Nonword repetition stimuli for Vietnamese-speaking children

Nonword repetition (NWR) has been a widely used measure of language-learning ability in children with and without language disorders. Although NWR tasks have been created for a variety of languages, minimal attention has been given to Asian tonal languages. This study introduces a new set of NWR stimuli for Vietnamese. The stimuli include 20 items ranging in length from one to four syllables. The items consist of dialect-neutral phonemes in consonant–vowel (CV) and CVC sequences that follow the phonotactic constraints of the language. They were rated high on wordlikeness and have comparable position segments and biphone probabilities across stimulus lengths. We validated the stimuli with a sample of 59 typically developing Vietnamese–English bilingual children, ages 5 to 8. The stimuli exhibited the expected age and length effects commonly found in NWR tasks: Older children performed better on the task than younger children, and longer items were more difficult to repeat than shorter items. We also compared different scoring systems in order to examine the individual phoneme types (consonants, vowels, and tones) and composite scores (proportions of phonemes correct, with and without tone). The study demonstrates careful construction and validation of the stimuli, and future directions are discussed.     

Safe and unsafe school spaces: Comparing elementary school student perceptions to common ecological interventions and operationalizations

There is a burgeoning literature on school safety in the United States. Often, researchers determine the problem and intervention. Few studies, however, examine how students understand school safety. In this study, elementary school students in the United States (n = 225) marked safe and unsafe school places; this was correlated with other commonly used school safety measures. Results indicate that children have different perceptions of safety based on school location. Additionally, for older children, unsafe places correlated with injury data, adult absence and low levels of territoriality. For younger children, unsafe places were associated with adult absence and referrals. Safe places were places that were more likely to have an adult. Results bring into question some common safety interventions. Implications include working with children to determine what is meant by ‘safe’ and interventions. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mistaking randomness for free will

Belief in free will is widespread. The present research considered one reason why people may believe that actions are freely chosen rather than determined: they attribute randomness in behavior to free will. Experiment 1 found that participants who were prompted to perform a random sequence of actions experienced their behavior as more freely chosen than those who were prompted to perform a deterministic sequence. Likewise, Experiment 2 found that, all else equal, the behavior of animated agents was perceived to be more freely chosen if it consisted of a random sequence of actions than if it consisted of a deterministic sequence; this was true even when the degree of randomness in agents’ behavior was largely a product of their environments. Together, these findings suggest that randomness in behavior—one’s own or another’s—can be mistaken for free will.     

"Dwelling in the Past": The Role of Rumination in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Prolonged exposure, a cognitive behavioral therapy including both in vivo and imaginal exposure to the traumatic memory, is one of several empirically supported treatments for chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In this article, we provide a case illustration in which this well-validated treatment did not yield expected clinical gains for a client with PTSD and co-occurring major depression. After providing an overview of the literature, theory, and treatment protocol, we discuss the clinical cascade effect that underlying ruminative processes had on the treatment of this case. Specifically, we highlight how ruminative processes, focusing on trying to understand why the traumatic event happened and why the client was still suffering, resulted in profound emotional distress in session and in a lack of an "optimal dose" of exposure during treatment.     

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Children and Adolescents: A Review and Analysis

Only recently has the mental health community recognized the applicability of diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents, including a consideration of specific age-related features. This paper provides a current review of the literature on PTSD pertaining to children and adolescents. Following a discussion of issues on diagnostic criteria and assessment of this affective disorder in this population, there is an overview of the existing literature on prevalence, comorbidity, risk factors, parental and family factors, and issues of gender and age of onset. The remainder of the paper focuses on the range of traumatic stressors in children and adolescents that can result in PTSD, including natural or human disasters, war and violence, chronic or life-threatening medical conditions, community violence and the witnessing of traumatic events, and physical and/or sexual abuse and other forms of interpersonal violence. Throughout the paper, there is an emphasis on the importance of considering developmental factors. Finally, implications of the existing literature for future areas of research are addressed.     

Are there interactive processes in speech perception?

Lexical information facilitates speech perception, especially when sounds are ambiguous or degraded. The interactive approach to understanding this effect posits that this facilitation is accomplished through bi-directional flow of information, allowing lexical knowledge to influence pre-lexical processes. Alternative autonomous theories posit feed-forward processing with lexical influence restricted to post-perceptual decision processes. We review evidence supporting the prediction of interactive models that lexical influences can affect pre-lexical mechanisms, triggering compensation, adaptation and retuning of phonological processes generally taken to be pre-lexical. We argue that these and other findings point to interactive processing as a fundamental principle for perception of speech and other modalities.     

Semantic ambiguity and the failure of inhibition hypothesis as an explanation for reading errors in deep dyslexia

We report evidence for dissociation between explicit and implicit access to word representations in a deep dyslexic patient (JO). JO read aloud a series of ambiguous (e.g., bank) and unambiguous (e.g., food) words and performed a lexical decision task using these same items. When required to explicitly access the items (i.e., naming), JO showed relative impairment for ambiguous compared with unambiguous words. In contrast, the same stimuli produced an advantage for ambiguous words in lexical decision. The results are discussed within a framework of deep dyslexia that considers errors in production to arise through a failure to inhibit spuriously activated candidate representations.     

Marijuana effects on human forgetting functions

It has long been known that acute marijuana administration impairs working memory (e.g., the discrimination of stimuli separated by a delay). The determination of which of the individual components of memory are altered by marijuana is an unresolved problem. Previous human studies did not use test protocols that allowed for the determination of delay-independent (initial discrimination) from delay-dependent (forgetting or retrieval) components of memory. Using methods developed in the experimental analysis of behavior and signal detection theory, we tested the acute effects of smoked marijuana on forgetting functions in 5 humans. Immediately after smoking placebo, a low dose, or a high dose of marijuana (varying in delta9-THC content), subjects completed delayed match-to-sample testing that included a range of retention intervals within each test session (0.5, 4, 12, and 24 s). Performances (discriminability) at each dose were plotted as forgetting functions, as described and developed by White and colleagues (White, 1985; White & Ruske, 2002). For all 5 subjects, both delta9-THC doses impaired delay-dependent discrimination but not delay-independent discrimination. The outcome is consistent with current nonhuman studies examining the role of the cannabinoid system on delayed matching procedures, and the data help illuminate one behavioral mechanism through which marijuana alters memory performance.     

Equating tasks and sustaining attention in children and adults: the methodological and theoretical utility of d' matching

The present study develops a method to create task equivalency for children and adults in vigilance research. Experiment 1 employed the signal detection index of perceptual sensitivity (d') to calibrate vigilance tasks for 32 children (ages 7-8) and 32 adults. The results of Experiment 1 suggest that task equivalency across groups can be attained, and a vigilance decrement was observed for children. In Experiment 2, the task parameter of event rate was manipulated across two vigils. Again, 32 children (ages 7-8) and 32 adults participated. The results suggest that a reverse event rate effect emerged for both children and adults. In addition, developmental differences in response to the event rate manipulation and with respect to the vigilance decrement emerged: Children benefited less from the manipulation and were more likely to demonstrate a vigilance decrement than were adults. No developmental differences emerged for the sensitivity decrement. The results are explained with reference to how task demands interact with participant arousal, and implications for development and for future research are discussed.     

Fragment memories mark the end of childhood amnesia

Adults described and dated two kinds of first remembrances: a personal event memory (the recollection of a personal episode that had occurred at some time in some place) and a memory fragment (an isolated memory moment having no event context and remembered, perhaps, as an image, a behavior, or an emotion). First fragment memories were judged to have originated substantially earlier in life than first event memories--approximately 3 1/3 years of age for first fragment memories versus roughly 4 years of age for first event memories. We conclude that the end of childhood amnesia is marked not by our earliest episodic memories, but by the earliest remembered fragments of childhood experiences.