The effects of life crisis on psychological adjustment

In this survey study the question was asked how "life crisis," social conditions, and ratings of quality of life are related to psychological adjustment. The survey included 454 residents, and data were collected on five social conditions: income, education, age, marital status, and religious participation; four ratings of life quality: family, personal life, income, and overall quality of life; the number of recent changes in the lives of the respondents; and two indicators of psychological adjustment. These data were analyzed with multivariate analyses of variance and stepwise regression. Life crisis was associated directly with psychological adjustment. Social conditions and life quality ratings also had significant effects. People with high life-crisis scores reported more psychological distress, and poor social conditions appeared to further exacerbate their adjustment problems. Regardless of the magnitude of the crisis, quality of life ratings had sizable effects on reports of psychological adjustment.     

Production deficits in aphasia: A voice-onset time analysis

An experimental study was conducted to examine phonetic and phonemic deficits in the speech production of aphasics. Subjects included four Broca's aphasics, four Conduction aphasics, five Wernicke's aphasics, one nonaphasic dysarthric patient, and four normal controls. The subjects read a list of words containing word-initial stop consonants which were subsequently measured acoustically for voice-onset time. The results showed that Broca's aphasics exhibit a more severe production disorder than Conduction aphasics who in turn exhibit a more severe disorder than Wernicke's aphasics, in accord with clinical observations. In addition, although Broca's aphasics produced both phonetic and phonemic errors, the results showed that they have a pervasive phonetic disorder which affects their correct target productions as well as the total number of phonetic errors produced. This deficit however seems to be a speech deficit rather than a low-level motor control problem. In contrast, the Wernicke's aphasics show a deficit characterized by isolated phonemic mistargeting errors. Finally, the pattern of productions for the Conduction aphasics indicates that some patients show a predominantly phonetic disorder similar to the Broca's aphasics and others show predominantly a phonemic disorder similar to the Wernicke's aphasics.     

Quantitative amino acid determination in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid in endogenous depressions

The levels of 20 amino acids were measured in the plasma and cerbrospinal fluid of 41 patients with endogenic depressions. The plasma levels of 12 amino acids were found to be significantly lower in the patients than in the control group, but cerebrospinal fluid levels were significantly lower only in the case of taurine, glutamine, phenylalanine and aginine. Comparison of the same amino acid levels in treated and non-treated patients showed that serine and alpha-aminobutyric acid serum concentrations were higher in the nontreated patients. The tyrosine and phenylalanine levels in the cerebrospinal fluid of the patients who had received medicamentous treatment were higher than in the other group.     

Sensorimotor synchronization: Motor responses to regular auditory patterns

Subjects (N = 32) were asked to synchronize a motor response with tones in auditory patterns. These patterns were created from six tones and six intertone intervals of equal duration. The pitch of the first tone differed from the others. It was found that subjects used three types of timing in their motor response: (1) the first intertone interval was prolonged and the second interval was shortened, (2) the second intertone interval was prolonged and the first interval was shortened, and/or (3) the first interval and the second interval were of approximately the same length. The prolongation of the fifth interval was observed during all three types of timing. The results are explained using the concept of suprasegmental control of timing, which explains a prolongation of intervals at critical control point of the patterns. The occurrence of three different strategies of timing is discussed in connection with similar principles in musical performance.     

The role of duration and rapid temporal processing on the lateral perception of consonants and vowels

This study explored the extent to which rapid temporal processing and duration contribute to the right-ear advantage (REA) and presumably left-hemisphere processing for stop consonants and the lack of clear-cut laterality effects for vowels. Three sets of synthetic stimuli were constructed: consonant vowel stimuli [ba da ga bi di gi bu du gu] of 300 msec duration (full stimuli) and two shortened stimuli consisting either of a noise burst and 40-msec transitions (40-msec stimuli), or a noise burst and 20-msec transitions (20-msec stimuli). Stimuli were presented dichotically for consonant, vowel, and syllable identification. Results indicated a significant REA for consonants in the full and 40-msec conditions and a non-significant REA in the 20-msec condition. Nevertheless, the magnitude of laterality did not change across the three conditions. These results suggest that although transition information including duration contributes to lateralization for stop consonants, it is the presence of abrupt onsets which crucially determines lateralized processing. For vowels, there was a significant REA only in the full stimulus condition, and a significant decrement in the magnitude of the laterality effect in the two shortened stimulus conditions. These results suggest that for vowel perception, it is the nature of the acoustic cue used for phonetic identification and not duration that seems to be the critical determinant of lateralization effects.     

An automated eye movement laboratory for on-line electrooculography

This paper describes an automated eye movement laboratory that uses electrooculography (EOG) to study people’s eye movements while they read. An on-line minicomputer processes bioelectric potentials that correspond to saccadic eye movements. Horizontal saccades larger than 1.5 deg of visual angle are detected and analyzed in real-time as they occur. The laboratory is designed for prolonged yet unobtrusive observation of human eye movements during sustained reading periods of minutes or hours. All important functions regarding data collection and data reduction are performed automatically, according to simple procedures that can be applied uniformly and without bias to nearly all subjects that we study. Results from three experiments are cited in order to quantify the performance of the laboratory with respect to four criteria: saccade detection accuracy, measurement accuracy, sensitivity, and the uniformity of these measures over different subjects.     

Beyond Words: Influence of Nonverbal Behavior of Female Job Applicants in the Employment Interview

Three experiments studied the influence on hiring decisions of the nonverbal communication of female job applicants. The first experiment found ratings of the applicants' subtle cues to be significant predictors of the hiring decisions made by college-student judges. Professional employment interviewers served as judges in the second study to cross-validate the first experiment. The third study measured the relative contributions of work histories and nonverbal behavior to hiring decisions. Regardless of the work history preceding the applicant, nonverbal style had a statistically significant effect on hiring decisions.     

Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette: Connection Through Comedy

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018) is a brilliant and masterful work of comedy in which Gadsby announces she is quitting comedy. In this article, I draw on classical and contemporary humor theory to explore the comedic content of Nanette and critique Gadsby’s reasons for quitting. Although I largely agree with Gadsby’s concerns about comedy, I argue that the very show in which she presents them, Nanette, stands as evidence against their universal truth. Gadsby argues that comedy is no longer conducive to her health for at least three related reasons. First, the self-deprecatory comedy out of which she has built her career is a symptom of her humiliation which she is no longer willing or able to showcase for the pleasure of others. I argue that while self-deprecatory humor can, of course, be a sign of humiliation, it needn’t be. Comedians, including those on the margins, can and do effectively employ self-deprecation without humiliation or denigration of self, and one way comedians do this is as a ruse to expose the ignorance of the audience or of comic targets not present. Second, Gadsby analyzes jokes and argues their two-part structure, set-up and punch line, is inadequate for telling the whole story of the trauma she has endured as a lesbian who, as she puts it, presents as “gender not-normal.” However, I maintain that, although jokes may not be, stand-up sets are often complete wholes with beginnings, middles, and ends. In fact, Nannette is a prime example of such complex comedy. Finally, she argues that the comedian’s job is to create and dispel tension, but she is no longer willing to take responsibility for or do anything to dispel the tension created when she speaks of her past trauma. But I discuss how Gadsby, as a true master of her craft, is able to create a highly successful and very funny comedy show in which she completely controls the tension while explicitly choosing to leave significant portions of it with the audience. In fact, super stand-up comedy can introduce tension it neglects to remove without sacrificing the humor. Indeed, Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette is a prime example of comedy that powerfully does precisely this.