Narrative discourse after closed head injury in children and adolescents.

This study examined narrative discourse in 20 children and adolescents at least 1 year after sustaining a head injury. Narratives were analyzed along the dimensions of language structure, information structure, and flow of information. Severity of impaired consciousness was associated with a significant reduction in the amount of language and information. The most important finding which emerged was the disruption in information structure. This pattern confirms the impression of disorganized discourse in severely injured children. Explanations for the disruption in information structure are explored in terms of the role of vocabulary, memory, and localization of lesion according to magnetic resonance imaging. In view of recent evidence that frontal lobe damage is associated with discourse formulation deficits in adults and is the most common site of focal lesion in closed head injury, we examined discourse patterns in individual patients with frontal lobe lesions. Preliminary data from our single-case studies suggest discourse patterns similar to those reported for adults with frontal lobe injuries.     

Understanding and solving arithmetic word problems: A computer simulation

In this paper, I describe a computer program, WORDPRO, which simulates the psychological processes involved when third-grade children understand and solve simple arithmetic word problems. Both the implementation of the program and its performance on a set of sample problems are presented. WORDPRO is a useful research tool in that it demonstrates the sufficiency of the theory upon which it is based, assists in communicating that theory to other researchers, and provides a sources of empirical predictions for experimental tests of the theory.     

Time: a speeding train or wind-driven sand? The estimation of fixed temporal intervals as related to images of time

Relationship between Knapp's metaphor scale of attitudes toward time and subjective estimation of fixed time intervals, measured by a modification of Lovett Doust's method, was described. Results were discussed within the framework of studies relating the measurements of cognitive styles and altered consciousness states to the dilated or accelerated perceptions of time.     

Assessing Adolescent and Adult Attachment: A Review of Current Self-Report Measures

Increased interest in attachment theory among counseling researchers and practitioners has led to the development of several measures of attachment-related constructs. Following a brief overview of the theoretical foundations of attachment theory as conceptualized by Ainsworth (1989) and Bowlby (1988), the authors of this article review four self-report measures of adolescent and adult attachment. Many considerations for the selection and use of these instruments in future counseling research and assessment are discussed.     

The rule learning behavior of reading disabled and normal children as a function of task characteristics and instruction

The purpose of this research was to investigate rule learning in reading disabled (RD) and normal children (chronological age and reading age (RA) match) when required to (a) abstract rules independently, and (b) use rules after instruction. Study 1 required the children to solve problems using shapes and letters. Although there was no difference between groups in the rate of problem solving when children were asked to abstract rules independently, the pattern of errors was different. The RD children made a greater proportion of errors on the negative instance for the more complex problems. In particular, this occurred on the letter task which involved psycholinguistic categorization. After instruction, the RA controls made more errors than the other groups. Study 2 was an analogous pseudoword reading task. Even with statistical adjustment for differences in prior grapheme-phoneme (g-p) rule knowledge, the RD children performed less accurately than the RA controls when they had to abstract rules, although this was restricted to the most difficult rule (rule of e). There was no difference after instruction in rule application, although the pattern of errors and post-test results indicated that the RD children continued to experience decoding difficulty. These results suggest a phonologically based productive deficit which interferes with the learning of g-p rules. This may be part of a more general language deficit which includes psycholinguistic categorization. Despite the severity of this handicap, RD children seem responsive to instruction.     

An on-line assessment of causal reasoning during comprehension

Fletcher and Bloom (1988) have argued that as readers read narratives, clause by clause, they repeatedly focus their attention on the last preceding clause that contains antecedents but no consequences in the text. This strategy allows them to discover a causal path linking the text's opening to its final outcome while minimizing the number of times long-term memory must be searched for missing antecedents or consequences. In order to test this hypothesis, we examined the reading times of 25 subjects for each clause of eight simple narrative texts. The results show that: (1) causal links between clauses that co-occur in short-term memory (as predicted by the strategy) increase the time required to read the second clause; (2) potential causal links between clauses that never co-occur in short-term memory (again as predicted by the strategy) have no effect on reading time; and (3) reinstatement searches are initiated at the end of sentences that are causally unrelated to the contents of short-term memory or that contain clauses that satisfy goals no longer in short-term memory. These results support the claim that subjects engage in a form of causal reasoning when they read simple narrative texts.