What is the deficit in phonological processing deficits: auditory sensitivity, masking, or category formation?

Although children with language impairments, including those associated with reading, usually demonstrate deficits in phonological processing, there is minimal agreement as to the source of those deficits. This study examined two problems hypothesized to be possible sources: either poor auditory sensitivity to speech-relevant acoustic properties, mainly formant transitions, or enhanced masking of those properties. Adults and 8-year-olds with and without phonological processing deficits (PPD) participated. Children with PPD demonstrated weaker abilities than children with typical language development (TLD) in reading, sentence recall, and phonological awareness. Dependent measures were word recognition, discrimination of spectral glides, and phonetic judgments based on spectral and temporal cues. All tasks were conducted in quiet and in noise. Children with PPD showed neither poorer auditory sensitivity nor greater masking than adults and children with TLD, but they did demonstrate an unanticipated deficit in category formation for nonspeech sounds. These results suggest that these children may have an underlying deficit in perceptually organizing sensory information to form coherent categories.     

Elevated suicide rates at high altitude: sociodemographic and health issues may be to blame

Suicide rates are higher at high altitudes; some hypothesize that hypoxia is the cause. We examined 8,871 suicides recorded in 2006 in 15 states by the National Violent Death Reporting System, with the victim's home county altitude determined from the National Elevation Dataset through FIPS code matching. We grouped cases by altitude (low<1000m; middle=1000-1999m; high≥2000m). Of reported suicides, 5% were at high and 83% at low altitude, but unadjusted suicide rates per 100,000 population were higher at high (17.7) than at low (5.7) altitude. High and low altitude victims differed with respect to race, ethnicity, rural residence, intoxication, depressed mood preceding the suicide, firearm use and recent financial, job, legal, or interpersonal problems. Even after multivariate adjustment, there were significant differences in personal, mental health, and suicide characteristics among altitude groups. Compared to low altitude victims, high altitude victims had higher odds of having family or friends report of a depressed mood preceding the suicide (OR 1.78; 95%CI:1.46-2.17) and having a crisis within 2weeks before death (OR 2.00; 95%CI:1.63-1.46). Suicide victims at high and low altitudes differ significantly by multiple demographic, psychiatric, and suicide characteristics; these factors, rather than hypoxia or altitude itself, may explain increased suicide rates at high altitude.     

Age-dependent consequences of seizures: relationship to seizure frequency, brain damage, and circuitry reorganization

Seizures in the developing brain pose a challenge to the clinician. In addition to the acute effects of the seizure, there are questions regarding the impact of severe or recurrent seizures on the developing brain. Whether provoked seizures cause brain damage, synaptic reorganization, or epilepsy is of paramount importance to patients and physicians. Such questions are especially relevant in the decision to treat or not treat febrile seizures, a common occurrence in childhood. These clinical questions have been addressed using clinical and animal research. The largest prospective studies do not find a causal connection between febrile seizures and later temporal lobe epilepsy. The immature brain seems relatively resistant to the seizure-induced neuronal loss and new synapse formation seen in the mature brain. Laboratory investigations using a developmental rat model corresponding to human febrile seizures find that even though structural changes do not result from hyperthermic seizures, synaptic function may be chronically altered. The increased understanding of the cellular and synaptic mechanisms of seizure-induced damage may benefit patients and clinicians in the form of improved therapies to attenuate damage and changes induced by seizures and to prevent the development of epilepsy.     

The effect of enactment upon sentence imitation in preschool children

Preschool children imitated two matched lists of sentences varying in length, in syntactic complexity, and in semantic complexity. Sentences on one list were acted out with toys prior to imitating them. For 3-year-olds, enactment increased retention of all sentential variables: number of words, number of frames, number of propositions, and syntax. For children younger than 3 years, enactment increased only the number of words retained, while for children older than 4 years, enactment had a minimal effect on all sentential variables. In a second experiment, prior enactment had long-term effects on the degree to which children's spontaneous stories about the toys resembled the previous sentences that they had been given to imitate. Long-term effects, however, did not extend to retention of syntax. Enactment appears to increase both young children's interest in a sentence imitation task and the amount of semantic encoding in which they engage. Its effect, however, is mediated by the degree of mastery of relevant linguistic rules.Some of these data were presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit, April 1983. The authors would like to thank Lorraine Chiasson, Judith Codd, and Susan Saba for their assistance with the data analysis.     

Marital therapy: The importance of the assessment of the individuals on personality tests

The importance of assessing individuals in a marital conflict is seen as vital. The theoretical position that there are big ‘T’ and little ‘t’ individuals indicated that some members of the relationship are more eager for thrill seeking and being outgoing while little ‘t’ individuals are more eager for harmony and conservative personality traits. This has long been established. There are extremes of this but also these traits are on a continuum. While opposites attract in a relationship, the more individuals have in common, the more likely the marital relationship will work except in one area, that of seeking control or dominance. Here, opposites are likely to be more successful. Areas where there are likely to be difficulties between big ‘T’ and little ‘t’ individuals are in the rates of infidelity where big T's may predominate, also in sexual dissatisfaction and problems, attitudes to love, marital abuse and spouse abuse, child rearing issues, drug and alcohol abuse, the handling of money, household chores and division of labour, recreation interests, and religious differences. While not all of these may come into conflict or may be part of a big ‘T’ or little ‘t’ personality, there is a weighing in one direction rather than in the other. In order for rehabilitation between marital partners, it is important for each to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the other's personality, be they big ‘T’ or little ‘t’ individuals. Approaches by counsellors, psychologists to these individual differences are discussed.