Detection of missing words in spoken text

Two tests were conducted to examine listeners' detection of missing words in spoken paragraph contexts. Detection was assessed by presenting listeners with normal paragraphs and with paragraphs each containing a single occurrence of a missed word, an inappropriate pause, or a mispronounced word. In the first test, listeners were simply asked whether they detected any abnormalities and to describe them. The results indicated that listeners reported missed words in only 34 to 49% of the paragraphs containing such words. In the second test, a separate group of listeners was given more specific instructions beforehand, indicating the three possible types of abnormality. In this task, the correct detection of missed words rose to 96%. Taken together, the results indicate that listeners do not readily detect occasional missing words under ordinary circumstances but are capable of such detection in a task specifically focused on message abnormalities.This work was supported by NIH Grant NS 20071. We thank Stephen Eady for serving as the speaker for the test recordings and Pamela Mueller for writing paragraphs.     

INCREASING DISTANCE AND INDEPENDENCE OF AMBULATION IN ELDERLY NURSING HOME RESIDENTS

We tested the effectiveness of a prompt-and-praise procedure for increasing walking distance and independence in eight nursing home residents. Walking distance and method of ambulation were observed just prior to mealtimes; in addition, mobility and social interaction were time-sampled in the living areas throughout the day. Treatment was lagged in a multiple baseline design across lunch and dinner meals within subjects, and across subjects within each of three units. In the mealtime setting, two subjects began walking the maximum scored distance during baseline; the other six subjects showed a marked increase in walking beginning with the first meal in which the intervention was applied. Six of the eight subjects also progressed to more independent means of ambulation. Generalization of walking to the second meal was observed in all four of the subjects in whom this could be assessed. Generalization across subjects was not observed nor was generalization to the living areas. Staff successfully implemented the procedures in the mealtime settings and the effects were maintained at the 4-month follow-up.     

Visual search for change in older adults

Previous research has demonstrated that younger adults are surprisingly poor at detecting substantial changes to visual scenes. Little is known, however, about age differences in this phenomenon. In the 2 experiments reported here, older adults were slower than younger adults in detecting changes to simple visual stimuli. This age difference was beyond what would be expected given known age-related changes in processing speed. Examination of eye movement behavior during the search for change suggested that age-related changes in the useful field of view and degree of cautiousness play a significant role. Speed of processing and 3 age-related eye movement behaviors explained 85% of the variance in change detection latency, eliminating the effect of age.     

Sequential tapping interferes selectively with multiple-object tracking: do finger-tapping and tracking share a common resource?

Multiple-object tracking involves simultaneously monitoring positions of a number of target items as they move among distractors. Young adults are capable of tracking only 3-5 items at once. In this study we investigated the origin of this limitation by looking for secondary tasks that interfere with tracking. We compared tracking performance (baseline condition), with performance when participants tapped three fingers in a specific order while tracking (sequential tapping) or articulated three syllables in a specific order while tracking (sequential articulation). The articulation task was used to ensure that the interference produced by sequential tapping was more than would be expected by the executive demands of carrying out any two “attention-demanding” tasks at once. Even though sequential tapping does not require vision or memorizing the positions of external items, it produced significantly more interference than did sequential articulation, as might be expected if tracking and sequential tapping shared a common (limited) resource.     

You can take it with you: individual differences and expatriate effectiveness

The authors report the collaborative efforts of 2 research teams that independently investigated the effects of stable personality traits (the Big Five) and specific behavioral competencies (cultural flexibility, task and people orientations, and ethnocentrism) on key dimensions of expatriate effectiveness: psychological adjustment, assignment withdrawal cognitions, and job performance. Analyses of multiple-source and longitudinal data from 3 studies, including a diverse sample of expatriates in Hong Kong and separate samples of Korean and Japanese expatriates posted around the world, indicate several direct effects of individual differences. Further data show reliable distinctions between the traits and competencies as well as incremental prediction by either set of predictors in the presence of the others.     

Influence of participation in a cup-stacking unit on timing tasks

Cup stacking is a relatively new activity which has been promoted at conferences for physical educators as having many direct and indirect benefits, such as improved quickness. This study examined the influence of a cup-stacking instructional unit on reaction and anticipation times of 69 children in Grades 2 and 4. Within each grade participants were assigned to an experimental or a control group. The former received a 3-wk. instructional unit following the lesson plans provided by the promoters of cup stacking. The control groups received a standard physical education curriculum. Analysis indicated no significant differences in reaction and anticipation times between the groups before and after practicing the instructional unit.     

Quantitative reanalysis of aggregate data on IQ in sexual offenders

General intelligence has been the most commonly studied neuropsychological characteristic of sexual offenders for over 70 years. Results, however, have been highly inconsistent. To assess whether sexual offenders score lower in IQ than nonsexual offenders and to explore which sexual offense characteristics relate to IQ, the authors reanalyzed all reports providing sufficient information. Data spanned 236 samples, comprising 25,146 sexual offenders and controls. The literature contained sufficient information to permit comparison of adult versus juvenile sexual offenders, offenders targeting children versus adults, offenders targeting their own versus unrelated children, and offenders targeting boys versus girls. Results confirm the association between IQ and sexual offending and suggest that previous discrepancies are attributable to how many pedophilic individuals were in each sample.     

Temporally nonadjacent nonlinguistic sounds affect speech categorization

Speech perception is an ecologically important example of the highly context-dependent nature of perception; adjacent speech, and even nonspeech, sounds influence how listeners categorize speech. Some theories emphasize linguistic or articulation-based processes in speech-elicited context effects and peripheral (cochlear) auditory perceptual interactions in non-speech-elicited context effects. The present studies challenge this division. Results of three experiments indicate that acoustic histories composed of sine-wave tones drawn from spectral distributions with different mean frequencies robustly affect speech categorization. These context effects were observed even when the acoustic context temporally adjacent to the speech stimulus was held constant and when more than a second of silence or multiple intervening sounds separated the nonlinguistic acoustic context and speech targets. These experiments indicate that speech categorization is sensitive to statistical distributions of spectral information, even if the distributions are composed of nonlinguistic elements. Acoustic context need be neither linguistic nor local to influence speech perception.     

The Effect of Experiential Knowledge on Construction of Risk Perception in Hereditary Breast/Ovarian Cancer

The purpose of this study was to explore the connection between experiential knowledge of hereditary breast/ovarian cancer and understandings of personal cancer risk. Using a qualitative research design, the investigator conducted in-depth interviews with 53 individuals (45 female, 8 male) from families at high-risk for hereditary breast/ovarian cancer. Study results showed that two forms of experiential knowledge, empathetic and embodied knowledge, were integral to participants constructions of their cancer risk. They also illustrated that knowledge derived from experience often took precedence over objective clinical estimates of risk. The paper discusses the clinical implications of these findings and suggests that counseling strategies, which expand upon patients lived experience and knowledge of the disease, may enhance communication of genetic risk. Assessment of experiential knowledge promises to suggest new ways to frame genetic information that will enable people to better understand their objective risk or to modify exaggerated and/or inaccurate risk perceptions.     

Illusory Conjunctions of Color and Motion With Shape Following Bilateral Parietal Lesions

The primate visual system responds to shapes, colors, and various other features more strongly in some brain areas than others. However, it remains unclear how these features are bound together so that an object with all its attributes is perceived. A patient (R.M.) with bilateral parietal-occipital lesions has been shown previously to miscombine the shape and color of items, making errors known as illusory conjunctions (ICs). In this study, we examined the effects of a third feature (motion) on this patient's IC rates. R.M. was presented with two letters that moved in different ways. He often reported seeing the shape of one of the letters with the other letter's motion. His performance on the same task with three features shows that correctly combining two features did not necessarily lead to correctly binding the third. These data support modularity of feature representations in the human brain and provide supporting evidence that spatial representations associated with the parietal lobe are necessary for normal feature integration.