Age-related differences in interlingual priming: a behavioural and electrophysiological investigation

Reaction time (RT) and the N400 ERP component were measured to examine age-related differences in bilingual language processing. Although young bilinguals appear to access both languages simultaneously (i.e., non-selective access), little is known about language selection in older adults. The effect of language context on language selectivity was investigated using interlingual homographs (IH; i.e., words with identical orthography but distinct semantic features in two languages, e.g., coin meaning 'corner' in French and 'money' in English). Younger and older French/English bilinguals were presented with triplets of letter strings comprised of a language context cue, an IH, and a target word, in a lexical decision semantic priming task. RT and ERP results support non-selective language access in young adults; however, the older bilinguals used the language context cue to bias their reading of the IH. Results are discussed in terms of age-related changes in language processing and context use in bilinguals.     

Integrating Social Comparison Theory and Self-Esteem within Objectification Theory to Predict Women’s Disordered Eating

This study integrated social comparison theory and self-esteem into the objectification theory framework to broaden our understanding of sexual objectification as it relates to body shame and disordered eating. Women (N?=?274) from a Midwestern U.S. college completed measures of sexual objectification via appearance feedback, body surveillance, body shame, body comparison, self-esteem, and disordered eating. Structural equation modeling indicated that this expanded model fit the data. Appearance feedback predicted body surveillance, body comparison, self-esteem and—unexpectedly—disordered eating. Body surveillance, body comparison, and self-esteem predicted body shame. Furthermore, hierarchical moderated regression revealed that body comparison moderated the body surveillance—disordered eating link; women who frequently monitored their body and compared it to others’ bodies reported the highest disordered eating.     

Ambivalence toward mothers who kill: an examination of 45 U.S. cases of maternal neonaticide

Public opinion about neonaticide (the killing of a newborn within the first 24 hours of life) has varied across time and cultures. Some nations have passed legislation on behalf of maternal offenders with the assumption that childbirth, a time of unique biological change, may lead to mental disturbance. The United States, however, makes no such distinction; offenders are prosecuted under general homicide laws. Nevertheless, U.S. courts often consider a mother's emotional and physical condition prior to and during delivery. This study includes 44 female offenders and 45 infant deaths and highlights society's ambivalence toward neonaticide offenders. The authors suggest that this ambivalence may be attributed to: (1) the perception that an offender's emotional and physical turmoil during the birth and homicide reduces her culpability; (2) the sentiment that neonaticide offenders are more "redeemable" than other offenders; and (3) the uncertainty about the personhood of a fetus or newborn.     

MR Diffusion Tensor Imaging: A Window into White Matter Integrity of the Working Brain

As Norman Geschwind asserted in 1965, syndromes resulting from white matter lesions could produce deficits in higher-order functions and “disconnexion” or the interruption of connection between gray matter regions could be as disruptive as trauma to those regions per se. The advent of in vivo diffusion tensor imaging, which allows quantitative characterization of white matter fiber integrity in health and disease, has served to strengthen Geschwind’s proposal. Here we present an overview of the principles of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and its contribution to progress in our current understanding of normal and pathological brain function.     

The role of early fine and gross motor development on later motor and cognitive ability

The aim of this study was to determine whether information obtained from measures of motor performance taken from birth to 4 years of age predicted motor and cognitive performance of children once they reached school age. Participants included 33 children aged from 6 years to 11 years and 6 months who had been assessed at ages 4 months to 4 years using the ages and stages questionnaires (ASQ: [Squires, J. K., Potter, L., & Bricker, D. (1995). The ages and stages questionnaire users guide. Baltimore: Brookes]). These scores were used to obtain trajectory information consisting of the age of asymptote, maximum or minimum score, and the variance of ASQ scores. At school age, both motor and cognitive ability were assessed using the McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development (MAND: [McCarron, L. (1997). McCarron assessment of neuromuscular development: Fine and gross motor abilities (revised ed.). Dallas, TX: Common Market Press.]), and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Version IV (WISC-IV: [Wechsler, D. (2004). WISC-IV integrated technical and interpretive manual. San Antonio, Texas: Harcourt Assessment]). In contrast to previous research, results demonstrated that, although socio-economic status (SES) predicted fine motor performance and three of four cognitive domains at school age, gestational age was not a significant predictor of later development. This may have been due to the low-risk nature of the sample. After controlling for SES, fine motor trajectory information did not account for a significant proportion of the variance in school aged fine motor performance or cognitive performance. The ASQ gross motor trajectory set of predictors accounted for a significant proportion of the variance for cognitive performance once SES was controlled for. Further analysis showed a significant predictive relationship for gross motor trajectory information and the subtests of working memory and processing speed. These results provide evidence for detecting children at risk of developmental delays or disorders with a parent report questionnaire prior to school age. The findings also add to recent investigations into the relationship between early motor development and later cognitive function, and support the need for ongoing research into a potential etiological relationship.     

Rightward collisions and their association with pseudoneglect

Whereas right parietal damage can result in left hemineglect, the general population shows a subtle neglect of the right hemispace-known as pseudoneglect. A recent study has demonstrated that people collide to the right more often and attributed this bias to pseudoneglect. [Nicholls, M. E. R., Loftus, A., Meyer, K., & Mattingley, J.B. (2007). Things that go bump in the right: The effect of unimanual activity on rightward collisions. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1122-1126]. Nicholls examined the effect of unimanual activation by requiring participants to fire projectiles at a target whilst walking and found that the rightward bias was exaggerated or reversed when the left and right hands were active, respectively. However, the act of aiming at a target may have inadvertently biased walking trajectory to the right. The current study addressed this issue by requiring participants (n=149) to walk through a narrow doorway three times whilst entering text into a phone using the (a) left, (b) right or (c) both hands. Despite the fact that entering text into a phone should produce no rightward bias, participants bumped to the right more often. Unlike previous research, no effect of unimanual activation was observed. This lack of effect was attributed to the smaller hand movements for entering numbers compared to firing a toy gun. Finally, this study showed an association for the first time between biases in observable bumping and line bisection performance-suggesting that unilateral bumping is related to pseudoneglect.     

A context-informed approach to the study of negative-feedback seeking in depression

The purpose of the current study was to examine the link between negative-feedback seeking (NFS) and depression using a behavioural task that addressed many of the limitations of existing measures of NFS, to use a remitted-depressive design to determine whether NFS is a temporary or stable feature of depression, and to examine the role of personality and contextual variables (e.g., marital quality, spousal characteristics) in NFS. Using a sample of 59 couples (12 wife currently depressed, 20 wife remitted-depressed, and 27 wife never-depressed), we designed a task that correlated with an established measure of NFS and was able to distinguish between non-depressed and currently depressed wives. Using this behavioural task, we found that NFS is stably associated with depression and that relationship and partner characteristics may protect depressed individuals from engaging in destructive interpersonal patterns.     

On the role of regular phonological variation in lexical access: evidence from voice assimilation in French

The present study investigated whether lexical access is affected by a regular phonological variation in connected speech: voice assimilation in French. Two associative priming experiments were conducted to determine whether strongly assimilated, potentially ambiguous word forms activate the conceptual representation of the underlying word. Would the ambiguous word form [sud] (either assimilated soute 'hold' or soude 'soda') facilitate "bagage" 'luggage', which is semantically related to soute but not to soude? In Experiment 1, words in either canonical or strongly assimilated form were presented as primes. Both forms primed their related target to the same extent. Potential lexical ambiguity did not modulate priming effects. In Experiment 2, the primes such as assimilated soute pronounced [sud] used in Experiment 1 were replaced with primes such as soude canonically pronounced [sud]. No semantic priming effect was obtained with these primes. Therefore, the effect observed for assimilated forms in Experiment 1 cannot be due to overall phonological proximity between canonical and assimilated forms. We propose that listeners must recover the intended words behind the assimilated forms through the exploitation of the remaining traces of the underlying form, however subtle these traces may be.     

Why size counts: children's spatial reorientation in large and small enclosures

When mobile organisms are spatially disoriented, for instance by rapid repetitive movement, they must re-establish orientation. Past research has shown that the geometry of enclosing spaces is consistently used for reorientation by a wide variety of species, but that non-geometric features are not always used. Based on these findings, some investigators have postulated a species-universal 'geometric module' that is transcended by the acquisition of spatial language at 6 years. This conclusion has been challenged, however, by findings that children as young as 18 months actually do use features to reorient in larger enclosures than those used in the original experiments. The reason for the room size effect is explored here in five experiments. Collectively, the data on age at which features are first used point to the importance of both restriction of movement in the small space and the fact that features are closer in the small space. In addition, success is seen at younger ages when the target object is adjacent to the feature. These results favor an adaptive combination model of spatial reorientation over a 'module-plus-language' view.     

The rainbow of emotions: at the crossroads of neurobiology and phenomenology

Continental Philosophy Review - This contribution seeks to explicitly articulate two directions of a continuous phenomenal field: (1) the genesis of intersubjectivity in its bodily basis (both...