Lateralization for reading musical chords: Disentangling symbolic, analytic, and phonological aspects of reading

It has been repeatedly shown that the left hemisphere (right visual field) is superior to the right hemisphere (LVF) in reading English, a bias possibly due to any or all of three confounded factors: (1) the symbolic nature of the coding system; (2) the analytic requirements of the decoding process; and (3) the phonological associations of the elements. Recent work on reading Japanese ideograms (Kanji) disentangles (1) from (2) and (3), but leaves the latter two confounded. We further disentangle (2) and (3) by examining visual field preference for reading musical chords, representatives of an analytic, nonphonological symbol system. The strong RVF advantage is interpreted as indicating that the left hemisphere is dominant for reading an analytic symbol system that is not phonologically based. We conclude that the left-hemisphere advantage traditionally found for reading phonological symbols is due to their analytic nature in addition to any effect due to their linguistic association.     

Temporal reliability of aphasic performance on the token test.

Test-retest reliability for the Token Test was established for a sample of 30 aphasic subjects tested on 3 days within an 8-day period. Fifteen subjects were tested within 3 months of onset of disorder. Results indicated that subject performance was highly reliable on test-retest, regardless of time since onset; that subjects did not learn the tasks through test readministration; and that the test sections were homogeneous yet sampling at discrete levels.     

Menstrual symptom questionnaire: further psychometric evaluation

Novak, Jones, and Jones (1975) state that menstrual distress (dysmenorrhea) is the greatest cause of lost work hours among women, and Kistner (1970) estimate this to be 140 million annual work hours. Thirty-five percent of female adolescents. 25% of college women, and 60–70% of single females in their 30's and 40's are said to be invalid during menstruation (Green, 1971). Treatment procedures for primary dysmenorrhea have included hypnosis (Lackie, 1964), physical exercises (Golub. 1959). natural childbirth techniques (House, 1969), and oral contraceptives.

Though hormones are the most recent, frequent and effective treatment approach (Novak et al. 1975). Tyler (1973) cautions against their use because of possible adverse side effects. Recently, systematic desensitization (SD) has been used to relieve menstrual distress (Mullen, 1968, 1971; Reich, 1972; Tasto and Chesney, 1974) without risk of such side effects. Although SD has been effective, considerable response variability has been noted.

Becuase of this variability. Chesney and Tasto (1975a) developed the Menstrual Symptom Questionnaire (MSQ) to psychometrically identify two types of primary dysmenorrhea: spasdomic dysmenorrhea which designates distress during the flow period associated with excessive muscle tension, and congestive dysmenorrhea referring to premenstrual tension related to water retention. This instrument was designed to define types of menstrual symptoms and not symptom severity. Test-retest reliability was 0.87 and discrimination between spasdomic and congestive dysmenorrhea was highly significant. Of 48 women tested. 29 were identified as spasdomic with MSQ scores between 82 and 102, while 19 scored in the congestive range (46–68). Interestingly, no women scored in the median range (69–81), suggesting that there exists two unique types of primary dysmenorrhea identifiable by the MSQ. Subsequently, Chesney and Tasto (1975b) reported that congestive women did not respond to SD, while spasdomic symptoms were significantly reduced. It was hypothesized that the relaxation training component of SD was effective with spasmodic muscle tension symptoms and ineffective with congestive water retention symptoms. Consequently, the MSQ was thought capable of accounting for previously reported response variability of primary dysmenorrhea to SD.

The present study was intended to replicate Chesney and Tasto's (1975a, 1975b) findings. The following Null hypotheses were tested; (a) the MSQ does not have significant test-retest reliability; (b) the congestive-spasmodic symptom dimension of the MSQ is not dichotomous; and (c) the MSQ does not predict SD effectiveness     

Perspective ability: The relative difficulty of the other observer's viewpoints

Previous research findings regarding the relative difficulty of the different positions occupied by the other observer in a perspectives task are contradictory; this may be due to a lack of control of the object arrangement and differences in masking from each viewpoint. In the present experiment, an object array was employed in which the views from the experimental positions were objectively of equal difficulty. Children of 6, 8, and 10 years found that representing the 90 and 270° views was equally difficult, but both of these views were easier than the 180° view.     

Behavioral inference in young children

Three experiments are reported on behavioral inference in children of 3 to 5 years of age. In each experiment the children learned two separate sequences of behavior which they were required to put together in the final test stage in order to obtain a reward. In the first experiment moderate levels of behavioral inference were obtained, although a relatively high proportion of children failed to respond in the test phase. In the second experiment different instructions were used in the test phase, the number of nonresponders was greatly reduced and a much higher proportion of children showed behavioral inference. The third experiment obtained similar results under conditions which excluded the possibility of mediation during a memory test, which was included in the previous experiments. It was concluded that behavioral inference is found, under suitable conditions, in children as young as 3-years-old, and that reports by other investigators of failure to find such inference up to the age of about 8 were due to problems with apparatus and instructions.     

Differences in the search rate of children and adults in short-term memory

When people recognize a test item as belonging or not belonging to a previously presented set, recognition latency increases with the number of items in the set. Although some evidence suggests otherwise, it is currently held that the rate of this increase is the same for children and adults. In contrast, the present experiments indicated a much slower search rate for second graders (mean age = 7.33 years) than for seventh (mean age = 12.50 years) and twelfth graders (mean age = 17.25 years). Moreover, search rate for second graders was invariant under instructions which did or did not emphasize speed and with presentation of the memory set in either the auditory or visual modality. Experiment II showed that the slow search rate for children was not due to differences in encoding between children and adults.