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Biomedical subjects

J E McLean

Publications and source records attributed to J E McLean.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1995

Initiation and repair of intentional communication acts by adults with severe to profound cognitive disabilities.

This study assessed the communication initiation and repair behaviors of 28 individuals with severe to profound mental retardation in a variety of experimental conditions. All of these individuals communicated through nonsymbolic gestures. The experimental procedures were devised to simulate the conditions that typically evoke two different types of initiations: comments and requests. Each subject initiation was followed by an experimenter response that indicated a communication breakdown to determine if and how these subjects would attempt to repair such breakdowns. Different indicators of communication breakdown were systematically varied in these scripted interactions, including explicit requests for repair (verbal and gestural) and implicit requests for repair (failure to respond or inappropriate response to the subject's communication act). All subjects initiated at least one communication act, and all but three subjects repaired at least one communication act following a breakdown. Significantly more subjects initiated protoimperative than protodeclarative communication acts, despite equal opportunities for both types of acts. Across all conditions, additions were observed to occur significantly less often than recasts or repetitions. There were no significant differences in the number of subjects repairing communication following the different types of communication breakdown.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

White-black and white-Hispanic differences on fluid and crystallized abilities by age across the 11- to 94-year range.

Standardization data for the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test (KAIT) were used to examine white-black and white-Hispanic differences on the Horn-Cattell crystallized and fluid constructs at several age groups across the broad 11- to 94-year span. Samples included 1,547 white, 241 black, and 140 Hispanic persons. Multivariate analyses with educational attainment covaried yielded only one significant finding: the white-black difference on the Crystallized Famous Faces subtest became smaller with increasing age.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Is the pattern of intellectual growth and decline across the adult life span different for men and women?

Gender comparisons on the WAIS-R were made for 1,480 adults from the standardization sample, ages 20-74 years, to determine whether men and women differ in their age-related patterns of change on tests of fluid and crystallized abilities. Multivariate analyses of covariance and univariate analyses of covariance were conducted, covarying education, to examine the age + gender interactions. These interactions tended to be nonsignificant and trivial for the WAIS-R Verbal and Performance scales and the 11 subtests, which suggests that both men and women maintain their crystallized abilities through old age, but show early, rapid declines in fluid ability. These results were interpreted in terms of the literature on aging and intelligence, gender differences in cognitive abilities, and gender differences in V-P patterns for patients with unilateral brain damage.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Public school teachers in the U.S. evaluate the educational impact of student space experiments launched by expendable vehicles, aboard Skylab, and aboard Space Shuttle.

Space education is a discipline that has evolved at an unprecedented rate over the past 25 years. Although program proceedings, research literature, and historical documentation have captured fragmented pieces of information about student space experiments, the field lacks a valid comprehensive study that measures the educational impact of sounding rockets, Skylab, Ariane, AMSAT, and Space Shuttle. The lack of this information is a problem for space educators worldwide which led to a national study with classroom teachers. Student flown experiments continue to offer a unique experiential approach to teach students thinking and reasoning skills that are imperative in the current international competitive environment in which they live and will work. Understanding the history as well as the current status and educational spin-offs of these experimental programs strengthens the teaching capacity of educators throughout the world to develop problem solving skills and various higher mental processes in the schools. These skills and processes enable students to use their knowledge more effectively and efficiently long after they leave the classroom. This paper focuses on student space experiments as a means of motivating students to meet this educational goal successfully.

Cognition↗
PubMed1991

Communication profiles of two types of gesture using nonverbal persons with severe to profound mental retardation.

A structured communication sampling procedure was used to measure the form and function characteristics of intentional communication acts produced by nonverbal adults with severe mental retardation. Four "contact" subjects (who communicated only with contact gestures) and 4 "distal" subjects (who used distal as well as contact gestures) participated in this study. All subjects produced communication acts that were coded as initiations, and all subjects produced protoimperative-type communication acts. However, contact subjects produced no protodeclarative-type communication acts, whereas all distal subjects produced some protodeclaratives. Distal subjects also produced significantly more repair/recast acts than did contact subjects. Other findings included a tendency for distal subjects to communicate at a higher rate, to initiate more communication acts, and to produce more accompanying wordlike vocalizations than contact subjects. These results are discussed in light of Werner and Kaplan's (1984) concept of distancing as central to symbolization. Implications for future research and for clinical practice are also discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Analysis of WAIS-R factor patterns by sex and race.

Factor analyses of WAIS-R standardization data for samples grouped by sex and race (Black-White) produced congruent factors for the various samples and offered good support for Wechsler's two-scale division of the subtests. The factor structures for males and females produced some interesting differences across the age range that were related to sex-related findings in studies of patients with unilateral brain damage. Additionally, Black males and Black females seemed to use different strategies for solving Wechsler's verbal and nonverbal subtests.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Empirical test of the Inglis and Lawson hypothesis about sex differences in WAIS and WAIS-R brain-damage studies.

This study investigated Inglis and Lawson's (1982) hypothesis that sex differences in research on unilateral brain damage is a function of the way females solve nonverbal problems. They argued that females, to a greater extent than males, use verbal strategies when solving Wechsler's Performance subtests. From this hypothesis, it follows that Verbal and Performance IQs should correlate significantly higher for females than for males. This possibility was explored using standardization data from the WAIS-R for ages 16-74. No sex differences in the correlations were noted, arguing against the Inglis-Lawson hypothesis.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Base rates of WAIS-R subtest scatter as a guide for clinical and neuropsychological assessment.

Data from the WAIS-R standardization sample (N = 1880, ages 16-74) were analyzed to determine normal base rates of subtest scatter and to discover whether the amount of scatter is related significantly to various stratification variables. Two indices of scatter were computed for the Verbal, Performance, and Full Scales: range (highest minus lowest scaled score) and number of subtests that deviated significantly from a person's own mean. ANOVAs conducted with the range statistic showed that scatter on all three WAIS-R IQ scales was related significantly to education level; that Blacks had less scatter than Whites on the Verbal and Full Scale; and that females had less scatter than males on the Verbal scale. Base rate normative tables of subtest scatter were presented for five different levels of Full Scale IQ. Implications of these tables for clinical and neuropsychological assessment were discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Sex, race, residence, region, and education differences on the 11 WAIS-R subtests.

The relationship of test performance on the 11 WAIS-R subtests to five background variables was examined by MANOVAs and univariate ANOVAs on standardization data. For all four broad age groups (16-19, 20-34, 35-54, 55-74), significant differences were found for sex, race, and education main effects. Geographic region produced significant main effects for three of the age groups, but residence yielded significant results only for the oldest group. The pattern of the relationships of subtest scores to each background variable was analyzed, interpreted, and integrated with previous research.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Assessment of dental students' attitudes toward cancer using a paired comparison technique.

The purpose of this paper is to present a description of the development of an instrument to measure attitudes towards cancer. The instrument used a paired comparison technique to assess dental students' attitude toward patients with cancer in relation to other diseases of patients they would encounter in practice. Nine diseases including cancer were paired in 36 combinations. A shift in the ranking of cancer when compared with other serious diseases would indicate a change in attitude. The attitude instrument was administered to 67 students at the beginning and end of a junior oncology course. Analysis of the paired comparison resulted in rankings for the diseases from least to most preferred. The ranking for cancer moved from second to fourth indicating a positive attitude change. The importance of the students' attitude toward encountering patients with cancer and implications for this technique in attitude measurement are discussed.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1978

Verbal information gathering strategies: the child's use of language to acquire language.

Recent investigations suggest that normally developing infants are active participants in a language-transmission partnership with the mature speakers in their environments. In a recent paper, (Snyder, McLean, 1977) we noted that available data suggest several specific language acquisition strategies exhibited by children in these interactions. While the earlier paper focused on a set of posited nonverbal strategies, this sequel focuses on two broad types of early verbal behavior that function as effective strategies for the language-learning child. These posited verbal acquisition strategies are referred to as selective imitation and metalinguistic utterance production. The conflicting theory and data on the role of early verbal imitation are reviewed, and it is concluded that selective imitation is most functional at specific stages of the language acquisition process. A hierarchy of metalinguistic utterance types is suggested, ranging from those reflecting the highest apparent intentionality (that is, interrogative utterances) to those reflecting the least (referred to as evocative utterances). Suggestions for future research are offered and implications for language intervention are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

Deficient acquisition strategies: a proposed conceptual framework for analyzing severe language deficiency.

A conceptual framework was proposed for analyzing aberrant or retarded language development. Recent developments in psycholinguistics have led to a view of language acquisition as an interactive process involving external interactions between child and environment and internal interactions between cognitive holdings and processes. The child's active participation in these interactions is conceptualized as a system of language-acquisition strategies. These consist of both information-gathering strategies and information-processing strategies and are distinguished from the adult speaker's facilitation strategies. We suggest that aberrant or retarded language development may be viewed in terms of specific process deficits in one or more of these strategy systems. In the present article three preverbal information-gathering strategies identified as selective listening, establishment of joint reference, and feedback mechanisms were described. Suggestions for future research and implications for intervention were discussed.

Adult↗