Motor and cognitive interference effects on unimanual tapping rates

Experiments conducted on both normal and disordered populations have led to the hypothesis that the left hemisphere's specialization for language results from its control over motor activities. This control is reflected in the lateralized disruption of manual activity during cerebral time-sharing tasks. Recent studies have challenged this hypothesis, stating that the interference effects reflect both cognitive and motor mechanisms in the left hemisphere. This experiment investigates whether the left hemisphere's control over speech involves both of these components or is purely motor. The question was examined by measuring the effect of concurrent hemispheric activity on single-finger tapping rates. Forty subjects tapped under two conditions: speaking and listening. The data show there may be both motor and cognitive mechanisms involved in left-hemisphere control.     

Commentary on social class differences in sociodramatic play in historical context: A reply to McLoyd

Historical origins of the research on the cultural correlates of imaginative behavior by the Israeli psychologists Feitelson, Smilansky, and Eifermann are presented. It is argued that despite McLoyd's searching analysis of the deficiencies in studies which attempt to relate level of imaginative play to social class, those earlier cross-cultural studies, together with some 50 years of prior research on social class and play in general, provide a context which gives support to those studies despite their particular methodological deficiencies.     

Help-seeking: An understudied problem-solving skill in children

Traditional approaches to the study of young children's behavior in helping relationships are examined and criticized as inadequate because they have failed to represent the child's perspective from the role of “active helpee” (i.e., help-seeker in such relationships). By failing to look at helping from the perspective of the one who seeks help, researchers have neglected to pursue an important lead in understanding why some children are able to learn and progress independently when confronted with the same obstacles that serve to defeat other children. This article focuses on instrumental help-seeking defined as an active, complex social-cognitive activity that is essential to learning and achievement. In the first sections of this article, it is argued that instrumental help-seeking can be formally distinguished from passive dependency as well as from the actual giving and receiving of help. In following sections, a heuristic model of the help-seeking process is offered, prior research relevant to the model is reviewed, and ideas for research on help-seeking in children are suggested within the framework of this model.     

Synesthesia: II. Psychophysical relations in the synesthesia of geometrically shaped taste and colored hearing

The psychophysical function in two synesthetic subjects, one with geometrically shaped taste and the other with colored hearing, is investigated. Each synesthete is compared with three control subjects. Pilot studies are used to construct appropriate response domains. Compared to controls, synesthetes give a restricted set of responses that are also asymmetric with respect to the range of choices available in various subsets of the response domain. A combination of absolute and relative effects is also distinctive of synesthetic percepts. It is concluded that synesthesia is a distinct phenomenon unlike ordinary mediated associations, and occupies an intermediate position in the range of simple to complex brain mechanisms.