Letter-by-letter acquired dyslexia is due to the serial encoding of letters

Letter-by-letter acquired dyslexia (pure alexia) is assumed to be related to the serial encoding of letters, but the evidence for this assumption is somewhat indirect. Here, we demonstrate that the deficit is indeed due to serial encoding by comparing the performance of a letter-by-letter dyslexic reader with the performance of normal readers who were forced to read letter by letter; the data patterns are remarkably similar.     

Racial Differences in Responses to the Caregiver Strain Questionnaire

The aim of this study was to examine differences in responses to the Caregiver Strain Questionnaire (CGSQ) between African American and White caregivers of children with emotional and behavioral challenges. Significant item- and scale-level differences were detected across groups with African Americans consistently reporting less strain. We examined whether these differences were more likely due to nonequivalent measurement than to real differences in the experience of caregiver strain. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the model fit the data well for both racial groups, but there were some differences in structural components. Internal consistency was equivalent across the groups. In an examination of criterion validity, regression analyses showed that African American caregivers experienced a slower rate of increase in objective caregiver strain at a given increase in child internalizing problems. No other race differences were found in the regression analyses. In general, we conclude that the CGSQ can be useful for detecting caregiver strain and identifying family support needs for both White and African American caregivers. Differences across groups in reports of caregiver strain, however, call for more research on racial differences in the impact on the family of caring for a child with emotional and behavioral disorders.     

Assessment of social communication skills in preschoolers

This paper orients the reader to social communication assessment and reviews methods for assessing social communication behavior in children from toddlerhood through the preschool years. Most standardized, normed tests of language in this age range focus on morpho-syntactic and semantic comprehension and production abilities. While social communication is perhaps one of the most important skills for peer acceptance, these skills are often overlooked in language evaluation with children. However, there are a number of caregiver questionnaires, interviews, or direct social-communication sampling methods that are available to assist clinicians or researchers in documenting social-communication skills or behaviors. Since assessment of social communication is essential in clinical work with children with an autism spectrum disorder, some of the tools described below are outgrowths of autism research or provide autism-related scores. While many children receiving social communication assessments do not have autism, the need to assess social communication skills in children with language impairment is highlighted by the growing literature documenting social and pragmatic difficulties in this population (Bishop 2000 Causes, Characteristics, Intervention, and Outcome. Hove, UK: Psychology press). Regardless of whether the measures presented herein were initially designed for children with autism or not, they will provide insights into the social communicative behaviors or tendencies in young children.     

Forebrain emotional asymmetry: a neuroanatomical basis?

There is considerable psychophysiological evidence to indicate that the left and right halves of the human forebrain differentially associate with particular emotions and affective traits. A neurobiological model is needed. Here I propose that forebrain emotional asymmetry is anatomically based on an asymmetrical representation of homeostatic activity that originates from asymmetries in the peripheral autonomic nervous system. This proposal builds on recent evidence indicating that lateralized, higher-order re-representations of homeostatic sensory activity provide a foundation for subjective human feelings. It can subsume differing views of emotion and the forebrain because it suggests that emotions are organized according to the fundamental principle of autonomic opponency for the management of physical and mental energy.     

The old and thee, uh, new: disfluency and reference resolution

Most research on the rapid mental processes of on-line language processing has been limited to the study of idealized, fluent utterances. Yet speakers are often disfluent, for example, saying "thee, uh, candle" instead of "the candle." By monitoring listeners' eye movements to objects in a display, we demonstrated that the fluency of an article ("thee uh" vs. "the") affects how listeners interpret the following noun. With a fluent article, listeners were biased toward an object that had been mentioned previously, but with a disfluent article, they were biased toward an object that had not been mentioned. These biases were apparent as early as lexical information became available, showing that disfluency affects the basic processes of decoding linguistic input.     

An examination and replication of the psychometric properties of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument--second edition (MAYSI-2) among adolescents in detention settings

There is a high prevalence of psychological disorders among adolescents in detention facilities. The need for a simple, effective screening tool led to the development of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument (MAYSI) and its successor, the MAYSI-2. This study evaluated the MAYSI-2 psychometric properties based on the records of 704 youths evaluated at intake to detention facilities. In addition to factor structure, the study evaluated test-retest reliability and concurrent external validity. Results were generally encouraging in terms of the use of MAYSI-2 in detention facilities, and directions for future research are discussed.     

On the delay-dependent involvement of the hippocampus in object recognition memory

The role of the hippocampus in object recognition memory processes is unclear in the current literature. Conflicting results have been found in lesion studies of both primates and rodents. Procedural differences between studies, such as retention interval, may explain these discrepancies. In the present study, acute lidocaine administration was used to temporarily inactivate the hippocampus prior to training in the spontaneous object recognition task. Male C57BL/6J mice were administered bilateral lidocaine (4%, 0.5 microl/side) or aCSF (0.5 microl/side) directly into the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus 5 min prior to sample object training, and object recognition memory was tested after a short ( 5 min) or long (24 h) retention interval. There was no effect of intra-hippocampal lidocaine on the time needed for mice to accumulate sample object exploration, suggesting that inactivation of the hippocampus did not affect sample session activity or the motivation to explore objects. Lidocaine-treated mice exhibited impaired object recognition memory, measured as reduced novel object preference, after a 24 h but not a 5 min retention interval. These data support a delay-dependent role for the hippocampus in object recognition memory, an effect consistent with the results of hippocampal lesion studies conducted in rats. However, these data are also consistent with the view that the hippocampus is involved in object recognition memory regardless of retention interval, and that object recognition processes of parahippocampal structures (e.g., perirhinal cortex) are sufficient to support object recognition memory over short retention intervals.     

Rising and surviving: a conceptual model of active coping among Black lesbians

This study tested a conceptual model of active coping among a predominantly middle-class sample (N = 92) of Black lesbians (ages 18 to 68) attending a Black lesbian retreat. F. B. Tyler's (1978) active coping dimension of psychosocial competence and L. P. Anderson, C. L. Eaddy, and E. A. Williams's (1990) psychosocial competence model for Black Americans emphasizing the role of individual and environmental factors provided the theoretical framework for the study. A theoretical model was developed to examine whether internal (self-esteem, race and lesbian identification) and external (social support, perceived available lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered resources) factors predicted active coping. Results confirmed that the model of internal and external factors was a statistically significant predictor of active coping.     

Recognizing a plane-misoriented view of a familiar object is not influenced by the ease of specifying the main axis of elongation of that object

Participants saw three versions of pictures of familiar objects: the original unaltered (axis-normal) pictures, axis-extended pictures in which the main axes of the axis-normal pictures were elongated, and axis-switched pictures in which objects that were originally horizontally elongated were depicted as vertically elongated and vice versa. Relative to axis-normal pictures, axis extension aided decisions about whether the picture of the object was wide or tall, and axis switching hindered these decisions for both upright and plane-misoriented views. Nevertheless, although these axis manipulations clearly influenced decisions about the location of the object's main axis of elongation, axis-switched pictures were no harder to name than axis-extended pictures. Changing the depicted main axis of elongation by axis switching and axis extension did not influence object recognition in itself, whether for upright or for plane-misoriented views. This suggests that specifying the main axis of elongation of an object does not play an important role in the orientation-sensitive processes involved in identifying plane-misoriented views of that object.