Normative data for the Boston Naming Test in native Dutch-speaking Belgian children and the relation with intelligence

This paper reports the results of a normative study of the 60-item version of the Boston Naming Test (BNT) in a group of 371 native Dutch-speaking Flemish children between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Analysis of test results revealed that BNT performance was significantly affected by age and gender. The gathered norms were shown to be significantly lower than published norms for comparable North-American children. Error analysis disclosed remarkable similarities with data from elderly subjects, with verbal semantic paraphasias and 'don't know' responses occurring most frequently. Finally, BNT scores were shown to correlate strongly with general intelligence as measured with the Raven Progressive Matrices. The relation between both measures can be of help in the diagnosis of identification naming deficits and impaired word-retrieval capacities.     

Linguistic and cognitive abilities in infancy: when does language become a tool for categorization?

Infants' ability to form new object categories based on either visual or naming information alone was evaluated at two different ages (16 and 20 months) using an object manipulation task. Estimates of productive vocabulary size were also collected. Infants at both ages showed evidence of using visual information to categorize the objects, while only the older ones used naming information. Moreover, there was a correlation between vocabulary size and name-based categorization among the 20-month-olds. The present results establish that infants as young as 20 months can use the non-obvious cue of naming to categorize objects. The possibility of a link between this ability and lexical development is discussed.     

Naming problems do not reflect a second independent core deficit in dyslexia: Double deficits explored

The double deficit hypothesis states that naming speed problems represent a second core deficit in dyslexia independent from a phonological deficit. The current study investigated the main assumptions of this hypothesis in a large sample of well-diagnosed dyslexics. The three main findings were that (a) naming speed was consistently related only to reading speed; (b) phonological processing speed and naming speed loaded on the same factor, and this factor contributed strongly to reading speed; and (c) although general processing speed was involved in speeded naming of visual items, it did not explain the relationship between naming speed and reading speed. The results do not provide support for the existence of a second independent core naming deficit in dyslexia and indicate that speeded naming tasks are mainly phonological processing speed tasks with an important addition: fast cross-modal matching of visual symbols and phonological codes.     

Learning about occlusion: initial assumptions and rapid adjustments

We examined 6-month-olds abilities to represent occluded objects, using a corneal-reflection eye-tracking technique. Experiment 1 compared infants' ability to extrapolate the current pre-occlusion trajectory with their ability to base predictions on recent experiences of novel object motions. In the first condition infants performed at asymptote ( approximately 2/3 accurate predictions) from the first occlusion passage. In the second condition all infants initially failed to make accurate prediction. Performance, however, reached asymptote after two occlusion passages. This is the first study that demonstrates such rapid learning effects during an occlusion task. Experiment 2 replicates these effects and demonstrates a robust memory effect extending 24h. In occlusion tasks such long-term memory effects have previously only been observed in 14-month-olds (Moore & Meltzoff, 2004).     

Rapid response predicts binge eating and weight loss in binge eating disorder: findings from a controlled trial of orlistat with guided self-help cognitive behavioral therapy

OBJECTIVE: It is important to find ways to predict response to treatments as this may inform treatment planning. We examined rapid response in obese patients with binge eating disorder (BED) who participated in a randomized placebo-controlled study of orlistat administered with cognitive behavioral therapy delivered by guided self-help (CBTgsh) format. METHODS: Fifty patients were randomly assigned to 12-week treatments of either orlistat+CBTgsh or placebo+CBTgsh, and were followed in double-blind fashion for 3 months after treatment discontinuation. Rapid response, defined as 70% or greater reduction in binge eating by the fourth treatment week, was determined by receiver operating characteristic curves, and was then used to predict outcomes. RESULTS: Rapid response characterized 42% of participants, was unrelated to participants' demographic features and most baseline characteristics, and was unrelated to attrition from treatment. Participants with rapid response were more likely to achieve binge eating remission and 5% weight loss. If rapid response occurred, the level of improvement was sustained during the remaining course of treatment and the 3-month period after treatment. Participants without rapid response showed a subsequent pattern of continued improvement. CONCLUSION: Rapid response demonstrated the same prognostic significance and time course for CBTgsh as previously documented for individual CBT. Among rapid responders, improvements were well sustained, and among non-rapid responders, continuing with CBTgsh (regardless of medication) led to subsequent improvements.     

Why naming takes longer than reading? The special case of Arabic numbers

Since the work of Cattell, 1885 and Cattell, 1886, it is known that the time to name an object (or a color, a geometric figure, a drawing) is longer than the time to read the name of that object. This result has been confirmed by many authors but the explanation of this phenomenon is still lacking. One good explanation of the reading–naming time difference is the uncertainty factor. Whereas words are associated with a single response name, pictures are linked to several names (the so-called “uncertainty hypothesis”). Another good explanation of this difference is the obligatory retrieval of meaning for pictures but not for words (the so-called “semantic hypothesis”). In the present experiments, subjects had to name Arabic numbers and their corresponding written names. By using Arabic numbers and their corresponding written names, we contrasted these two hypotheses proposed to explain the reading–naming time difference. We exploited the fact that Arabic numbers share a very important attribute with their corresponding written names: their uncertainty is null. Indeed, there is only one way to name 5 and five. Our results suggest that the main factor responsible for this reading–naming time difference is the uncertainty factor, since uncertainty being equal, this difference disappeared completely throughout ten (Experiment 1) and five repeated sessions (Experiment 2).     

Naming analog clocks conceptually facilitates naming digital clocks

This study investigates how speakers of Dutch compute and produce relative time expressions. Naming digital clocks (e.g., 2:45, say "quarter to three") requires conceptual operations on the minute and hour information for the correct relative time expression. The interplay of these conceptual operations was investigated using a repetition priming paradigm. Participants named analog clocks (the primes) directly before naming digital clocks (the targets). The targets referred to the hour (e.g., 2:00), half past the hour (e.g., 2:30), or the coming hour (e.g., 2:45). The primes differed from the target in one or two hour and in five or ten minutes. Digital clock naming latencies were shorter with a five- than with a ten-min difference between prime and target, but the difference in hour had no effect. Moreover, the distance in minutes had only an effect for half past the hour and the coming hour, but not for the hour. These findings suggest that conceptual facilitation occurs when conceptual transformations are shared between prime and target in telling time.