COGNITIVE PROFILES OF READING-DISABLED CHILDREN:

Abstract— A comprehensive cognitive appraisal of elementary school children with learning disabilities showed that within the language sphere, deficits associated with reading disability are selective. Phonological deficits consistently accompany reading problems whether they occur in relatively pure form or in the presence of coexisting attention deficit or arithmetic disability. Although reading-disabled children were also deficient in production of morphologically related forms, this difficulty stemmed in large part from the same weakness in the phonological component that underlies reading disability. In contrast, tests of syntactic knowledge did not distinguish reading-disabled children from those with other cognitive disabilities, nor from normal children after covarying for intelligence.     

Young infants' perception of liquid coarticulatory influences on following stop consonants

Phonetic segments are coarticulated in speech. Accordingly, the articulatory and acoustic properties of the speech signal during the time frame traditionally identified with a given phoneme are highly context-sensitive. For example, due to carryover coarticulation, the front tongue-tip position for /1/ results in more fronted tongue-body contact for a /g/ preceded by /1/ than for a /g/ preceded by /r/. Perception by mature listeners shows a complementary sensitivity--when a synthetic /da/-/ga/ continuum is preceded by either /al/ or /ar/, adults hear more /g/s following /l/ rather than /r/. That is, some of the fronting information in the temporal domain of the stop is perceptually attributed to /l/ (Mann, 1980). We replicated this finding and extended it to a signal-detection test of discrimination with adults, using triads of disyllables. Three equidistant items from a /da/-/ga/ continuum were used preceded by /al/ and /ar/. In the identification test, adults had identified item ga5 as "ga,' and dal as "da,' following both /al/ and /ar/, whereas they identified the crucial item d/ga3 predominantly as "ga' after /al/ but as "da' after /ar/. In the discrimination test, they discriminated d/ga3 from da1 preceded by /al/ but not /ar/; compatibly, they discriminated d/ga3 readily from ga5 preceded by /ar/ but poorly preceded by /al/. We obtained similar results with 4-month-old infants. Following habituation to either ald/ga3 or ard/ga3, infants heard either the corresponding ga5 or da1 disyllable. As predicted, the infants discriminated d/ga3 from da1 following /al/ but not /ar/; conversely, they discriminated d/ga3 from ga5 following /ar/ but not /al/. The results suggest that prelinguistic infants disentangle consonant-consonant coarticulatory influences in speech in an adult-like fashion.     

Relations among regular and irregular morphologically related words in the lexicon as revealed by repetition priming

Several experiments examined repetition priming among morphologically related words as a tool to study lexical organization. The first experiment replicated a finding by Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, and Hall (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1979,18, 399-412), that whereas inflected words prime their unaffixed morphological relatives as effectively as do the unaffixed forms themselves, derived words are effective, but weaker, primes. The experiment also suggested, however, that this difference in priming may have an episodic origin relating to the less formal similarity of derived than of inflected words to unaffixed morphological relatives. A second experiment reduced episodic contributions to priming and found equally effective priming of unaffixed words by themselves, by inflected relatives, and by derived relatives. Two additional experiments found strong priming among relatives sharing the spelling and pronunciation of the unaffixed stem morpheme, sharing spelling alone, or sharing neither formal property exactly. Overall, results with auditory and visual presentations were similar. Interpretations that repetition priming reflects either repeated access to a common lexical entry or associative semantic priming are both rejected in favor of a lexical organization in which components of a word (e.g., a stem morpheme) may be shared among distinct words without the words themselves, in any sense, sharing a “lexical entry.”     

Risk factors for medically serious suicide attempts: evidence for a psychodynamic formulation of suicidal crisis

This study explored a psychodynamic model for suicide risk by examining risk factors for medically serious suicide attempts, including assessments of affect flooding, negative self-schema / fragmentation, and impaired reality testing, closely approximating Maltsberger's psycho-dynamic formulation of suicide crisis. Baseline risk factors including age, gender, psychiatric symptoms, high-risk behaviors, and the Implicit Risk for Suicide Index (IRSI) were used to detect medically serious suicide attempts monitored for up to a year after the assessment. Twenty-five psychiatric inpatients who made life-threatening suicide attempts after assessment were compared to 25 inpatients and 25 psychotherapy outpatients who made no suicide attempts during follow-up. Statistical analysis revealed that a history of at least one suicide attempt and elevated IRSI scores accounted for 60 percent of the variance in detecting medically serious suicide attempts. Elevated IRSI accurately identified suicide attempt status above and beyond past suicide attempts and other empirically validated risk factors. Results are discussed in light of psychodynamic formulations of suicide risk.     

The energetics of motivated cognition: a force-field analysis

A force-field theory of motivated cognition is presented and applied to a broad variety of phenomena in social judgment and self-regulation. Purposeful cognitive activity is assumed to be propelled by a driving force and opposed by a restraining force. Potential driving force represents the maximal amount of energy an individual is prepared to invest in a cognitive activity. Effective driving force corresponds to the amount of energy he or she actually invests in attempt to match the restraining force. Magnitude of the potential driving force derives from a combination of goal importance and the pool of available mental resources, whereas magnitude of the restraining force derives from an individual's inclination to conserve resources, current task demands, and competing goals. The present analysis has implications for choice of means to achieve one's cognitive goals as well as for successful goal attainment under specific force-field constellations. Empirical evidence for these effects is considered, and the underlying theory's integrative potential is highlighted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

“Why Won't My Parents Help Me?”: Therapeutic Assessment of a Child and Her Family

We present a case study of a child's psychological assessment using the methods of Therapeutic Assessment (TA). The case illustrates how TA can help assessors understand the process and structure of a family by highlighting how maladaptive family processes and interactions impact a child's development. It also illustrates how TA with a child can serve as a family intervention. In this case, it became apparent that the child's social difficulties were significant, not minor as initially reported by the parents, and were rooted in an insecure attachment, underlying depression, an idiosyncratic view of the world, and longing for attention, all of which were hidden or expressed in grandiose, expansive, and off-putting behaviors. In addition, the familial hierarchy was inverted; the parents felt ineffective and the child felt too powerful, leading to enhanced anxiety for the child. Intervention throughout, punctuated by the family session and feedback sessions, allowed the parents to develop a new “story” about their child and for the child to experience a new sense of safety. Following the TA, the parents and child indicated high satisfaction, enhanced family functioning, and decreased child symptomatology. Subsequent family therapy sessions allowed the family to further implement the interventions introduced in the TA.     

Linking Genes and Political Orientations: Testing the Cognitive Ability as Mediator Hypothesis

Recent research has demonstrated that genetic differences explain a sizeable fraction of the variance in political orientations, but little is known about the pathways through which genes might affect political preferences. In this article, we use a uniquely assembled dataset of almost 1,000 Swedish male twin pairs containing detailed information on cognitive ability and political attitudes in order to further examine the genetic and environmental causes of political orientations. Our study makes three distinct contributions to our understanding of the etiology of political orientations: (1) we report heritability estimates across different dimensions of political ideology; (2) we show that cognitive ability and political orientations are related; and (3) we provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that cognitive ability mediates part of the genetic influence on political orientations. These findings provide important clues about the nature of the complex pathways from molecular genetic variation to political orientations.     

A mega recognition memory study of 2897 disyllabic words

Following the studies by Cortese, Khanna, and Hacker (2010) on recognition memory for monosyllabic words, recognition memory estimates (e.g., hits, false alarms, hits minus false alarms) for 3000 disyllabic words were obtained from 120 subjects and 2897 of these words were analysed via multiple regression. Participants studied 30 lists of 50 words and were tested on 30 lists of 100 words. Of the subjects, 60 received a constant study time of 2000?ms per item and 60 studied items at their own pace. Specific predictor variables included log word frequency, word length, imageability, age of acquisition, orthographic similarity, and phonological similarity. The results were similar to those of Cortese et al. (2010). Specifically, in the analysis of hits minus false alarms, the entire set of predictor variables accounted for 34.9% of the variance. All predictor variables except phonological similarity were related to performance, with imageability, length, orthographic similarity and frequency all being strong predictors. These results are mostly compatible with the predictions made by single- and dual-process theories. However, across items hit rates were not correlated with false alarms. Given that most variables produced the standard mirror pattern, this latter outcome poses a major challenge for recognition memory theories.