Intervening causation and the mitigation of responsibility for harm doing II. The role of limited mental capacities

The present study investigated (i) the conditions under which the proximal cause of an event affects judgments of a distal cause, (ii) the capacities persons need to be held responsible for their actions, and (iii) the relationship between judgments of causation, blame, and restitution. Subjects read about situations in which an initial act, in combination with a later behavior by a second person, produced harm. The age and mental state of the second person were varied. It was found that cause and blame assigned to the initial action was greater when the second person was a child or mentally disturbed, as compared to a sane adult. Causal and moral responsibility were related to the understanding, reasoning capacity, and ability to control behavior of the person judged. Finally, support was obtained for an entailment model of the relations between judgments of causation, blame, and restitution.     

Children's affective,behavioral, and cognitive responses to social comparison

Relative outcomes in social commerce with peers are potent determinants of cognitions and behavior in young children. Although there has been considerable attention given to the behavioral consequences of social comparisons following the receipt of rewards, there has been less concern with cognitive or affective consequences. Additionally, little is known about the accrued effects of multiple social comparison experiences that may be consistent or inconsistent with one another. In the present study, young children received a constant level of reward but the amount they saw a peer receive was varied. There were two sequences of reward distribution, and in a given sequence children received either the same number of rewards as the peer (=), more (+), or fewer (?). In a 3 × 3 factorial design all possible combinations occurred. A negative inequality in reward distribution, no matter where it fell in a sequence, made children sad and inclined children to distribute fewer rewards to peers. When a sequence contained an initial experience of positive inequality, children decreased subsequent levels of self-reward. Experiencing a comparison that revealed a negative inequality in reward distribution also disrupted children's accuracy in appraising the overall distribution of rewards: even when an initial negative inequality was completely offset by an equivalent experience of positive inequality, children inaccurately concluded that they had received fewer rewards than their peers.     

Subcortical functions in language: A working model

The current paper explains a model of subcortical language functions that focuses on dynamic interactions between the cortex, the thalamus, and the basal ganglia in the production of spoken language. The model was derived from (a) studies of subcortical lesions and language, (b) studies of subcortical stimulation and language, (c) knowledge regarding neural pathways between various cortical and subcortical structures, and (d) indications that preverbal monitoring of language occurs. In the current model, the thalamus plays roles in cortical arousal and activation and in preverbal semantic monitoring. The basal ganglia function to regulate the degree of excitation conveyed from the thalamus to the cortex and to time the release of formulated language for motor programming. Consistency with classical syndromes of aphasia and potential applications to other areas in the neurosciences are discussed. The current theory, unlike previous formulations, is specific enough that testable hypotheses can be derived.     

Deep dyslexia in childhood?

Deep dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder in which semantic substitutions (e.g., city read as town) are made in reading single isolated words. In this paper, evidence for deep dyslexic-type errors is presented from the word-recognition responses of six children, aged 7 years and 0 month to 8 years and 9 months, with severe reading disorders. These semantic substitutions occur in the absence of phonological skills. Therefore, it appears that there exists a small subset of developmental dyslexics who at the beginning of acquisition of reading skills are able to engage in semantic processing, but who show severe impairment of phonological processing. The existence of these reading errors indicate that the use of a phonological code is not necessary to extract meaning from the printed word.     

Clustering of disfluency in nonstuttering childrens' early utterances

The clustering of disfluency within early utterances in the speech of four nonstuttering children was examined. During the developmental period their mean length of utterance was between 2.25 and 3.0 morphemes. The frequency and characteristics of the clustered disfluencies are described and compared with single disfluent moments. Clusters of two disfluencies were analyzed for interactive effects of positional preference and type. Results were similar to those found in older preschool nonstuttering speakers, demonstrating the normal developmental nature of clustering in early sentences. Implications for using this temporal measure to differentially diagnose normal from abnormal disfluency are discussed.