Perception of place-of-articulation information in natural speech by monkeys versus humans

Four monkeys and 6 humans representing five different native languages were compared in the ability to categorize natural CV tokens of /b/ versus /d/ produced by 4 talkers of American English (2 male, 2 female) in four vowel contexts (/i, e, a, u/). A two-choice "left/right" procedure was used in which both percentage correct and response time data were compared between species. Both measures indicated striking context effects for monkeys, in that they performed better for the back vowels /a/ and /u/ than for the front vowels /i/ and /e/. Humans showed no context effects for the percentage correct measure, but their response times showed an enhancement for the /i/ vowel, in contrast with monkeys. Results suggest that monkey perception of place of articulation is more dependent than human perception on the direction of the F2 onset transitions of syllables, since back-vowel F2s differentiate /b/ and /d/ more distinctively. Although monkeys do not provide an accurate model of the adult human in place perception, they may be able to model the preverbal human infant before it learns a more speech-specific strategy of place information extraction.     

Associations in the course of personality disorders and Axis I disorders over time

In this study, the authors examined time-varying associations between schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD), or obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) personality disorders and co-occurring Axis I disorders in 544 adult participants from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study. The authors tested predictions of specific longitudinal associations derived from a model of crosscutting psychobiological dimensions (L. J. Siever & K. L. Davis, 1991) with participants with the relevant Axis I disorders. The authors assessed participants at baseline and at 6-, 12-, and 24-month follow-up evaluations. BPD showed significant longitudinal associations with major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. AVPD was significantly associated with anxiety disorders (specifically social phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder). Two of the four personality disorders under examination (STPD and OCPD) showed little or no association with Axis I disorders.     

Borderline psychopathology in the first-degree relatives of borderline and axis II comparison probands

The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of each of the nine DSM criteria for borderline personality disorder and the prevalence of the disorder itself in the first-degree relatives of borderline probands and Axis II comparison subjects. Four hundred and forty-five inpatients were interviewed about familial borderline psychopathology using the Revised Family History Questionnaire--a semistructured interview of demonstrated reliability. Of these 445 subjects, 341 met both DIB-R and DSM-III-R criteria for BPD and 104 met DSM-III-R criteria for another type of personality disorder (and neither criteria set for BPD). The psychopathology of 1,580 first-degree relatives of borderline probands and 472 relatives of Axis II comparison subjects was assessed. Both DSM-III-R and DSM-IV BPD were found to be more common among the relatives of borderline than Axis II comparison probands. However, five of the criteria for BPD (inappropriate anger, affective instability, paranoia/dissociation, general impulsivity, and intense, unstable relationships) and all four sectors of borderline psychopathology (affect, cognition, impulsivity, and interpersonal relationships) were found to be both more common and discriminating than the BPD diagnosis itself. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that the subsyndromal phenomenology of BPD may be more common than the borderline diagnosis itself.     

Sensory discrimination and intelligence: testing Spearman's other hypothesis

At the centenary of Spearman's seminal 1904 article, his general intelligence hypothesis remains one of the most influential in psychology. Less well known is the article's other hypothesis that there is "a correspondence between what may provisionally be called 'General Discrimination' and 'General Intelligence' which works out with great approximation to one or absoluteness" (Spearman, 1904, p. 284). Studies that do not find high correlations between psychometric intelligence and single sensory discrimination tests do not falsify this hypothesis. This study is the first directly to address Spearman's general intelligence-general sensory discrimination hypothesis. It attempts to replicate his findings with a similar sample of schoolchildren. In a well-fitting structural equation model of the data, general intelligence and general discrimination correlated .92. In a reanalysis of data published byActon and Schroeder (2001), general intelligence and general sensory ability correlated .68 in men and women. One hundred years after its conception, Spearman's other hypothesis achieves some confirmation. The association between general intelligence and general sensory ability remains to be replicated and explained.     

Project Trust: breaking down barriers between middle school children

This paper analyzes the success of a camp retreat weekend called Project Trust involving middle school students and teachers. The goal of the camp is to break down barriers between cliques identified as active in the school. The camp focuses on building team relationships across clique membership and incorporates elements of peace education and conflict resolution. A treatment group (campers) and comparison group (noncampers) were administered an adaptation of the Bogardus Social Distance Test and the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale before and after the camp. Attendance was found to lower social distance scores for nine of the ten groups/cliques. Campers also had higher self-concept scores after the retreat.     

Personality factors in older women's perceived susceptibility to diseases of aging

Personality correlates of older women's perceived susceptibility to breast cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis were examined in a community sample of 312 women aged 40-86. A latent factor of general perceived susceptibility to disease was shown to underlie disease-specific perceptions of susceptibility. Affect-related personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, optimism, worry, and self-deceptive enhancement) and internal and chance health locus of control predicted general perceived susceptibility. Perceived disease characteristics (e.g., perceived controllability, severity) and the use of cognitive heuristics (i.e., perceived similarity to those who contract each disease) also displayed marked consistency across the three distinct diseases. Finally, our results suggested that general beliefs about the characteristics of health threats and the use of cognitive heuristics may mediate the link between personality traits and perceived risk.     

Emotions, personality, and health: introduction to the special issue

Our intent in this introduction to the special issue on Emotions, Personality, and Health is to alert readers to the logic underlying the editors' choices of topics for the issue and to provide a brief summary of its contents. We discuss how the 10 articles fit together to provide a mosaic of diverse approaches to the study of emotion. Collectively, these articles show ways that emotion research may be integrated with personality theory to inform us about the psychological dimensions of health and illness.     

Crossed Wernicke's aphasia: a case report

Crossed aphasia is a phenomenon in which an individual sustains a lesion in the right hemisphere (typically non-language dominant), but who exhibits an aphasic syndrome. The authors present a case study of an individual with crossed aphasia (CA) in an attempt to provide anecdotal information for four questions posed by : (a). Is CA a reversal of the normal cerebral hemisphere pattern of language function? (b). Does the presence of aphasia following a right cerebral hemisphere lesion indicate that typical right hemisphere functions (e.g., visual perception) are intact? (c). How may the aphasia's presentation differ from typical left hemisphere aphasias? And (d). is the pattern of improvement following CA similar to that of typical left hemisphere aphasias? We longitudinally examined the communicative-cognitive performance of an adult man with crossed aphasia of the Wernicke's type following a cerebrovascular accident. A 21-week follow-up evaluation indicated improvements in his language functioning from our initial evaluation, but he continued to exhibit a classic, moderately severe Wernicke's aphasia.