual constitution of agency and intersubjectivity creates the possibility of resurrecting the dramatic tension that characterized dual drive theory by relocating that tension between the desire to know (oneself, the Other) and the destruction of that desire. To do so, the paper contemplates an internally consistent lens for reconciling the terrain of deficit and dissociation with that of conflict by offering a process-oriented view of agency as “drive” that is rooted between subjective and material contexts. Finally, the paper explores the quest for intersubjective truth as offering a means of living beyond the ubiquity of compromise formation.     

Reviews

Lois Raynor: The Adopted Child Comes of Age. National Institute of Social Services Library No. 36, 1980. George Allen and Unwin. Paperback, [euro]5.50.

W.R. Bion: The Long Weekend. Fleetwood Press, 1982 [euro]9.00.     

THE IMPACT OF I/T/A ON LOW‐LEVEL READERS IN THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

The Initial Teaching Alphabet was contrasted with traditional orthography in remediation classes for slow readers at the junior high school level. Using the Iowa Test scales as the measure of achievement, the Initial Teaching Alphabet group demonstrated statistically superior gains. Differences in motivation and attitude were ruled out as major contributors. The Initial Teaching Alphabet potential as a remediation technique for higher grade levels appears to be dependent upon curriculum standardization and teacher preparation.     

Reviews: Books, Theater, and Painting

JUNG AND THE POSTMODERN: THE INTERPRETATION OF REALITIES. By Christopher Hauke. 304 pp. London & Philadelphia: Routledge, 2000. THE FASHIONING OF ANGELS: PARTNERSHIP AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE. By Stephen and Robin Larsen. pp. Chrysalis Books, 2000, $19.95. CHILDREN IN THERAPY: USING THE FAMILY AS A RESOURCE. Edited by C. Everett Bailey. 529 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. $45.00. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION AND COPING: THEORY, RESEARCH, PRACTICE. By Kenneth I. Pargament. New York: Guilford Press, 1997. $50.00. SOUL WILDERNESS: A DESERT SPIRITUALITY. By Kerry Walters. 153pp. New York/Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 2001. $12.95. SOUL MAKING: THE DESERT WAY OF SPIRITUALITY. By Alan Jones. 215 pp. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1985. $16.00. Theater: Words of Albert Schweitzer and the Music of Bach. Painting: Vermeer and the Delft School