What is right with “deep” dyslexic patients?

Two aphasic adults with a specific acquired dyslexia were given tests requiring the processing of written words and sentences. Despite the general severity of the patients' deficits, some aspects of such processing appear to be relatively well preserved. The patients have particular difficulty reading aloud function words and abstract words; yet in word/nonword discrimination tests, both patients showed normal recognition of function words and one showed normal performance with abstract words. The patients do have a deficit in comprehension of visually presented words and sentences; yet their performance on comprehension tests was considerable and, moreover, showed meaningful relationships with their ability to read aloud.     

Fact and fantasy: the roles of accuracy and variability in confusing imaginations with perceptual experiences

In Experiment 1, pictures were presented to subjects two, five, or eight times, and subjects were asked to imagine each pciture two, five, or eight times. Subsequently, subjects estimated the number of times each picture had been presented. Their estimates of the frequency of these external events were influenced by imagination trials; this effect was greater for good imagers than for poor imagers. Experiment 2 involved a similar design in which subjects were asked either to imagine the same referent for a word or to imagine a different referent for a word on successive imagination trials. Consistency (same referent) did not increase the influence of imaginations on immediate judgments of external frequency. Thus, the results of Experiment 1 were attributed to the greater accuracy (as opposed to greater consistency) of good imagers' internal generations of the stimuli. Furthermore, variation (imagining different referents), like greater accuracy, increased the effects of imagination trials on immediate but not on delayed judgments of frequency. Possible mechanisms underlying these effects are discussed. In general, the two studies show that qualitative characteristics of completely covert generations influence their impact on estimates of the frequency of external events.     

Orthography and familiarity effects in word processing

Both orthographic regularity and visual familiarity have been implicated as contributors to the efficiency of processing visually presented words. Our studies sought to determine which of the internal codes representing words in the nervous system are facilitated by these two variables. To do this, sets of letter strings in which orthography and familiarity were factorially combined were used as the basis for physical, phonetic, semantic, and lexical judgments. The data indicated consistent effects of orthography on the activation of all codes. These effects were seen in same-different matching and in judgments of stimulus orientation, which are based on visual codes; in judgments of pronounceability based on phonetic codes; in judgments of meaningfulness based on semantic codes; and in lexical decisions, which are based on phonetic and semantic codes together. Familiarity, on the other hand, had a clear influence on the activation of semantic codes and to a lesser extent affected phonetic codes. Despite previous positive results found in matching letter strings, however, no influence of familiarity occurred in judgments based on visual codes once evidence for criterion shifting was eliminated. Our negative results included direct tests of facilitation in matching acronyms (e.g., FBI) and in matching both regular and irregular strings familiarized by specific training. It now appears that earlier findings of visual familiarity effects may be attributed to response biases resulting from the activation of higher level codes sensitive to familiarity, and to the use of small sets of training stimuli that allowed subjects to induce orthographic-like rules. The results obtained so far with our methods seem to reconcile an inconsistent literature by showing that speeded decisions based on visual codes are most strongly influenced by rule-governed processing mechanisms sensitive to orthographic structure, whereas decisions based on phonetic and semantic codes are affected about equally by rule-governed mechanisms and by stimulus-specific mechanisms sensitive to familiarity. This conclusion may lead to changes in notions of how effective various kinds of visual training are likely to be at different stages in the acquisition of reading skill.     

Coactor's behavior and imitative aggression

After being exposed to either an aggressive or a nonaggressive filmed model, four- and five-year-old boys were tested for imitation while either alone or with a confederate who had also seen the film. The confederate's behavior was either inactive, the same as that in the film, the same as that in the film the child had not seen, novel but of the same category (aggressive or nonaggressive) as that in the film seen, or novel but in the category of the film not seen. These conditions conformed to the dimensions of a 2 × 6 factoral design. According to prediction, the imitation of subjects exposed to the aggressive model was greatest when the confederate's behavior was similar to the model's. No difference in imitation was produced by the confederate's actions if the boy had watched the nonaggressive model. The results were interpreted within the context of social comparison theory.This project was facilitated by the senior author's Margaret Bosshardt Pace and Paul David Pace Research Fellowship.     

Durkheim Revisited: “Why Do Women Kill Themselves?”

Durkheim divided suicide into four social types; egoistic, anomic, fatalistic, and altruistic assigning the first two to modern, western society while relegating the last two to pre-industrial social orders. However, contemporary studies of female suicidal behavior and depression show that such women exhibit personality characteristics of low self-esteem, passivity, dependence and living vicariously for others which correspond to the behavioral indices of impersonalism, submissiveness, passivity, and obedience that produce the lack of individuation characteristic of Durkheim's altruistic/fatalistic suicide categories. On this basis, the author suggests that altruistic/fatalistic suicide may even in the modern world be relevant to the explanation of female suicidal behavior, a hypothesis which, if true, would support the contention that "men and women inhibit different social worlds."     

SCOPE: A Comprehensive-Sequential Approach to Career Counseling

SCOPE is a comprehensive career-counseling program presently in operation at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey. It consists of a basic program plus a cluster of supplemental, optional exercises. The basic program has a sequence of four career-planning phases, one of which applies to each undergraduate year. Efforts are made to process students systematically through the entire basic program. An individual checklist kept for each participating student provides an internal mechanism for program evaluation and modification. Early results suggest effectiveness and positive student reactions.     

Detecting Alcoholism in Clients

Alcoholism is a primary, progressive, fatal, and treatable disorder. It often goes undetected because of a lack of understanding of how to tell an alcoholic from someone who drinks heavily. This article presents a systematic approach using the most reliable and valid instruments available. The approach will allow a clinician to quickly and accurately diagnose or rule out the presence of alcoholism in a client. Accurate diagnosis will allow proper treatment of this disorder, which affects about 6.7% of all people.     

Assessment of human obesity: The measurement of body composition

The most common methods of assessing degree of obesity in humans are reviewed. These include anthropometry, somatotyping, bodyweight, skinfold calipering, densitometry, and several nondensitometric procedures. The evidence suggests that bodyweight may often be an unreliable and invalid index of obesity. The parameters influencing its inaccuracy are discussed. These include age, height, sex, muscularity, and degree of obesity or amount of recent weight loss. The most reliable and valid measures of human bodyfat are generally the most complicated and impractical. Compromise assessment procedures involving nonintrusive measurement of subcutaneous fat and selected anthropometric dimensions may offer an incomplete but welcome improvement over sole reliance on bodyweight as an index of obesity.     

PDP-12 stimulus control and data collection for lateralized discrimination learning

A BASIC program that requires a minimum 8K core, 32K disk, KW12-A real-time clock, eight extended operation eight-mode DEC relays with peripheral interface, and user-generated special-function assembly language subroutines for clock and relay control was prepared, using advanced OS/8 BASIC, for conducting laterality studies. It is assumed that the user’s system has a dual tape drive. CRT, and Teletype. Modified IEE readouts have been used for stimulus presentation. Laterality effects and results suggesting application of the procedure in clinical neuropsychological testing have been achieved. This paper describes the rationale for development of the task, summarizes administration procedures, and provides flowcharts of the BASIC program and assembly language special functions, as well as a circuit diagram for the peripheral relay interface.