Fantasy proneness as a confounder of verbal lie detection tools

This study investigated whether high fantasy‐prone individuals have superior storytelling abilities. It also explored whether this trait is related to specific linguistic features (i.e. self‐references, cognitive complexity, and emotional words). Participants high (n = 30) and low (n = 30) on a fantasy proneness scale were instructed to write down a true and a fabricated story about an aversive situation in which they had been the victim. Stories were then examined using two verbal lie detection approaches: criteria‐based content analysis (CBCA) and linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC). Irrespective of the truth status of the stories, independent observers rated stories of high fantasy‐prone individuals as being richer in all nine CBCA elements than those of low fantasy‐prone individuals. Furthermore, overall, high fantasy‐prone people used more self‐references in their stories compared with low fantasy‐prone individuals. High fantasy prones' fabricated stories scored higher on various truth indices than authentic stories of low fantasy prones. Thus, high fantasy‐prone people are good in creating a sense of authenticity, even when they fabricate stories. Forensic experts should bear this in mind when they employ verbal lie detection tools. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Precursor behavior and functional analysis: A brief review

Researchers have developed precursor functional analyses to provide an alternative, and presumably safer, format for functional analysis of severe problem behavior. When researchers use functional analysis contingencies for precursor behaviors, it is possible to infer functional characteristics about severe problem behaviors based on patterns of less severe precursor behaviors, permitting practitioners to complete the assessment with less risk to clients, practitioners, or others. The current paper discusses recent advances in the development and validation of precursor identification, and offers suggestions and future directions for investigating and implementing precursor functional analyses. We propose a decision‐making model, in which practitioners integrate procedures to identify precursors into the functional‐analysis process, to expedite the analysis of severe problem behaviors.     

Teaching children with autism spectrum disorder to tact auditory stimuli

Studies on teaching tacts to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have primarily focused on visual stimuli, despite published clinical recommendations to teach tacts of stimuli in other sensory domains as well. In the current study, two children with ASD were taught to tact auditory stimuli under two stimulus‐presentation arrangements: isolated (auditory stimuli presented without visual cues) and compound (auditory stimuli presented with visual cues). Results indicate that compound stimulus presentation was a more effective teaching procedure, but that it interfered with prior object‐name tacts. A modified compound arrangement in which object‐name tact trials were interspersed with auditory‐stimulus trials mitigated this interference.     

汉语儿童阅读能力发展中的语音加工技能研究

通过对儿童阅读发展这一领域相关研究的回顾,对汉语儿童阅读能力发展中的语音加工问题进行了探讨。在汉语阅读过程中,语音成分的介入已经得到了研究的普遍支持,但是在语音技能与阅读能力间的关系方面,虽然语音加工技能的不同成分（语音意识、声旁意识及言语工作记忆）与儿童阅读能力发展间都存在着一定的联系,但这些语音技能在汉语儿童阅读能力发展中所起作用的具体机制及介入程度还需进一步的研究论证。     

Predicting the directionality of probability words from their membership functions

Teigen and Brun have suggested that distinct from their numerical implications, most probability phrases are either positive or negative, in that they encourage one to think of reasons why the target event will or will not occur. We report two experiments testing our hypotheses that (a) the direction of a phrase can be predicted from properties of its membership function, and (b) this relation is invariant across contexts, and (c) —originally formulated by Teigen and Brun (1999)—that strong modifiers intensify phrase directionality. For each phrase, participants encoded membership functions by judging the degree to which it described the numerical probabilities 0.0, 0.1, …, 1.0, and also completed sentences including the target phrase. The types of reasons given in the sentence completion task were used to determine the phrase's directionality. The results support our hypotheses (a) and (b) regarding the relation between directionality and the membership functions, but we found only limited support for hypothesis (c) regarding the effects of modifiers on directionality. A secondary goal, to validate an efficient method of encoding membership functions, was also achieved. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dementia with Lewy bodies: a pure case

A pure case of autopsy-confirmed dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is described. The patient presented with distinctive verbal fluency deficits in the context of mild language impairment, intact recognition memory, and impaired paragraph recall. Neuroimaging (CT and SPECT) showed progressive medial temporal lobe atrophy. Neuropathology revealed Lewy bodies, degeneration in the substantia nigra, nucleus basalis of Meynert (Nakano & Hirano, 1984), and locus ceruleus, but no pathology characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. It is in this sense that the case is "pure" DLB. Early neuropsychological diagnosis of DLB is essential (Salmon et al., 1996) given the potentially fatal hazard of neuroleptics (McKeith et al., 1992) and the difficulties associated with clinical neurological diagnoses (Litvan et al., 1998).     

Effects of Verbal Processing on Psychiatric Patients’ Proactive Coping Skills Using Recreational Music Therapy

Psychiatric patients who are able to cope with life stressors and appropriately use leisure time are less likely to be rehospitalized. The purpose of this study was to examine how verbal processing of recreational music therapy affected psychiatric patients’ knowledge and use of coping and leisure skills. The researchers utilized a quasirandomized controlled design and collected data at pretest, immediately before discharge, and at one month postdischarge. The researchers isolated verbal processing within recreational music therapy sessions to determine if the verbal-processing component affected proactive coping and patients’ use of coping and leisure skills. Using the Proactive Coping Scale, the researchers measured patients’ proactive coping before and after attending recreational music therapy sessions. Results indicated no significant between-group differences in patients’ proactive coping scores. Difficulties conducting research in psychiatric settings, clinical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Deregulated semantic cognition contributes to object‐use deficits in Alzheimer's disease: A comparison with semantic aphasia and semantic dementia

Executive control is impaired from the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and this produces deregulated semantic cognition (Corbett, Jefferies, Burns, & Lambon Ralph, 2012 ; Perry, Watson, & Hodges, 2000 ). While control deficits should affect semantic retrieval across all modalities, previous studies have typically focused on verbal semantic tasks. Even when non‐verbal semantic tasks have been used, these have typically employed simple picture‐matching tasks, which may be influenced by abnormalities in covert naming. Therefore, in the present study, we examined 10 patients with AD on a battery of object‐use tasks, in order to advance our understanding of the origins of non‐verbal semantic deficits in this population. The AD patients’ deficits were contrasted with previously published performance on the same tasks within two additional groups of patients, displaying either semantic degradation (semantic dementia) or deregulation of semantic retrieval (semantic aphasia; Corbett, Jefferies, Ehsan, & Lambon Ralph, 2009 ). While overall accuracy was comparable to the scores in both other groups, the AD patients’ object‐use impairment most closely resembled that observed in SA; they exhibited poorer performance on comprehension tasks that placed strong demands on executive control. A similar pattern was observed in the expressive domain: the AD and SA groups were relatively good at straightforward object use compared to executively demanding, mechanical puzzles. Error types also differed: while all patients omitted essential actions, the SA and AD groups’ demonstrations also featured unrelated intrusions. An association between AD patients’ object use and their scores on standard executive measures suggested that control deficits contributed to their non‐verbal semantic deficits. Moreover, in a task specifically designed to manipulate executive demand, patients with AD (and SA) exhibited difficulty in thinking flexibly about the non‐canonical uses of everyday objects, especially when distracted by semantically related objects. This study provides converging evidence for the notion that a failure of regulatory control contributes to multimodal semantic impairment in AD and uniquely demonstrates this pattern for the highly non‐verbal domain of object use.     

Foetal trauma,body memory and early infant communication: a case illustration

This paper presents the complex case of a male patient who started life as an unwanted pregnancy and adoptee in an era of socio‐cultural shame and blame. When able to contact his birth mother later in life, he experienced a number of confronting synchronicities as well as visions which he felt were related to failed abortion attempts and to other pre‐ and post‐natal events. The case material lends weight not only to Freud's, Ehrenwald's and FitzHerbert's assertions that the earliest form of mother‐infant communications is telepathic in nature but that this mode of communication can be retained if emotional trauma inhibits normal developmental processes. Contemporary neuroscience research is presented supporting the hypothesis that emotional memory can become imbedded in the psyche/soma of the foetus. Such memory traces can later emerge into imagery and/or words if the traumatic impingement has been substantial enough and if other defensive strategies are in place. Clinical implications are then suggested regarding analysts’ attention to the emotional conditions underpinning their patients’ conceptions and foetal development; the connection to projective identification components of the countertransference as being aspects of the earliest telepathic mother/infant communication channel and the need for reductive analyses in analyst training programmes.