Reflections on the development of speech perception.

The literature on the role of infant–adult comparisons in developmental accounts of speech perception is reviewed, and methodological problems associated with such comparisons are delineated. It is argued that the data that are appropriate for the evaluation of categorical perception in infancy are unavailable. Moreover, the view that language experience operates to eliminate discriminative abilities once present rather than to add abilities once absent is without clear-cut support. The serious confounding of age and method of testing casts doubt on current developmental accounts of speech perception based on comparisons of infant and adult. (French abstract) (87 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparative study of speech perception in young severely retarded children and normally developing infants

The discrimination of minimally paired speech sounds by seven retarded children with a mean age of 3 years, 2 months and a mean IQ of 38.4 was compared with the discrimination performance of eight normally developing 7-month-old infants. Children and infants were tested using the Visually Reinforced Infant Speech Discrimination (VRISD) paradigm in which they were taught to respond with a head turn to a change in a repeating background auditory stimulus. Responses were reinforced by activation of an animated toy. All children proved to be conditionable and both groups evidenced discrimination of the speech contrasts tested. The data suggest that the retarded children have moree difficulty processing a contrast cued by rapid spectral changes (often associated with consonant discrimination) than they do a contrast cued by steady-state spectral information (often associated with the perception of slowly articulated vowels). The normally developing infants did not find rapid spectral cues mor difficult than steady-state cues These results parallel those of Tallal (1976) who found that dynamic cues were specifically difficult for dysphasic children (with normal nonverbal intelligence), but not for linguistically-normal elementary school children.     

Parental perception of emotional expressiveness in children with autism.

Parents' perceptions of their children's emotional expressiveness, and possible bases for these perceptions, were investigated in a study comparing older, nonretarded autistic and normal children and in another study comparing young autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children. Both groups of autistic children were perceived as showing more negative emotion and less positive emotion than comparison children. In the younger sample, parental perceptions correlated with the children's attention and responsiveness to others' displays of emotion in 2 laboratory situations. Findings contradict the view that autism involves the "absence of emotional reaction." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-cultural study of age-related differences in perceptual acuity.

Examined H. Gough and E. Mcgurk's (see pa, vol. 41:14442) cross-cultural test of cognitive functioning based on a 30-item set of geometric forms and illusions. The applicability of the series and its validity in specifying age-related cognitive levels was studied in 193 9-17 yr. Old italian children and 266 italian adults. Average weighted scores of 14.78 and 17.17 were obtained; response to the testing was favorable in both samples. Among the children, performance on the series correlated .31 with age at last birthday, and mean scores increased consistently from age 9-15. Age norms were similar to those reported earlier for american samples. (29 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Laterality differences in perception: A review.

Defines laterality differences (LDs) as differences in accuracy of recall of recognition, favoring information in 1 visual hemifield over that in another. In research analyzing these differences, stimulus and experimental characteristics have been manipulated to better understand processes affecting LD, and a general functional interpretation in terms of a "postexposural trace-scanning" mechanism has been advanced. Certain structural factors handedness, ocular dominance, and cerebral dominance have been related to LD. Implications of this research and of the postulated explanations are discussed. (78 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in reaction to meprobamate: A study in visual perception.

An investigation of the effect of meprobamate upon reactions to Necker Cube, Retinal Rivalry, Archimedes Spiral, and Peripheral Span on 68 college-age males, divided equally between drug and placebo conditions by the doubleblind method. No significant relationship appeared between the Maudsley Personality Inventory Extraversion scale and the test scores, nor between the tests themselves, with exception of cube and rivalry (r = + .35, p     

Cross-cultural comparison as doorkeeper in research on the social and emotional adjustment of children and adolescents.

Cross-cultural comparison serves a crucial function as a final test of paradigms that emerge in intracultural studies of child and adolescent adjustment and maladjustment. Beliefs about child and adolescent adjustment are inextricably linked to cultural values regarding the place of the individual in society. Socialization practices and coping behaviors differ in adaptive significance according to the economic structure of a society and its value system. It is argued that the doorkeeper function of cross-cultural research is performed most effectively when a wide range of cultures are sampled, for which core beliefs are measured directly and not inferred from the general literature on each culture, and multiple sources of information are tapped. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characteristics of speech motor development in children.

Pulsed ultrasound was used to study tongue movements in the speech of 11 children, aged 3 yrs 3 mo to 11 yrs 6 mo. The stimuli were CV syllables that were produced at a normal speech rate with alternate vowels stressed. In Ss over 6 yrs of age, the pattern of tongue dorsum movement was identical to that observed in adults. For all Ss, the maximum velocity of tongue dorsum raising and lowering was correlated with the extent of the gesture. The slope of the relationship differed for stressed and unstressed vowels, although the differences were not consistent prior to age 6 yrs. For all Ss, the correlation between displacement and peak velocity was accompanied by a relatively constant interval from the initiation of the movement to the point of maximum velocity. The similarity in the tongue dorsum kinematics of children and adults is consistent with the idea that speech motor development involves a refinement of basic modes of motor operation rather than any significant change in the control of the speech apparatus. The speech data obtained are characteristic of systems that can be described by 2nd-order differential equations. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-cultural research in the perception of pictorial materials.

Reviews cross-cultural studies of the perception of objects in pictures, the use of depth and familiarity cues, and intercultural differences in picture perception in general. Criticisms of the ambiguities and inadequacies in existing stimulus materials and in instruction and questioning techniques are advanced, along with suggestions for changes. An attempt is made to evaluate existing research in light of the evidence it provides for the importance of direct experience with pictorial materials in the use and comprehension of such materials. (56 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of preschool curricula for disadvantaged children: A Canadian study.

The effects of a Piaget-based preschool curriculum for disadvantaged Canadian children ( N = 35) were compared with the effects of both a traditional program ( N = 18) and a no-treatment condition ( N = 18). Gain scores from pre- to posttest revealed significant differences between the Piagetian group and the no-treatment control condition on measures of verbal IQ (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), mental age, seriation, and conservation. Moreover, the Piagetian group made significantly greater gains than the traditional class on measures of mental age, seriation, and classification. The only significant gain score (classification) difference between the children attending the traditional nursery and those not attending preschool at all favored the latter group. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-cultural psychology's challenges to our ideas of children and development.

Historically, cross-cultural psychology has been expected to contribute to an understanding of children and development by increasing the generality of the experiences to which children are exposed and thus providing a broader base from which to report how experience affects development. A variety of difficulties with this basic enterprise are summarized in terms of the difficulty of isolating independent variables and ambiguities in the interpretation of dependent variables. A major, current contribution of cross-cultural psychology is to the processes by which relations between culturally organized experience and development are investigated. It seems clear that a close interplay between laboratory and observational research in which experiments are used as self-conscious models of potentially important cultural experiences will be needed to enable psychologists to gain the benefits from cross-cultural research which its founders envisioned. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in value priorities: Cross-cultural and multimethod studies.

The authors assess sex differences in the importance of 10 basic values as guiding principles. Findings from 127 samples in 70 countries (N = 77,528) reveal that men attribute consistently more importance than women do to power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, and self-direction values; the reverse is true for benevolence and universalism values and less consistently for security values. The sexes do not differ on tradition and conformity values. Sex differences are small (median d = .15; maximum d = .32 [power]) and typically explain less variance than age and much less than culture. Culture moderates all sex differences and sample type and measurement instrument have minor influences. The authors discuss compatibility of findings with evolutionary psychology and sex role theory and propose an agenda for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Introduction: Cross-cultural studies of development.

This article introduces the special section on cross-cultural studies of development. The articles in this special section are powerful examples of how cross-cultural work can inform developmental theory. Each documents an "experiment in nature," and they are good experiments indeed. They cover topics from sleeping arrangements to language development and represent a process of growing sophistication in cross-cultural work. Rather than relying on unsystematic and unreliable but compelling narratives, these studies use systematic and sophisticated methodologies and theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prevalence of fibromyalgia in children: a clinical study of Mexican children

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of fibromyalgia (FM) in schoolchildren according to the 2 stage classification process proposed by the 1990 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Multicenter Criteria Committee on Fibromyalgia. METHODS: Stage 1: we administered a pain questionnaire to a sample of 548 schoolchildren (264 boys, 284 girls; mean age 11.9 yrs, range 9-15). Stage 2: two rheumatologists examined all children with diffuse pain. Using thumb palpation, they examined 18 fibromyalgia tender points and 3 pairs of controls points followed by dolorimetry. Additionally, a random sample of 79 children with no pain were selected as controls, following the same procedures (thumb palpation and dolorimetry). The Wilcoxon test was used to compare the distribution of tenderness thresholds between FM and non-FM groups. Kappa statistics for multiple raters was used to assess interobserver agreement. RESULTS: Seven children, all girls, fulfilled the ACR diagnostic criteria for FM. Thus, the prevalence of FM in this group of schoolchildren reached only 1.2%. The girls with FM had a mean of 14 tender points, whereas controls (n = 79) had 2.4. Pain thresholds were 3.4 kg in children with FM and 5.1 kg in controls (p = 0.004). CONCLUSION: The prevalence of FM in our study was 5-fold lower than a previous report. This variance may be due to (1) racial and sociocultural differences between populations; and (2) differences in methodological approach. The difficulties of making accurate estimates of FM across different studies are highlighted.     

Emergent themes in the study of emotional development and emotion regulation.

Makes explicit a reconceptualization of the nature of emotion that over the past decade has fostered the study of emotion regulation. In the past, emotions were considered to be feeling states indexed by behavioral expressions: now, emotions are considered to be processes of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting the relation between the organism and the environment on matters of significance to the person. When emotions were conceptualized in the traditional way as feelings, emotion regulation centered on ego-defense mechanisms and display rules. The former was difficult to test; the latter was narrow in scope. By contrast, the notion of emotions as relational processes has shifted interest to the study of person/environment transactions in the elicitations of emotion and to the functions of action tendencies, emotional "expressions," language, and behavioral coping mechanisms. The article also treats the importance of affect in the continuity of self-development by documenting the impressive stability of at least two emotional dispositions: irritability and inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A review of sex differences in peer relationship processes: Potential trade-offs for the emotional and behavioral development of girls and boys.

Theory and research on sex differences in adjustment focus largely on parental, societal, and biological influences. However, it also is important to consider how peers contribute to girls' and boys' development. This article provides a critical review of sex differences in several peer relationship processes, including behavioral and social-cognitive styles, stress and coping, and relationship provisions. The authors present a speculative peer-socialization model based on this review in which the implications of these sex differences for girls' and boys' emotional and behavioral development are considered. Central to this model is the idea that sex-linked relationship processes have costs and benefits for girls' and boys' adjustment. Finally, the authors present recent research testing certain model components and propose approaches for testing understudied aspects of the model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-cultural research in child development: A sample of the state of the art.

The 6 articles in this special section represent the state of the art in cross-cultural research on child development, revealing common strengths as well as recurring lacunae. The articles document some of the diverse environments of child development, explore questions of universality and cultural variation in mothers' and children's behavior, and attempt to delineate causal relationships among culture, parental behavior, and developmental outcomes. A common strength of the research is the collection of quantitative developmental data using familiar methods from Western-based research. However, most of the reports lack systematic information on relevant aspects of the cultural setting, making interpretation of results problematic. Further progress in the field will require integration of methods for the study of the child and the cultural context for development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-cultural differences in children's use of decision rules: A comparison between Japan and Australia.

Tested the hypothesis that children in collectivist and individualist cultures would differ in the decision rules used for the distribution of rewards between a majority and minority in the group. A decision game was developed for classroom administration in primary schools. 149 12-yr-olds in Osaka, Japan, and 162 12-yr-olds in Adelaide, Australia, were assigned randomly to a large group (majority) or to a small group (minority) in the classroom. They were told that only 1 group—large group or small group—could obtain chocolate rewards on each trial. Ss were asked to indicate how many chances (out of 6 trials) each group should have to obtain the rewards in a hypothetical game and in a real-life game. Ss then completed a social attitudes questionnaire assessing attitudes toward group loyalty and personal interests, acceptance of various decision rules for resolving competing interests in a group, and beliefs about people's willingness to be helpful and altruistic. Results show that in the real-life game, in both the majority and minority conditions, Japanese Ss were more likely to adopt an "equal-say" rule, while Australian Ss tended to use decision rules that followed self-interest and favored their own group. Findings support the hypothesis. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-guides and emotionally significant childhood memories: A study of retrieval efficiency and incidental negative emotional content.

Two studies examined the effects of several cue types on ease of retrieval (EOR) and incidental negative emotional content (INEC) of childhood memories. Ss were presented an individually tailored list of cues and verbalized the 1st memory of a childhood experience that came to mind. Both studies included self-guide cues (trait attributes representing accessible, emotionally significant self-evaluative standards), affect cues (positive and negative emotion labels), and yoked-control cues (self-guide cues of other Ss). In Study 1, both EOR and proportion of INEC varied by cue type; negative affect cues led to the most efficient retrieval and most negative content, whereas self-guide cues (especially self-discrepant cues) showed greater EOR and INEC than control cues. Study 2 included 2 additional self-referential cue types (TAT and self-rating checklist) to examine the influences of self-referentiality and affectivity on the dependent measures. Negative affect and self-guide cues were again associated with greater EOR and greater INEC. Both negative emotionality and self-evaluative significance appear to influence retrieval of emotionally significant childhood memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)