A Review of Diagnostic Techniques in the Differential Diagnosis of Epileptic and Nonepileptic Seizures

The diagnosis of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) is complex. Long-term electroencephalogram monitoring with video recording (video EEG) is the most common method of differential diagnosis of epilepsy and PNES. However, video EEG is complex, costly, and unavailable in some areas. Thus, alternative diagnostic techniques have been studied in the search for a diagnostic method that is as accurate as video EEG, but more cost effective, convenient, and readily available. This paper reviews the literature regarding possible diagnostic alternatives and organizes findings into 7 areas of study: demographic and medical history variables, seizure semiology, provocative testing, prolactin levels, single photon emission computed tomography, psychological testing, and neuropsychological testing. For each area, the literature is summarized, and conclusions about the accuracy of the technique as a diagnostic tool are drawn. Overall, it appears unlikely that any of the reviewed alternative techniques will replace video EEG monitoring; rather they may be more successful as complementary diagnostic tools. An important focus for further investigations involves combinations of diagnostic techniques for the differential diagnosis of epilepsy and PNES.     

Vigilance for threat: effects of anxiety and defensiveness

Eysenck’s (1997) theory that attentional biases for threat vary as an interactive function of trait anxiety and defensiveness was tested using a visual probe task. Two stimulus exposure conditions were used to explore a secondary issue concerning attentional allocation over time. Results indicated that, among high trait anxious participants, only those with low levels of defensiveness showed vigilance for threatening faces presented for 500 ms. They also showed an attentional preference for neutral faces, relative to happy faces, irrespective of exposure condition. This pattern was reversed in high trait anxious participants with high levels of defensiveness, who showed an attentional bias towards happy faces (relative to neutral faces) under both exposure conditions. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for (a) the significance of measures of defensiveness for the conceptualization of high trait anxious individuals, and (b) the status of anxiety-related biases at different stages of information processing.     

Graveyards: Russian ritual and belief pertaining to the dead

The age-old tradition of feasting the dead has been maintained by Russian populations for well over five centuries. Graveyards hold a special place both in traditional Orthodox faith and in the lives of Russians and others in the city of Narva, Estonia. The tradition of feasting the dead for three, nine and forty days after death, can be traced unbroken to pre-Christian Rus’. Details may vary, but always the soul of the deceased must battle its way out of the body and then spend time in both heaven and hell. While this journey is occurring, the living must remember the dead, helping their souls during this period of travail. Even a final feast one year after the death of the individual does not end the relationship between the living and the deceased, for the graves are still visited on a regular basis as a sign of respect to the dead, who are potential saints in the Russian Orthodox tradition. This ‘saintly’ land — Russian graves — defines homeland and roots the population to a new area. By examining the importance of graveyards to Russians, to the ethnic Komi of Northern Russia, and other Eastern Europeans, I demonstrate that a sense of place is maintained in these rituals of daily life.     

Psycholinguistic norms for action photographs in French and their relationships with spoken and written latencies.

A set of 142 photographs of actions (taken from Fiez & Tranel, 1997) was standardized in French on name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, visual complexity, imageability, age of acquisition, and duration of the depicted actions. Objective word frequency measures were provided for the infinitive modal forms of the verbs and for the cumulative frequency of the verbal forms associated with the photographs. Statistics on the variables collected for action items were provided and compared with the statistics on the same variables collected for object items. The relationships between these variables were analyzed, and certain comparisons between the current database and other similar published databases of pictures of actions are reported. Spoken and written naming latencies were also collected for the photographs of actions, and multiple regression analyses revealed that name agreement, image agreement, and age of acquisition are the major determinants of action naming speed. Finally, certain analyses were performed to compare object and action naming times. The norms and the spoken and written naming latencies corresponding to the pictures are available on the Internet (http://www.psy.univ-bpclermont.fr/~pbonin/pbonin-eng.html) and should be of great use to researchers interested in the processing of actions.     

Intrinsic,identified, and controlled types of motivation for school subjects in young elementary school children

Background. There are two approaches to the differential examination of school motivation. The first is to examine motivation towards specific school subjects (between school subject differentiation). The second is to examine school motivation as a multidimensional concept that varies in terms of not only intensity but also quality (within school subject differentiation). These two differential approaches have led to important discoveries and provided a better understanding of student motivational dynamics. However, little research has combined these two approaches. Aims. This study examines young elementary students' motivations across school subjects (writing, reading, and maths) from the stance of self‐determination theory. First, we tested whether children self‐report different levels of intrinsic, identified, and controlled motivation towards specific school subjects. Second, we verified whether children self‐report differentiated types of motivation across school subjects. Sample. Participants were 425 French‐Canadian children (225 girls, 200 boys) from three elementary schools. Children were in Grades 1 (N=121), 2 (N=126), and 3 (N=178). Results. Results show that, for a given school subject, young elementary students self‐report different levels of intrinsic, identified, and controlled motivation. Results also indicate that children self‐report different levels of motivation types across school subjects. Our findings also show that most differentiation effects increase across grades. Some gender effects were also observed. Conclusion. These results highlight the importance of distinguishing among types of school motivation towards specific school subjects in the early elementary years.     

Challenging the Limits of Critique in Education Through Morin’s Paradigm of Complexity

The position adopted in this paper is inspired by Edgar Morin’s paradigm of complexity and his critique of scientific and philosophical forms of reductionism. This paper is based on research focusing on the diversity of conceptions of critique developed in academic discourses. It aims to challenge the fragmentation and the reduction framing the understanding of this notion in educational sciences. The reflection begins with the introduction of some of Morin’s assumptions concerning the paradigm of complexity. The next section provides a definition of the idea of critique and explores some limits associated with contemporary references framing this notion. Theories of critique are at the core of several educational theories. Based on the literature identified in French-speaking and English-speaking critical traditions in education, several factors determining the way the idea of critique is reduced in education are highlighted. Stressing the tacit character of those variables challenges the limits of traditional conceptions of critique in contemporary education. The position adopted denounces therefore the fact that the current development of theories of critique in education does not provide a framework considering more systematically their conditions of emergence, their own limitations, as well as the antagonistic, complementary and contradictory relationships, which connect them to one another. Based on this position, this paper finally suggests that a distinction be made between “hypocritique” and “hypercritique” as a semantic artifact, stressing the importance of challenging existing theories of critique in education according to the level of complexity that one may attribute to them.     

Clustering preference data in the presence of response-style bias

Preference data, such as Likert scale data, are often obtained in questionnaire-based surveys. Clustering respondents based on survey items is useful for discovering latent structures. However, cluster analysis of preference data may be affected by response styles, that is, a respondent's systematic response tendencies irrespective of the item content. For example, some respondents may tend to select ratings at the ends of the scale, which is called an ‘extreme response style’. A cluster of respondents with an extreme response style can be mistakenly identified as a content-based cluster. To address this problem, we propose a novel method of clustering respondents based on their indicated preferences for a set of items while correcting for response-style bias. We first introduce a new framework to detect, and correct for, response styles by generalizing the definition of response styles used in constrained dual scaling. We then simultaneously correct for response styles and perform a cluster analysis based on the corrected preference data. A simulation study shows that the proposed method yields better clustering accuracy than the existing methods do. We apply the method to empirical data from four different countries concerning social values.     

Sadder but wiser: Emotional reactions and wisdom in a simulated suicide intervention

Scholars within the Berlin paradigm have analysed participants' responses to a hypothetical vignette about a friend's suicide ideation. However, no study has yet focused on participants' emotional reactions to this scenario, an important aspect of wisdom performance. We conducted a Thin‐Slice Wisdom study where participants were asked to give advice to a hypothetical friend contemplating suicide. We analysed their emotional profiles using facial expression analysis software (FACET2.1 and FACEREADER7.1). Participants' verbal responses were also transcribed and then scored by 10 raters using the Berlin criteria. Results revealed that the sadder the participants felt, the wiser their performance. Wiser participants may have been better at exploring this sad, but true, existential human dilemma.