Contextual mood priming following left and right hemisphere damage

This research examined the influence of mood-congruent and mood-incongruent contexts on recognizing affective prosody after brain damage. Predictions stemmed from an associative network theory of learning and memory. Thirty-three male subjects, 11 each in right hemisphere damaged (RHD), left hemisphere damaged (LHD), and normal control groups judged moods from the prosody of semantically neutral phrases. In one task, the prosodic stimulus phrases were judged in isolation. In another task, the phrases were preceded by short paragraphs which were either congruent or incongruent in emotional tone with the prosodic stimuli. These paragraphs were designed to prime specific mood choices. As anticipated, LHD subjects' prosodic mood recognition was more accurate when given congruent rather than incongruent affective contexts. Congruent contexts facilitated, and incongruent contexts disrupted, their prosodic mood judgments to the same extent as normals. RHD subjects showed a partial context decrement. They were less accurate than normal or LHD subjects in the congruent condition, and were unaffected by incongruent contexts. When given congruent biasing paragraphs, however, RHD subjects did experience facilitation on a par with that found for the other groups, indicating spared sensitivity to certain contextual factors. The distinction between automatic and effortful processes is offered as a potential explanation for the RHD group's pattern of performance.     

Correlations between glucose metabolic rates in brain regions of healthy male adults at rest and during language stimulation

This study examines the effect of different behavioral conditions on patterns of correlation between regional cerebral metabolic rates for glucose. Cerebral glucose metabolism was determined with positron emission tomography and (11C)-deoxyglucose in 29 normal subjects between the ages of 23 and 55. Seventeen subjects were studied in an unstimulated (resting) condition and 12 subjects during a phoneme monitoring language stimulation. Partial correlation coefficients, controlling for whole brain glucose metabolism, were calculated for pairs of metabolic rates in 14 cortical and 2 subcortical regions. Both stimulated and unstimulated subjects showed statistically significant correlations between left and right hemisphere homologs. The stimulated subjects also showed significant within-hemisphere correlations between left but not right hemisphere regions. These included left perisylvian regions classically associated with language functions (left inferior frontal, left superior temporal and left transverse temporal cortical regions) as well as other regions. Significant correlations between left regions and a right superior temporal region were also found. In general, these findings show a pattern of cross-hemisphere symmetry at rest and of hemisphere asymmetry during stimulation. Moreover, the asymmetry observed during stimulation appears to be superimposed upon a pattern of cross-hemisphere symmetry similar to that observed in the unstimulated state.     

Implications of memory and language dysfunction in the naming deficit of senile dementia

Young normals, elderly normals, and patients with either mild-to-moderate or severe senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) were administered several tests of language function and remote memory. On all of the language tests examined, elderly normals exhibited a mild, nonsignificant performance decrement relative to the young normals. Advanced SDAT patients were markedly impaired on all of the tests. Early dementia patients were most impaired, relative to aged normals, on tests of object naming, category instance fluency, and remote memory. The deficit was smaller on the WAIS vocabulary subtest, on selecting the name of a visually presented object, and on recalling the function of an object. Early SDAT patients were least impaired in selecting the picture of an object after its name had been provided and in selecting objects that belong to a specified functional category. The results are consistent with the notion that the language dysfunction in early SDAT is due to a deficit in semantic memory function in which general, categorical information remains available whereas information about specific attributes becomes less accessible. The object naming test might be useful in the assessment of treatment effects upon SDAT because of its sensitivity and specificity to dementia, its high face validity, and its independence of recent memory.     

Anomalous dominance in sibling stutterers: Evidence from CT scan asymmetries, dichotic listening, neuropsychological testing, and handedness

Two left-handed siblings with developmental stuttering are comprehensively described. The methods of study included speech and language evaluation, neurological and neuropsychological examinations, dichotic listening, auditory evoked responses, electroencephalogram, and CT scan asymmetry measurements. The data from each sibling showed evidence of anomalous cerebral dominance on many of the variables investigated. The CT scan measurements showed atypical asymmetries, especially in the occipital regions. These findings support the theory that stuttering may be related to anomalous cerebral dominance, both on functional as well as structural bases. Implications of anomalous dominance and the resultant effect of hemispheric rivalry on speech fluency are discussed.     

Work site group meetings and the effectiveness of a televised smoking cessation intervention

At the work site, smoking accounts for increased health care expenses and worker absenteeism due to smoking-related illness and reduced productivity and lost wages. Developing comprehensive and accessible smoking cessation programs at the work site is an important objective for health care professionals. In this study, employees of 43 corporations participated in a televised smoking cessation program accompanied by self-help manuals. The media component involved presenting a smoking cessation program on a network television affiliate station during the 4:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. news for 20 days. Employees at half the corporations also had access to semiweekly self-help group meetings. Adding self-help support groups to a program involving self-help manuals and the media reports was found to significantly increase abstinence and its maintenance over time. The implications of using the media, self-help groups, and work site locations in large-scale community-based interventions are discussed.     

Psychosocial characteristics of preschool siblings of handicapped and nonhandicapped children

This project examined psychosocial characteristics of 24 preschool-aged siblings of handicapped children in relation to a control group of 22 siblings of nonhandicapped children. Subjects were matched on family size and income, sibling age, birth order, sex, age spacing, and marital status of their parents. Results indicated no statistically significant differences between groups of children on measures of perceived self-competence and acceptance, understanding of developmental disabilities, empathy, and child care responsibility. Significant group differences were found where brothers of handicapped children were rated by their mothers as being more depressed and aggressive than brothers of nonhandicapped control children. Sisters of handicapped children were rated by mothers as being more aggressive than sisters of nonhandicapped children. Sisters of handicapped children and brothers of nonhandicapped children had significantly fewer privileges and more restrictions on their home activities than other groups. Results are discussed in relation to previous research on older silbings of handicapped children and the general literature on family stress and childhood disability and disease. The importance of examining sibling functioning via multiple measures of child behavior is stressed.The authors are grateful to the children and families who participated in the project. The assistance of Dr. Ricardo Barrera, Christine DiBlasio, Lisa Kaye, Paola Bellabarba, Jeanne Logozzo, Donna Motley, Jennifer Harter, and Tina Meisell is also gratefully acknowleged. This project was funded by Grant Number G008300345 from the U.S. Department of Education.     

Strict embedding of the elementary ontology into the monadic second-order calculus of predicates admitting the empty individual domain

There is given the proof of strict embedding of Leniewski's elementary ontology into monadic second-order calculus of predicates providing a formalization of the class of all formulas valid in all domains (including the empty one). The elementary ontology with the axiom S (S S) is strictly embeddable into monadic second-order calculus of predicates which provides a formalization of the classes of all formulas valid in all non-empty domains.     

Strategic hand use preferences and hemispheric specialization in tactual reading: impact of the demands of perceptual encoding

Four reading-related, information-processing tasks were administered to right-handed blind readers of braille who differed in level of reading skill and in preference for using the right hand or the left hand when required to read text with just one hand. The tasks were letter identification, same-different matching of letters that differed in tactual similarity, short-term memory for lists of words that varied in tactual and phonological similarity, and paragraph reading with and without a concurrent memory load of digits. The results showed interactions between hand preference and the hand that was actually used to read the stimulus materials, such that left preferrers were significantly faster and more accurate with their left hands than with their right hands whereas right preferrers were slightly but usually not significantly faster with their right hands than with their left hands. In all cases, the absolute magnitude of the left-hand advantage among left preferrers was substantially larger than the right-hand advantage among right preferrers. The results suggest that encoding strategies for dealing with braille are reflected in hand preference and that such strategies operate to modify an underlying but somewhat plastic superiority of the right hemisphere for dealing with the perceptual requirements of tactual reading. These requirements are not the same as those of visual reading, leading to some differences in patterns of hemispheric specialization between readers of braille and readers of print.