Recovery from aphasia: Spontaneous speech versus language comprehension

Seventy-four aphasic patients, subdivided into four groups (fluent, mixed, nonfluent, and severely nonfluent), were tested three times in the course of 1 year to assess recovery of spontaneous speech and sentence comprehension. Although 12 of the 28 spontaneous speech variables employed showed significant time changes, some of these changes indicated improvement and others deterioration. There was no overall clinical improvement in spontaneous speech in any group. On the sentence comprehension tests, however, all four groups did show considerable, significant improvement. There were no qualitative or quantitative differences among the groups in the course of recovery, despite the fact that the groups differed in the severity of aphasia as well as on the fluency dimension. In certain patients there was also some improvement in spontaneous speech, but this did not in most cases correlate with an improvement in either fluency or sentence comprehension. Possible reasons why receptive abilities improved more than expressive abilities are discussed.     

Noun animacy and the passive voice: A developmental approach

Line drawings of simple situations, in which the animacy of both actor and acted-upon was systematically varied, were presented to children aged between five and 10 years and to adults. Their task was to describe what was happening in each picture. When the actor was more animate than the acted-upon the pictures were invariably described in the active voice whereas pictures in which the acted-upon was more animate than the actor were frequently described using a passive. When the animacy of the two elements was equal a smaller number of passives was produced mainly in response to pictures depicting two inanimates. The size of the animacy difference between actor and acted-upon was also found to influence passive production. In the more animate acted-upon condition most passives were produced to describe pictures of an inanimate actor and human acted-upon. This pattern of responses is seen as providing support for a view of the passive as a syntactic form which allows thematisation of an acted-upon when it is of greater importance to the speaker than the actor.     

Recency effects in memory,as a function of modality of intervening events

Summary Word lists of fifteen items were presented to eye or to ear, with recall either immediately, or after a visual task, or after an auditory one. Instructions were to recall the last items first. An intervening task using the same modality greatly reduced recall of the last items presented; whereas a visual task did not do so for acoustically presented items. An auditory task reduced visual memory. These results suggest a specific auditory memory for recent events, over-written by subsequent auditory events.This research was supported by the Medical Research Council. The experimental work was performed at the Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge.     

A continuum of dimensional separability

Recent studies of children’s perception may be interpreted in terms of a developmental continuum from integrality to separability in the perception of multidimensional variation. Two experiments examined the existence of such a continuum in adult perception. The first experiment indicated that there are dimensional combinations that are neither clearly integral nor separable for adults. Rather, such a combination results in performance patterns intermediate between those found with integral and separable dimensions. The second experiment tested one conceptualization of a continuum of dimensional separability in a speeded classification task. By this conceptualization, the perceived structures of multidimensional variation are orderable by thedegree to which the component dimensions are differentiated. Consistent with this view, performances with three-dimensional combinations are shown to be differentially dependent on dimensional and wholistic relations. The importance of the joint consideration of developmental and adult issues in the perception of multidimensional variation is briefly discussed.     

Effects of methylphenidate (Ritalin) on selective attention in hyperactive children

This study investigated the effect of methylphenidate (Ritalin) on the selective attention of hyperactive children designated as favorable or adverse responders to stimulant medication. Using a type II incidental learning paradigm, it was found that children in the drug condition recalled more central and less incidental stimuli than those children in the placebo condition. While no differential effects on recall were found for responder type, methylphenidate did affect the spontaneous overt labeling of central stimuli by the favorable responder group. Results were interpreted in terms of the role of methylphenidate in narrowing the focus of attention. Implications for the classification of hyperactive children as favorable and adverse responders were also discussed.This paper is based on a master's thesis completed by the first author in the Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, under the supervision of the second author. The authors wish to thank J. Thomas Dalby for his assistance in the conducting of this experiment.     

Stimulus factors in children's learning set performance

Three experiments are reported which investigate the effects of attentional factors on learning set performance of children. Number of varying irrelevant dimensions, trials per problem, and age were examined. The first experiment tests with 6- and 8-year-old-children the effects of one as opposed to two varying irrelevant dimensions. An interaction between age and dimensions showed younger children to be differentially affected by the treatment conditions, two varying irrelevant dimensions being more difficult than one. There was no difference between treatments for the older children, nor between older and younger subjects receiving one varying irrelevant dimension. In the second experiment, 6- and 8-year-olds were examined on two varying irrelevant dimension problems, receiving either 4 or 12 trials per problem. Amount of exposure within-problems, affected performance with 12 trials per problem resulting in superior performance at both age levels. A third experiment tested 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old-children using one and two varying irrelevant dimension problems with 4 and 12 trials per problem. Results confirmed the finding that learning set acquisition is influenced by irrelevant dimensions and within-problems exposure, with these effects interacting with age and amount of training. These findings support the utility of applications of an attentional analysis to the learning set performance of normal children.     

Avoiding and seeking self-focused attention

Male and female undergraduates read aloud statements about women which were either attitudinally consistent, discrepant, or neutral relative to their attitudes toward women. Following this, they were given the opportunity to choose to wait in front of a mirror or a nonreflecting wall. Subjects engaging in attitudinally discrepant behavior avoided self-focusing stimuli; those engaging in attitudinally consistent behavior sought contact with self-focusing stimuli. Intermediate tendencies to seek or avoid self-focused stimuli were demonstrated by subjects reading attitudinally neutral material. The theory of objective self-awareness was extended by demonstrating that self-focusing stimuli are not just avoided in response to negative discrepancies, but are sought out in response to attitude-behavior consistencies.     

Articulatory suppression and the grouping of successive stimuli

Summary Two experiments required subjects to memorise for immediate recall lists of nine items, presented visually and grouped by threes. As each item followed the previous one in the same spatial location, it must have been temporarily stored until the whole group had arrived. In one experiment the items were digits; grouping could be detected by the fact that recall of the last two items in a group was heavily contingent upon recall of the first item. In the second experiment the items were letters, and some of the lists were made up of meaningful triplets of letters such as UNO. Grouping could be detected by the size of the difference between these lists and the meaningless ones. In each experiment, the extent of grouping was just as great if the subjects were asked to repeat an irrelevant sequence of sounds while memorising; although the recall under both conditions was of course depressed.It appears therefore that the temporary memory, in which the items are held before grouping, is not impaired by articulatory suppression; nor in these conditions could it have been a sensory store. The result is supportive evidence for the existence of an abstract, non-sensory, non-motor, working memory.Both authors are employed, and their research supported, by the Medical Research Council