Coordination tending towards an anti-phase relationship determines greater sway reduction during entrainment with a simulated partner

The increased risk of falls in the older aged population demands the development of assistive robotic devices capable of effective balance support. For the development and increased user acceptance of such devices, which provide balance support in a human-like way, it is important to understand the simultaneous occurrence of entrainment and sway reduction in human-human interaction. However, sway reduction has not been observed yet during a human touching an external, continuously moving reference, which rather increased human body sway. Therefore, we investigated in 15 healthy young adults (27.20±3.55 years, 6 females) how different simulated sway-responsive interaction partners with different coupling modes affect sway entrainment, sway reduction and relative interpersonal coordination, as well as how these human behaviours differ depending on the individual body schema accuracy. For this, participants were lightly touching a haptic device that either played back an average pre-recorded sway trajectory (“Playback”) or moved based on the sway trajectory simulated by a single-inverted pendulum model with either a positive (Attractor) or negative (Repulsor) coupling to participant's body sway. We found that body sway reduced not only during the Repulsor-interaction, but also during the Playback-interaction. These interactions also showed a relative interpersonal coordination tending more towards an anti-phase relationship, especially the Repulsor. Moreover, the Repulsor led to the strongest sway entrainment. Finally, a better body schema contributed to a reduced body sway in both the “reliable” Repulsor and the “less reliable” Attractor mode. Consequently, a relative interpersonal coordination tending more towards an anti-phase relationship and an accurate body schema are important to facilitate sway reduction.     

Biological and psychological predictors of heart rate patterns during physical activity

ObjectiveLatent class modeling (LCM) offers a promising approach for examining correlates of heart rate (HR) patterns over multiple exercise sessions. This research examined biological and psychological variables associated with different patterns of HR response to physical activity (PA).MethodsIn a three-arm randomized controlled trial (exercise video games vs. standard exercise vs. non-exercise control), HR was recorded during PA sessions over a 12-week period. LCM identified three patterns of HR during PA across 189 participants in active arms: 1) high HR across sessions with low variability within sessions, 2) linear increase in HR across sessions with low variability within sessions, and 3) high variability in HR across all sessions. Associations with biological (resting heart rate, blood pressure, BMI, age, cholesterol, triglycerides, HbA1c) and psychological (depression, motivations for PA, PA-induced feelings) predictors of latent class membership were iteratively tested.ResultsPsychological variables played as important a role in the final model as biological variables for predicting latent class membership. Few differences were found between LC1 and LC2, but LC3 differed from the other two groups in that participants were likelier to report that they feel revitalized after PA (vs. LC1 and LC2), to be less motivated for PA (vs. LC1), reported greater depression (vs. LC1 and LC2), and were younger (vs. LC1).ConclusionsThese findings demonstrate the potential of LCM to identify biological and psychological factors associated with chronotropic responses to PA, and advance understanding of the role of psychological factors in chronotropic PA outcomes.     

Psychosocial Adaptation to Chronic Illness and Disability: A Preliminary Study of its Factorial Structure

This study examined the factorial structure of psychosocial adaptation to chronic illness and disability in a sample of 313 individuals who sustained spinal cord injury (SCI). Three models were examined. The first model tested the hypothesis that psychosocial adaptation is composed of a single, global factor, in which positive (adaptive) and negative (nonadaptive) reactions define two opposing poles of the same dimension. The second model tested the validity of two distinguishable factors, representing adaptive and nonadaptive dimensions. The third model examined the relationship between the 2-factor model and a third dimension, that of denial. The data from the instruments measuring psychosocial adaptation to trauma and disability (the Reactions to Impairment and Disability Inventory and the Purdue Posttraumatic Stress Disorder-Revised) were submitted to a series of confirmatory factor analyses, and the results from the goodness of fit tests and fit indices provided strong support to the validity of the latter two models. The findings indicated that the structure of adaptation to SCI can be best conceptualized as representing two, moderately linked but clearly distinguishable, factors and that the construct of denial of disability further elucidates our understanding of the structure of adaptation to loss of body integrity.

Development of the Lurian Approach: A Cultural Neurolinguistic Perspective

This article presents a discussion of the principle of extracortical organization of higher mental functions and its significance for the development of contemporary neuropsychology. The role of external factors (stimulus-mediator, symbol) in establishing functional connections between various brain systems is, in principle, universal. However, inasmuch as differing mediators and means, or significantly different details within them (direction of writing, orientation by maps or by the behavior of sea birds, etc.) may and in fact do develop in different cultures, neuropsychological analysis must take into account cross-cultural differences. Diagnostic tools must also be adapted to differing cultural contexts. The efficacy of this principle for the analysis of bilingual aphasia and of mental organization of speech, including the effect of acquisition of literacy in native language, is demonstrated. The importance of this principle for the development of new directions in applied neuropsychology is also discussed.     

The Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire: Psychometric properties of a Lithuanian translation in an adolescent sample

The present study provides a preliminary validation of the Lithuanian version of the Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire (SAQ, Nurmi, et al., 1995), a self-reported measure of social and cognitive behavioral strategies. An attempt to validate SAQ subscales was made by correlating them with the Youth Self-Report (Achenbach, 1991) and school grades. This was done with a sample of 14- to 17-year-old adolescents (N= 734). The results showed that although internal consistency reliabilities were good, they were lower when compared with the original version of SAQ. The SAQ subscales were moderately associated with various validity criteria, such as anxiety/depression, withdrawal, social problems and somatic complaints and school grades. Results also showed moderate correlations between similar strategic components across achievement and affiliative situations. The results provide preliminary evidence for concurrent validity of the Lithuanian version of SAQ.     

Semantic and syntactic aspects of the mass/count distinction: a case study of semantic dementia

Semantic and syntactic contributions to processing of mass and count nouns were assessed by examining the performance of a patient suffering from a pure semantic deficit. Semantic and syntactic processing was evaluated on grammaticality judgement and sentence-picture matching tasks, respectively, where each task involved mass and count readings of metonymic nouns. While the patient did not show impaired performance on the grammaticality judgment task, he manifested difficulties in making mass/count distinctions in the sentence-picture matching task. It is thus argued that while distributionally the mass/count distinction may be established on a purely syntactic basis, cognitive processing of mass/count information requires both intact syntactic and semantic knowledge.     

Which Executive Functioning Deficits Are Associated With AD/HD,ODD/CD and Comorbid AD/HD+ODD/CD?

This study investigated (1) whether attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) is associated with executive functioning (EF) deficits while controlling for oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder (ODD/CD), (2) whether ODD/CD is associated with EF deficits while controlling for AD/HD, and (3)~whether a combination of AD/HD and ODD/CD is associated with EF deficits (and the possibility that there is no association between EF deficits and AD/HD or ODD/CD in isolation). Subjects were 99~children ages 6–12 years. Three putative domains of EF were investigated using well-validated tests: verbal fluency, working memory, and planning. Independent of ODD/CD, AD/HD was associated with deficits in planning and working memory, but not in verbal fluency. Only teacher rated AD/HD, but not parent rated AD/HD, significantly contributed to the prediction of EF task performance. No EF deficits were associated with ODD/CD. The presence of comorbid AD/HD accounts for the EF deficits in children with comorbid AD/HD+ODD/CD. These results suggest that EF deficits are unique to AD/HD and support the model proposed by R. A. Barkley (1997).     

Severity of Emotional and Behavioral Problems Among Poor and Typical Readers

The purpose of this study was to examine the severity of behavioral and emotional problems among adolescents with poor and typical single word reading ability (N = 188) recruited from public schools and followed for a median of 2.4 years. Youth and parents were repeatedly assessed to obtain information regarding the severity and course of symptoms (depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, aggression, delinquent behaviors, inattention), controlling for demographic variables and diagnosis of ADHD. After adjustment for demographic variables and ADHD, poor readers reported higher levels of depression, trait anxiety, and somatic complaints than typical readers, but there were no differences in reported self-reported delinquent or aggressive behaviors. Parent reports indicated no differences in depression, anxiety or aggression between the two groups but indicated more inattention, somatic complaints, and delinquent behaviors for the poor readers. School and health professionals should carefully assess youth with poor reading for behavioral and emotional symptoms and provide services when indicated.     

Combining speed and accuracy to assess error-free cognitive processes

Both the speed and accuracy of responding are important measures of performance. A well-known interpretive difficulty is that participants may differ in their strategy, trading speed for accuracy, with no change in underlying competence. Another difficulty arises when participants respond slowly and inaccurately (rather than quickly but inaccurately), e.g., due to a lapse of attention. We introduce an approach that combines response time and accuracy information and addresses both situations. The modeling framework assumes two latent competing processes. The first, the error-free process, always produces correct responses. The second, the guessing process, results in all observed errors and some of the correct responses (but does so via non-specific processes, e.g., guessing in compliance with instructions to respond on each trial). Inferential summaries of the speed of the error-free process provide a principled assessment of cognitive performance reducing the influences of both fast and slow guesses. Likelihood analysis is discussed for the basic model and extensions. The approach is applied to a data set on response times in a working memory test. The authors wish to thank Roger Ratcliff, Christopher Chabris, and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments, and Aureliu Lavric for providing the data analyzed in this paper.     

Unheard Voices: Experiences of Families Living with HIV/AIDS in India*

This study was aimed at understanding the impact of HIV on the family system in the Indian context. A sample of 20 families caring for a relative living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) was recruited from a HIV counseling clinic at the National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences and a respite home for PLWHAs in Bangalore City in southern India. Qualitative data were collected from these families using a semi-structured interview guide and recorded in the form of narratives. Analysis of these data revealed the following themes: Stigma and discrimination; disclosure; changes in family functioning; financial difficulties; fears of the family; and helplessness. Each theme was presented in detail and implications for intervention to help these families and their PLWHAs discussed. V.A.S. Krishna, PhD, MPE, Fogarty Funded Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63108 (krishnavas@epi.wustl.edu). Ranbir S. Bhatti, PhD, Professor of Family Therapy, Montfort College, Bangalore, Former Professor and Head, Department of Psychiatric Social Work, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India 560029 (ranbirbhatti@yahoo.com). Prabha S. Chandra, MD, Additional Professor, Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India 560029 (prabhachandra@rediffmail.com). Srilatha Juvva, PhD, Reader, Department of Family and Child Welfare, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India 400088 (juvvas@tiss.edu). *The authors would like to thank all the PLWHAs and their family members for volunteering to be part of this study. Post-doctoral Fellowship support for Dr. V.A.S. Krishna from Fogarty Grant—TW05811 (LB Cottler, PI).