The role of psychological processes in estimates of stuttering severity

Purpose

To examine the associations of trait anxiety (STAI), social anxiety (SIAS), depression (BDI-II), and personality features (ADP-IV) with three measures of stuttering severity: %SS, Stuttering Severity, Instrument, and the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering.

Method

Fifty adults with a history of stuttering served as participants. Participant scores on trait, anxiety, social anxiety, depression, and personality features were entered into a regression analysis, with the criterion variables (DVs) being: %SS, SSI-3, OASES total score. In order to explore the OASES, further, each of the four OASES subscales were also examined. A separate regression was conducted for, each dependent variable.

Results

The OASES total score model was significant (p < .0001) and revealed that social anxiety and, trait anxiety were the only significant predictors, with medium effect sizes noted for both variables. In contrast, percent syllables stuttered and the SSI were not significantly associated with psychological, variables, suggesting that anxiety may not always be related to overt indicators of stuttering. Depression and personality dysfunction were not significantly associated with any measure of, stuttering severity.

Conclusion

Anxiety in the form of social and trait anxiety are significantly associated with stuttering, severity as indicated by the OASES. Traditional procedures for assigning severity ratings to individuals, who stutter based on percent syllables stuttered and the Stuttering Severity Instrument are not, significantly related to psychological processes central to the stuttering experience. Depression and, personality characteristics do not meaningfully account for stuttering.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (a) differentiate forms of anxiety that are likely to be associated with stuttering (b) understand the importance of determining features of stuttering that go beyond the obvious, surface characteristics of stuttering frequency, and (c) discuss the important clinical and theoretical implications for understanding the degree of psychological dysfunction that is likely to be characteristic of those who stutter.     

Attention shifts or volatile representations: What causes binding deficits in visual working memory?

The current study tested two hypotheses of feature binding memory: The attention hypothesis, which suggests that attention is needed to maintain feature bindings in visual working memory (VWM) and the volatile representation hypothesis, which suggests that feature bindings in memory are volatile and easily overwritten, but do not require sustained attention. Experiment 1 tested the attention hypothesis by measuring shifts of overt attention during the study array of a change detection task; serial shifts of attention did not disrupt feature bindings. Experiments 2 and 3 encouraged encoding of more volatile (Experiment 2) or durable (Experiment 3) representations during the study array. Binding change detection performance was impaired in Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 3, suggesting that binding performance is impaired when encoding supports a less durable memory representation. Together, these results suggest that although feature bindings may be volatile and easily overwritten, attention is not required to maintain feature bindings in VWM.     

Relating developments in children's counterfactual thinking and executive functions

The performance of 93 children aged 3 and 4 years on a battery of different counterfactual tasks was assessed. Three measures: short causal chains, location change counterfactual conditionals, and false syllogisms—but not a fourth, long causal chains—were correlated, even after controlling for age and receptive vocabulary. Children's performance on our counterfactual thinking measure was predicted by receptive vocabulary ability and inhibitory control. The role that domain general executive functions may play in 3- to 4-year olds' counterfactual thinking development is discussed.     

Existential Social Theory After the Poststructuralist and Communication Turns

Thomas Flynn's work on Sartre and Foucault, the first of a two-volume project, offers a unique opportunity for examining an existential theory of history. It occasions rethinking existential-social categories from the vantage point of the poststructuralist turn. And it contributes to developing existential variants of critical theory. The following questions guide me in each of the three above areas. First, how is human history intelligible, given not only our finite sense of ourselves but also claims that we have reached the end of history? Second, with the poststructuralist eclipse of dialectics, can we render existential categories in social terms and vice versa? Third, critics decry grand theorizing even in fallibilist reason, e.g., of Habermas, while others are worried by the normative deficits of poststructuralist nominalism, e.g., of Foucault. Can existential variants of critical social theory, anticipated before Sartre by Marcuse, split the difference?     

Stress and Cytokine Effects on Learning: What Does Sex Have to Do With It?

Many studies have alluded to sexually dimorphic changes in behavior following stress. Although many have suggested that these changes are a function of stress-induced changes in learning and memory, there are questions regarding whether performance in those learning and memory tasks are influenced by stress-induced changes in drive more than in actual learning and memory processes. We used the classically conditioned eyeblink response (CCER) to determine whether slowed learning following stress in females can be explained by changes in unconditional response (UR) amplitude, a sign of a stress-induced shift in sensory reactivity. In addition, we had a second treatment group injected with the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1beta to serve as an interoceptive stress condition, a physiological stressor with minimal stimulation to the animal. Replicating the work by Shors and colleagues, we found that stressed female rats had slower acquisition of the conditioned response (CR), but we also found that an IL-1beta injection leads to a slowing of CR acquisition. However, in both cases, UR amplitude was lower in the treatment groups. We followed up these results by testing sensory reactivity through the acoustic startle response (ASR), where the magnitude of the ASR was marginally, but nonsignificantly, reduced by the same dose regimen of IL-1beta. Together, these experiments suggest that tailshock stress and immune signaling (IL-1beta) reduce sensory reactivity and the saliency of the stimuli used in the CCER, leading to slower learning in female rats.     

Self‐Esteem and Suicide Ideation in Psychiatric Outpatients

Depression, hopelessness, and low self‐esteem are implicated as vulnerability factors for suicide ideation. The association of self‐esteem with suicide ideation after controlling for depressed mood and hopelessness was examined. Adult psychiatric outpatients (N = 338) completed measures of self‐esteem, suicide ideation, hopelessness, and depression. Self‐esteem was operationalized as beliefs about oneself (self‐based self‐esteem) and beliefs about how other people regard oneself (other‐based self‐esteem). Each dimension of self‐esteem was negatively associated with suicide ideation after controlling for depression and hopelessness. Of the two dimensions of self‐esteem, other‐based self‐esteem was the more robust predictor of suicide ideation. These findings suggest that even in the context of depression and hopelessness, low self‐esteem may add to the risk for suicide ideation.     

The relation between similarity grouping and perceptual constancy.

In two experiments on whether similarity grouping is based on the retinal or the perceived slopes of lines, observers judged the grouping of diagonal lines when a display of vertical and diagonal lines was presented upright and when it was slanted 75 deg toward the floor. The floorwise slanting of the display improved gouping, as would be expected if the spontaneous organization of a field into groups in strongly influenced by the projection-level representation of stimuli. It is proposed that similarity grouping occurs at the readout stage of stimulus processing and involves segregating a field into groups on the basis of extrafoveal stimulus differences that are responded to in parallel; or if sequentially, very quickly and independently of focal attention.