Inattention-Hyperactivity and Reading Achievement in Children from Low-Income Families: A Longitudinal Model

This study examined how preschool inattention-hyperactivity is related to elementary school reading achievement. Prereading skills were hypothesized to be a link between them. This link was explored using longitudinal data on 105 low-socioeconomic-status (SES) children's inattentive-hyperactive behavior and prereading skills in Head Start and in kindergarten and their inattentive-hyperactive behavior and reading skills in first grade. A model of this relationship was tested using structural equation modeling. The results failed to show a significant path between inattention-hyperactivity and prereading skills at both the Head Start and kindergarten levels. A significant path was found between first grade inattention-hyperactivity and reading skills, confirming that the strong relationship between inattention-hyperactivity and poor reading achievement commonly found in children from other SES levels was also significant in this low-SES sample. Strong relationships were found between pre-reading skills and reading skills, as well as among hyperactivity levels at the three grades. The issue of the direction of the path of influence between attention-behavior and reading achievement is addressed briefly; however, the results indicate that further longitudinal work is necessary to resolve this issue.     

Behavioral control of visual fixation of the rhesus monkey.

A paradigm for the control of visual fixation of the macaque monkey in vision experiments was described. Using a Maxwellian view, the procedure permits the placement of discrete test-light stimuli in a specific area of the retina as the monkey fixates a primary target. This procedure holds foveal fixation as other behaviorally significant visual stimuli are presented to the visual field. By a methods-of-limits procedure, the sensitivity of the monkey eye was measured at different retinal locations under both photopic and scotopic visual adaptation.     

视觉搜索左右视野靶时脑两半球加工特点

研究视觉分别搜索在左右视野靶时,脑两侧前额叶视觉加工的机制。14名有偿被试参加实验。实验任务是从正圆中所存在的垂直方向的箭头,搜索出水平方向箭头,并判断箭头方向。靶所在左右视野经过镜面处理完全对应。结果发现当靶出现约220ms后左右两侧脑区ERP出现分叉点,靶对侧与靶同侧的前脑区相比有非常显著的负向电位活动,对侧和同侧的N2延续40-80ms。分析认为靶对侧前额脑区N2负向活动增强是注意的等级提高,聚焦点收窄,使所要加工的靶在主效应脑区(靶视野对侧脑区)“跃显”出来,在得到正反馈诱导的同时,也得到更多的资源,靶同侧脑区N2可能与中断或阻止其他无关信息的涌入有关。     

Visual aspects of centrally elicited attack behavior in the cat: “Patterned reflexes” associated with selection of and approach to a rat

It has been previously suggested that the electrical brain stimulation which elicits quiet-biting attack in the cat actively affects the way the central nervous system processes visual and tactile information concerned with the reflexes involved in the terminal aspects of attack. In order to examine the effects of brain stimulation on a nonterminal aspect of attack – the stimulated cat's selection of and approach to a rat – cats were implanted with attack-eliciting electrodes in both the lateral hypothalamus and the midbrain ventral tegmental area. These cats were then tested in an 8-ft-long cage, one end of which was divided into three, 2-ft-long parallel compartments, whose openings faced the end of the cage from which the cat commenced its approach. An anesthetized rat was placed at the back of one compartment, a bowl of food at the back of another compartment, and the third compartment contained no object. It was found in the first experiment that the attack elicited by nearly all electrodes was selectively directed at the rat. However, the success of the cat in finding the compartment containing the rat varied dramatically for different electrodes in the same cat. Further, these differences were stable and did not change as the cat gained experience with the task. The results suggested that the stimulation of different brain sites in the same cat differentially affected the visual neural mechanisms involved in guiding a cat to a rat. Previous studies have also suggested that the effects of brain stimulation which elicits quiet-biting attack are largely lateralized to the side of the brain stimulated. In order to determine if the effects of stimulation on the neural mechanisms mediating the visually guided approach of a cat to a rat were also lateralized, attempts were made in a second experiment to disrupt the visual input to one side of the brain by unilaterally transecting the optic tract. It was found that this manipulation interfered with the visually guided selective approach to a rat, if the cat was stimulated through hypothalamic or mid-brain electrodes ipsilateral to the optic tract transection, but not if the hypothalamic or midbrain stimulation was on the contralateral (visually intact) side of the brain. However, any final interpretation of the results was confounded by the finding in all of these cats of a complex syndrome of neglect of all contralateral sensory information.     

From Noosphere to Theosphere: Cyclotrons, Cyberspace, and Teilhard's Vision of Cosmic Love

Two theme–setting quotations introduce this essay—that of Yeats's falcon, deaf to the falconer's call, adrift in space above the blood–dimmed tide, counterpoised to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's call to abandon old nationalistic prejudices and build the earth. With primary references to the thought of Teilhard, along with, among others, to Ewert Cousins, Andrew M. Greeley, Karl Jaspers, Marshall McLuhan, Ilya Prigogine, Karl Rahner, Leonard Swidler, David Tracy, and Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that the most crucial intellectual paradigm shift of the twenty–first century will challenge humanity to take the turn from uncritical attachment to rigid absolutism or atomistic fragmentation toward a sense of open–ended, off–centered centeredness and fluid connections—from a static to a dynamic model of reality. Central to my argument is the Teilhardian reinterpretation of the Christian metaphors of creation, fall, incarnation, salvation, and the eschaton in the evolutionary terms of the emergence of cosmic consciousness from the chrysalis of the world of the past—from chaos to order, from biosphere via noosphere to theosphere. Facilitated by the exponential growth of populations, collaborative research, science, technology, and global communication (most dramatically manifested by the Internet), this emergent understanding of what it means to be human can, first, foster the awareness that in humanity evolution has become conscious of itself, and then, gradually, precipitate the formation of “the global village” (the mystical body of Christ), as respectful dialogue replaces diatribe and the dualistic pugilism of Samuel Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations” is gradually transformed into a nonadversarial mentality that values shared humanity and a common purpose. Thus, eons hence, empowered by love–energy, the transmutation of the human into the ultra–human can take the ultimate quantum leap into a yet higher dimension where spirit/energy is no longer in need of flesh/mass, and Earth can be safely left behind.     

对人眼色觉异常的定量测量研究

依据Ｒａｙｌｅｉｇｈ颜色匹配方法研制人眼颜色视觉定量测量实验装置,并对２０名色觉正常和３０名色觉异常大学生的颜色视觉进行测量。结果表明,色觉异常被试在Ｒａｙｌｅｉｇｈ匹配中点和匹配范围测量值上均与色觉正常被试者存在明显的差异。     

红光照明条件下VDT不同显示色的视觉效果比较

本研究以VDT上持续进行的视觉作业速度和眼的调节辐合时间作为指标,对红光照明条件下VDT显示的红、黄、绿、蓝、白五种字符色的视觉效果进行了比较.实验中,VDT背景光的主波长为630nm.结果表明,五种字符色在两项指标上均表现出显著差异;绿色显示的视觉效果最好,红色显示的效果最差,黄、白、蓝三色处于中间.     

Adjustment to chronic low back pain--the relative influence of fear-avoidance beliefs, catastrophizing, and appraisals of control

The present study investigated the relative extent to which patients' adjustment to chronic low back pain (CLBP) was influenced by their fear-avoidance beliefs, their tendency to catastrophize, and their appraisals of control. Eighty-three CLBP patients completed a series of self-report measures before participating in a physical therapist-led intervention. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that patients' perceptions of their ability to decrease pain explained a small, but statistically significant, proportion of the variance in pain intensity. In addition, patients' levels of catastrophizing, as well as their fear-avoidance beliefs about both work and physical activity, were independently associated with levels of disability. Interestingly, however, when exploring the relative predictive utility of these three psychological factors, it became evident that fear-avoidance beliefs about physical activity (FABs-PA) were the only significant predictor of patients' disability. Specifically, those patients who exhibited higher levels of FABs-PA tended to report greater levels of disability, even after adjusting for age, sex and pain intensity.     

A Note on (K)Nots: Response to Robert W. Kentridge''s Commentary

GY, an extensively studied human hemianope, is aware of salient visual events in his cortically blind field but does not call this "vision." To learn whether he has low-level conscious visual sensations or whether instead he has gained conscious knowledge about, or access to, visual information that does not produce a conscious phenomenal sensation, we attempted to image process a stimulus s presented to the impaired field so that when the transformed stimulus T(s) was presented to the normal hemifield it would cause a sensation similar to that caused by s in the impaired field. While degradation of contrast, spatio-temporal filtering, contrast reversal, and addition of smear and random blobs all failed to match the response to a flashed bar s(f), moving textures of low contrast were accepted to match the response to a moving contrast-defined bar, s(m). Orientation and motion direction discrimination of the perceptually matched stimuli [s(m) and T(s(m))] was closely similar. We suggest that the existence of a satisfactory match indicates that GY has phenomenal vision.     

初二学生解几何应用题策略类型的研究

运用作品分析法对60份初二优秀生、中等生、差生的第一学期数学期中考试卷进行分析,发现初二不同学习水平学生解数学应用题时表现出不同的解题策略类型：优秀生的解题策略属于“俯瞰型”;中等生的解题策略属于“经验型”;差生的解题策略属于“盲试型”。