Unilateral brain damage effects on processing homonymous and polysemous words

Using an auditory semantic priming paradigm, the present study investigated the abilities of left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) non-fluent aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) and normal control individuals to access, out of context, the multiple meanings of three types of ambiguous words, namely homonyms (e.g., "punch"), metonymies (e.g., "rabbit"), and metaphors (e.g., "star"). In addition, the study tested certain predictions of the "suppression deficit" and "coarse semantic coding" hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the linguistic deficits typically observed after RH damage. Homonymous, metonymous, and metaphorical words were used as primes followed after a short (100 ms) or a long (1000 ms) inter-stimulus interval (ISI) by dominant-meaning-related, subordinate-meaning-related or unrelated target words. No significant group effects were found, and for both ISIs, dominant- and subordinate-related targets were facilitated relative to unrelated control targets for the homonymy and metonymy conditions. In contrast, for the metaphor condition, only targets related to the dominant meaning were facilitated. These findings provide only partial support for the "suppression deficit" hypothesis and no support for the "coarse semantic coding" hypothesis (as interpreted herein) indicating that patients with focal LH or RH damage can access the multiple meanings of ambiguous words and exhibit processing abilities comparable to those of older normal control subjects, at least at the single-word level.     

Priming effects for affective vs. neutral faces

Affective and Neutral Tasks (faces with negative or neutral content, with different lighting and orientation) requiring reaction time judgments of poser identity were administered to 32 participants. Speed and accuracy were better for the Affective than Neutral Task, consistent with literature suggesting facilitation of performance by affective content. Priming effects were significant for the Affective but not Neutral Task. An Explicit Post-Test indicated no conscious knowledge of the stimulus frequency that was associated with performance facilitation. Faster performance by female vs. male participants, and differential speeds and susceptibility to priming of different emotions were also found. Anger and shock were responded to most rapidly and accurately in several conditions, showed no gender differences, and showed significant priming for both RT and accuracy. Fear and pain were responded to least accurately, were associated with faster female than male reaction time, and the accuracy data showed a kind of reverse priming.     

Sensitivity to prosodic structure in left- and right-hemisphere-damaged individuals

An experiment was conducted in order to determine whether left- (LHD) and right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) patients exhibit sensitivity to prosodic information that is used in syntactic disambiguation. Following the work of, a cross-modal lexical decision task was performed by LHD and RHD subjects, as well as by adults without brain pathology (NC). Subjects listened to sentences with attachment ambiguities with either congruent or incongruent prosody, while performing a visual lexical decision task. Results showed that each of the unilaterally damaged populations differed from each other, as well as from the NCs in terms of sensitivity regarding prosodic cues. Specifically, the RHD group was insensitive to sentence prosody as a whole. This was in contrast to the LHD patients, who responded to the prosodic manipulation, but in the unexpected direction. Results are discussed in terms of current hypotheses regarding the hemispheric lateralization of prosodic cues.     

FAMILY AND COMMUNALLY RAISED (KIBBUTZ) CHILDREN 20 YEARS LATER: BIOGRAPHICAL DATA*

Two groups of individuals, one made up of persons raised in the kibbutz communal system, and the other of persons raised in traditional families, who had been first studied in 1955 as part of a comparative research project, were studied again twenty years later. The follow-up study included 146 individuals, amounting to 85% of the original groups, whose average age in 1975 was around 30. The two groups were compared on several aspects of psychosocial functioning, such as place of residence, work, marital status, military service and psychosomatic symptoms. The similarities and the differences between the two groups are discussed in the context of the two respective child rearing systems.     

Low-Income Parents’ Socialization of Their Preschoolers’ Early Reading and Math Skills

Children from low-income and Black and Latino families are often at risk for reading and math difficulties. We examined whether there were differences in Black and Latino Head Start parents' beliefs about reading and math socialization, frequency of children's engagement in reading and math, and children's reading and math skills. There were differences in parents' socialization beliefs, children's reading and math activities, and associations with children's reading and math outcomes. Although reading/math engagement was more limited than what is reported among middle-income families, findings show the importance of parental beliefs and practices for children's reading and math outcomes.