Perceptual processing of partially and fully assimilated words in French

Models of speech perception attribute a different role to contextual information in the processing of assimilated speech. This study concerned perceptual processing of regressive voice assimilation in French. This phonological variation is asymmetric in that assimilation is partial for voiced stops and nearly complete for voiceless stops. Two auditory-visual cross-modal form priming experiments were used to examine perceptual compensation for assimilation in French words with voiceless versus voiced stop offsets. The results show that, for the former segments, assimilating context enhances underlying form recovery, whereas it does not for the latter. These results suggest that two sources of information -- contextual information and bottom-up information from the assimilated forms themselves -- are complementary and both come into play during the processing of fully or partially assimilated word forms.     

The scope and limits of enactive approaches to visual experience

I pursue here three related aims. First, I criticise some of the metaphysical claims made on behalf of the so-called 'enactive' approach to visual experience. Secondly, I explain why the enactive view of visual experience is hard to square with the evidence in favour of the two-visual-systems model of human vision. Finally, I explore one possible way to develop the 'pre-emptive perception' framework and explain why, contrary to first appearances, some of the fundamental discoveries of brain mechanisms, whose function might be to underlie pre-emptive perception, do not really support the enactive approach to visual experience.     

Shades of disengagement: high school dropouts speak out

The purpose of this study was to describe how dropouts navigate their educational journeys. Eighty dropouts participated to individual interviews which were recorded and transcribed. The data analysis yielded three broad categories in answering the research question. Setting the stage in the family and the school, the dropouts described their teetering between in and out of school contexts and proceeded to explain how they ended their educational journey. For 20 dropouts, family turmoil represented a pervasive force negatively influencing their schooling. For 24 dropouts, problems in school set the stage for dropping out. Teetering represented juggling strategies to prolongand to sabotage the journey, while the end of the journey occurred as a result of a pivotal moment (48%) or a gradual fade out (52%) from the school context.

Perceived behavioral changes in early multiple sclerosis

Acquired behavioral changes have essentially been described in advanced multiple sclerosis (MS). The present study was designed to determine whether behavioral modifications specifically related to the MS pathological process could be identified in the initial phase of the disease, as compared to control patients with chronic, relapsing and progressive inflammatory disorders not involving the central nervous system (CNS). Eighty-eight early MS patients (Expanded Disability Status Scale score 相似文献   

Clinical assessment of motor function: a processes oriented instrument based on a speed-accuracy trade-off paradigm

In this study, we developed a digitizing tablet-based instrument for the clinical assessment of human voluntary movements targeting motor processes of planning, programming and execution. The tool was used to investigate an adaptation of Fitts' reciprocal tapping task [10], comprising four conditions, each of them modulated by three indices of difficulty related to the amplitude of movement required. Temporal, spatial and sequential constraints underlying the various conditions allowed the intricate motor processes to be dissociated. Data obtained from a group of elderly healthy subjects (N=50) were in agreement with the literature on motor control, in the temporal and spatial domains. Speed constraints generated gains in the temporal domain and costs in the spatial one, while spatial constraints generated gain in the spatial domain and costs in the temporal one; finally, sequential constraints revealed the integrative nature of the cognitive operations involved in motor production. This versatile instrument proved capable of providing quantitative, accurate and sensitive measures of the various processes sustaining voluntary movement in healthy subjects. Altogether, analyses performed in this study generated a theoretical framework and reference data which could be used in the future for the clinical assessment of patients with various movement disorders, in particular Parkinson's disease.     

The clinical representativeness of couple therapy outcome research

The clinical representativeness of outcome studies is defined as the generalizability of recruitment processes, assessment/diagnostic procedures, treatment protocols, and therapeutic results from research settings to naturalistic treatment settings. The main goal of the present study was to examine the clinical representativeness of couple therapy in outcome studies. The data set was formed by 50 published clinical trials, including 34 couple therapy outcome studies for marital distress (CTMD) and 16 couple therapy outcome studies for comorbid relational and mental disorders (CTMD + C). The present findings showed that, overall, the clinical representativeness of couple therapy outcome studies is only fair (i.e., the mean global score is slightly lower than the midpoint of the rating scale used to assess representativeness). CTMD + C studies fared better than CTMD studies on many dimensions of clinical relevance. Studies in which pretherapy training was less intensive (for CTMD studies only), treatment was less structured, and therapists were more experienced showed larger effect sizes than those in which such was not the case.     

Electrophysiological evidence of central interference in the control of visuospatial attention

Visuospatial attention can be deployed to different locations in space without movement of the eyes. A large body of human electrophysiological studies reveals enhanced sensory-perceptual responses to stimuli that appear at an attended location. However, it is not clear that the mechanisms that underlie visuospatial attention are under the control of attention mechanisms that limit central processing in multiple-task situations. We investigated this question by incorporating a visual task that required the deployment of visuospatial attention as the second task of psychological refractory period (PRP) dual-task paradigms. The N2pc component of the event-related potential was used as an electrophysiological index of the moment-by-moment deployment of visuospatial attention to monitor when and where observers were attending while they performed concurrent central processing known to cause the PRP effect. Electrophysiological evidence shows that central processing interfered with the N2pc, suggesting that visuospatial attention is under the control of capacity-limited central mechanisms.     

The influence of action perception on object recognition: a developmental study

Two experiments explored the existence and the development of relations between action representations and object representations. A priming paradigm was used in which participants viewed an action pantomime followed by the picture of a tool, the tool being either associated or unassociated with the preceding action. Overall, we observed that the perception of an action pantomime can facilitate the recognition of a corresponding tool. Experiment 1 was based on a naming task and was conducted with 9- to 12-year-old children and a group of young adults. While substantial priming effects were obtained for all age groups, they were especially important for the youngest participants. Smaller priming effects were obtained in Experiment 2, using a categorization task and conducted on 5- to 11-year-old children and young adults, but again the results suggest that these action priming effects diminish with increasing age. Implications of these results for the organization and development of conceptual knowledge are discussed.