Do dyslexics have difficulty accessing articulatory information?

Summary Dyslexic and normal readers of the same reading age of around eight years, but of different chronological age (ten and eight years) were given an articulation accessing and a phoneme segmentation task. For the former task they had to indicate which of several schematic drawings corresponded to the position of their tongue, teeth, and lips for a given phoneme. The dyslexic children experienced great difficulty with this task while they were equal to the normal children on a simple phoneme segmentation task. These results were replicated with two further samples of dyslexic and normal children. It is hypothesized that awareness of articulation processes is an important factor in explanations of dyslexia.     

Sentence repetition in preschoolers: Effects of length,complexity, and word familiarity

Seventy-two sentences presented to ten preschool children for repetition were designed so that three sentence construction factors varied independently. The factors were (1) length in number of words, (2) complexity of personal pronouns and main verbs as scaled by Lee (1974), and (3) word familiarity, defined as common vocabulary or the substitution of a nonsense word in place of a typical noun or verb in the model sentence. Three methods were employed for scoring the children's responses: (1) number of retained words, (2) Developmental Sentence Scoring (Lee, 1974), and (3) Stephens's Categories (Stephens, 1974). Eighteen sentences were re-presented for the assessment of reliability. The results of multiple regression analyses indicated that length was the important contributing factor in the children's responses to the model sentences and that Stephens's Category Scale of response scoring was the most sensitive method for detecting the influence of the three sentence factors on the children's responses.     

Modification of an impulsive cognitive tempo in emotionally disturbed boys

In order to determine the relative effectiveness of verbal self-instructions and training to delay before responding in modifying an impulsive cognitive style, 15 impulsive emotionally disturbed boys were assigned to one of three groups. The cognitive-training group was given practice in verbal self-instructions, the delay-training group received practice in delaying before responding, and the control group received no training. Posttreatment scores on the Matching Familiar Figures Test showed a significant increase in latencies for both the cognitive and delay-training groups. However, only the cognitive-training group, which had recieved practice in verbal self-instructions, made fewer errors following training. Implications for future research and potential treatment strategies for verbal self-instructions are discussed.     

The Effect of Research with Teenage Mothers on the Development of Their Infants1

Mother-infant interaction of 14 teenage mothers and 12 women 20 years or older was observed and recorded in the laboratory or the home when the infants were 16, 20, 24, and 52 weeks of age. In order to assess the possible effect of the research intervention on the maternal behavior and on the infants' development, a control group of teenage mothers and their infants was seen only at the end of the study when the infant was 52 weeks old. At 12 months the Home Observation Measure of the Environment Inventory (HOME) was administered and infants were assessed with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (motor and mental scales) and the Ainsworth Strange Situation procedure. On all measures the observation groups scored significantly higher than the control group. The significant aspects of the research intervention are discussed.     

Is an equal interval scale an equal discriminability scale?

Stevens and Galanter’s (1957) iterative procedure for minimizing bias in category scaling was used for the scaling of loudness of white noise. The spacing obtained deviated systematically from a spacing constructed in accordance with an equal discriminability scale from a previous experiment (Eisler & Montgomery, 1972). For the stimulus spacing yielding a “pure” category scale, a magnitude scale was constructed too. Since the category scale could be predicted accurately by Fechnerian integration of this magnitude scale, it was concluded that the “pure” category scale is a pure discrimination scale. The discrepancy between the equal discriminability scale and the “pure” category scale was interpreted as a bias in the former scale due to greater recognizability of stimuli located at the extremes of the stimulus range.     

The indeterminacy of color vision

A critical survey of recent work on the ontological status of colors supports the conclusion that, while some accounts of color can plausibly be dismissed, no single account can yet be endorsed. Among the remaining options are certain forms of color realism according which familiar colors are instantiated by objects in our extra-cranial visual environment. Also still an option is color anti-realism, the view that familiar colors are, at best, biologically adaptive fictions, instantiated nowhere.I argue that there is simply no fact of the matter as to which of these remaining options is correct. I blame this indeterminacy on the fact that color vision exhibits several of the hallmarks of a modular input system, as described by Jerry Fodor in The Modularity of Mind.Finally, I speculate that the range of live options falling within the scope of the indeterminacy may be even broader than initially indicated.     

MECHANISMS OF PLACEBO PAIN REDUCTION:

Abstract— Identical experimental pain stimuli were applied to the right and left index fingers of 56 university students, following the application of a placebo in the guise of a topical anesthetic to one of the fingers. The pain stimuli were administered simultaneously to treated and untreated fingers for half of the subjects and sequentially for the others Significant and equtvalent reductions in pain were reported in both conditions as a function of placebo administration. These data indicate that reductions of experimental pain produced by placebos presented in the guise of local anesthetics are not mediated by such global mechanisms as anxiety reduction or the release of endogenous opioids.     

Grades of Explanation in Cognitive Science

I sketch an explanatory framework that fits a variety of contemporary research programs in cognitive science. I then investigate the scope and the implications of this framework. The framework emphasizes (a) the explanatory role played by the semantic content of cognitive representations, and (b) the important mechanistic, non-intentional dimension of cognitive explanations. I show how both of these features are present simultaneously in certain varieties of cognitive explanation. I also consider the explanatory role played by grounded representational content, that is, content evaluated by appeal to its truth, falsity, accuracy, inaccuracy and other relational properties.