Bridging ears and eyes when learning spoken words: On the effects of bilingual experience at 30 months

From the very first moments of their lives, infants selectively attend to the visible orofacial movements of their social partners and apply their exquisite speech perception skills to the service of lexical learning. Here we explore how early bilingual experience modulates children's ability to use visible speech as they form new lexical representations. Using a cross‐modal word‐learning task, bilingual children aged 30 months were tested on their ability to learn new lexical mappings in either the auditory or the visual modality. Lexical recognition was assessed either in the same modality as the one used at learning (‘same modality’ condition: auditory test after auditory learning, visual test after visual learning) or in the other modality (‘cross‐modality’ condition: visual test after auditory learning, auditory test after visual learning). The results revealed that like their monolingual peers, bilingual children successfully learn new words in either the auditory or the visual modality and show cross‐modal recognition of words following auditory learning. Interestingly, as opposed to monolinguals, they also demonstrate cross‐modal recognition of words upon visual learning. Collectively, these findings indicate a bilingual edge in visual word learning, expressed in the capacity to form a recoverable cross‐modal representation of visually learned words.     

Multiple sclerosis,emotion perception and social functioning

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) can experience problems in interpreting others’ emotions from faces or voices. However, to date little is known about whether difficulties in emotion perception in MS are related to broader aspects of social functioning. Also, there are few studies reporting the effect of MS on more ecologically valid assessments of emotion perception using multimodal videos. The current study looks at (1) the effect of MS on perceiving emotions from faces, voices and multimodal videos; (2) the possible role of slowed processing and executive dysfunction in emotion perception problems in MS and (3) the relationship between emotion perception and broader social functioning in MS. 53 people with MS and 31 healthy controls completed tasks of emotion perception and cognition, and assessed their levels of social support and social participation. Participants with MS performed worse than demographically matched controls on all measures of emotion perception. Emotion perception performance was related to cognitive measures in those with MS. Also, significant associations were found between emotion perception difficulties in MS and poorer social function. In particular, people with MS who had poorer emotion perception also reported lower levels of social support from their friends, and regression analysis showed that this prediction was maintained even when disease severity and cognitive function were taken into account. These results show that problems with emotion perception in MS extend to more realistic tasks and may predict key aspects of social functioning.     

Visual aspects of centrally elicited attack behavior in the cat: “Patterned reflexes” associated with selection of and approach to a rat

It has been previously suggested that the electrical brain stimulation which elicits quiet-biting attack in the cat actively affects the way the central nervous system processes visual and tactile information concerned with the reflexes involved in the terminal aspects of attack. In order to examine the effects of brain stimulation on a nonterminal aspect of attack – the stimulated cat's selection of and approach to a rat – cats were implanted with attack-eliciting electrodes in both the lateral hypothalamus and the midbrain ventral tegmental area. These cats were then tested in an 8-ft-long cage, one end of which was divided into three, 2-ft-long parallel compartments, whose openings faced the end of the cage from which the cat commenced its approach. An anesthetized rat was placed at the back of one compartment, a bowl of food at the back of another compartment, and the third compartment contained no object. It was found in the first experiment that the attack elicited by nearly all electrodes was selectively directed at the rat. However, the success of the cat in finding the compartment containing the rat varied dramatically for different electrodes in the same cat. Further, these differences were stable and did not change as the cat gained experience with the task. The results suggested that the stimulation of different brain sites in the same cat differentially affected the visual neural mechanisms involved in guiding a cat to a rat. Previous studies have also suggested that the effects of brain stimulation which elicits quiet-biting attack are largely lateralized to the side of the brain stimulated. In order to determine if the effects of stimulation on the neural mechanisms mediating the visually guided approach of a cat to a rat were also lateralized, attempts were made in a second experiment to disrupt the visual input to one side of the brain by unilaterally transecting the optic tract. It was found that this manipulation interfered with the visually guided selective approach to a rat, if the cat was stimulated through hypothalamic or mid-brain electrodes ipsilateral to the optic tract transection, but not if the hypothalamic or midbrain stimulation was on the contralateral (visually intact) side of the brain. However, any final interpretation of the results was confounded by the finding in all of these cats of a complex syndrome of neglect of all contralateral sensory information.     

A sensory contact model for the study of aggressive and submissive behavior in male mice

The technique for simultaneous development of aggressive and submissive behaviors as a result of successive experiences of defeats or victories in daily intermale confrontations in male mice permanently living under sensory contact conditions is offered for behavioral, pharmacological, and neurophysiological studies of mechanisms of agonistic social relations. Distant sensory contact is achieved by placing a pair of males into a common cage separated by a transparent partition with holes permitting visual contact and the individuals perceiving each other's odors but preventing any physical at contact all times except for 10-min daily tests. These conditions essentially elicit aggression in winner males and quickly result in submission by losers of the same strain of mice. The meaning of consecutive stages of the technique, the problem of controls, and applications of this model are discussed.     

儿童青少年时期加工速度和执行功能在流体智力发展中的作用

以7~15岁儿童青少年为研究对象,考察加工速度和执行功能对流体智力的影响。研究结果表明,随着年龄的增长,感觉运动加工速度、知觉加工速度对流体智力从具有直接影响到只通过执行功能中的记忆更新成分产生间接影响,但这种影响存在年龄间的差异。在童年中期（7~9岁）,知觉加工速度对流体智力不仅具有直接的预测作用,还通过记忆更新对其产生间接的影响。童年晚期（10~12岁）,感觉运动加工速度和知觉加工速度不再对流体智力具有直接预测作用,都是通过记忆更新和抑制/转换合成成分间接对流体智力起作用。青春期（13~15岁）,知觉加工速度对流体智力只通过记忆更新产生间接影响。     

Efficacy of a 7-week dance (RCT) PE curriculum with different teaching pedagogies and levels of cognitive challenge to improve working memory capacity and motor competence in 8–10 years old children

ObjectivesThis study examined how learning a dance choreography with different teaching pedagogies and different cognitive challenge influenced the development of working memory capacity and motor competence in primary school children.DesignRandomised-controlled trial.MethodsEighty primary school children (8.8 ± 0.7 years old; 61% females) were recruited and randomly assigned to two experimental groups – a high-cognitive and a low-cognitive group – and a control group. The two experimental groups practiced dance for 7 weeks, twice a week, learning a choreography, while the control group participated in the school standard PE curriculum. In the high-cognitive group, the dance teachers limited visual demonstrations and encouraged children to memorise and recall movement sequences to increase the cognitive challenge.ResultsWhile the pre-to post-test improvements did not statistically differ between experimental groups, the analysis showed that the high-cognitive group statistically improved their working memory capacity (p < 0.01; d = 0.51), while the low-cognitive (p = 0.04; d = 0.48) and control groups did not (p = 0.32; d = 0.17). All three groups improved their motor competence from pre-to post-test, and there was a significant group*time effect (p < 0.01, η_p² = 0.13) with the high-cognitive group showing larger improvement than the control.ConclusionsThe results of this study provide initial support that dance practice coupled with a high cognitive challenge could improve working memory capacity and motor competence in children; however, the difference between groups was not statistically significant, and future research is necessary to examine the generalization of this finding.     

公安民警的创伤后应激症状对执行功能的影响—基于Stroop范式的探究

公安民警常常身临应激和危险情境中,是创伤事件的易感人群,但其创伤后应激症状对执行功能的影响研究尚且缺乏。已有研究发现,具有创伤后应激症状的个体的执行功能存在缺陷,表现在对冲突信息的抑制能力受损以及对创伤相关信息的注意偏向和情绪唤起。本研究以公安民警为实验组被试,据其创伤后应激症状分为高低两组,在校大学生为对照组被试,采用Stroop范式探究创伤后应激症状对公安民警“冷”、“热”执行功能的影响。结果表明,具有创伤后应激症状的公安民警在“冷”、“热”执行功能上不存在缺陷,但仍在一定程度上受到创伤后应激症状的影响。启示对具有创伤后应激症状的公安民警进行干预时,应关注其症状的严重程度,在“热”执行功能上寻求更有效的干预方式。     

Contextual control of equivalence-based transformation of functions

The transformation of functions refers to the untrained acquisition of stimulus functions among members of stimulus equivalence classes or relational frames. Although it is widely assumed that contextual control over the transformation of fuctions must exist, this has not yet been conclusively demonstrated in laboratory studies. Four experiments are reported in which (a) stimulus equivalence classes were established, (b) a conditional stimulus function was trained for one member of each of the classes, and (c) multiple-exemplar procedures were used to train and test for contextual control over the transformation of the stimulus function within the classes and to assess whether it generalized to new equivalence classes. Although a significant amount of training was required, the procedures ultimately resulted in the contextual control of function transformation for 9 of 10 participants and generalized contextual control for 4 of 5 participants.