Stimulus fading in the treatment of adipsia

Stimulus fading procedures have repeatedly been demonstrated as effective in shaping a wide variety of new behaviors. Borrowing from this body of research, the behavioral treatment of feeding disorders presents a new area of application for stimulus fading. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the efficacy of stimulus fading in the treatment of adipsia. Two children who ate solids, but refused all liquids, were participants in the study. Results showed that a five step fading procedure starting with a spoon and thickened liquids, and ending with a cut‐out‐cup, was successful in establishing cup drinking skills for both children. Results of the study suggest that stimulus fading can facilitate feeding skill acquisition. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Haptic face processing.

We present an overview of a new multidisciplinary research program that focuses on haptic processing of human facial identity and facial expressions of emotion. A series of perceptual and neuroscience experiments with live faces and/or rigid three-dimensional facemasks is outlined. To date, several converging methodologies have been adopted: behavioural experimental studies with neurologically intact participants, neuropsychological behavioural research with prosopagnosic individuals, and neuroimaging studies using fMRI techniques. In each case, we have asked what would happen if the hands were substituted for the eyes. We confirm that humans can haptically determine both identity and facial expressions of emotion in facial displays at levels well above chance. Clearly, face processing is a bimodal phenomenon. The processes and representations that underlie such patterns of behaviour are also considered.     

Young children associate novel words with complex objects rather than salient parts

How do children learn associations between novel words and complex perceptual displays? Using a visual preference procedure, the authors tested 12- and 19-month-olds to see whether the infants would associate a novel word with a complex 2-part object or with either of that object's parts, both of which were potentially objects in their own right and 1 of which was highly salient to infants. At both ages, children's visual fixation times during test were greater to the entire complex object than to the salient part (Experiment 1) or to the less salient part (Experiment 2)--when the original label was requested. Looking times to the objects were equal if a new label was requested or if neutral audio was used during training (Experiment 3). Thus, from 12 months of age, infants associate words with whole objects, even those that could potentially be construed as 2 separate objects and even if 1 of the parts is salient.     

The role of working memory in the development of emotion comprehension

This study investigated the relationship between emotion comprehension, grammar comprehension, and working memory capacity in children between 5 and 11 years (n= 130), testing the hypothesis that working memory has a role in the development of emotion comprehension. We replicated the correlation between emotion comprehension and grammar comprehension, and found that working memory capacity correlates with both of these variables (also with age statistically controlled). The significant effect of age on emotion comprehension was eliminated when working memory capacity was co‐varied. In a regression analysis of emotion comprehension scores, when working memory capacity was entered as a predictor, no additional variance was significantly accounted for by grammar comprehension, gender, or age. A structural relations model, in which the paths from working memory capacity to emotion comprehension and from working memory capacity to grammar comprehension account fully for the correlation between grammar and emotion comprehension, fit the data well. However, working memory capacity was not equally related to all components of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) ( Pons & Harris, 2000 ), the relationship being significant only for some of them. In particular, working memory capacity has a decisive role in the transition from understanding external to mental aspects of emotions. It is concluded that the development of working memory has a considerable impact on the development of emotion comprehension.     

Influences of vowel and tone variation on emergent word knowledge: a cross‐linguistic investigation

To learn words, infants must be sensitive to native phonological contrast. While lexical tone predominates as a source of phonemic contrast in human languages, there has been little investigation of the influences of lexical tone on word learning. The present study investigates infants’ sensitivity to tone mispronunciations in two groups of infants. For one group (Chinese learners), tone is phonemic in their native language, and for the second group (English learners), tone is non‐phonemic and constituted suprasegmental variation. In Experiment 1, English learners were trained on novel word–object pairings and tested on their recognition of correct pronunciations, tone and vowel mispronunciations of these words at 18 and 24 months. In Experiment 2a, bilingual English‐Chinese learners were tested on a similar task translated into Chinese at the same age intervals. Results demonstrate that non‐tonal learners treated tonal and vowel substitutions alike as mispronunciations at 18 months but only treated vowel substitutions as mispronunciations at 24 months. Tonal learners treated both tonal and vowel substitutions as mispronunciations at both ages. In Experiment 2b, bilingual non‐tone language learners were tested on the same set of tasks replicating a similar set of results as monolingual non‐tone language learners (Experiment 1). Findings point to an early predisposition to treat tone as a defining characteristic of words regardless of its lexical relevance at 18 months. Between 18 and 24 months, learners appear to ascribe lexical relevance to tone in a language‐specific manner. The current study identifies the influences of tone variation on memories for newly learned words and the time period during which lexical tone – a highly frequent constituent of human languages – actually becomes lexical for early learners. Findings are contextualized with prevailing models of the developing lexicon.     

Family Cohesion and Health-Related Quality of Life of Children with Type 1 Diabetes: The Mediating Role of Parental Adjustment

Despite the increasing number of studies on the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of children with type 1 diabetes (T1D), little is known about the influence of family and parental factors on this outcome. This study aimed to explore whether family cohesion and children’s HRQOL were connected through three indicators of parental psychological adjustment (parenting stress, depressive symptoms, and anxious symptoms) as well as whether these links varied according to the child’s age. Levels of family cohesion, parenting stress, and depression/anxiety symptoms of parents of children with T1D and parents of healthy children were compared. The sample included 88 child–parent dyads composed of children/adolescents (8–18 years old) with T1D and one of their parents and 121 dyads composed of healthy children/adolescents and one of their parents. The parents completed self-report measures of family cohesion, parenting stress, and emotional adjustment, and the children completed measures of HRQOL. Testing of the hypothesized moderated mediational model showed that higher HRQOL ratings in children were associated with higher levels of cohesion through lower levels of parental stress, regardless of the child’s age. Parents of children with T1D perceived less cohesion and felt more anxiety and stress about parenting tasks compared to parents of healthy children. Our findings suggest that parents of children with T1D are at an increased risk of psychological maladjustment. Moreover, this study highlights the interrelation between family/parental functioning and child adjustment and makes an innovative contribution by identifying a mechanism that may account for the link between family and child variables.     

Young Mandarin learners use function words to distinguish between nouns and verbs

Mandarin requires neither determiners nor morphological inflections, which casts doubt on Mandarin‐speaking children's ability to use function words as a syntactic bootstrapping tool to identify the form class of a new word. This study examined 3‐ and 5‐year‐old Mandarin learners' ability to use function words to interpret new words as either nouns or verbs in the absence of the requirement for determiners and inflections in the ambient language. In Experiment 1, 3‐, and 5‐year‐old Mandarin‐speaking children were exposed to eight novel words embedded in sentence frames differing only in the form class markers used. The 5‐year‐olds interpreted the novel words as either nouns or verbs depending on the form class markers they heard, while the 3‐year‐olds learned only the nouns. Experiment 2 confirmed that the 5‐year‐olds understood the function of the verb‐marker. Thus, Mandarin‐speaking children can use function words to distinguish nouns versus verbs, and this ability appears between three and five years of age.