Recognition of affective prosody in brain-damaged patients and healthy controls: A neurophysiological study using EEG and whole-head MEG

A passive oddball experiment was used in which stimuli were emotional exclamations differing in their affective tone. In both electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), deviants elicited an N300 component, sometimes accompanied by a slow wave. Both components had a symmetrical distribution, but the former was more posterior than the latter. The same responses to prosodic stimuli were significant in 6 of 27 patients with severe disorders of consciousness (persistent vegetative state and minimally conscious state) and in all 3 of the examined locked-in patients, indicating that the procedure can be applied for testing neurological patients. The occurrence of significant responses depended on the presence or absence of a lesion to the right temporal lobe. Obviously, the N300 depends on the activity of the right temporal cortex but does not originate there. We suggest that the component is related not to the recognition of affective prosody as such, but to the following detection of affective mismatch due to violations of emotional context of stimulation.     

Infant irritability: The impact of fetal alcohol exposure,maternal depressive symptoms,and low emotional support from the husband

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of fetal alcohol exposure, maternal depressive symptoms, and low emotional support from the husband on infant irritability in the first one and a half years of life. Four models describing the interplay of these factors were assessed: A direct effect model, an interaction or threshold model, a mediational model and a transactional model. Method: A sample of initially 458 women was assessed in a prospective 3‐wave study across the first 17 months after childbirth. Fetal alcohol exposure was questioned retrospectively six weeks after birth. Infant irritability was reported by the mothers and fathers. Results: Support for the direct effect model and the interaction model could be found: Fetal alcohol exposure and low emotional support from the husband were associated with increased infant irritability at 5 months. The impact of fetal alcohol exposure was moderated by postnatal depressive symptoms. More irritability was reported if both risk factors, prenatal alcohol exposure and maternal depressive symptoms, were present. Infant irritability and maternal depressive symptoms were associated cross‐sectionally. At the age of 17 months only a main effect of prenatal alcohol exposure on irritability could be found. Conclusion: Direct effects of fetal alcohol exposure, maternal depressive symptoms, and low emotional support from the husband on infant irritability as well as an interaction between fetal alcohol exposure and maternal depressive symptoms were revealed. The interaction can be understood in terms of a diathesis‐stress model. However, no longitudinal associations between maternal depressive symptoms and infant irritability could be found.     

Information transmission for one-dimensional stimuli: The role of strategies

Important evidence about the information flow between perceptual and motor processes has been obtained from the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) recorded in two-choice go/nogo tasks. Here, we investigated the effect of time pressure on information transmission for one-dimensional stimuli (four squares differing in size). In between- and within-subject designs, respectively, Experiments 1 and 2 showed that under time pressure partial information initiates hand decision and response preparation before complete size information is available. These findings appear to be at odds with the asynchronous discrete coding model. Experiment 3 assessed the mechanisms behind these effects by manipulating the relative difficulty of extracting hand- and go/nogo-specific information from the size of the stimuli. Consistent with asynchronous coding, our results suggest that serial-consecutive processes in extracting partial and full size information may occur also for one-dimensional stimuli. Our data are inconclusive as to the question of discreteness or continuity of information transmission. On a more general level, our data support the notion of flexibility in the coding of perceptual dimensions to adapt performance to environmental conditions.     

Perceptual identification across the life span: a dissociation of early gains and late losses

The age-correlated gains and losses in visual identification under backward pattern masking were studied in a representative sample of 226 individuals ranging from 6 to 88 years of age. Participants identified masked symbols at leisure under high and low stimulus quality and at varying Stimulus Onset Asynchronies. Performance increased from childhood to early adulthood and then decreased, describing the common inverted U-shaped function. However, measures of general processing speed accounted for the gains in childhood and adolescence but not for losses in older age. This asymmetry between child development and aging is inconsistent with general-factor lifespan theories of cognitive development and suggests that specific mechanisms underlying visual identification during child development and aging are different.     

The influence of family environment and child temperament on work/family role strain for mothers and fathers

This study examined the additive effect of structural variables, child characteristics, and the family environment on mothers' and fathers' work/family role strain. Differences between mothers and fathers on these variables were also examined. The sample consisted of 36 dualearner families whose children had been in daycare from infancy through 4 years of age. Structural variables included work schedules and time spent with child for mothers only, fathers only, and both parents together with child. Child characteristics included temperament and health. Family environment variables included different components of the family environment (conflict, cohesion, expressiveness, organization, and control) and parenting daily hassles. Results showed that mothers' time with child and caregiving for child were greater than fathers'. Mothers reported more expressiveness in the family and more daily hassles with children than fathers. Mothers' level of role strain was also significantly higher than fathers'. For mothers, role strain was associated with hours away from home, child sociability, family conflict, and daily hassles resulting in an R² of 0.57. Fathers' role strain was associated with family expressiveness, organization, and their wives' daily hassles resulting in an R² of 0.37. Data suggest that mothers' and fathers' role strain may be driven by somewhat different factors. For women, aspects of the family and the child and work hours accounted for a considerable portion of the variance while for men, only aspects of the family environment were associated with their level of role strain. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alcohol and Acquaintance Rape in Australia: Testing the Presupposition Model of Attributions About Responsibility and Blame1

According to the presupposition model of attributions about responsibility and blame (Bradbury & Fincham, 1990), an attribution of blame presupposes an attribution of responsibility. Both constructs share the dimensions of choice, intention, and accountability, but an additional dimension of liability relates only to blame. Reactions of 260 university students to acquaintance‐rape scenarios portraying different levels of alcohol intoxication were examined. Results showed that the model's dimensions explained much of the variance in attributions of responsibility and blame, although the hierarchical structure was not supported. Mediational analyses suggest that different attributional principles apply when assigning victim and perpetrator responsibility, which may explain why intoxicated victims are assigned more responsibility than sober victims, but intoxicated perpetrators are assigned less responsibility than sober perpetrators.     

Factors explaining male/female differences in attitudes and purchase intention toward genetically engineered salmon

• Frequently observed male/female differences in attitudes toward genetically engineered (GE) foods have not received adequate explanations. We examined (a) the ability of two hypotheses (safety concern and institutional trust) to explain male/female attitudes toward GE salmon and (b) the effect of attitudes on male/female differences in purchase intent. A survey (n = 501) was administered in two branches of a regional supermarket chain. After reading an information booklet, men and women's scores on a knowledge quiz did not differ but women had significantly more negative attitudes toward GE salmon than men. Attitudinal male/female differences were attributed to women's lower trust in government agencies and scientific organizations, and higher level of perceived health risks compared to men – supporting both hypotheses. But the essential basis of these attitudinal male/female differences appeared to be women's greater concern about the ethics/morality of this application. Attitude differences were the major contributor to male/female differences in purchase intention.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Increases in language lateralization in normal children as observed using magnetoencephalography

Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies investigating hemispheric dominance for language have shown that hemispheric specialization increases with age. We employed magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate these effects as a function of normal development. In sum, 22 healthy children aged 7-16 years were investigated using two language tasks: a verb-generation (VG) task and a vowel-identification (VI) task. Significant hemispheric differences were found for both tasks in cerebral language areas using oscillatory MEG spectral analyses, confirming the MEG's ability to detect hemispheric specialization for language in children. Additionally, a significant increase of this lateralization as a function of age was observed for both tasks. As performance in the VI task showed no correlation with age, this increase seems to be unrelated to performance. These results confirm an increase in hemispheric specialization as a function of normal brain maturation.     

Reading voices and hearing text: talker-specific auditory imagery in reading

A series of experiments was conducted to determine if linguistic representations accessed during reading include auditory imagery for characteristics of a talker's voice. In 3 experiments, participants were familiarized with two talkers during a brief prerecorded conversation. One talker spoke at a fast speaking rate, and one spoke at a slow speaking rate. Each talker was identified by name. At test, participants were asked to either read aloud (Experiment 1) or silently (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) a passage that they were told was written by either the fast or the slow talker. Reading times, both silent and aloud, were significantly slower when participants thought they were reading a passage written by the slow talker than when reading a passage written by the fast talker. Reading times differed as a function of passage author more for difficult than for easy texts, and individual differences in general auditory imagery ability were related to reading times. These results suggest that readers engage in a type of auditory imagery while reading that preserves the perceptual details of an author's voice.