Implications of evaluating and intervening with incipient stutterers

A study was conducted to investigate the factors involved in the recovery from incipient stuttering without therapeutic intervention. Fifteen subjects were seen on two occasions, once for an initial evaluation after the reported onset of stuttering, and for a second evaluation to determine if they had recovered or become chronic stutterers. Within the constraints of a small sample, several findings are presented: (1) 80% of the children recovered spontaneously from stuttering, (2) subjects who exhibited more types and frequencies of disfluencies upon onset had a poorer prognosis for recovery, (3) the age of onset, if under 4 years, had little bearing on recovery, and (4) children who were seen professionally soon after disfluency onset had the greatest prognosis for recovery. Possible implications of these results are discussed.     

Production of narrative discourse in aphasia

The study described the abilities of a group of 15 moderately impaired aphasics and 15 normals to produce narrative discourse. The experimental tasks included telling stories, summarizing stories, and giving morals to stories. The data were analyzed in terms of sentential grammar, discourse grammar, and subjective ratings of content and clarity of language. The results showed that aphasics produced well-structured discourse. The language of the aphasics' discourse was reduced in both complexity and amount, as compared to that produced by normals. The reduction of language reflected selective reduction of hierarchically organized information. The findings of the study confirm the results of previous research on mildly impaired aphasics, which also showed preservation of discourse structure with selective reduction of information.     

Speech abnormalities in seizures: a comparison of absence and partial complex seizures

In order to determine whether speech changes are useful in differentiating seizure types, a study was done in which speech abnormalities during two distinct seizure types, partial complex and absence seizures, were compared. Speech changes noted during prolonged electroencephalographic and video monitoring were compared in 16 patients with 47 partial complex seizures and 19 patients with 95 absence seizures. Speech changes were common during both seizure types. Although some significant differences in speech patterns were noted in the two seizure types, the degree of overlap was such to preclude using speech changes alone as the sole clinical criteria in differentiating the seizures.     

Job change: A study of an acute job stressor

This paper studies the relationship between job entry and job stress. Skill uncertainty, defined as having inadequately developed job skills, was thought to be associated with the stress reaction. In a longitudinal study of 62 transferred employees, skill uncertainty was associated with both negative emotional arousal 1 month after job entry and with positive emotional arousal 3 months after job entry.     

Cleaning the plate: food left by overweight and normal weight persons.

The amount of food left on trays after a clinner meal in a university cafeteria was measured for 146 persons. Half of the subjects were overweight and half were normal weight. Overweight women left significantly less food on their trays than did women of normal weight. Among men, the overweight also left less food but the difference did not reach significance. These findings suggest that food left over must be measured in estimating food intake from food choice, that behavior therapy injunctions to leave food on the plate are justified, and that obesity may be, at least in part, a result of learned patterns of behavior.     

Individual differences in field articulation as a factor in language comprehension

Previous research has suggested that performance differences associated with field independence/field articulation (FA) reflect differences in the efficiency of a limited capacity “working memory” (WM) system. An information-processing analysis of language comprehension suggests the involvement of WM. This experiment tested the hypothesis that performance differences in a language comprehension task could be predicted on the basis of level of FA and the mediating role of WM. Three levels of memory load were established by varying the logical structure of sets of semantically related sentences which subjects were required to integrate. In the low memory load condition, there was no difference between high and low FA subjects on a test of integration (inference) and specific memory (recognition). In the high memory load condition, there was a decline in performance for low FA subjects on both inference and recognition. Other aspects of the results suggested that the breakdown in information processing, for low FA subjects in the high memory load condition, occurred during or shortly after initial encoding of the sentences.     

Multivariate relationships between measures of learning style and memory

Three self-report instruments assessing “learning style” were administered to 106 undergraduate students: the Inventory of Learning Processes, the Study Behavior Questionnaire, and the Learning Style Inventory. Performance measures on word list and prose learning tasks were also obtained using both immediate and delayed retention tests. Canonical correlation analysis of the pairs of learning style instruments indicated that there was a small to moderate amount of overlapped variance. Inspection of the canonical variates revealed that what overlap existed was generally due to a common factor related to the depth of processing conception of memory. No significant canonical correlations were obtained between any of the learning style instruments and word list retention measures. However, the Inventory of Learning Processes and the Learning Style Inventory each obtained one significant canonical correlation with the set of prose retention measures. There was little overlap between sets of retention measures derived separately from prose and word list tasks. The findings have implications concerning (a) the validity and equivalency of available self-report instruments assessing learning style, (b) the role of the learning task in studying individual differences in learning and memory processes, and (c) the assessment of “depth of processing” at the level of individual differences.