Teaching adults new words: the role of practice and consolidation

Semantic and orthographic learning of new words was investigated with the help of the picture-word interference (PWI) task. In this version of the Stroop task, picture naming is delayed by the simultaneous presentation of a semantically related as opposed to an unrelated distractor word (a specific PWI effect), as well as by an unrelated word compared with a nonword (a general PWI effect). This interference is taken to reflect automatic orthographic and semantic processing. The authors observed that participants showed both types of PWI effects for newly learned words following a single study session. Interestingly, specific PWI effects were not obtained immediately after testing but did emerge a week later without additional practice. This suggests that a period of consolidation is involved in the establishment of word representations. In addition, identical PWI effects were obtained when the study and test words were presented in either the same or different letter case. This provides evidence that the newly acquired orthographic representations are coded in an abstract format.     

Right hemispatial neglect: frequency and characterization following acute left hemisphere stroke

The frequency of various types of unilateral spatial neglect and associated areas of neural dysfunction after left hemisphere stroke are not well characterized. Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) in distinct spatial reference frames have been identified after acute right, but not left hemisphere stroke. We studied 47 consecutive right handed patients within 48h of left hemisphere stroke to determine the frequency and distribution of types of right USN using cognitive testing and MRI imaging. The distribution of USN types was different from the previously reported distribution following acute right hemisphere stroke. In this left hemisphere stroke population, allocentric neglect was more frequent than egocentric neglect.     

Predictors of Media Effects on Body Dissatisfaction in European American Women

This study involved a sample of 81 European American women viewing either appearance-related or non-appearance-related magazine advertisements. Participants completed measures of demographics and objectified body consciousness prior to viewing these images and a measure of body dissatisfaction prior to and after viewing the images. Body dissatisfaction scores worsened after viewing images of women who exemplified cultural standards of the thin beauty ideal. Neither objectified body consciousness nor body mass index predicted degree of change in body dissatisfaction after viewing the images. In other words, the impact of viewing the images was the same for all women, despite varying body mass index levels and varied degrees of objectified body consciousness. Implications are discussed.     

A developmental approach to violence, hostile attributions, and paranoid thinking in adolescence

Research within the area of paranoid thinking has focused primarily on adults and has only recently looked at the effects during the critical life stage of adolescence, with even less research in the context of the juvenile justice system. This article aims to explore the relationship between antisocial behaviour in adolescence and the development of paranoid thinking, set within wider contexts that surround the juvenile justice system. The information presented is drawn from both the current research and the clinical experiences of those working in adolescent forensic psychiatry services. The relationships with other disorders such as conduct disorder, ADHD, PTSD, and depression are also explored.     

Costs in searching for two targets: dividing search across target types could improve airport security screening

The cost of searching for two visual targets simultaneously was compared against two separate single‐target searches using exposure time and accuracy measures within a staircase procedure. Dual‐target search for all stimuli (colour, shape and orientation) exhibited a loss of accuracy for one target. For orientation and shape, this dual‐target cost in accuracy was extreme, with chance‐level performance on one target. For colour, dual‐target search exhibited an additional cost in search time, with search requiring a longer exposure than the summed time required for two single‐target searches. An additional search‐time cost was also found for orientation targets when irrelevant colour variation was added to the display. In conclusion, dual‐target search for dissimilar targets is accompanied by an accuracy cost. Furthermore, colour variation, whether task‐relevant or not, leads to an additional cost in processing speed. The results suggest that a divided‐effort strategy would improve performance in search tasks such as X‐ray baggage screening. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial working memory performance and fMRI activation interaction in abstinent adolescent marijuana users.

Previous studies have suggested neural disruption and reorganization in adult marijuana users. However, it remains unclear whether these effects persist in adolescents after 28 days of abstinence and, if they do, what Performance x Brain Response interactions occur. Adolescent marijuana users (n=17) and controls (n=17) aged 16-18 years were recruited from local schools. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected after 28 days' monitored abstinence as participants performed a spatial working memory task. Marijuana users show Performance x Brain Response interactions in the bilateral temporal lobes, left anterior cingulate, left parahippocampal gyrus, and right thalamus (clusters >/=1358 microl; p<.05), although groups do not differ on behavioral measures of task performance. Marijuana users show differences in brain response to a spatial working memory task despite adequate performance, suggesting a different approach to the task via altered neural pathways.     

Counseling Supervisors' Assessment of Race,Racial Identity,and Working Alliance in supervisory Dyads

The authors investigated the role of race, racial identity attitudes and working alliance in counseling supervision using data obtained from supervisors in supervisory dyads. Results revealed the strongest working alliance for supervisor‐supervisee pairs with high racial identity development and the weakest working alliance for pairs with low racial identity development. Los autores investigaron el papel que juegan la raza, las actitudes de identidad racial y la alianza de trabajo en la supervisión de consejería, empleando datos obtenidos de supervisores involucrados en diadas de supervisión. Los resultados revelaron que la alianza de trabajo más sólida se da en parejas de supervisor‐supervisado con un desarrollo alto de identidad racial, y la alianza de trabajo más débil en parejas con un desarrollo bajo de identidad racial.     

Eye movements of young and older adults during reading

The eye movements of young and older adults were tracked as they read sentences varying in syntactic complexity. In Experiment 1, cleft object and object relative clause sentences were more difficult to process than cleft subject and subject relative clause sentences; however, older adults made many more regressions, resulting in increased regression path fixation times and total fixation times, than young adults while processing cleft object and object relative clause sentences. In Experiment 2, older adults experienced more difficulty than young adults while reading cleft and relative clause sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities created by deleting the that complementizers. Regression analyses indicated that readers with smaller working memories need more regressions and longer fixation times to process cleft object and object relative clause sentences. These results suggest that age-associated declines in working memory do affect syntactic processing.     

Imitation in infancy: the development of mimicry

Parents of 162 infants ages 6 to 20 months modeled subsets of four of the same set of eight behaviors, each for a maximum of 3 min, and encouraged their infants to imitate. Proportions of infants producing each behavior (a) when it was modeled and (b) during modeling of a different behavior were compared to estimate the age at which infants mimicked each kind of behavior. No reproduction of these motor acts--that is, no mimicry--was observed at 6 months. Mimicry appeared to develop slowly through most of the 2nd year, emerging at different ages for different behaviors. The findings suggest that newborns' behavioral matching may not be continuous with mimicry later in infancy. Imitation is probably not one behavioral competency with one underlying mechanism. It is more likely a category of different ways of combining and using different types of knowledge, some of which develop across the first 2 years of life.