Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: a psycholinguistic grain size theory

The development of reading depends on phonological awareness across all languages so far studied. Languages vary in the consistency with which phonology is represented in orthography. This results in developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations and accompanying differences in developmental reading strategies and the manifestation of dyslexia across orthographies. Differences in lexical representations and reading across languages leave developmental "footprints" in the adult lexicon. The lexical organization and processing strategies that are characteristic of skilled reading in different orthographies are affected by different developmental constraints in different writing systems. The authors develop a novel theoretical framework to explain these cross-language data, which they label a psycholinguistic grain size theory of reading and its development.     

Differential relational encoding of categorical information in memory for action events

Memory for action phrases is better if the actions are enacted in subject-performed tasks (SPTs) than if they are only listened to in verbal tasks (VTs). This effect is ascribed to better item-specific encoding of SPTs than of VTs. The role of interitem relational information is controversial, and the findings of clustering with categorically structured lists are inconsistent (see Engelkamp, 1998). The present study contributes to clarifying these effects by demonstrating that intentional relational encoding can be used more efficiently in VTs than in SPTs and influences the degree of clustering. If the list structure is not obvious, inducing intentional encoding by presenting the category labels prior to list presentation and asking subjects to use this preinformation increases clustering in VTs but not in SPTs. Without preinformation, clustering scores of VTs and SPTs did not differ, with preinformation, clustering of VTs was stronger than that of SPTs. The authors suggest how the inconsistent findings with regard to clustering effects can be explained.     

Memory for actions: Item and relational information in categorized lists

Enacting action phrases in subject-performed tasks (SPTs) leads to better free recall than hearing or reading the same materials in verbal tasks (VTs). This enactment effect is usually explained by better item-specific information in SPTs than in VTs. The role of relational information is controversial. In the present paper, we will take the multiple recall approach to study the role of item and relational information in memory for actions by computing the number of item gains and the number of item losses over trials. This approach has previously been applied to lists of unrelated action phrases. We applied it to categorically related lists, also allowing a measure of relational information by clustering scores. It was found that SPTs produced more item gains than VTs. This finding confirmed the assumption that SPTs provide better item-specific information than VTs. The number of item losses did not differ between VTs and SPTs. This finding suggests that relational information is equally provided by VTs and SPTs. However, the organizational scores showed a more differentiated picture. Clustering was greater in SPTs than in VTs with randomly presented lists, but not with blocked lists. We suggested that these results, as well as other findings from the literature, could be explained by distinguishing automatic and strategic processes and the types of item associations that are addressed by these processes.     

Protein synthesis inhibition blocks consolidation of an acrobatic motor skill

To investigate whether motor skill learning depends on de novo protein synthesis, adult rats were trained in an acrobatic locomotor task (accelerating rotarod) for 7 d. Animals were systemically injected with cycloheximide (CHX, 0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) 1 h before sessions 1 and 2 or sessions 2 and 3. Control rats received vehicle injections before sessions 1, 2, and 3. Although CHX did not affect improvement of performance within session 1, between-session improvement was impaired. In overtrained animals, comparable injections of CHX had no effect on rotarod performance. These findings suggest that consolidation of motor skills requires protein synthesis.     

Do patients with OCD and pathological gambling have similar dysfunctional cognitions?

The obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder (OCSD) theory postulates that a wide range of disorders is closely related to OCD. Current cognitive models ascertain that certain beliefs leading to misinterpretation of the significance of intrusions are important in the etiology and maintenance of OCD. This study examined whether pathological gambling, a disorder belonging to the OC spectrum, is characterized by similar dysfunctional cognitions as OCD. Dysfunctional beliefs of OCD patients were compared to those of patients with pathological gambling, panic disorder and normal controls. These beliefs were measured by the Obsessive-compulsive Beliefs Questionnaire-87 (OBQ-87), which was developed by a group of leading OCD researchers [Behav. Res. Ther. 35 (1997) 667]. It was hypothesized that according to the OCSD theory, pathological gamblers would exhibit similar cognitions to OCD patients, as well as increased levels of OCD symptoms. Analysis showed that OCD patients exhibited higher OBQ-87 scores than both panic patients and normal controls, but equal to pathological gambling patients. Pathological gamblers exhibited, however, no increase in OCD symptoms. These mixed results do not seem to support the OC spectrum theory for pathological gambling, moreover being contradictory to contemporary cognitive OCD models.     

Neuroendocrine responses to psychological stress in eumenorrheic and oligomenorrheic women

Neuroendocrine adaptive responses to psychological stress include activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sometimes suppression of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. In women who experience chronic stress, these responses are probably responsible for disturbances in the menstrual cycle. In the present experiment, we investigated the effect of an acutely stressful situation on the physiological and neuroendocrine responses in college age women. We hypothesized that females who are experiencing some degree of abnormal menstrual function or women who have less-robust cycles (oligomenorrheic females) would exhibit differences in gonadotropin secretion from eumenorrheic females when exposed to psychological stressors. Fifteen women completed this study: eumenorrheic (n = 5) and oligomenorrheic women (n = 5) who experienced a series of psychological stressors, and eumenorrheic controls (n = 5). Blood samples were taken at 10 min intervals for 8 h (09:00-17:00) in each woman during the mid-follicular phase of the menstrual cycle. The psychological stressors were administered for 1 h beginning at 13:00 h. Luteinizing hormone (LH), growth hormone (GH) and cortisol were measured in each sample to assess the effect of stress on secretion of these hormones. Deconvolution analysis was used to analyze pulsatile hormone secretion and the approximate entropy (ApEn) statistic analyzed the regularity of release of each hormone. Although, there were significant changes in heart rate (HR), skin resistance (SR) and cortisol levels in the stressed women during the psychological stressor compared to resting baseline values but not in the controls, there was no difference in either LH or GH secretion between women who experienced stress and those who did not. Furthermore, there were no differences in the LH or GH secretion patterns in the oligomenorrheic and eumenorrheic women exposed to the psychological stressor.     

Protein synthesis-dependent long-term memory induced by one single associative training trial in the parasitic wasp Lariophagus distinguendus

Protein synthesis-dependent long-term memory in Apis mellifera and Drosophila melanogaster is formed after multiple trainings that are spaced in time. The parasitic wasp Lariophagus distinguendus remarkably differs from these species. It significantly responds to the artificial odor furfurylheptanoate (FFH) in olfactometer experiments, when this odor was presented during one single training trial, consisting of one sequence of host recognition behavior on a wheat grain infested by its hosts. Feeding wasps with actinomycin D erases the learned response 24 h after the training, demonstrating that protein synthesis-dependent long-term memory has been formed in L. distinguendus already after one single training.     

Becoming literate in different languages: similar problems, different solutions

The teaching of reading in different languages should be informed by an effective evidence base. Although most children will eventually become competent, indeed skilled, readers of their languages, the pre-reading (e.g. phonological awareness) and language skills that they bring to school may differ in systematic ways for different language environments. A thorough understanding of potential differences is required if literacy teaching is to be optimized in different languages. Here we propose a theoretical framework based on a psycholinguistic grain size approach to guide the collection of evidence in different countries. We argue that the development of reading depends on children's phonological awareness in all languages studied to date. However, we propose that because languages vary in the consistency with which phonology is represented in orthography, there are developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations, and accompanying differences in developmental reading strategies across orthographies.     

Performance on a simple reaction time task while sleep deprived

Divergent results have been reported on the effect of a night's sleep loss on performance of a single monotonous task. The present experiment examined the effect that partial sleep deprivation had on 10 participants' performance on a simple reaction time task requiring low responding for 120 min. compared to performance on the same task when well rested. Participants missed significantly more signals and had slower reaction times when sleep deprived. Reaction times increased with time when participants were both sleep deprived and rested, but the number of misses did not significantly change over time. Reaction time was significantly correlated with subjective ratings of sleepiness and heart rate in both conditions. EEG and heart-rate variability measures did not correlate significantly with reaction time. Misses correlated significantly with subjective ratings and heart rate but only in the rested condition.