Peculiar aspects of reading and writing performances in patients with olivopontocerebellar atrophy

Olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA) is a still debated condition, of which motor disruption is the most common feature. A high incidence of associated mood disorders may exist, but there are few studies on concomitant cognitive impairment. Our aim was to assess whether there is reading and writing disruption in olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA). 6 patients were administered different reading and writing tasks. Scores were then compared to those obtained by healthy volunteers. There was an evident impairment in reading and writing execution in our patients compared to those of the control group. On the contrary, no difference could be found in abstraction, problem-solving, and memory tasks. We discuss the results, debating the role of the cerebellum in the conscious process of cognition or in ocular movement control (necessary for reading and writing fluidity and effective execution) and in the dynamic activation of all the cerebral cortex mediated by the diffuse projection to the reticular system.     

Antecedents and reactions to health-related social control

A model of the antecedents and reactions to health-related social control is proposed. This model suggests health behavior characteristics, including type, frequency, and severity of consequences, are social control antecedents. Social control is then thought to elicit better health behavior and emotions. Attributions to explain social control are proposed to effect emotional reactions and behavior. Undergraduates read hypothetical scenarios to test the proposed model. Study 1 found that health-compromising behaviors and behaviors with more severe consequences elicited more social control. Study 2 found that, compared to negative tactics, positive social control tactics elicited more behavior change, and compared to social/appearance concerns, attributions to health elicited positive emotions. Attributions did not moderate the impact of social control on emotions or behavior.     

Music lessons enhance IQ

The idea that music makes you smarter has received considerable attention from scholars and the media. The present report is the first to test this hypothesis directly with random assignment of a large sample of children (N = 144) to two different types of music lessons (keyboard or voice) or to control groups that received drama lessons or no lessons. IQ was measured before and after the lessons. Compared with children in the control groups, children in the music groups exhibited greater increases in full-scale IQ. The effect was relatively small, but it generalized across IQ subtests, index scores, and a standardized measure of academic achievement. Unexpectedly, children in the drama group exhibited substantial pre- to post-test improvements in adaptive social behavior that were not evident in the music groups.     

The atheist’s free will offence

This paper criticizes the assumption,omnipresent in contemporary philosophy ofreligion, that a perfectly good and loving Godwould wish to confer on (at least some) finitepersons free will. An alternative mode ofDivine-human relationship is introduced andshown to be as conducive to the realization ofvalue as one involving free will.Certain implications of this result are thenrevealed, to wit, that the theists free willdefence against the problem of evil isunsuccessful, and what is more, that free will,if it exists, provides positive support foratheism.     

Liking and memory for musical stimuli as a function of exposure

Three experiments examined changes in liking and memory for music as a function of number of previous exposures, the ecological validity of the music, and whether the exposure phase required focused or incidental listening. After incidental listening, liking ratings were higher for music heard more often in the exposure phase and this association was stronger as ecological validity increased. After focused listening, liking ratings followed an inverted U-shaped function of exposure for the most ecologically valid stimuli (initial increases followed by decreases), but this curvilinear function was attenuated or nonexistent for less valid stimuli. In general, recognition improved as a function of previous exposure for focused listeners, but the effect was attenuated or absent for incidental listeners.     

Writing errors by normal subjects

Writing is a complex process requiring visual memory, attention, phonological and semantic operations, and motor performance. For that reason, it can easily be disturbed by interfering with attention, memory, by interfering subvocalization, and so on. With 16 female third-year students (23.4 +/- 0.8 yr.) from the University of Trieste, we investigated the production of errors in three experimental conditions (control, articulatory suppression, and tapping). In the articulatory suppression condition, the participants produced significantly more linguistic impairments (such as agrammatism, unrelated substitutions, sentence omissions, and semantically deviant sentences), which are similar to linguistic impairments found in aphasia. On the tapping condition there were more perseverations, deletions, and substitutions of both letters and words. These data suggest that writing is not an automatic skill. Only after many years of experience and practice of processing information (through cortical to subcortical channels) can writing be considered an automatic skill. Limited experimental conditions can disrupt the writing system of normal subjects, probably interfering with the cortical to subcortical loops, and link normality to pathology.     

Infants' and adults' perception of scale structure.

Adults and 9-month-old infants were required to detect mistuned tones in multitone sequences. When 7-tone versions of a common nursery tune were generated from the Western major scale (unequal scale steps) or from an alternative scale (equal steps), infants detected the mistuned tones more accurately in the unequal-step context than in the equal-step context (Experiment 1). Infants and adults were subsequently tested with 1 of 3 ascending-descending scales (15 tones): (a) a potentially familiar scale (major) with unequal steps, (b) an unfamiliar scale with unequal steps, and (c) an unfamiliar scale with equal steps. Infants detected mistuned tones only in the scales with unequal steps (Experiment 2). Adults performed better on the familiar (major) unequal-step scale and equally poorly on both unfamiliar scales (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings are indicative of an inherent processing bias favoring unequal-step scales.     

The Mozart Effect: An Artifact of Preference

The "Mozart effect" reported by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993, 1995) indicates that spatial-temporal abilities are enhanced after listening to music composed by Mozart. We replicated and extended the effect in Experiment 1: Performance on a spatial-temporal task was better after participants listened to a piece composed by Mozart or by Schubert than after they sat in silence. In Experiment 2, the advantage for the music condition disappeared when the control condition consisted of a narrated story instead of silence. Rather, performance was a function of listeners' preference (music or story), with better performance following the preferred condition.