Multi- and unisensory decoding of words and nonwords result in differential brain responses in dyslexic and nondyslexic adults

The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was designed, in order to investigate the neural substrates involved in the audiovisual processing of disyllabic German words and pseudowords. Twelve dyslexic and 13 nondyslexic adults performed a lexical decision task while stimuli were presented unimodally (either aurally or visually) or bimodally (audiovisually simultaneously).The behavioral data collected during the experiment evidenced more accurate processing for bimodally than for unimodally presented stimuli irrespective of group. Words were processed faster than pseudowords. Notably, no group differences have been found for either accuracy or for reaction times. With respect to brain responses, nondyslexic compared to dyslexic adults elicited stronger hemodynamic responses in the leftward supramarginal gyrus (SMG), as well as in the right hemispheric superior temporal sulcus (STS). Furthermore, dyslexic compared to nondyslexic adults showed reduced responses to only aurally presented signals and enhanced hemodynamic responses to audiovisual, as well as visual stimulation in the right anterior insula.Our behavioral results evidence that the two groups easily identified the two-syllabic proper nouns that we provided them with. Our fMRI results indicate that dyslexics show less neuronal involvement of heteromodal and extrasylvian regions, namely, the STS, SMG, and insula when decoding phonological information. We posit that dyslexic adults evidence deficient functioning of word processing, which could possibly be attributed to deficits in phoneme to grapheme mapping. This problem may be caused by impaired audiovisual processing in multimodal areas.     

Negative post-event processing and decreased self-appraisals of performance following social stress in childhood social anxiety: an experimental study

Cognitive models of social phobia (SP) assume that following social evaluative stress, individuals with SP engage into dysfunctional post-event processing (PEP), a detailed negative review of the past event. While previous research has already shown, that children with high levels of social fears suffer from more frequent negative PEP, it remains unclear how stable PEP is across time in this age group and whether it leads to degraded self-appraisals of performance. Therefore in the present study we exposed a group of high (HSA) and low socially anxious children (LSA; both n = 20), aged 10–12 years, to a social evaluative situation and assessed negative and positive PEP as well as self-rated performance at 2.5 h and one week after the task. Our results revealed that HSA children reported more negative PEP than LSA children, independent of levels of depression. Moreover, negative PEP was related to measures of social anxiety and performance ratings within the tasks. Only the performance ratings in HSA children worsened over the course of the following week and were related to more negative PEP. Thus, these results speak for the high clinical relevance dysfunctional PEP may have for the maintenance of social fears already in childhood.     

A computational model of word segmentation from continuous speech using transitional probabilities of atomic acoustic events

Word segmentation from continuous speech is a difficult task that is faced by human infants when they start to learn their native language. Several studies indicate that infants might use several different cues to solve this problem, including intonation, linguistic stress, and transitional probabilities between subsequent speech sounds. In this work, a computational model for word segmentation and learning of primitive lexical items from continuous speech is presented. The model does not utilize any a priori linguistic or phonemic knowledge such as phones, phonemes or articulatory gestures, but computes transitional probabilities between atomic acoustic events in order to detect recurring patterns in speech. Experiments with the model show that word segmentation is possible without any knowledge of linguistically relevant structures, and that the learned ungrounded word models show a relatively high selectivity towards specific words or frequently co-occurring combinations of short words.     

Phase of oral contraceptive cycle and endurance capacity of rowers

Eight female rowers (M age = 21.0 yr., SD = 2.8), using a monophasic oral-contraceptive pill, performed a 1-hr. rowing ergometer test (intensity: 70% VO2max) during the active-pill and non active-pill phases of the oral contraceptive cycle. No significant differences were found in mean energy expenditure, oxygen consumption, respiratory exchange ratio, and heart rate during the endurance test at the two phases of the oral contraceptive cycle. Mean energy expenditure rate, carbohydrate energy expenditure, lipid energy expenditure, and blood lactate during the test were not statistically significantly different among the cycle phases. In conclusion, there was no observed difference in substrate oxidation and blood lactate level during endurance rowing at different phases of the oral contraceptive cycle in these endurance-trained rowers. Endurance-trained female athletes on oral contraceptives should not worry about the possible differences in substrate oxidation during everyday training at different phases of the oral contraceptive cycle.     

Individual differences in working memory capacity predict retrieval-induced forgetting

Selectively retrieving a subset of previously studied information enhances memory for the retrieved information but causes forgetting of related, nonretrieved information. Such retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) has often been attributed to inhibitory executive-control processes that supposedly suppress the nonretrieved items' memory representation. Here, we examined the role of working memory capacity (WMC) in young adults' RIF. WMC was assessed by means of the operation span task. Results revealed a positive relationship between WMC and RIF, with high-WMC individuals showing more RIF than low-WMC individuals. In contrast, individuals showed enhanced memory for retrieved information regardless of WMC. The results are consistent with previous individual-differences work that suggests a close link between WMC and inhibitory efficiency. In particular, the finding supports the inhibitory executive-control account of RIF.     

How task experience influences students' performance expectancies: the role of certainty

The importance of performance expectancies for predicting behavior has long been highlighted in research on expectancy-value models. These models do not take into account that expectancies may vary in terms of their certainty. The study tested the following predictions: task experience leads to a higher certainty of expectancies; certainty and mean expectancies are empirically distinguishable; and expectancies held with high certainty are more accurate for predicting performance. 273 Grade 8 students reported their performance expectancy and the certainty of expectation with regard to a mathematics examination immediately before and after the examination. Actual grades on the examination were also assessed. The results supported the predictions: there was an increase in certainty between the two times of measurement; expectancies and certainty were unrelated at both times of measurement; and for students initially reporting higher certainty, the accuracy of the performance expectancy (i.e., the relation between expectancy and performance) was higher than for students reporting lower certainty. Given lower certainty, the accuracy increased after the students had experience with the examination. The data indicate that it may be useful to include certainty as an additional variable in expectancy-value models.     

Intrapersonal and interpersonal risk factors for peer victimization in immigrant youth in Finland

This study (a) compared native Finns and immigrant children with respect to different forms of peer victimization and (b) tested whether intrapersonal (e.g., depression) and interpersonal (e.g., peer rejection) sample was drawn from the first phase of a large intervention evaluation project, KiVa, in Finland, composed of 4,957 native Finns (51% girls), 146 first-generation immigrants (48% girls), and 310 second-generation immigrants (53% girls) 9 to 12 years of age. The concurrent data included self- and peer reports collected via Internet-based questionnaires. Compared with native youth, first- and second-generation immigrants were more often targets of both peer- and self-reported victimization. Both immigrant groups experienced higher levels of physical, racist, and sexual victimization than natives. Furthermore, second-generation immigrants reported higher levels of property damage, threats, and cybervictimization than native Finns. Significant indirect effects were found between immigrant status and victimization. Interpersonal but not intrapersonal risk factors helped to explain these associations.     

The magic cup: great apes and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) individuate objects according to their properties

Despite current interest in dog (Canis familiaris) cognition, very little is known about how dogs represent objects and how they compare with other species, such as the great apes. Therefore, we investigated how dogs and great apes (chimpanzees [Pan troglodytes], bonobos [Pan paniscus], orangutans [Pongo pygmaeus], gorillas [Gorilla gorilla]) individuate objects in a classical violation of expectation paradigm. We used a container (magic cup) with a double bottom that allowed us to change the type of food that subjects had seen being placed in the container. Using a 2 × 2 design, we varied whether subjects received a generally preferred food and whether the food was substituted (surprise trials) or not (baseline trials). Apes showed increased begging and looking behaviors and dogs showed increased smelling behavior. Both species stayed near the experimenter more frequently in the surprise trials compared with baseline trials. Both species reacted to positive (i.e., good food substituted for bad food) and negative (i.e., bad food substituted for good food) surprises. These results suggest that apes and dogs were able to individuate objects according to their properties or type in comparable ways. In addition, we looked for frustration and elation effects, but subjects' behaviors were not influenced by the food they saw and which they received in previous trials.     

The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: it's getting better all the time

Bertram, R., Kuperman, V., Baayen, R. H. & Hyönä, J. (2011). The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: It’s getting better all the time. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 530–544. Inserting a hyphen in Dutch and Finnish compounds is most often illegal given spelling conventions. However, the current two eye movement experiments on triconstituent Dutch compounds like voetbalbond“footballassociation” (Experiment 1) and triconstituent Finnish compounds like lentokenttätaksi“airporttaxi” (Experiment 2) show that inserting a hyphen at constituent boundaries does not have to be detrimental to compound processing. In fact, when hyphens were inserted at the major constituent boundary (voetbal‐bond“football‐association”; lentokenttä‐taksi“airport‐taxi”), processing of the first part (voetbal“football”; lentokenttä“airport”) turns out to be faster when it is followed by a hyphen than when it is legally concatenated. Inserting a hyphen caused a delay in later eye movement measures, which is probably due to the illegality of inserting hyphens in normally concatenated compounds. However, in both Dutch and Finnish we found a learning effect in the course of the experiment, such that by the end of the experiments hyphenated compounds are read faster than in the beginning of the experiment. By the end of the experiment, compounds with a hyphen at the major constituent boundary were actually processed equally fast as (Dutch) or even faster than (Finnish) their concatenated counterparts. In contrast, hyphenation at the minor constituent boundary (voet‐balbond“foot‐ballassociation”; lento‐kenttätaksi“air‐porttaxi”) was detrimental to compound processing speed throughout the experiment. The results imply that the hyphen may be an efficient segmentation cue and that spelling illegalities can be overcome easily, as long as they make sense.     

Post-decision consolidation in large group decision-making

Decision-makers tend to change the psychological attractiveness of decision alternatives in favor of their own preferred alternative after the decision is made. In two experiments, the present research examined whether such decision consolidation occurs also among individual group members in a large group decision-making situation. High-school students were presented with a decision scenario on an important issue in their school. The final decision was made by in-group authority, out-group authority or by majority after a ballot voting. Results showed that individual members of large groups changed the attractiveness of their preferred alternative from a pre- to a post-decision phase, that these consolidation effects increased when decisions were made by in-group members, and when participants identified strongly with their school. Implications of the findings for understanding of group behavior and subgroup relations are discussed.