Reconstructive retrieval deficits in Broca's aphasia

Anterior aphasic patients' ability to utilize the phonemic and/or semantic features of verbal material for retention purposes was investigated. In the first experiment, patients were asked to either detect word repetitions, phoneme repetitions, or rhymes in a list of items. The aphasics performed well on word and phoneme repetition detection but below both normals and amnesic Korsakoffs on rhyme detection. In the second experiment the patients were instructed to analyze either the physical, phonemic, or semantic features of words they were later asked to recognize. Aphasics were differentially affected (as were normals) by these instructions: semantic feature analysis resulted in the best performance, followed by phonemic feature analysis. It was concluded that anterior aphasics can analyze, recirculate, and even store the phonemic features of words, but find difficulty in reconstructing the originally presented item from these features.     

Projective drawings and children who stutter

Five young stutterers (aged 5–10 yr) and a matched group of five nonstuttering children completed five projective drawings and a scale for assessing communication attitudes of children at the beginning and at the end of a 3-mo treatment period. While the attitude scale failed to indicate differences between stuttering and nonstuttering children, performances on selected drawings did distinguish between experimental and control subjects. In addition, significant changes were observed in selected drawings over the treatment period for the young stutterers.     

Stuttering and syllable stress

Eighteen adult stutterers read two lists each of 16 bisyllabic words. In one list, stress appeared on the first syllable; in the second, the “same” words carried second syllable stress. There proved to be no significant difference in proportion between stressed and unstressed syllables associated with stuttering. This investigation appears to dispute the proposition that stressed syllables provide the focal points of stuttering (Wingate, 1976).     

Processing of visually presented vowels in the cerebral hemispheres

The respective efficiency of the cerebral hemispheres in processing visually presented vowels is discussed and examined in a tachistoscopic experiment with normal subjects. It is suggested that results from dichotic listening experiments cannot be used to predict performance on the same material in the visual modality. The physical characteristics of the stimulus, in both modalities, contribute to the pattern of hemispheric advantage and cannot be ignored in the interpretation of results from dichotic listening and tachistoscopic experiments.     

Hierarchical planning disability in the drawings and constructions of a special group of severely aphasic children

A small group of severely receptive aphasic children who appear to be suffering from a rare aphasic syndrome that has been referred to in the literature as "acquired aphasia with convulsive disorder in children" was tested on drawing and construction tasks which tap hierarchical planning abilities. Although they could draw and construct a complex figure when using a serial method, they could not do so when required to use hierarchical planning in building up the model in terms of its subunits. Their scores reflecting hierarchical ability were significantly lower than those of age-matched profoundly deaf and normal children. The nature of this disability is discussed and its effects noted on tasks in other modalities. It is argued that neither an auditory deficit theory nor a short-term memory deficit theory is adequate to account for the observed disabilities. Individual differences in the group were noted. It was also found that a smaller percentage of developmentally expressive aphasic children evidenced the hierarchical planning disability. It is concluded that a primary hierarchical planning disability in some aphasic children can account for some aspects of their linguistic disabilities and for disabilities on other nonlanguage and nonauditory tasks.     

Does everybody like a liker?

The primary hypothesis examined was that people giving positive evaluations are themselves regarded as more attractive than when they give negative evaluations. This research tests whether this holds when reciprocity is not at issue. Subjects in six experiments were presented with stimulus persons who varied in the proportion of positive to negative evaluations they gave of various attitude objects (political figures, cafeteria workers, cities, movies, and college courses). Giving predominantly positive evaluations did in fact lead to greater liking of the stimulus person in each experiment. This finding held over (1) audio or written interviews with the stimulus persons, (2) a variety of classes of attitude objects, and (3) both within-subject and between-subject designs. Greater liking for likers occurred even controlling for attitude similarity.     

Associations in Pavlovian conditioned inhibition

Two experiments with rat subjects used a variety of transfer tests to examine the associations learned when Pavlovian inhibition is established by an A+, AX− paradigm. Experiment 1 found in a conditioned suppression situation that inhibition conditioned to X with one exciter (A) readily transferred to another exciter (B) which had been paired with the same shock US. Transfer occurred even when the response to A had been extinguished prior to testing with B. However, X did not inhibit a general activity response produced by a B which had been subsequently paired with a food US. Experiment 2 employed a Pavlovian conditioning situation in which A and B, when separately paired with the same food US, evoked dissimilar responses. Nevertheless, an inhibitor trained in an A+, AX− paradigm successfully inhibited the different response evoked by B. However, such an X did not inhibit the behaviors acquired by A or B when they were subsequently paired with a shock US. The transfer of Pavlovian inhibition across conditioned stimuli and responses but not across unconditioned stimuli is consistent with the notion that a conditioned inhibitor acts to prevent activation of a US representation which would normally be activated by conditioned exciters.