Speech patterning of natural discourse of well and depressed mothers and their young children

The speech behavior of 14 depressed and 18 nondepressed mothers during conversations with their 3-year-old children was examined in this study. Given the general motor retardation, reduced energy level, and social withdrawal of depressed individuals, the speech patterns of depressed mothers were predicted to differ from the speech patterns of well mothers. Depressed mothers vocalized less often and responded less quickly to the cessation of their children's speech than healthy mothers. However, in a mildly stressful situation (awaiting a doctor's visit) the depressed mothers, but not the healthy mothers, significantly increased their level of speech productivity. Children of the depressed mothers spoke less than children of healthy women, particularly while sitting and eating lunch with their mothers. The observed difference in the mothers' behaviors was interpreted as an indication that the 2 groups of children are exposed to very different patterns of socialization. The offspring of depressed women are being taught both to keep social interaction to a minimum and to be overreactive to even mild stresses. The differences in the children's behavior may indicate that already these 3-year-old children have learned to keep their interactions with their mother to a minimum. This manner of adaptation may have negative effects on the child's continued social, emotional, and cognitive development.     

Flocking to the crowd: Cultural entrepreneur mobility guided by homophily,market size,or amenities?

Economic activity and innovation clusters in urban areas. Urban economics points to important knowledge and productivity spillovers in cities, in addition to other factors like thicker markets, lower transportation costs, and consumptive amenities. Yet thus far little work has analyzed how these different factors drive migration decisions of arts-related entrepreneurs, especially when they work in online platforms for fundraising. We use data on the largest US crowdfunding platform to identify relocating creators, allowing us to identify which kinds of regions are attracting and retaining more of this sort of talent. We test for the influence of clustering based on homophily, migration to larger markets, and relocation toward particular geographic amenities. Overall we find the strongest evidence for homophily and some distinct tendencies favoring certain regional amenities. Importantly, we both identify general relocation patterns among crowdfunding creatives and break down the attracting features for different types of creators. An examination of (net) migration by different categories of projects, such as musicians or filmmakers, reveals important heterogeneity in the attractors. For example, musicians are drawn stronger music sectors, while writers seek more isolation from other writers. This helps inform the interregional competition for talent and “creative class,” especially among a group of relatively footloose arts- and culture-intensive entrepreneurs.

     

Developmental associations between verbal and visual short-term memory and the acquisition of decoding skill

This study longitudinally investigated the relationships between verbaland visual short-term memory (STM) and the acquisition of decoding from thepre-reading through the early acquisition stages in 63 Hebrew-speakingchildren Test waves occurred in kindergarten, first grade and second grade.IQ, visual and verbal STM and decoding ability were assessed. The dataindicated that while both verbal and visual STM in kindergarten were significantlycorrelated to later decoding skill, pre-reading visual STM was a stronger predictor.The results further showed that pre-reading performance on the WISC-R BlockDesign test predicted later decoding ability, while performance on theWISC-R Vocabulary test did not. Lastly decoding skill in grade 1 was foundto predict only visual in grade 2. These results indicate that visualparameters may make a crucial contribution to the acquisition of decodingskills. The size of pre-reading visual STM capacity appears to play a rolein this process. The relationship between visual STM and decoding may bebidirectional, as learning to decode appears to develop visual STM. It issuggested that either language-related or task-related factors may accountfor these counter-to-mainstream results.     

The Underlying Factors of Word Reading Rate

The discovery of the acceleration phenomenon and the contribution of reading rate as an independent variable to the quality of the reading process brought about a systematic research project that examined the underlying factors of word reading rate. Word reading requires processing information in the visual and auditory modalities and relies on word recognition skills such as phonological and orthographic decoding. Therefore, it is believed that speed of processing of some subset of the above sub-processes affects word-reading rate. By using experimental manipulations relying on both electrophysiological (ERPs) and behavioral measures, the sub-processes that are activated in word reading can be distinguished and shown to differentiate between the early perceptual, the central cognitive, and the motoric stages of activation. Results indicate that word reading rate is related to basic speed of processing in the modalities activated during the reading process. However, the processing level within each modality that contributes to self-paced and fast word reading rate differs according to age and the efficiency of reading skills.     

Reading training by means of disappearing text: effects on reading performance and eye movements

The Reading Acceleration Program (RAP), which uses adaptively increasing text erasure rates to enforce reading rate improvements, has been positively evaluated in various languages, reader and age groups. The current study compared the established incremental increase of text erasure rate with a training using fixed erasure rates in two groups of young, non-impaired German adults. Eye-tracking measures prior and post training examined training-related changes of eye-movement patterns. Equal gains in reading performance in both training groups led to the conclusion that not the adaptive increase but already text erasure at fixed rates provides an economically efficient tool for the enhancement of reading rates. Furthermore, eye-tracking results suggest that text erasure training affects word processing not only at one specific level, but simultaneously at pre-lexical, lexical, and post-lexical stages. Although these outcomes are promising, further research is necessary to determine the optimal individual erasure rates that preserve good comprehension at varying levels of text difficulty and in different orthographies.     

Brain activity of regular and dyslexic readers while reading Hebrew as compared to English sentences

The aim of the present study was to examine differences among regular and dyslexic adult bilingual readers when processing reading and reading related skills in their first (L1 Hebrew) and second (L2 English) languages. Brain activity during reading Hebrew and English unexpected sentence endings was also studied. Behavioral and electrophysiological measures including event-related potentials (ERP) and low resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) methodology were employed. Results indicated discrepancies in the processing profiles of dyslexic and regular bilingual readers in both first and second languages. In general, the amplitudes of the evoked potentials were higher and the latencies longer among dyslexic readers during processing of information in first and second languages (L1 and L2), but were more pronounced in English (L2). LORETA analysis indicated evidence that the source of brain activity measured by current density of brain activation is different when reading Hebrew as compared to English sentences mainly among dyslexics and not among regular readers. The data from the present study supports the dominanat bilingual hypothesis for defining bilinguals. A discrepancy between achievement in performing various L1 and L2 tasks was consistent across groups. Both groups were better in there mother tongue, which was Hebrew as compared to English.