Quality of life assessment in Turkish patients with schizophrenia and their relatives

Quality of life of first-degree relatives living in the same household with patients having schizophrenia has not been sufficiently explored. 30 patients with schizophrenia (16 women, 14 men), diagnosed using DSM-IV criteria, 31 of their relatives (15 women, 16 men), and 34 control subjects (21 women, 13 men) were included in the study. The mean age of the patients, their relatives, and the control subects were 39.8 +/- 10.9, 58.1 +/- 12.5 and 37.3 +/- 17.0, respectively. The World Health Oranization Quality of Life-Brief Form was administered to all subjects. Quality of life was worse for the patient group than for their relatives and control subjects, but relatives of the patients and control subjects were not significantly different on Quality of life. Quality of life was negatively correlated with the severity of psychopathology and extrapyramidal side effects induced by antipsychotic drugs in the patients.     

Processing reduced word forms: the suffix restoration effect

Listeners cannot recognize highly reduced word forms in isolation, but they can do so when these forms are presented in context (Ernestus, Baayen, & Schreuder, 2002). This suggests that not all possible surface forms of words have equal status in the mental lexicon. The present study shows that the reduced forms are linked to the canonical representations in the mental lexicon, and that these latter representations induce reconstruction processes. Listeners restore suffixes that are partly or completely missing in reduced word forms. A series of phoneme-monitoring experiments reveals the nature of this restoration: the basis for suffix restoration is mainly phonological in nature, but orthography has an influence as well.     

Dogs (Canis familiaris) learn from their owners via observation in a manipulation task

Eighty-seven pet dogs (Canis familiaris) were involved in an experiment in which they had to solve a task to obtain a ball. After witnessing a full demonstration by their owner (10 times pushing the handle of the box, which released a ball), most dogs preferred to touch the handle sooner and more frequently in comparison with other parts of the box, and they used the handle to get the ball. In contrast, dogs in 3 control groups developed their own respective methods. The lack of emergence of the ball and playing after the demonstration did not affect the learning performance strongly. This suggests that in dogs the outcome of a demonstration plays only a restricted role in the manifestation of social learning.     

Stereotype development in Andalusian children

Social psychologists have shown a profound interest in intergroup relationships, but there are very few papers focusing on the developmental aspects that explain the psychological mechanisms involved in the construction of group and cultural identity. Our research aims to explore how the self-categorization of Andalusian children evolves. We tried to assess the degree to which they self-identify as Andalusian, Spanish, and European, and how this identification changes with age. We were also interested in the affective evaluation of different groups (French, Italian, English, German, Spanish, Catalonian, and Andalusian) made by Andalusian children. Furthermore, we analyzed the relationship between self-categorization and the evaluation of these groups. Results show that the development of national (autonomous community) identity in these children is influenced by their cognitive development, as well as by the relationships among the regional communities of Spain and the relationships between Spain and other countries. The peculiarity of Andalusians as a group is that they assume both identities: Spanish and Andalusian, from a very early age. In-group favoritism is an extended phenomenon at all ages, and Andalusian children have a negative stereotype of the other Spanish groups and other European communities.     

Ethical issues at the university-industry interface: A way forward?

This paper forms an introduction to this issue, the contents of which arose directly or indirectly from a conference in May 2001 on Corruption of scientific integrity? — The commercialisation of academic science. The introduction, in recent decades, of business culture and values into universities and research institutions is incompatible with the openness which scientific and all academic pursuit traditionally require. It has given rise to a web of problems over intellectual property and conflict of interest which has even led to corporate sponsors’ suppressing unfavourable results of clinical trials, to the detriment of patients’ health. Although there are those who see the norms of science developing to recognise the importance of instrumental science aiming at specific goals and of knowledge judged by its value in a context of application, none justifies the covert manipulation of results by vested interest.Public awareness of these problems is growing and creating a climate of opinion where they may be addressed. We suggest a way forward by the introduction of nationally and internationally-accepted guidelines for industrial collaboration which contain proper protections of the core purposes of universities and of the independence of their research. Some codes suggested for this purpose are discussed. We note that some universities are moving to adopt such codes of conduct, but argue the need for strong support from the government through its funding bodies.     

The use of prosodic cues in language discrimination tasks by rats

Recent research with cotton-top tamarin monkeys has revealed language discrimination abilities similar to those found in human infants, demonstrating that these perceptual abilities are not unique to humans but are also present in non-human primates. Specifically, tamarins could discriminate forward but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese, using both natural and synthesized utterances. The present study was designed as a conceptual replication of the work on tamarins. Results show that rats trained in a discrimination learning task readily discriminate forward, but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese; the results are particularly robust for synthetic utterances, a pattern that shows greater parallels with newborns than with tamarins. Our results extend the claims made in the research with tamarins that the capacity to discriminate languages from different rhythmic classes depends on general perceptual abilities that evolved at least as far back as the rodents. Electronic Publication     

Further evidence for feature correlations in semantic memory.

The role of feature correlations in semantic memory is a central issue in conceptual representation. In two versions of the feature verification task, participants were faster to verify that a feature (< is juicy >) is part of a concept (grapefruit) if it is strongly rather than weakly intercorrelated with the other features of that concept. Contrasting interactions between feature correlations and SOA were found when the concept versus the feature was presented first. An attractor network model of word meaning that naturally learns and uses feature correlations predicted those interactions. This research provides further evidence that semantic memory includes implicitly learned statistical knowledge of feature relationships, in contrast to theories such as spreading activation networks, in which feature correlations play no role.     

Interactive learning in the paradise fish (Macropodus opercularis): an ethological interpretation of the second-order conditioning paradigm

This study was aimed at the examination of ‘mental construction’ in paradise fish by interactive learning, which is suggested as an alternative hypothesis for backward or second-order conditioning. Avoidance of goldfish was established in paradise fish by presenting a harmless goldfish (a novel stimulus) after an aversive event (mild electric shocks) in the dark compartment of a shuttle tank. It was found that this avoidance depended on context pre-exposure. Experiment 1 was designed to study the effect of mild shocks on shuttling activity in a familiar context. Experiment 2 aimed at establishing fear-conditioning to the goldfish in a higher-order conditioning paradigm. In the course of training, unpaired stimuli were presented in the dark compartment of the shuttle tank in such a manner that the presentation of mild shocks (20 mA) preceded the encounter with a harmless fish (goldfish). Experiment 3 demonstrated the role of context pre-exposure in interactive learning. Results indicate that (1) while 60 mA shocks resulted in avoidance of the dark compartment, the 20 mA mild shocks affected exploratory behaviour; (2) after pre-exposure to the training environment, paradise fish avoided the dark compartment containing goldfish provided that subjects had previously encountered mild, explorative shocks there; (3) this conditioned fear, a ‘mental construction’ of a potential danger, was proved to be transferable to another context and was consequently aimed specifically at the goldfish, a living being, rather than the training context; (4) the pre-exposure to the shuttle tank was an important part of this training procedure, that is, only subjects habituated to the shuttle tank avoided the goldfish. Results are discussed in the framework of the Interactive Learning Hypothesis, which has been developed as an ethological approach to a higher-order conditioning paradigm. Received: 15 January 1999 / Accepted after revision: 18 August 1999