Coping with asymmetry: How infants and adults walk with one elongated leg

The stability of a system affects how it will handle a perturbation: The system may compensate for the perturbation or not. This study examined how 14-month-old infants—notoriously unstable walkers—and adults cope with a perturbation to walking. We attached a platform to one of participants’ shoes, forcing them to walk with one elongated leg. At first, the platform shoe caused both age groups to slow down and limp, and caused infants to misstep and fall. But after a few trials, infants altered their gait to compensate for the platform shoe whereas adults did not; infants recovered symmetrical gait whereas adults continued to limp. Apparently, adult walking was stable enough to cope with the perturbation, but infants risked falling if they did not compensate. Compensation depends on the interplay of multiple factors: The availability of a compensatory response, the cost of compensation, and the stability of the system being perturbed.     

Interview‐informed synthesized contingency analyses: Thirty replications and reanalysis

The speed with which a functional analysis (FA) provides a convincing demonstration of the variables that influence problem behavior may be termed efficiency. Multiple FA formats have been developed to improve analytic efficiency while the core components of the Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, and Richman (1982/1994) procedures are maintained. We attempted to illustrate an alternative efficient process for conducting FAs of problem behavior that relied on modifying those core components. In Study 1, we describe 30 applications of the interview‐informed synthesized contingency analysis (Hanley, Jin, Vanselow, & Hanratty, 2014), which required an average of 25 min of analysis. The first sessions of these analyses were reanalyzed in Study 2 to determine if contingencies that controlled problem behavior could be identified in only 3 to 5 min. This was the case in 80% of analyses.     

人工全髋关节置换术肢体长度调定方法的前瞻性研究

探讨人工全髋关节置换术预防双下肢不等长的方法。综合采用术前X线片模板测量股骨头运动中心指导选择假体颈长;术中根据股骨头运动中心是否与大粗隆尖端平齐、侧卧位测量双髌骨下缘是否在同一平面、牵拉患肢根据软组织张力调整患肢长度等方法来确定术中股骨颈假体的长度。本组44例患者分为2组：A组术前肢体等长（21例）;B组术前肢体不等...     

The probabilistic analysis of language acquisition: theoretical, computational, and experimental analysis

There is much debate over the degree to which language learning is governed by innate language-specific biases, or acquired through cognition-general principles. Here we examine the probabilistic language acquisition hypothesis on three levels: We outline a novel theoretical result showing that it is possible to learn the exact generative model underlying a wide class of languages, purely from observing samples of the language. We then describe a recently proposed practical framework, which quantifies natural language learnability, allowing specific learnability predictions to be made for the first time. In previous work, this framework was used to make learnability predictions for a wide variety of linguistic constructions, for which learnability has been much debated. Here, we present a new experiment which tests these learnability predictions. We find that our experimental results support the possibility that these linguistic constructions are acquired probabilistically from cognition-general principles.     

The surgical anxiety questionnaire (SAQ): development and validation

Objective: Preoperative anxiety is often assessed using general anxiety measures; existing specific measures might lack content coverage and/or are not psychometrically validated. This study aimed to develop a new self-report measure of surgery-specific anxiety and test its psychometric properties.

Design: The surgical anxiety questionnaire (SAQ) was developed from themes identified in qualitative research and reviewed by an interdisciplinary expert team. It was administered preoperatively to 135 patients (56% female, mean age 51) on the day of surgery alongside additional measures of preoperative anxiety, state anxiety, perceived stress, depression and social desirability. Follow-up assessment was conducted immediately post-surgery and two weeks post-surgery (n?=?114) to examine recovery and predictive validity of the scale.

Results: Factor analysis revealed a three component structure, including: concerns about health (six items), concerns about recovery (four items) and concerns about procedures (four items). Three additional items of relatively high concern were retained in the total score (17 items). The SAQ displayed good reliability, validity (content, construct and predictive) and adequate overall psychometric properties.

Conclusions: Preliminary results suggest that the SAQ is a promising tool for measuring preoperative anxiety and predicting recovery. Recommendations for future research include employing a confirmatory factor analysis and examining test-retest reliability.     

Random word generation reveals spatial encoding of syllabic word length

Existing random number generation studies demonstrate the presence of an embodied attentional bias in spontaneous number production corresponding to the horizontal Mental Number Line: Larger numbers are produced on right-hand turns and smaller numbers on left-hand turns (Loetscher et al.,2008, Curr. Biol., 18, R60). Furthermore, other concepts were also shown to rely on horizontal attentional displacement (Di Bono and Zorzi, 2013, Quart. J. Exp. Psychol., 66, 2348). In two experiments, we used a novel random word generation paradigm combined with two different ways to orient attention in horizontal space: Participants randomly generated words on left and right head turns (Experiment 1) or following left and right key presses (Experiment 2). In both studies, syllabically longer words were generated on right-hand head turns and following right key strokes. Importantly, variables related to semantic magnitude or cardinality (whether the generated words were plural-marked, referred to uncountable concepts, or were associated with largeness) were not affected by lateral manipulations. We discuss our data in terms of the ATOM (Walsh, 2015, The Oxford handbook of numerical cognition, 552) which suggests a general magnitude mechanism shared by different conceptual domains.