Sex, gender, ethnicity, and access to health care services: Research and policy challenges for immigrant women in Canada

This article explores the matching process at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels in health services in order to arrive at culturally competent and gender-sensitive health care. We provide a brief overview of sex, gender, ethnicity, and health, specifically in terms of sex and ethnic matching at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. Throughout the article we raise some controversial elements surrounding matching by providing a discussion of studies conducted in this field. In conclusion we examine the challenges to sex and ethnic matching in order to provide recommendations and alternative strategies toward the achievement of culturally competent and gender-sensitive health care.     

Haptic perception in newborns

Two experiments using different procedures were performed in which newborns’ ability to process information about object shape with their hands was explored. In the first experiment, a haptic fixed‐trial procedure was used and a decrease in holding times was found for both right and left hands. In the second experiment, discrimination between objects was studied in which a shifted procedure associated to an infant‐control procedure followed by a dishabituation procedure was used. Habituation to an object and a reaction to the novelty of a new object were shown for both right and left hands, showing that neonates are able to process and encode some information about object shape and then to discriminate between different shapes. It is the first evidence of such an ability in neonates. Methodological procedure and haptic cognition with regard to sensory symmetry are discussed and some developmental perspectives are proposed.     

Children’s strategies in complex arithmetic

Strategies used to solve two-digit addition problems (e.g., 27 + 48, Experiment 1) and two-digit subtraction problems (e.g., 73 – 59, Experiment 2) were investigated in adults and in children from Grades 3, 5, and 7. Participants were tested in choice and no-choice conditions. Results showed that (a) participants used the full decomposition strategy more often than the partial decomposition strategy to solve addition problems but used both strategies equally often to solve subtraction problems; (b) strategy use and execution were influenced by participants’ age, problem features, relative strategy performance, and whether the problems were displayed horizontally or vertically; and (c) age-related changes in complex arithmetic concern relative strategy use and execution as well as the relative influences of problem characteristics, strategy characteristics, and problem presentation on strategy choices and strategy performance. Implications of these findings for understanding age-related changes in strategic aspects of complex arithmetic performance are discussed.     

Consensus scoring, correct responses and reliability of the MSCEIT V2

The scoring protocol adopted by the MSCEIT V2 has been criticised since its development. The present study raises questions regarding the value of consensus scoring by analysing responses within the categorical subscales of Changes and Blends using the Optimal Scaling technique within the Categorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA) via Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), (n = 206). On a number of occasions, there was no clear agreement as to the “correct” response to items within these categorical subscales. Such an issue seems integral to the application of the MSCEIT V2 and one which deserves more attention. On a more positive note, improvements were made to the reliabilities of the subscales of Changes and Blends, using Optimal Scaling, but less so for Changes. Nevertheless, this raises the possibility of improving the reliabilities of other subscales in the MSCEIT V2 and in turn improving the power of subsequent statistical tests.     

Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks

In many jobs, employees must manage multiple projects or tasks at the same time. A typical workday often entails switching between several work activities, including projects, tasks, and meetings. This paper explores how such work design affects individual performance by focusing on the challenge of switching attention from one task to another. As revealed by two experiments, people need to stop thinking about one task in order to fully transition their attention and perform well on another. Yet, results indicate it is difficult for people to transition their attention away from an unfinished task and their subsequent task performance suffers. Being able to finish one task before switching to another is, however, not enough to enable effective task transitions. Time pressure while finishing a prior task is needed to disengage from the first task and thus move to the next task and it contributes to higher performance on the next task.     

Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the impact of regional variation on phoneme perception

This event-related potential (ERP) study examined the impact of phonological variation resulting from a vowel merger on phoneme perception. The perception of the /e/-/ε/ contrast which does not exist in Southern French-speaking regions, and which is in the process of merging in Northern French-speaking regions, was compared to the /ø/-/y/ contrast, which is stable in all French-speaking regions. French-speaking participants from Switzerland for whom the /e/-/ε/ contrast is preserved, but who are exposed to different regional variants, had to perform a same-different task. They first heard four phonemically identical but acoustically different syllables (e.g., /be/-/be/-/be/-/be/), and then heard the test syllable which was either phonemically identical to (/be/) or phonemically different from (/bε/) the preceding context stimuli. The results showed that the unstable /e/-/ε/ contrast only induced a mismatch negativity (MMN), whereas the /ø/-/y/ contrast elicited both a MMN and electrophysiological differences on the P200. These findings were in line with the behavioral results in which responses were slower and more error-prone in the /e/-/ε/ deviant condition than in the /ø/-/y/ deviant condition. Together these findings suggest that the regional variability in the speech input to which listeners are exposed affects the perception of speech sounds in their own accent.     

Not all visual features are created equal: early processing in letter and word recognition

In four experiments, we investigated the effect of deleting specific features of letters on letter and word recognition in the context of reading aloud. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the relative importance of vertices versus midsegments in letter recognition. Experiments 3 and 4 tested the relative importance of vertices versus midsegments in word recognition. The results demonstrate that deleting vertices is more detrimental to letter and word identification than is deleting midsegments of letters. These results converge with those of previous research on the role of vertices in object identification. Theoretical implications for early processing in reading are noted.     

Maternal intrusion: Its roots and consequences

Abstract

Behind an intrusive mother’s view of her actual child lies a disproportionate, hidden desire to revive an ideal relationship with a perfect mother. The resulting image of an idealized child then becomes a strategic aspect of the mother’s own identity, representing an idealized figure from her own past. As the mother’s idealization is disturbed by the reality of the child, the mother experiences the situation between herself and the baby as “pathological,” that is, disruptive to her. She then attempts to repair the idealization by resisting any change in the status of her relationship to her child, even as the child grows older. Her rigidity in this regard necessarily excludes a paternal presence that could challenge or change the mother–infant idealized dyad. The mother’s orientation is also contradictory to, and acts as a resistance to, psychoanalytic therapeutic interventions, which aim at any “change.”     

Which behaviours? Identifying the most common and burdensome behaviour changes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Behaviour change is increasingly recognised as a common feature of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and may be similar to that seen in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The behaviours most disturbed in ALS, and those that relate most significantly to caregiver burden, however, have not been well established. Forty ALS participants and their caregivers, and 27 age- and gender-matched healthy controls and their relatives, participated in this study. ALS participants were assessed on a disease rating scale, and caregivers and control informants completed the revised version of the Cambridge Behaviour Inventory and a measure of burden. ALS caregivers reported significantly more disturbance than healthy control informants on the functional domains of everyday skills, self-care, and sleep, and in the behavioural domains of mood and motivation. There were no differences between groups in frequency of memory and orientation difficulties, or behaviours characteristic of FTD, such as changes to eating habits or stereotypic and motor behaviour, indicating that the behavioural profile in ALS may differ from FTD. In the ALS group, the domains with the strongest relationship to caregiver burden were everyday skills, motivation and memory, likely because poor motivation, memory dysfunction and difficulties completing activities of daily living require more carer support via direct supervision, prompting or hands on care. Services to support ALS patients and caregivers need to provide targeted interventions for those functional and behavioural changes which are most burdensome in the disease.