Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to W E Cooper.
Five adult patients with focal brain damage in different areas of the frontal lobes and five matched controls were administered a 20 Questions test. Other tests of planning, problem-solving, and decision-making were also administered to frontal lobe patients. The results indicate that damage to the frontal lobe impairs the ability to impose and utilize hierarchical organization in mental representation.
It may be inferred from reaction time studies that the location of emphasis on nouns and noun phrases facilitates their comprehension (understanding and memory). However, we know of no previous demonstration of improved passage comprehension in normal listeners associated with emphasis placement. The present experiment examined effects of emphasis on comprehension of 12 passages that were read aloud and tape recorded. Emphasis placement was varied by splicing sentences containing emphasized or nonemphasized noun phrases into passages without altering the wording of the passages. These passages, contrasting in emphasis, were presented to 60 listeners. Comprehension was measured with multiple-choice, recognition questions that required subjects to link ideas across sentences. Comprehension was accurate significantly more often when correct response alternatives had been emphasized (71%), than when incorrect alternatives had been emphasized (56%), or no emphasis occurred in passages (57%). Findings reflect enhanced comprehension of emphasized items in terms of their meaning links to other concepts presented in passages. Results support the pragmatic assumption that the role of emphasis is to delineate constituents important in discourse meaning.
The U.S. Bureau of Mines and the Mine Safety and Health Administration have evaluated, for accuracy and reliability, a commercially available Instant Working Level Meter (IWLM) used by the mining industry to measure short-lived 222Rn-progeny concentrations. Six evaluation parameters were determined experimentally. These included two alpha and two beta detector efficiencies for the short-lived 222Rn progeny and two internal conversion factors. The experimental procedure detailing the evaluation technique is described in the paper. The measuring accuracy of 13 instruments is as follows: average inherent uncertainty (at least 68% confidence interval) is +/- 18%; for counting statistics and rounding at 0.10 WL (2.1 microJ m-3), coefficients of variation range from +/- 15% at low gamma flux backgrounds to +/- 50% at gamma flux backgrounds of 0.39 microC kg-1 h-1 (1.5 mR h-1). All parameters were derived theoretically and measured experimentally. All tests were conducted at a sample flow rate of 2.5 L min-1. A sample air flow rate of 7.5 L min-1 can lower the counting statistics to more acceptable levels at 0.1 WL (2.1 microJ m-3).
The reproductive condition, steroid hormone concentrations in the plasma, and behavior of bright and plain female Holbrookia propinqua were examined. Bright females performed significantly more aggressive rejection of courtship than plain females. Bright females were significantly more likely than plain females to have follicles larger than 5.0 mm or oviductal eggs; females with large follicles or oviductal eggs had significantly higher concentrations of progesterone and androgen than those with small follicles and lacking oviductal eggs. Plasma progesterone, androgen, and estradiol levels in the females studied behaviorally were significantly higher for the bright females than for the plain ones. Females undergoing rapid brightening were significantly more likely to be sexually receptive and copulate than were either plain or fully brightened females. The role of sex steroid hormones in coloration and behavior and the adaptive value of chromatic signalling by females are discussed.
A 39-year-old right-handed woman suffered an aneurysmal hemorrhage damaging the anterior four-fifths of the corpus callosum as shown on MRI. Computer-aided acoustical analyses of fundamental frequency (Fo) contours and durational patterns were performed on emotive and nonemotive utterances at 4 weeks, 4 months, and 1 year postsurgery. The patient read sentences in each of five tones (happy, sad, angry, neutral, questioning) or with emphasis on certain words. She showed little Fo distinction with intended mood at 4 weeks, but her performance improved over time. This improvement in speech production was accompanied by an improvement in perceptual judgments of her intended tone by six normal listeners. Fo patterns characteristic of emphatic stress and question forms were found at all test periods, but again improved with time. Durationally, the patient showed appropriate emotive and nonemotive distinctions on most sentences. These results provide acoustic evidence that interhemispheric connections via the corpus callosum are important to proper Fo programming, especially emotive distinctions. The results suggest that the right hemisphere contributes to Fo programming but, following callosal damage, such programming can later be performed by the left hemisphere.
Two tests were conducted to examine listeners' detection of missing words in spoken paragraph contexts. Detection was assessed by presenting listeners with normal paragraphs and with paragraphs each containing a single occurrence of a missed word, an inappropriate pause, or a mispronounced word. In the first test, listeners were simply asked whether they detected any abnormalities and to describe them. The results indicated that listeners reported missed words in only 34 to 49% of the paragraphs containing such words. In the second test, a separate group of listeners was given more specific instructions beforehand, indicating the three possible types of abnormality. In this task, the correct detection of missed words rose to 96%. Taken together, the results indicate that listeners do not readily detect occasional missing words under ordinary circumstances but are capable of such detection in a task specifically focused on message abnormalities.
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A study was conducted to examine some of the factors that influence peoples' generation of likely consequences associated with a major hypothetical life event, involving the loss of the function of one of one's own limbs. The design included four limbs involving two inclusion relations, thumb-hand and foot-leg, and two viewpoints involving consequences for one-self or for others. The results indicated that subjects generate more numerous consequences for primary than for secondary consequences, more for short-term consequences than for medium- or long-term ones, more for an inclusive limb than for an included limb (e.g., hand vs thumb), and more pertaining to one-self than to others. Individual differences in the generation of consequences were not associated with prior experience involving functional loss of the limbs tested or with general differences in academic performance. The results permit inference about some of the mental processes that accompany consequence generation.
Sexual receptivity in the female scincid lizard Eumeces laticeps occurs naturally only during the spring breeding season, which is also when maximal follicular development occurs. The presumption that high estrogen levels are coincidentally present and the need for a reliable method of inducing sexual receptivity for behavioral studies prompted tests of the hypothesis that estrogen induces sexual behavior. A series of experiments established that estradiol-17 beta induces sexual behavior. A series of experiments established that estradiol-17 beta induces sexual receptivity within 4 days when injected every other day at 2.0 micrograms in 20 microliters peanut oil in intact or ovariectomized females. In behavioral tests conducted during August, all control females (intact or ovariectomized injected with vehicle only) rejected courtship whereas all females receiving estrogen copulated. Estrogen injections also induced a statistically significant change from rejection to receptivity within individuals. Initial attempts to implant estradiol-17 beta in Silastic tubes killed all females so treated.
Rarely, aphasics may develop what appears to be a foreign accent, as noted by Monrad-Kröhn whose Norwegian patient sounded German. We describe a right-handed native American who developed a foreign accent following damage to the left premotor region and white matter anterior to the head of the left caudate nucleus. Her aphasia was of the transcortical motor type. Both she and her parents were born in the USA, she never traveled outside the country and never learned a foreign language. Phonetic analysis of her voice taped prior to the stroke revealed normal speech with a midwestern accent. In contrast, analyses of her current spontaneous speech, repetition, and reading reveal shifts in vowels, e.g., /I/----/i/, /ae/----/a/; increased diphthonigization; and tense speech posture. These features, which were especially frequent in spontaneous speech, probably explain her "accent." Acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency contours of sentences read in different emotional tones revealed a restricted range and variability of the peaks and valleys.
This study was conducted to determine if fundamental voice frequency (F0) decreases throughout the course of spontaneously produced sentences, and if so, to compare the declination pattern associated with spontaneously produced sentences to the declination pattern which is reliably found when speakers read isolated sentences aloud. A picture description task was used to elicit original sentences of the speakers' own formulation while still providing considerable experimental control over the semantic content and syntactic structure of the sentences. Five speakers each formulated and produced five sentences in the picture description task and read aloud five matched sentences. F0 declination reliably occurred in one- and two-clause sentences in spontaneous speech and oral reading. There were no differences between the declination slopes in the two speech modes. We concluded that the domain of F0 declination is not strictly limited to read speech. Comparison of these findings with other recent reports suggests that declination is characteristic of sentences spoken in isolation but not of lengthy passages, independent of whether the speaker is reading aloud or speaking spontaneously.
An acoustical study of speech production was conducted to determine the manner in which the location of linguistic focus influences intonational attributes of duration and fundamental voice frequency (F0) in matched statements and questions. Speakers orally read sentences that were preceded by aurally presented stimuli designed to elicit either no focus or focus on the first or last noun phrase of the target sentences. Computer-aided acoustical analysis of word durations showed a localized, large magnitude increase in the duration of the focused word for both statements and questions. Analysis of F0 revealed a more complex pattern of results, with the shape of the F0 topline dependent on sentence type and focus location. For sentences with neutral or sentence-final focus, the difference in the F0 topline between questions and statements was evident only on the last key word, where the F0 peak of questions was considerably higher than that of statements. For sentences with focus on the first key word, there was no difference in peak F0 on the focused item itself, but the F0 toplines of questions and statements diverged quite dramatically following the initial word. The statement contour dropped to a low F0 value for the remainder of the sentence, whereas the question remained quite high in F0 for all subsequent words. In addition, the F0 contour on the focused word was rising in questions and falling in statements, regardless of focus location. The results provide a basis for work on the perception of linguistic focus.
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Paralexic speech errors were examined during the oral reading of sentences for 12 right-handed adults, including four Broca's aphasics, four Wernicke's aphasics and four patients with unilateral right-hemisphere lesions. A category system of error types was developed, and 129 errors were analyzed in terms of identifiable linguistic components, operating in isolation as well as interactively. The two aphasic groups produced a variety of errors, whereas the right-hemisphere group produced very few in number and type. Broca's aphasics committed more morphological errors than did Wernicke's aphasics, whereas Wernicke's aphasics committed more graphophonemic-neologistic errors than did Broca's.
A series of experiments was conducted to examine the influence of contrastive stress on intonational patterns of duration and fundamental voice frequency (F0). In a preliminary study, intonational patterns in spontaneous speech were compared with the patterns in oral reading of the transcribed spontaneous material. In both circumstances, a general declination of F0 peaks throughout the course of a sentence was not regularly observed, contrary to earlier findings with oral reading of isolated sentences. Two experiments were then conducted to examine the possibility that the general absence of declination observed here might be due to the influence of sentence focus, following previous results from Swedish showing that declination was not observed consistently in isolated sentences until after the site of focus. In experiment 1, we found no evidence of this restriction on declination in the oral reading of English declaratives. Declination was observed both before and after the focused item in a sentence. Furthermore, our analyses revealed that focus (as manifested by contrastive stress) is generally accompanied by an increase in duration on the focused word and by a sharp drop in F0 following the focused item. In experiment 2, these effects were replicated and extended using longer sentences. In both experiments, the influence of focus was strictly localized to the site of focus in the case of duration, but not F0. The results for both duration and F0 indicate that the influence of focus assignment on these attributes varies systematically as a function of the focus location in the sentence. Finally, the combined elongation effects for focus and utterance-final lengthening were less than would be predicted by an additive model, suggesting the operation of an expandability constraint on segmental lengthening in speech production.
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