英语专业语音教学与测试认知

高校英语专业语音课程是培养英语专业学生语音基本技能的主要课程。重视语音课程的开设,选择经过系统语音训练的教师与合适的教材不仅有利于学习者语音技能的提高,也有助于培养学生对语音的敏感性和对语言的情感体会。开展阶段性语音测试是对学生语音发展情况以及语音教学的有效评价与反馈。     

Memory bias in health anxiety is related to the emotional valence of health-related words

OBJECTIVES: A model based on the associative strength of object evaluations is tested to explain why those who score higher on health anxiety have a better memory for health-related words. METHOD: Sixty participants observed health and nonhealth words. A recognition memory task followed a free recall task and finally subjects provided evaluations (emotionality, imageability, and frequency) for all the words. Hit rates for health words, d', c, and psychological response times (PRTs) for evaluations were examined using multi-level modelling (MLM) and regression. RESULTS: Health words had a higher hit rate, which was greater for those with higher levels of health anxiety. The higher hit rate for health words is partly mediated by the extent to which health words are evaluated as emotionally unpleasant, and this was stronger for (moderated by) those with higher levels of health anxiety. Consistent with the associative strength model, those with higher levels of health anxiety demonstrated faster PRTs when making emotional evaluations of health words compared to nonhealth words, while those lower in health anxiety were slower to evaluate health words. CONCLUSIONS: Emotional evaluations speed the recognition of health words for high health anxious individuals. These findings are discussed with respect to the wider literature on cognitive processes in health anxiety, automatic processing, implicit attitudes, and emotions in decision making.     

Recall and recognition memory in amnesia: patients with hippocampal, medial temporal, temporal lobe or frontal pathology

The relationship between recall and recognition memory impairments was examined in memory-disordered patients with either hippocampal, medial temporal, more widespread temporal lobe or frontal pathology. The Hirst [Hirst, W., Johnson, M. K., Phelps, E. A., & Volpe, B. T. (1988). More on recognition and recall in amnesics. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 14, 758-762] technique for titrating exposure times was used to match recognition memory performance as closely as possible before comparing recall memory scores. Data were available from two different control groups given differing exposure times. Each of the patient groups showed poorer recall memory performance than recognition scores, proportionate to the difference seen in healthy participants. When patients' scores were converted to Z-scores, there was no significant difference between mean Z-recall and Z-recognition scores. When plotted on a scatterplot, the majority of the data-points indicating disproportionately low recall memory scores came from healthy controls or patients with pathology extending into the lateral temporal lobes, rather than from patients with pathology confined to the medial temporal lobes. Patients with atrophy extending into the parahippocampal gyrus (H+) performed worse than patients with atrophy confined to the hippocampi (H-); but, when H- patients were given a shorter exposure time (5s) and compared with H+ at a longer exposure (10s), their performance was virtually identical and did not indicate any disproportionate recall memory impairment in the H- group. Parahippocampal volumes on MRI correlated significantly with both recall and recognition memory. The possibility that findings were confounded by inter-stimulus artefacts was examined and rejected. These findings argue against the view that hippocampal amnesia or memory disorders in general are typically characterised by a disproportionate impairment in recall memory. Disproportionate recall memory impairment has been observed in a number of published cases, and the reason for the varying pattern obtained across hippocampal patients requires further examination.     

The recognition potential reflects an intermediate level of visual representation

A well-known event-related potential (ERP) component—the recognition potential (RP) is a response to recognizable stimuli, peaking at around 200–250 ms. The aim of the present study is to put to the test the contrasting perceptual and semantic accounts of the RP, with manipulation of word meaning and presentation format of stimuli. The hypothesis was that RP latencies would be observed to increase with the difficulty of identification in presentation formats in accord with both accounts and the present study would replicate the semantic effect independently of the perceptual manipulations. The stimuli were Chinese characters and presented to native speakers. The data yielded a negative component (RP) at around 250 ms for all formats of real characters and pseudocharacters at parietooccipital electrodes. The RP for real characters was larger in normal formats than in mirror formats and the RP for pseudocharacters was greater in normal-upright format than other formats. However, a significant RP latency difference was observed between real characters and pseudocharacters. It seems that our data could not be taken as evidence for semantic processing account. We suggest that the RP is a reflection of intermediate visual representation which integrates information from various pathways and then achieve word form analysis. When word form analysis becomes difficult, the categorical feature of word form contributes to word recognition.     

Prevalence and Record of Alcoholism Among Emergency Department Patients

OBJECTIVES:

The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of alcoholism among inpatients, to identify social and demographic factors associated with this prevalence and to determine its rate of recognition by the medical team.

METHODS:

The study population consisted of all patients admitted to the emergency room at Hospital São Lucas, Porto Alegre, Brazil, between July and September of 2005. The data were collected in two steps: an interview with the patient and a review of the medical records to investigate the cases of alcoholism recorded by the medical team. The questionnaire consisted of questions concerning social and demographic data, smoking habits and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test.

RESULTS:

We interviewed 248 patients. Twenty-eight (11.3%) were identified as alcoholics. Compared to the patients with a negative Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test value (less than 8), those with a positive Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test were more likely to be male, illiterate and smokers. The medical records of 217 (87.5%) patients were reviewed. Only 5 (20.0%) of the 25 patients with a positive Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test whose medical records were reviewed were identified as alcoholics by the medical team. The diagnosis made by the medical team, compared to Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, shows only a 20% sensitivity, 93% specificity and positive and negative predictive values of 29% and 90%, respectively.

CONCLUSION:

Alcoholism has been underrecognized in patients who are hospitalized, and, as such, this opportunity for possible early intervention is often lost. Key social and demographic factors could provide physicians with risk factors and, when used together with a standardized diagnostic instrument, could significantly improve the rate of identification of alcoholic patients.     

Automatic recognition of anatomic features on cephalograms of preadolescent children

Objective:To develop a system that automatically recognizes the dentoskeletal traits on cephalograms recorded for preadolescent children and to examine performance reliability.Materials and Methods:We obtained 859 lateral cephalograms and divided them into group P (400 films taken from orthodontic patients having permanent dentition) and group M (459 films taken from those having mixed dentition). Fifty-nine cephalograms in group M were reserved for system test, and the remaining cephalograms in groups M and P were used for system development. Using a previously reported method (Yagi and Shibata, 2003), systems S_M and S_P+M were developed with the knowledge generated from groups M and P+M (combined sample of groups M and P), respectively. The system S_P that had been developed for cephalograms of permanent dentition in our previous report was also employed for comparison. To evaluate performance reliability, the systems examined the 59 reserved cephalograms. The areas of each system-identified anatomic structure surrounding the anatomic landmarks and the positions of each system-identified landmark were compared with the norms in the form of confidence ellipses. The success rates were calculated for S_P, S_M, and S_P+M.Results:The systems successfully identified all of the specified anatomic structures in all of the images. The systems S_P, S_M, and S_P+M determined the landmark positions with a mean success rate of 69% (range, 38–98%), 82% (range, 50–100%), and 82% (range, 58–100%), respectively.Conclusions:Systems S_M and S_P+M were confirmed to be accurate and reliable in recognizing the anatomic features on the cephalograms of preadolescent children.     

Functional relevant loss of long association fibre tracts integrity in early Alzheimer's disease

The aim of our study was to quantify the structural integrity of the long association fibre tracts in early Alzheimer's disease (AD) and to correlate the findings with the cognitive performance of the patients. We conducted region-of-interest-based analyses of color-coded diffusion-tensor imaging in 12 patients with early AD (age 69.8+/-8.0 years; MMSE 25.3+/-1.8) and 16 age- and education-matched healthy controls. Early AD patients showed significantly decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) of the cingulate bundles and the inferior fronto-occipital fascicles bilaterally, whereas FA values of the superior longitudinal fascicles (second division) did not differ significantly between patients and controls. Neuropsychological performance of patients in the verbal episodic memory test domain correlated significantly with disturbances of left cingulate fibre tract integrity. Reduced left cingulate bundle integrity was most strongly correlated with impaired performance in a verbal recognition task (Spearman's rho=0.81, P=0.001). Moreover, Boston naming test performance also correlated with the left cingulate bundle integrity (Spearman's rho=0.71, P=0.009). These findings suggest substantial disturbances of the structural connectivity within long association fibre tracts, especially the cingulate bundles and the inferior fronto-occipital fascicles, in early AD and highlight the important role of the cingulate bundles in verbal recognition.     

Superposition of Episodic Memories: Overdistribution and Quantum Models

Memory exhibits episodic superposition, an analog of the quantum superposition of physical states: Before a cue for a presented or unpresented item is administered on a memory test, the item has the simultaneous potential to occupy all members of a mutually exclusive set of episodic states, though it occupies only one of those states after the cue is administered. This phenomenon can be modeled with a nonadditive probability model called overdistribution (OD), which implements fuzzy‐trace theory's distinction between verbatim and gist representations. We show that it can also be modeled based on quantum probability theory. A quantum episodic memory (QEM) model is developed, which is derived from quantum probability theory but also implements the process conceptions of global matching memory models. OD and QEM have different strengths, and the current challenge is to identify contrasting empirical predictions that can be used to pit them against each other.     

Familieterapi med familiemedlemmer fordelt på 3 generasjoner

Background: Patients with schizophrenia suffer from wide range of deficits in neurocognitive functions of the brain, including visuospatial working memory. Aims: This study aims at evaluating the effect of short-term smoking abstinence on different components of visuospatial working memory in smoker patients with schizophrenia as well as possible reversal effect of a nicotine patch. Methods: In this trial, 45 male smoker patients with schizophrenia (Razi Hospital, Tabriz, Iran, 2010) were randomly divided into three groups. One group experienced a short time (overnight) smoking abstinence; one group used a single dose of nicotine patch (21 mg) after an overnight smoking abstinence and one group with no intervention or restrain on smoking was considered as control. The function of visuospatial working memory was tested by the brief visuospatial memory test-revised (BVMT-R) at the baseline and after the intervention. Results: The three groups were matched regarding age, educational level and the initial elements of cognitive performance. Between-the-group analysis showed that patients with an overnight smoking abstinence had a significant decrease in percent retained score and an increase in recognition biases compared to patients using nicotine patch and controls. No significant changes were observed in patints using nicotine patch or controls. Conclusions: Smoking abstinence results in visuospatial disabilities in male smoker patients with schizophrenia, including delayed recall and recognition biases.