Monitoring simultaneous auditory messages

If a S is asked to monitor two simultaneous auditory speech messages and to report only on the occurrence of target words appearing at random in either message, then it is shown that he witt fail to detect all of them but will detect significantly more than half. The targets used in these experiments were immediate repeats of text words. The results reject theories that part of the sensory input is blocked or that all is recognized. Detection performance was a function of rate of speech and of intertarget interval; there was a small, not significant, effect of instruction to recognize message content.     

Medium-chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase deficiency: Its relationship to SIDS and the impact on genetic counseling

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is defined as the sudden and unexpected death of an apparently healthy infant under 1 year of age. Routine autopsies often provide few clues as to the cause of death and rarely include a biochemical evaluation. Genetic counseling for SIDS can be difficult as recurrence risks vary depending on the age at death and the number of deaths which have occurred in the family. Biochemical disorders may account for up to 5% of SIDS. Of the metabolic disorders known to be involved in SIDS, the most commonly found is medium-chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (MCAD). MCAD is an autosomal recessive disorder of fatty acid oxidation which accounts for up to 1% of SIDS. For some families, the addition of a postmortem biochemical investigation can identify an unsuspected metabolic disorder as the cause of death. Once the diagnosis is established, accurate genetic counseling can then be provided. Metabolic testing of the surviving siblings of victims of sudden death, and the subsequent identification of those due to MCAD can prevent the tragedy of recurrent SIDS in some families. In addition, screening the survivors of an acute life threatening event (ALTE) may also prevent a recurrence.     

Child and adolescent services research at the national institute of mental health: Research opportunities in an emerging field

This article describes an important new area of research on services for children and adolescents with mental disorders at the National Institute of Mental Health, the parameters of mental health services research for youth, and the opportunities that are available for grant-funded investigations in this area.     

Using focus groups to facilitate culturally anchored research

Scholars have acknowledged the need to anchor scientific knowledge about social and psychological processes in the norms, values, and experiences of the partticular population under study. This article describes how focus groups can be incorporated into the planning stages of a research pogram to facilitate these goals. After a brief overview of teh central components of focus group research, and example from a program of research involving dual-earner African American families is used to as an illustration. The article describes how (a) the identification of cultural knowledge and (b)access to the language participants use to think and talk about a topic can help researchers formulate a conceptual framework, identify important constructs, and develop appropriate instruments for assessing constructs. Some strengths and limitations of focus group research are discussed.     

The stability of individual differences in gender typing: Implications for understanding gender segregation

The stability of individual differences has important implications for understanding the origins of gender-typed behaviors. For example, if some children have a stronger preference for same-sex playmates (gender segregation) than do others, then exploring characteristics that may differentiate these children from their peers (e.g., preference for gender-typed toys or teacher proximity) should prove fruitful. Otherwise, research might be focused more appropriately on group-level processes or situational factors rather than individual differences. In the current study, 57 2 1/2- to 3-year-olds from middle-class Canadian homes were observed repeatedly during free play at their preschools. Four aspects of gender typing (gender segregation, use of masculine and feminine gender-typed toys, teacher proximity) were measured so that the stability of individual differences and relations among the measures could be assessed. Stable individual differences were found for all four measures among boys, and for two of the measures (feminine toy play, teacher proximity) among girls. In addition, boys who played most frequently with masculine toys rarely were observed in proximity to the teacher. However, there was no relation between gender segregation and the other indices of gender typing.     

Effectiveness of School-Based Mental Health Services for Children: A 10-Year Research Review

A review of the literature from 1985 to 1995 on school-based mental health services for children was conducted using a computerized data-base search. Of the 5,046 references initially identified, 228 were program evaluations. Three inclusion criteria were applied to those studies: use of random assignment to the intervention; inclusion of a control group; and use of standardized outcome measures. Only 16 studies met these criteria. Three types of interventions were found to have empirical support for their effectiveness, although some of the evidence was mixed: cognitive-behavioral therapy, social skills training, and teacher consultation. The studies are discussed with reference to the sample, targeted problem, implementation, and types of outcomes assessed, using a comprehensive model of outcome domains, called the SFCES model. Future studies of school-based mental health services should (a) investigate the effectiveness of these interventions with a wider range of children's psychiatric disorders; (b) broaden the range of outcomes to include variables related to service placements and family perspectives; (c) examine the combined effectiveness of these empirically-validated interventions; and (d) evaluate the impact of these services when linked to home-based interventions.     

Late Adolescents' Experiences With and Attitudes Toward Videogames1

A total of 229 late adolescents (a large majority 15 to 19 years of age) completed a questionnaire that assesses a broad range of videogame-relevant experiences, preferences, and attitudes. Videogame playing was found to be a more popular, and a more highly regarded, activity among males than females. Gender differences were also found in participants' ratings of their motivations for playing videogames, their evaluations of particular characteristics of videogames, and their selection of their “most favorite” videogame. The differences between frequent and infrequent videogame players appeared to be limited to differences in the extent to which videogame playing is pursued and evaluated as a positive leisure activity, rather than reflecting broad differences in interest or personality. Some relations were found between participants' self-reported personality characteristics (i.e., self-esteem, empathy, conscientiousness, and introversion) and their attitudes toward videogames.     

Pronominalization and discourse coherence,discourse structure and pronoun interpretation

Two self-paced reading-time experiments are reported that examine the time course of pronoun interpretation processes based on local discourse structure and on world knowledge. The characterization of local discourse structure is based on recent work on centering, which provides a specific formulation of how the ways in which sentences make reference to common entities determines the coherence of discourse segments and how discourse structure influences interpretation of ambiguous pronouns. The results of the first experiment show that readers generate a default interpretation of a pronoun based on features of local discourse structure, and that that default interpretation is later confirmed or overridden by knowledge-based processes. The results of the second experiment show that local discourse structure continues to influence pronoun interpretation even when the semantic information that ultimately compels interpretation occurs before the pronoun. These results support the view that processes acting on local discourse structure play a powerful role in guiding language comprehension.