Illness representations,knowledge and motivation to perform presymptomatic testing for late-onset genetic diseases

This study addresses the relation between illness representations, knowledge and motivation to perform the presymptomatic testing (PST) of subjects at-risk for Familial Amyloydotic Polyneuropathy (FAP), Huntington’s disease (HD) and Machado–Joseph disease (MJD), compared with subjects at-risk for Hereditary Hemochromatosis (HH). The sample comprised a clinical group of 213 subjects at genetic risk for FAP, HD and MJD, and a comparison group of 31 subjects at genetic risk for HH, that answered three open-ended questions relating illness representations, knowledge about the disease, and motivation to perform PST. People at-risk for FAP, HD and MJD use more metaphors, make more references to the family, are more concerned with the future and feel more out of curiosity and to learn, than for HH. These subjects at-risk correspond to the profile of somatic individual or personhood, wherein the unsubjectivation of the disease can function as a coping mechanism.     

Early Gesture Provides a Helping Hand to Spoken Vocabulary Development for Children with Autism,Down Syndrome,and Typical Development

Typically developing (TD) children refer to objects uniquely in gesture (e.g., point at a cat) before they produce verbal labels for these objects (“cat”). The onset of such gestures predicts the onset of similar spoken words, showing a strong positive relation between early gestures and early words. We asked whether gesture plays the same door-opening role in word learning for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS), who show delayed vocabulary development and who differ in the strength of gesture production. To answer this question, we observed 23 18-month-old TD children, 23 30-month-old children with ASD, and 23 30-month-old children with DS 5 times over a year during parent–child interactions. Children in all 3 groups initially expressed a greater proportion of referents uniquely in gesture than in speech. Many of these unique gestures subsequently entered children’s spoken vocabularies within a year—a pattern that was slightly less robust for children with DS, whose word production was the most markedly delayed. These results indicate that gesture is as fundamental to vocabulary development for children with developmental disorders as it is for TD children.     

What is the future for tool-specific generalized motor programs?

A key issue in cognitive sciences is to understand the cognitive bases of human tool use. Answers have been provided by two competing approaches. The manipulation-based approach assumes that humans can use tools because of the ability to store sensorimotor knowledge about how to manipulate tools. By contrast, for the reasoning-based approach, human tool use is based on the ability to reason about physical object properties. Recently, Caruana and Cuccio proposed a kind of reconciliation, based on the distinction between three types of abductive inference, involving a different contribution of motor and cognitive elements: Automatic abduction (motor + and cognitive-), abduction by selection (motor ± and cognitive±) and creative abduction (motor- and cognitive+). This perspective offers new interesting avenues. Nevertheless, it is also subject to several theoretical and epistemological limitations, which make it in its present form inappropriate for the study of the cognitive bases of human tool use. This article aims to discuss these limitations.     

Integration of parafoveal orthographic information during foveal word reading: beyond the sub-lexical level?

Prior research has shown that processing of a given target word is facilitated by the simultaneous presentation of orthographically related stimuli in the parafovea. Here we investigate the nature of such spatial integration processes by presenting orthographic neighbours of target words in the parafovea, considering that neighbours have been shown to inhibit, rather than facilitate, recognition of target words in foveal masked priming research. In Experiment 1, we used the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm to manipulate the parafoveal information subjects received while they fixated a target word within a sentence. In Experiment 2, we used the Flanking Letters Lexical Decision paradigm to manipulate parafoveal information while subjects read isolated words. Parafoveal words were either a higher-frequency orthographic neighbour of targets words (e.g., blue-blur) or a high-frequency unrelated word (e.g., hand-blur). We found that parafoveal orthographic neighbours facilitated, rather than inhibited, processing of the target. Thus, the present findings provide further evidence that orthographic information is integrated across multiple words and suggest that either the integration process does not enable simultaneous access to those words’ lexical representations, or that lexical representations activated by spatially distinct stimuli do not compete for recognition.     

Meaning Coconstruction in Group Counseling: The Development of Innovative Moments

This study discusses a model of group counseling, the narrative mediation path (NMP), which is a unique narrative, multimodal approach that combines four narrative modes (metaphoric, iconographic, writing, and bodily) and the narrative group. The purpose of the NMP is to foster reflexive processes with underachieving university students and to improve their academic performance. The study analyzes a single case of group counseling for seven underachieving economics students at an Italian university and the process of meaning construction among NMP narrative modes and the follow-up session. It applies the innovative moments coding system, a reliable method for studying change by tracking narrative innovations in sessions. More specifically, we focus on how innovative moments (IMs: action, reflection, protest, and reconceptualization) evolve during the four different narrative modes and the follow-up session. The findings suggest that the NMP fosters narrative innovations, mainly of a reflexive nature (reflection and reconceptualization). Moreover, during counseling and the follow-up session, the pattern of change is primarily characterized by reconceptualization IMs, the most complex form of narrative innovation.     

Drug Use and Self-Harming Behavior Among Incarcerated Men: Does Childhood Abuse,Anger, and Executive Function Make a Difference?

Childhood abuse, anger, drug-related problems, and self-harm are commonly seen among incarcerated individuals. Forty-three young incarcerated males from an Istanbul prison were assessed for childhood abuse, anger, drug use, self-harming behavior, and executive function (EF). Further, 58% of the sample was using drugs, and 60.5% showed self-harming behavior. Performing a backward stepwise binary logistic regression model, it was found that the likelihood of using drugs was determined by EF measured by the Trail Making Test form A, childhood abuse, anger, and self-harm. On the other hand, self-harm was determined by childhood abuse, anger, and drug use.     

Cultural context, obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, and cognitions: a preliminary study of three Turkish samples living in different countries

Previous research findings have suggested that recent cognitive accounts of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are valid across different cultural contexts for both clinical and nonclinical samples; however, there is evidence that cultural differences may have an impact on a number of cognitive variables. For this reason, immigration provides an exceptional opportunity for an examination of the role of cultural context in cognitions and possible changes in cultural characteristics. To this end, the present study examined the interrelationships between thought-action fusion, thought control strategies and OCD symptoms in three nonclinical samples, taking the immigration factor into consideration. Thus, the current study included three Turkish sample groups: those who remigrated to Turkey from Bulgaria, those still living in Bulgaria, and those that have always resided in Turkey. The findings of the study supported the role of thought and action fusion and control strategies in OCD symptoms in a cross-cultural context. To illustrate, worry, as a thought control strategy for OCD symptoms, was a common factor in all three sample groups. However, differences were also noted between the groups, despite having the same ethnic origin. Although they immigrated back to Turkey and have been living there for a considerable period of time, the Turkish remigrants retained similar characteristics to the respondents in Bulgaria on cognitions in general. Consequently, it may be suggested that cultural context might have a relative impact on certain correlates. A replication of these findings using different immigration groups and examining various cultural factors is strongly encouraged.     

Reprint of: stuttering treatment control using P300 event-related potentials

Positron emission tomography studies during speech have indicated a failure to show the normal activation of auditory cortical areas in stuttering individuals. In the present study, P300 event-related potentials were used to investigate possible effects of behavioral treatment on the pattern of signal amplitude and latency between waves. In order to compare variations in P300 measurements, a control group paired by age and gender to the group of stutterers, was included in the study. Findings suggest that the group of stutterers presented a significant decrease in stuttering severity after the fluency treatment program. Regarding P300 measurements, stutterers and their controls presented results within normal limits in all testing situations and no significant statistical variations between pre and post treatment testing. When comparing individual results between the testing situations, stutterers presented a higher average decrease in wave latency for the right ear following treatment. The results are discussed in light of previous P300 event-related potentials and functional imaging studies with stuttering adults.Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to describe the: (1) use of P300 event-related potentials in the study of stuttering; (2) differences between stuttering and non-stuttering adults; and (3) effects of behavioral fluency treatment on cerebral activity in stuttering speakers.     

A demonstration of dual-task performance without interference in some older adults

Highly efficient dual-task processing is demonstrated when reaction time to each of two tasks does not differ between the dual-task situation and the single-task situation. This has been demonstrated reliably in younger adults; nevertheless, the two extant studies of extensive dual-task training did not find evidence for it in any elderly adult. The origins of age-related differences after training were explored in a study in which the stimuli for the two tasks were perfectly redundant although two distinct responses were required. The dual-task situation thus greatly reduced the demands of stimulus categorization while still requiring two response selections and two response executions. After only limited training 8 of 8 younger adults and 5 of 8 older adults showed performance consistent with highly efficient processing. Three older adults failed to show this even after 12 training sessions. The results implicate stimulus categorization more than response selection as an important locus of inefficient dual-task processing, particularly for older adults.     

Early- and late-onset blindness both curb audiotactile integration on the parchment-skin illusion

It has been shown that congenital blindness can lead to anomalies in the integration of auditory and tactile information, at least under certain conditions. In the present study, we used the parchment-skin illusion, a robust illustration of sound-biased perception of touch based on changes in frequency, to investigate the specificities of audiotactile interactions in early- and late-onset blind individuals. Blind individuals in both groups did not experience any illusory change in tactile perception when the frequency of the auditory signal was modified, whereas sighted individuals consistently experienced the illusion. This demonstration that blind individuals had reduced susceptibility to an auditory-tactile illusion suggests either that vision is necessary for the establishment of audiotactile interactions or that auditory and tactile information can be processed more independently in blind individuals than in sighted individuals. In addition, the results obtained in late-onset blind participants suggest that visual input may play a role in the maintenance of audiotactile integration.