The Time Course of Grammatical and Phonological Processing During Speaking: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials

Motor-related brain potentials were used to examine the time course of grammatical and phonological processes during noun phrase production in Dutch. In the experiments, participants named colored pictures using a no-determiner noun phrase. On half of the trials a syntactic–phonological classification task had to be performed before naming. Depending on the outcome of the classifications, a left or a right push-button response was given (go trials), or no push-button response was given (no-go trials). Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were derived to test whether syntactic and phonological information affected the motor system at separate moments in time. The results showed that when syntactic information determined the response-hand decision, an LRP developed on no-go trials. However, no such effect was observed when phonological information determined response hand. On the basis of the data, it can be estimated that an additional period of at least 40 ms is needed to retrieve a word's initial phoneme once its lemma has been retrieved. These results provide evidence for the view that during speaking, grammatical processing precedes phonological processing in time.     

Prevalence of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms in 4- to 17-Year-Old Children in the General Population

The purposes of this study were (a) to estimate the prevalence of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) symptoms in the general preschool and school population; and (b) to analyze the influence of gender, age, and socioeconomic status (SES) variables on AD/HD symptoms. Out of the 80,000 preschool and schoolchildren living in Manizales, Colombia, a random sample of 540 children was selected. Two gender, three age (4- to 5-year olds, 6- to 11 -year olds, and 12- to 17-year olds), and three SES (low, middle, and high) groups were used. The 18 DSM-IV symptoms corresponding to AD/HD Criterion A were assessed on a scale of 0 (never) to 3 (almost always). All three demographic variables established statistically significant differences: AD/HD symptoms were more frequent in 6-to 11-year-old, low-SES, male participants. DSM-IV Criterion A for AD/HD was fulfilled by 19.8% of the boys and 12.3% of the girls. However, this difference was marginally significant only in the AD/HD Subtype I: Combined. It was concluded that demographic variables are significant correlates of the AD/HD diagnosis. The prevalence found in this study was higher than usually reported, even though only the symptomatic DSM-IV AD/HD criterion was analyzed. We failed to confirm the assumed AD/HD gender ratio.     

Analysis of four measures of positional bias within a multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessment

Positional bias is a pattern of responding to a specific location that can be influenced by response effort and/or prior learning history. Prior research on positional bias within stimulus preference assessments have focused primarily on its use in paired stimulus assessments due to the complex nature of the multiple stimulus without replacement (MSWO) preference assessment. The present study is a secondary data analysis that utilized four different methods to measure side and center bias in a MSWO preference assessment for 19 young children with autism spectrum disorder. Participants displayed varying degrees of biased responding but collectively engaged in minimal biased responding. This study includes an analysis of the four methodologies, discussion of general patterns of responding, and general recommendations for the application of these methodologies in future research.     

Parental socialization of mental health in Chinese American families: What parents say and do,and how youth make meaning

Parental mental health socialization is a process by which parents shape how youth develop and maintain beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors regarding mental health and help-seeking behaviors. Although culture shapes parental mental health socialization, few studies have examined specific parental socialization practices regarding mental health and help-seeking, especially as a culturally anchored process. Using a qualitative approach, this study explores youth-reported parental socialization of mental health within Chinese American families by examining focus group data from 69 Chinese American high school and college students. Findings revealed that youth received parental messages that conveyed culturally anchored conceptualizations of mental health that included stigmatized views of mental illness and perceptions of mental distress as not a legitimate problem. Parents responded to youth distress in culturally consonant ways: by encouraging culturally specific coping methods, dismissing or minimizing distress, or responding with silence. Youth engaged in the active interpretation of parental messages through cultural brokering, bridging the gap between their parents’ messages and mainstream notions of mental health and help-seeking. Overall, our findings point to the significant role of culture in parental mental health socialization in Chinese American families and the need to integrate culturally specific understandings of mental health into future interventions for Asian American youth.     

Psychological maladjustment mediates the link between remembrances of parental rejection in childhood and loneliness in adulthood: A cross-cultural comparative study

Drawing stimulus from interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory, this multicultural study examined relations between men's versus women's remembrances of maternal and paternal acceptance-rejection in childhood and their current level of loneliness, as mediated by adults' self-reported psychological maladjustment. Adults (N = 899) from five nations (Iraq, Italy, the Netherlands, Pakistan, and the United States) responded to the Adult version of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire-short form for mothers and fathers, the Adult version of the Personality Assessment Questionnaire-short form, and the Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Loneliness Scale. Adults' remembrances of maternal and paternal rejection in childhood significantly and independently predicted feelings of loneliness but remembered paternal rejection was more strongly related to these feelings than were remembrances of maternal rejection. Psychological maladjustment fully mediated the effect of remembered maternal rejection but only partially mediated the effect of remembered paternal rejection on loneliness. There were no significant differences in these results across the five countries or genders. Overall, the results suggest that adults' remembrances of parental rejection in childhood—along with the theoretically expected development of psychological maladjustment—are likely to be associated panculturally with the experience of loneliness in adulthood.     

A comparison of stimulus set size on tact training for children with autism spectrum disorder

Previous studies on skill acquisition have taught targets in stimulus sets composed of different numbers of stimuli. Although the rationale for selection of a stimulus set size is not clear, the number of target stimuli trained within a set is a treatment decision for which there is limited empirical support. The current investigation compared the efficiency of tact training in 4 stimulus set sizes, each of which included 12 stimuli grouped into (a) 4 sets of 3 stimuli, (b) 3 sets of 4 stimuli, (c) 2 sets of 6 stimuli, and (d) 1 set of 12 stimuli. Results of all 4 participants with autism spectrum disorder show tact training with larger (i.e., 6 and 12) stimulus set sizes was more efficient than training with smaller (i.e., 3 and 4) stimulus set sizes.     

The Development of Selective Attention in Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

The influence of age on a selective attention task was studied in a sample of children with and without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The impact of methylphenidate (MPH) treatment on selective attention was also investigated in the children with ADHD. Two age groups of children with ADHD and two age groups of control children were tested using a timed computer task. The task consisted of identifying visual target stimuli under various distracter conditions. Distracters varied on the basis of modality (i.e., visual, auditory, or both) and task relevance (i.e., meaningful or irrelevant). Reaction times and accuracy were measured. Children with ADHD were less efficient on the selective attention task than were children without ADHD, and older children were more efficient than younger children in both groups. Children without ADHD were influenced more by the nature of distracters than were children with ADHD. For children with ADHD, MPH improved performance overall.     

The Causes,Course, and Consequences of Anger Problems in Veterans Returning to Civilian Life

While anger is a common problem for veterans returning from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, veterans' understanding of the causes, course, and consequences of anger has not been explored. We conducted this qualitative study to learn veterans' perspectives about their anger problems. We identify and describe three distinct patterns of anger problems that emerged as a consequence of (a) loss of structure during reintegration to civilian life, (b) moral injury sustained through a wartime experience, and (c) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While anger problems tended to be short lived for those experiencing loss of structure, problems persisted for years for those with moral injury or PTSD. Anger following all three patterns negatively impacted veterans' experiences with reintegration. We discuss the implications of these findings.     

Resolving Uncertainty About the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale–12: Application of Modern Psychometric Strategies

In this study, we evaluated the factor structure, reliability estimates, item parameters, and differential correlates of the short form of the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (Carleton, Norton, &; Asmundson, 2007 Carleton, R., Norton, P., &; Asmundson, G. (2007). Fearing the unknown. A short version of the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21, 105–117.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in samples of undergraduate women (n = 387) and men (n = 276) ranging in age from 18 to 49 years (M = 20.20, SD = 3.91). This instrument was designed to measure 2 facets of intolerance of uncertainty—prospective anxiety and inhibitory anxiety—although total scores on the measure are often used. A major objective of this study was to determine the degree to which derivation of total versus subscale scores is empirically permissible. Comparison of a bifactor model to a unidimensional model and a 2-factor correlated traits model indicated that the bifactor model exhibited superior fit to the sample data. This model provided evidence of a strong general intolerance of uncertainty factor that was more reliable and accounted for significantly more common variance than either subscale factor. Examination of the item response theory slope parameters revealed negligible bias in the measure's items across genders. Finally, a series of simultaneous regression analyses was conducted to examine differential correlates of the measure's total scale scores for men and women.     

Emergent social identity and observing social support predict social support provided by survivors in a disaster: Solidarity in the 2010 Chile earthquake

Survivors of disasters commonly provide each other with social support, but the social‐psychological processes behind such solidarity behaviours have not been fully explicated. We describe a survey of 1240 adults affected by the 2010 Chile earthquake to examine the importance of two factors: observing others providing social support and social identification with other survivors. As expected, emotional social support was associated with social identification, which in turn was predicted by disaster exposure through common fate. Observing others' supportive behaviour predicted both providing emotional social support and providing coordinated instrumental social support. Expected support was a key mediator of these relationships and also predicted collective efficacy. There was also an interaction: social identification moderated the relationship between observing and providing social support. These findings serve to develop the social identity account of mass emergency behaviour and add value to disaster research by showing the relevance of concepts from collective action.