Accessibility of case and gender contrasts for agent--object assignment in Broca's aphasics and fluent anomics

Yugoslav agrammatic Broca's aphasics, fluent anomics, and control subjects were tested for comprehension of agent-object relations in a series of simple Serbo-Croatian sentences in the conversational past tense, consisting of two nouns and a transitive action verb. The availability of two closed class cues--case contrasts and gender contrasts--as well as the availability of an open class lexical cue--animacy contrasts--was varied across sentences. An analysis of subjects' agent-object assignments yielded the following results: Both Broca's aphasics and fluent anomics showed a selective impairment in sensitivity to closed class morphology, although anomics were considerably less impaired than Broca's aphasics. This finding was interpreted as evidence for a non-syndrome-dependent vulnerability of abilities to process closed class morphology for comprehension. In addition, the pattern of agent-object assignments for Broca's aphasics revealed that the degree to which they were able to access the two closed class cues depended on a convergence of the various cues to agent-object relations. In particular, a convergence of case and gender contrasts had an interactive effect on Broca's responses: Gender agreement cues were accessed only in the presence of convergent case contrasts. Conversely, sensitivity to case contrasts was dramatically heightened in the presence of convergent gender contrasts. These results were consistent with a view that the two cues function as intrasentential "primes" or "retrieval cues" for one another.     

Cognitive impairment in preschoolers: Identification using the personality inventory for children-revised

This study evaluated the clinical validity of the Intellectual Screening, Development, and Achievement scales of the Personality Inventory for Children-Revised (PIC-R), as well as the newly derived PIC-R Factor IV scale, in identifying cognitive impairment in a clinic-referred sample of preschoolers. The clinical validity of these PIC-R subscales was also compared to that of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory (MCDI). The results showed that the PIC-R scales and Factor IV were reasonably successful in identifying cognitively impaired preschoolers, but much less successful in identifying cognitively normal preschoolers. Overall, the MCDI was the most successful in correctly identifying the preschoolers' cognitive status.     

Perceived control and health

Perceived control (PC) is defined as thebelief that one can determine one’s own internal states and behavior, influence one’s environment, and/or bring about desired outcomes. Two important dimensions of PC are delineated: (1) whether the object of control is located in the past or the future and (2) whether the object of control is over outcome, behavior, or process. A variety of constructs and measures of PC (e.g., efficacy, attribution, and locus of control) are discussed in relation to these dimensions and selected studies are reviewed. The issues, controversies, and limits of the research on perceived control and health are addressed in terms of the antecedents and consequences of perceived control. Investigations should clearly conceptualize the object of perceived control, use measures that match the conceptualization, and when attempting to manipulate control, directly measure perceived control. The relation between PC and health outcomes is complex, and different aspects of PC may interact to affect health outcomes.     

The role of phonemes and syllables in the perceived similarity of speech sounds for children

In two experiments, we investigated the factors that influence the perceived similarity of speech sounds at two developmental levels. Kindergartners and second graders were asked to classify nonsense words, which were related by syllable and phoneme correspondences. The results support the existence of a developmental trend toward increased attention to individual phonemic segments. Moreover, one significant factor in determining the perceived similarity of speech sounds appears to be the position of the component correspondences; attention to the beginning of utterances may have developmental priority. An unexpected finding was that the linguistic status of the unit involved in a correspondence (whether it was a syllable or a phoneme) did not seem particularly important. Apparently, the factors which contribute to the perceived similarity of speech sounds in the classification task are not identical to those which underlie performance in explicit segmentation and manipulation tasks, since in the latter sort of task, syllables are more accessible than phonemes for young children. The present task may tap a level of processing that is closer to the one entailed in word recognition and lexical access.     

The facial muscle patterning of posed and imagery-induced expressions of emotion by expressive and nonexpressive posers

Much research on emotional facial expression employs posed expressions and expressive subjects. To test the generalizability of this research to more spontaneous expressions of both expressive and nonexpressive posers, subjects engaged in happy, sad, angry, and neutral imagery, and voluntarily posed happy, sad, and angry facial expressions while facial muscle activity (brow, cheek, and mouth regions) and autonomic activity (skin resistance and heart period) were recorded. Subjects were classified as expressive or nonexpressive on the basis of the intensity of their posed expressions. The posed and imagery-induced expressions were similar, but not identical. Brow activity present in the imagery-induced sad expressions was weak or absent in the posed ones. Both nonexpressive and expressive subjects demonstrated similar heart rate acceleration during emotional imagery and demonstrated similar posed and imagery-induced happy expressions, but nonexpressive subjects showed little facial activity during both their posed and imagery-induced sad and angry expressions. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

The effect of subject's gender on judgments of similarity and choice of a comparison other

This study examined the implications for social comparison theory of the proposition that women have lower self-confidence than men when there is a socially defined standard of performance. To this end, it was hypothesized that women would judge themselves to be similar to a lower ranked person, whereas men would judge themselves to be similar to a higher ranked person. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that women would choose to see a score lower than their own, whereas men would choose to see a score higher than their own. The results on the measure of similarity indicated that men did judge themselves to be similar to a higher ranked person, whereas women showed no consistent preferences in their judgments of similarity. The results on the choice of a comparison other were not as clear-cut.     

The use of a resident daily scheduling procedure to increase appropriate social,ward, and scheduling behavior in adult psychiatric residents (patients)

The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the efficacy of a goal orientation procedure in their treatment of apathy, isolation, and insufficient goal setting skills in chronic psychiatric residents. The experiment was conducted in a behaviorally-oriented deinstitutionalization program in a state psychiatric hospital. Three male and four female chronic psychiatric residents served as research participants. A group repeated measures design with four within-participant phases (ABA‘B’) was utilized. The goal orientation procedure included a written schedule that was completed by each research participant daily. This Daily Living Schedule required that a behavior be specified by the participant for every half-hour period during the day (8:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.). During all four phases of the experiment, research participants were observed on the ward from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. for engagement in scheduled target behaviors. The daily scheduling procedure produced substantial increases in appropriate behavior such as social activities, ward jobs, and participation in treatment programs, whereas decrease were produced in inappropriate behavior such as isolation and day time sleeping.     

How normal and retarded individuals monitor and regulate speed and accuracy of responding in serial choice tasks

These experiments investigate whether or not differences in the way that retarded and nonretarded individuals monitor and regulate speed and accuracy of responding contribute to the slower and more variable performance of retarded subjects on choice reaction time (RT) tasks. Rabbitt (1979, 1981) suggested that efficient choice RT performance is mediated by subjects tracking increasingly faster RT bands on successive trials until, by making and recognizing errors, they discover those very fast RT levels that should be avoided and those safe bands, just above typical error levels, that should be tracked. Experiments 1A and 1B established that most retarded subjects detect their errors as efficiently as nonretarded controls, a finding that excludes the possibility that retarded subjects do not monitor accuracy efficiently but achieve comparable levels of accuracy by consistently responding within very slow RT bands that minimize likelihood of errors. Experiment 2 showed that while a qualitatively similar trial-by-trial tracking mechanism mediates the performance of both groups, retarded subjects are less efficient at constraining RTs within very fast, but safe, bands. Increasing error probabilities at longer RTs suggest that momentary fluctuations in stimulus discriminability and/or attention are factors affecting RT variability in retarded subjects. The RT patterns for various sequences of correct responses initiated and terminated by errors suggest that the effective past experience (EPEX) guiding trial-by-trial RT adjustments of retarded subjects is short and inadequate, and it was argued that this can account for much of the remaining RT variability contributing to retarded-nonretarded differences. Not only does a short EPEX increase variability by giving rise to long error-free sequences of slower than average RT but also, when combined with occasional specified random fluctuations, it suggests why retarded subjects can achieve, but not sustain, RT levels maintained by nonretarded subjects.