Abuse and neglect of adults with mental retardation in different residential settings

Eighty-two per cent of all cases of abuse or neglect of an adult with mental retardation substantiated by the Abuse Investigation Division of the Connecticut Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities over a five-year period occurred in the victim's residence. Chi square analyses revealed that there was significantly more abuse in institutions and group homes and significantly less in the individual's own home. Furthermore, analyses revealed that there was significantly more personal neglect in group homes and community training homes and significantly less in own homes. The results were discussed and recommendations made regarding ways of reducing abuse and neglect.     

Meaning dominance norms for 120 homographs

Over the past two decades, homographs have been used in psychological experiments aimed at testing a variety of theoretical issues concerning memory and language. Often, such research requires prior knowledge of the dominance relations among various meanings of the homographs. Previously available homograph meaning norms are limited because they are now more than 10 years old, and they have typically reported only the two most dominant meanings even though many homographs have three or more common meanings. This paper presents normative data on 120 homographs from a relatively large, heterogeneous sample of subjects (N = 100). Meaning dominance was assessed by having subjects write the first definition that came to mind for each homograph. Definition responses were grouped by similarity, and the resulting meaning categories were verified against dictionary meaning classifications. The number of distinct meanings varied from two to six for the homographs investigated, and frequency of response is reported for all definition categories.     

Monitoring running-wheel movement using a serial mouse and an IBM-compatible system

A running-wheel-movement-detection system is described for use with an IBM-compatible system and a serial mouse. It is an adaptation of a system developed for use on a Commodore 64. The IBM-compatible system provides obvious advantages in speed, memory, data storage, and programming ease over the earlier Commodore 64 system.     

The role of the central nervous system in sudden cardiac death: Heartbeat dynamics in conscious pigs during coronary occlusion,psychologic stress and intracerebral propranolol

Electrocardiograms were recorded in conscious pigs during psychological stress (touching), left anterior descending coronary artery occlusion, intracerebral levo-propranolol (0.05 mg/kg), and their respective controls. The R-R intervals were evaluated with both a deterministic measure (point correlation dimension) and a stochastic one (mean). Only the deterministic measure was sensitive to between-subject responses (P<.01), whereas both measures were sensitive to within-subject changes. The results are explained by a deterministic model of heartbeat generation. Supported by the National Institute of Health Grant NS 27745.     

Fixation disengagement and eye-movement latency

We examined eye-movement latencies to a target that appeared during visual fixation of a stationary stimulus, a moving stimulus, or an extrafoveal stimulus. The stimulus at fixation was turned off either before target onset (gap condition) or after target onset (overlap condition). Consistent with previous research, saccadic latencies were shorter in gap conditions than they were in overlap conditions (the gap effect). In Experiment 1, a gap effect was observed for vergence eye movements. In Experiment 2, a gap effect was observed for saccades directed at a target that appeared during visual pursuit of a moving stimulus. In Experiment 3, a gap effect was observed for saccades directed at a target that appeared during extrafoveal fixation. The present results extend reports of the gap effect for saccadic shifts during visual fixation to (a) vergence shifts during visual fixation, (b) saccadic shifts during smooth visual pursuit, and (c) saccadic shifts during extrafoveal fixation. The present findings are discussed with respect to the incompatible goals of fixation-locking and fixation-shifting oculomotor responses.     

Novel popout with nonsense strings: Effects of predictability of string length and spatial location

Recent studies have shown that when one of four expected words is replaced by a single unexpected word, the unexpected word may capture attention. In three experiments, we explored the generality of this effect. In each experiment, observers viewed arrays composed of four computergenerated “nonsense” strings. Accuracy of string localization was assessed after each array. Some strings, calledfamiliar, appeared in many arrays, whereas others, callednovel, appeared in only one. In each experiment, novel strings in arrays composed of one novel and three familiar strings were localized more accurately than were novel strings in arrays composed entirely of novel strings, and familiar strings in these arrays were localized less accurately than were familiar strings in arrays composed entirely of familiar strings. These two effects, termednovel popout andfamiliar sink-in, respectively, were observed even when novel and familiar strings were rendered less discriminable by holding their lengths constant (Experiment 2) and when familiar strings always appeared in the same spatial locations (Experiment 3). The data suggest that novel objects can capture attention even when the objects lack any clear linguistic referent, when they are superficially similar to the familiar objects that surround them, and when the spatial locations of familiar objects are completely predictable.     

Syntactic determinants of stuttering in the spontaneous speech of normally fluent and stuttering children

Conflicting findings have been reported concerning whether fluent children use more complex syntactic structures than stutterers and whether or not stutterers experience specific difficulty with complex syntactic structures. On critical examination, the first of these apparent discrepancies appears to be due to (a) differences in the methods employed for syntactic analysis in different studies, and (b) misleading impressions gained by looking at speakers within a single age range. Data were reanalyzed where one method of analysis had shown that fluent speakers and stutterers did not differ with regard to syntactic structures used but where they did show a propensity for stuttering to occur on complex syntactic structures. These data cover a range of age groups. When the second method of syntactic analysis was applied, a difference was found between fluent speakers and stutterers, with the stutterers initially using more simple structures and fewer complex ones. This difference decreased over age groups. However, a difference still remained with respect to which syntactic structures stutterers experience difficulty. An additional analysis, not formerly conducted on these data, showed that, as reported elsewhere, there was a higher probability of stuttering on clause-initial and. It was also shown that this tendency decreased with age group of the stutterers.