Ego development and the ethics of care and justice: the relations among them revisited

This study examined the links among ego development and the ethics of care and justice in 144 Norwegian men and women, 15 to 48 years old, taking into consideration age, sex, education, and verbal intelligence. As expected, the relationship between Loevinger's model of ego development and care-based moral reasoning as measured with Skoe's Ethic of Care Interview (ECI) was significantly stronger than the one between ego development and justice as measured with Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT). Both ethics correlated significantly with verbal ability. Analyses showed that beyond its overlap with verbal intelligence, the variance shared between the ECI and ego development was substantial. By contrast, when verbal intelligence was controlled, the DIT was not significantly related to ego development or to the care ethic.     

When ecology and sociology meet: the contributions of Edward A. Ross

Edward A. Ross, a key figure in the early history of American sociology, developed a conceptualization of natural and social changes of the material environment that is virtually forgotten today. In this paper, these topics are discussed and located vis-à-vis Ross's intellectual contemporaries and their general take on the nature/society relationship. It is argued that ecological and sociological ideas in the early twentieth century influenced one another and, in the case of Ross, produced a perspective of social change that tried to include the dynamics of nature.     

Processing of temporal duration information in working memory after frontodorsal tumour excisions

This study aimed to test the hypothesis that impairments of temporal duration processing after frontal lobe lesions reflect deficits in executive monitoring functions rather than a domain-specific deficit in the maintenance of duration information in working memory. Patients with frontodorsal lesions, clinical controls with post-central lesions, and healthy controls performed recognition and classification tasks, which should allow for testing maintenance and monitoring functions, respectively. Results showed mild non-selective impairments of the frontal patients on both temporal and spatial recognition tasks, but a marked selective degradation on temporal classification while performance on spatial classification was unimpaired. This suggests that maintenance of duration information in working memory after frontal lesions is basically preserved but that, depending on executive task characteristics, there is a specific deficit in the strategic organization of this type of information.     

Priming visual face-processing mechanisms: electrophysiological evidence

Accumulated evidence from electrophysiology and neuroimaging suggests that face perception involves extrastriate visual mechanisms specialized in processing physiognomic features and building a perceptual representation that is categorically distinct and can be identified by face-recognition units. In the present experiment, we recorded event-related brain potentials in order to explore possible contextual influences on the activity of this perceptual mechanism. Subjects were first exposed to pairs of small shapes, which did not elicit any face-specific brain activity. The same stimuli, however, elicited face-specific brain activity after subjects saw them embedded in schematic faces, which probably primed the subjects to interpret the shapes as schematic eyes. No face-specific activity was observed when objects rather than faces were used to form the context. We conclude that the activity of face-specific extrastriate perceptual mechanisms can be modulated by contextual constraints that determine the significance of the visual input.     

Brain Potentials in the Processing of Complex Sentences: An ERP Study of Control and Raising Constructions

In the present study we made use of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to examine raising and subject control constructions in German. Our most salient result is that the ERPs elicited at the empty subject position of a raising construction are clearly different from those elicited at the corresponding position of an otherwise identical subject control construction, the former producing a stronger P600. We argue that this result provides an electrophysiological correlate of the theoretical distinction between NP trace and PRO.     

Auditory language comprehension: an event-related fMRI study on the processing of syntactic and lexical information

The functional specificity of different brain regions recruited in auditory language processing was investigated by means of event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects listened to speech input varying in the presence or absence of semantic and syntactic information. There were two sentence conditions containing syntactic structure, i.e., normal speech (consisting of function and content words), syntactic speech (consisting of function words and pseudowords), and two word-list conditions, i.e., real words and pseudowords. The processing of auditory language, in general, correlates with significant activation in the primary auditory cortices and in adjacent compartments of the superior temporal gyrus bilaterally. Processing of normal speech appeared to have a special status, as no frontal activation was observed in this case but was seen in the other three conditions. This difference may point toward a certain automaticity of the linguistic processes used during normal speech comprehension. When considering the three other conditions, we found that these were correlated with activation in both left and right frontal cortices. An increase of activation in the planum polare bilaterally and in the deep portion of the left frontal operculum was found exclusively when syntactic processes were in focus. Thus, the present data may be taken to suggest an involvement of the left frontal and bilateral temporal cortex when processing syntactic information during comprehension.     

Key Word Index to Volume 52

Other Index

Key Word Index to Volume 52     

Intergenerational transmission of marital quality across the transition to parenthood

One of the most frequently reported changes across the transition to parenthood is a decline in marital quality after the birth of a first baby. Experiences in the family of origin may influence the trajectory of marital quality. Our study aimed to investigate the impact of recollections of family-of-origin marriage on marital quality (self-reports and clinical evaluation) from pregnancy to 1 year after the birth of a first child. A total of 62 first-time parents completed questionnaires (self-reported marital satisfaction) and clinical interviews (clinical evaluation of couples' dialogue quality). Although self-reported marital satisfaction and observed dialogue quality were highly associated, only self-reported marital satisfaction declined from pregnancy to 1 year after birth. This decrease was partly due to very high marital satisfaction during pregnancy. Different trajectories for self-reported marital satisfaction and observed dialogue quality were found for participants with recollections of low-, average-, and high-quality family-of-origin marriage. A structural equation model showed that participants who recollected a negative quality in their parents' relationship reported more negative changes in the quality of their own marriages. There seems to be an intergenerational transmission of marital quality that comes to light when couples are challenged by the birth and rearing of a baby.     

Goal congruency in bimanual object manipulation

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the impact of action goals on the production of discrete bimanual responses. Similar to a bartender putting 2 glasses simultaneously on a shelf, participants placed 2 objects into either parallel or opposite orientations by carrying out either mirror-symmetrical or mirror-asymmetrical movements. In Experiment 1, performance was strongly affected by the congruency of the intended object orientations but was essentially unaffected by movement symmetry. Experiment 2 replicated this instrumental goal-congruency effect (and the absence of motor-symmetry effects) when actions were cued in advance. Experiment 3 revealed substantial motor-symmetry effects, provided the movements themselves became the action goal. The authors concluded that performance in bimanual choice reaction tasks is constrained by the creation and maintenance of goal codes rather than by properties inherent in the neuromuscular system that carries out these responses. These goals can relate to either body-intrinsic states or to body-extrinsic states according to the actor's current intentions.     

APP23 mice as a model of Alzheimer's disease: an example of a transgenic approach to modeling a CNS disorder

Animal models are considered essential in research ensuing elucidation of human disease processes and subsequently, testing of potential therapeutic strategies. This is especially true for neurodegenerative disorders, in which the first steps in pathogenesis are often not accessible in human patients. Alzheimer's disease is vastly becoming a major medical and socioeconomic problem in our aging society. Valid animal models for this uniquely human condition should exhibit histopathological, biochemical, cognitive, and behavioral alterations observed in Alzheimer's disease patients. Major progress has been made since the understanding of the genetic basis of Alzheimer's disease and the development and improvement of transgenic mouse models. All present Alzheimer's disease models developed are partial but nevertheless essential in further unraveling the nature and spatial and temporal development of the complex molecular pathology underlying this condition. One of the more recent transgenic attempts to model Alzheimer's disease is the APP23 transgenic mouse. This article describes the development and assessment of this human amyloid precursor protein overexpression model. We summarize histopathological and biochemical, cognitive and behavioral observations made in heterozygous APP23 mice, thereby emphasizing the model's contribution to clarification of neurodegenerative disease mechanisms. In addition, the first therapeutic interventions in the APP23 model are included.