Sensitivity to probabilistic orthographic cues to lexical stress in adolescent speakers with autism spectrum disorder and typical peers

Lexical stress refers to the opposition of strong and weak syllables within polysyllabic words and is a core feature of the English prosodic system. There are probabilistic cues to lexical stress present in English orthography. For example, most disyllabic English words ending with the letters "-ure" have first-syllable stress (e.g., "pasture", but note words such as "endure"), whereas most ending with "-ose" have second-syllable stress (e.g., "propose", but note examples such as "glucose"). Adult native speakers of English are sensitive to these probabilities during silent reading. During testing, they tend to assign first-syllable stress when reading a nonword such as "lenture" but second-syllable stress when reading "fostpose" (Arciuli & Cupples, 2006 ). Difficulties with prosody, including problems processing lexical stress, are a notable feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study investigated the ability of adolescents with ASD (13-17 years of age) to show this sensitivity compared with a group of typically developing peers. Results indicated reduced sensitivity to probabilistic cues to lexical stress in the group with ASD. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Manipulation of voice onset time during dichotic listening

The manipulation of voice onset time (VOT) during dichotic listening has provided novel insights regarding brain function. To date, the most common design is the utilisation of four VOT conditions: short-long pairs (SL), where a CV syllable with a short VOT is presented to the left ear and a CV syllable with a long VOT is presented to the right ear as well as long-short (LS), short-short (SS) and long-long (LL) pairs. Rimol, Eichele, and Hugdahl (2006) first reported that in healthy adults SL pairs elicit the largest REA while, in fact, LS pairs elicit a significant left ear advantage (LEA). This VOT effect was replicated by Sandmann et al. (2007). A study of children aged 5-8years of age has shown a developmental trajectory whereby long VOTs gradually start to dominate over short VOTs when LS pairs are being presented under dichotic conditions (Westerhausen, Helland, Ofte, & Hugdahl, 2010). Two studies have investigated attentional modulation of the VOT effect in children and adults. The converging evidence from these studies shows that at around 9years of age children lack the adult-like cognitive flexibility required to exert top-down control over stimulus-driven bottom-up processes (Andersson, Llera, Rimol, & Hugdahl, 2008; Arciuli, Rankine, & Monaghan, 2010). Arciuli et al. further demonstrated that this kind of cognitive flexibility is a predictor of proficiency with complex tasks such as reading. A review of each of these studies, the possible mechanisms underlying the VOT effect and directions for future research are discussed.     

The influence of suggestibility on memory

We provide a translation of Binet and Henri's pioneering 1894 paper on the influence of suggestibility on memory. Alfred Binet (1857-1911) is famous as the author who created the IQ test that bears his name, but he is almost unknown as the psychological investigator who generated numerous original experiments and fascinating results in the study of memory. His experiments published in 1894 manipulated suggestibility in several ways to determine effects on remembering. Three particular modes of suggestion were employed to induce false recognitions: (1) indirect suggestion by a preconceived idea; (2) direct suggestion; and (3) collective suggestion. In the commentary we suggest that Binet and Henri's (1894) paper written over 115 years ago is still highly relevant even today. In particular, Binet's legacy lives on in modern research on misinformation effects in memory, in studies of conformity, and in experiments on the social contagion of memory.     

The ease of lying

Brain imaging studies suggest that truth telling constitutes the default of the human brain and that lying involves intentional suppression of the predominant truth response. By manipulating the truth proportion in the Sheffield lie test, we investigated whether the dominance of the truth response is malleable. Results showed that frequent truth telling made lying more difficult, and that frequent lying made lying easier. These results implicate that (1) the accuracy of lie detection tests may be improved by increasing the dominance of the truth response and that (2) habitual lying makes the lie response more dominant.     

Emotional Health and the Big Five Personality Factors at the American State Level

Relations between the emotional health domain of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index and the Big Five personality factors were determined at the American state level. State emotional health scores were based on the aggregated results of 353,039 phone interviews conducted throughout 2008 with a representative sample of US adults (Gallup 2009a). State z scores (Rentfrow et al. in Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 339–386, 2008) on neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness were based on 619,397 nationally representative respondents to an internet survey between 1999 and 2005. State socioeconomic status (SES), urban percent, and white percent based on 2000 and 2005 data served as demographic controls. Alaska and Hawaii were excluded. When the controls entered a hierarchical multiple regression equation as a block and were followed by the Big Five selected stepwise, the controls accounted for 27.5% of the emotional health variance and neuroticism accounted for another 35.3%. With stepwise selection of controls and then Big Five variables, SES entered first (24.1%) and neuroticism entered second (32.4%). With stepwise selection from the combined control and Big Five pool, neuroticism entered first (47.5%), SES entered second (9.1%), and urban percent entered third (4.9%). Clearly, neuroticism and SES are the key contributors to emotional health variance and neuroticism makes the largest contribution. States with higher proportions of neurotic individuals and lower SES tended to have populations with poorer emotional health. Theoretical foundations for the link between neuroticism and emotional health at the state level and implications for changes in state emotional health are discussed.