Neonatal imitation of tongue protrusion and mouth opening: Methodological aspects and evidence of early individual differences

The present work examines imitation of mouth opening and tongue protrusion in 32 full-term infants at three different occasions: When the infants are two to three days, three weeks, and three months old. The analysis focuses (1) on individual differences in imitative behaviour and (2) on how to operationalize the infants' responses. The overall group analysis revealed that imitation of tongue protrusion was statistically significant for both two- to three-day-old and three-week-old infants but not when the children had become three months old. No statistically significant effect was observed for imitation of mouth opening. Two different imitation indexes were constructed in order to assess individual differences in early imitative behaviour. Results show that short-term stability in imitative tendencies exists between the first and second observation. The results further reveal that methodological factors must be seriously considered when studying neonatal imitation: the overall imitation found for tongue protrusion is demonstrated to be dependent on how the infants' responses are coded.     

Practice effects on speech production planning: evidence from slips of the tongue in spontaneous vs. preplanned speech in Japanese

The present study addresses the question of how practice in expressing the content to be conveyed in a specific situation influences speech production planning processes. A comparison of slips of the tongue in Japanese collected from spontaneous everyday conversation and those collected from largely preplanned conversation in live-broadcast TV programs reveals that, although there are those aspects of speech production planning that are unaffected by practice, there are various practice effects, most of which can be explained in terms of automatization of the processing of content, resulting in shifts in the loci of errors.     

听障大学生汉语阅读中的绕口令效应：口语经验和阅读能力的影响

听障者阅读时是否激活语音信息是听障者阅读研究领域的热点问题之一。本研究使用眼动技术,采用绕口令材料,考察口语经验和阅读能力对听障大学生汉语阅读中语音激活的影响。结果发现,口语经验较多且阅读能力较高(OHRH)的听障大学生的绕口令效应大于口语经验较少但阅读能力较高(OLRH)的听障大学生,OLRH组的绕口令效应大于口语经验较少且阅读能力较低(OLRL)的听障大学生。局部指标分析发现OHRH和OLRH组在早期和晚期指标上均存在绕口令效应,OLRL组只在晚期指标上才出现绕口令效应。结果表明,口语经验和阅读能力影响听障大学生汉语阅读中的语音激活。     

论《金人铭》的产生时代

《金人铭》产生的时代应该是战国末年至汉代初年,这有以下几个方面的证据:1.《金人铭》的内容与黄老学派关系密切,应该是黄老思想流行后的产物,不可能产生于孔子时代。2.《金人铭》的内容性质与战国以前的青铜器铭文的特征不符。3.《金人铭》把孔子入周观书和孔子入太庙二事混合在一起,露出了破绽。4.《金人铭》称“三缄其口”,而“缄”字在可靠的先秦文献中无“闭口”义。“缄”的本义为捆箱箧的绳索,“缄”有“闭口”义是西汉才有的现象。     

英语阅读中单词注释对词汇学习的影响研究

本研究以中学生为被试,探讨了英语阅读过程中不同形式的单词注释对词汇学习的影响。结果发现：中文注释与英文注释对词汇获得的影响视不同学习水平与学习进程而异;阅读前、阅读中或阅读后呈现注释对词汇获得也具有不同的作用机制。     

Children’s notions of the malleability of their academic competencies

This study set out to examine children’s notions of the malleability of their academic competencies and the relations of these notions to the child’s grade-level and gender and the parent’s educational level. In interviews of a total of 103 boys and girls of the third and the sixth grade, children of academically and vocationally educated parents were asked to rate their potential for improving their competencies in mathematics and Finnish. The children were asked to use intrapersonal and normative criteria in their ratings. The ratings were found to form distinct domains of the notions of malleability, as they did not correlate with each other. The children’s ratings of their current competencies, i.e. their academic self-concepts, turned out to be related to their normative ratings of the malleability of their competencies. The findings further suggested that the children’s notions of the malleability of their academic competencies became more pessimistic in the course of their school years.

Working with Italian patients in Munich – The case of Penelope1

Abstract

With their book Psychoanalytic perspectives on migration and exile (1989), L. Grinberg and R. Grinberg (1984) opened up a new clinical field, which had been neglected for a long time in the psychoanalytic community, although Freud’s multilinguistic competence had greatly contributed to the creation of psychoanalysis. With their book The Babel of the unconscious, Jacqueline Amati Mehler, Simona Argentieri, and Jorge Canestri were able to confirm the hypothesis that it is possible to help multilingual patients to integrate the different aspects of their self which are bound to their mother tongue and to their foreign tongue(s), and thus to allow them to develop a new identity. The author, who has been a psychoanalyst in Munich since 1999, works every day with his Italian patients in this new clinical field, that is in their common mother tongue and at the two levels of their old Italian and their new German identity. Through the detailed presentation of a clinical case, he furthermore shows how, on the one hand, the migration creates a new space in which therapy actually becomes possible, and on the other hand, not only therapy, but also the kind of relationship developed by the patients to their “new country” plays a decisive role in the whole process. Such a frame proved to be particularly good for the emergence, revisitation, and reelaboration of the transgenerational trauma around which the case of Penelope is centered. The author further assumes that the theme of “migration and identity” is becoming more and more important in our globalized world, with clinical consequences whose elaboration requires a specific cultural and technical preparation.     

The Relationship Between Balance Confidence and Cognitive Motor Interference in Individuals With Multiple Sclerosis

The authors examined and compared the development of oral and manual force control in preschool-aged children. In all, 50 typically developing children (aged 3-5 years) performed maximal strength tasks and submaximal visually guided tasks using tongue elevation, power, and precision grips. Dependent measures included strength, rate of force rise, initial force overshoot, force variability, and rate of force release. The authors performed age- and performance-related analyses. Results revealed similar changes for tongue, fingers, and hands across age- and performance-related measures for strength, initial force overshoot, and rate of force release. There were no significant changes in rate of force rise with increasing age. Force variability measures showed effector-specific changes with decreases across age- and performance-related measures for the hands and fingers but not for the tongue. Changes common across effector systems likely reflect biological development coupled with cognitive-strategic development. Effector-specific changes in force variability likely reflect experience gained through functional tasks influencing biological and cognitive-strategic development. Lack of change in force variability of the tongue suggests that fine control of the tongue is activity specific; thus, nonfunctional tasks are not likely to be sensitive to experience-related biological development.     

Perversion,eating disorders and sex roles

Abstract

Russell J.M. Perversion, Eating Disorders and Sex Roles. Int Forum Psychoanal 1992;1:98-103. Stockholm. ISSN 0803-706X

Perversion is presented as a fascination with something we also regard as repugnant. A perversion like exhibitionism is a metaphor illuminating the stereotypically masculine. An eating disorder such as bulimia provides a metaphor illuminating the stereotypically feminine. It also fits the account given of perversion. Stereotypes for masculine and feminine, though cultivated in social expectations, are rooted in the infant fantasy world. One is fascinated with the fate of what one has ejected (projected). This contributes to a groundwork for masculinity and exhibitionism. One is fascinated and ambivalent about what one takes in (introjects) which contributes to a groundwork for femininity and bulimia. Genitalia are discovered subsequently, as appropriate representations of these options. Our capacity to be socialized into gender roles, and our discovery of our genitalia en route to this socialization, are foreshadowed by these deeper and earlier styles.     

Phonology: A Review and Proposals from a Connectionist Perspective

A parallel distributed processing (PDP) model of phonological processing is developed, including components to support repetition, auditory processing, comprehension, and language production. From the performance of the PDP reading model of Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, and Patterson (1996), it is inferred that the acoustic-articulatory motor pattern associator that supports repetition provides the basis for phonological sequence knowledge. From the observation that many patients make phonemic paraphasic errors in language production, as in repetition, it is argued that there must be a direct link between distributed concept representations (lexical semantic knowledge) and this network representation of sequence knowledge. In this way, both lexical semantic and phonotactic constraints are brought to bear on language production. The literature on phonological function in normal subjects (slip-of-the-tongue corpora) and in patients with aphasia is critically reviewed from this perspective. The relationship between acoustic and articulatory motor representations in the process of phonetic perception is considered. Repetition and reproduction conduction aphasia are reviewed in detail and extended consideration is given to the representation of auditory verbal short-term memory in the model. Finally, the PDP model is reconciled with information processing models of phonological processing, including that of Lichtheim, and with current knowledge of the anatomic localization of phonological processing. Although no simulations of the model were run, a number of simulation studies are proposed.