Biases in attention and memory for body shape images in eating disorders.

PURPOSE: To investigate attentional and memorial biases towards body shape pictures among female patients with clinical eating disorders and healthy female controls. METHODS: A visual dot-probe task was used to assess attention towards pictures reflecting either a thin, normal, or obese female body shape. Pictures were presented in pairs; each pair depicted two different body shapes and were presented twice. Participant responses were compared across time and population. RESULTS: Overall, the eating disorder patients responded more slowly than controls, F(1,63) = 20.32, p < .001. Both groups showed an attentional bias towards the larger of two body shapes, F(1,63) = 4.30, p = .04, and responded more quickly the second time they viewed the picture pairs, F(1,63) = 33.80, p < .001. Upon second viewing of picture pairs, the eating disorder patients had a larger decrease in reaction time (86 ms) than the control sample (33 ms) only when both pictures included extreme body shapes (thin and obese); the decrease in reaction time when one of the pictures included a normal body shape was the same across groups upon second viewing (eating disorder: 37 ms; control: 32 ms), F(1,63) = 9.32, p = .003. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that individuals with eating disorders may be biased towards recall of dichotomous and/or extreme body shape images. While it remains unclear whether attentional and/or memorial bias is a risk, maintenance, or causal factor in eating disorders, future studies should employ longitudinal, prospective research designs to address these questions. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level II, comparative study.

Do reading and spelling share a lexicon?

In the reading and spelling literature, an ongoing debate concerns whether reading and spelling share a single orthographic lexicon or rely upon independent lexica. Available evidence tends to support a single lexicon account over an independent lexica account, but evidence is mixed and open to alternative explanation. In the current work, we propose another, largely ignored account--separate-but-shared lexica--according to which reading and spelling have separate orthographic lexica, but information can be shared between them. We report three experiments designed to competitively evaluate these three theoretical accounts. In each experiment, participants learned new words via reading training and/or spelling training. The key manipulation concerned the amount of reading versus spelling practice a given item received. Following training, we assessed both response time and accuracy on final outcome measures of reading and spelling. According to the independent lexica account, final performance in one modality will not be influenced by the level of practice in the other modality. According to the single lexicon account, final performance will depend on the overall amount of practice regardless of modality. According to the separate-but-shared account, final performance will be influenced by the level of practice in both modalities but will benefit more from same-modality practice. Results support the separate-but-shared account, indicating that reading and spelling rely upon separate lexica, but information can be shared between them.

The production effect: costs and benefits in free recall.

The production effect, the memorial benefit for information read aloud versus silently, has been touted as a simple memory improvement tool. The current experiments were designed to evaluate the relative costs and benefits of production using a free recall paradigm. Results extend beyond prior work showing a production effect only when production is manipulated within subject, not between, using a free recall paradigm. Furthermore, the results also indicate that the production effect is primarily driven by decreased memory for items read silently, not increased memory for items read aloud.

Why do we misspell the middle of words? Orthographic texture and the serial position effect.

In the current set of studies, a new hypothesis regarding the cause of the commonly observed U-shaped serial position effect (SPE) in spelling is introduced and tested. Instead of greater competition during output or weaker positional representation for word-medial letters, commonly accepted explanations for the cause of the SPE, the orthographic texture hypothesis suggests that variations in the activation strength of individual letters are responsible for the variations typically observed in spelling accuracy as a function of letter position. Sound-letter convergence, a measure of orthographic texture referring to how often a single letter appears in a sound's spelling, may be responsible for higher accuracy rates at word-flanking letter positions. Indeed, when sound-letter convergence was manipulated, spelling accuracy was as high as or higher in word-medial letter positions than in word-initial or -final letter positions indicating that letter position alone cannot account for the pervasive U-shaped serial position effect.

Self-harm and suicide attempts among high-risk, urban youth in the U.S.: shared and unique risk and protective factors.

The extent to which self-harm and suicidal behavior overlap in community samples of vulnerable youth is not well known. Secondary analyses were conducted of the "linkages study" (N = 4,131), a cross-sectional survey of students enrolled in grades 7, 9, 11/12 in a high-risk community in the U.S. in 2004. Analyses were conducted to determine the risk and protective factors (i.e., academic grades, binge drinking, illicit drug use, weapon carrying, child maltreatment, social support, depression, impulsivity, self-efficacy, parental support, and parental monitoring) associated with both self-harm and suicide attempt. Findings show that 7.5% of participants reported both self-harm and suicide attempt, 2.2% of participants reported suicide attempt only, and 12.4% of participants reported self-harm only. Shared risk factors for co-occurring self-harm and suicide attempt include depression, binge drinking, weapon carrying, child maltreatment, and impulsivity. There were also important differences by sex, grade level, and race/ethnicity that should be considered for future research. The findings show that there is significant overlap in the modifiable risk factors associated with self-harm and suicide attempt that can be targeted for future research and prevention strategies.

Changes in loneliness during middle childhood predict risk for adolescent suicidality indirectly through mental health problems.

We investigated whether changes in loneliness during middle childhood as well as from middle childhood into adolescence were associated with adolescent self-harm behaviors and suicidal thoughts using a community sample of 889 participants. Multivariate logistic regressions indicate that the relationship between changes in loneliness and suicidality is no longer statistically significant once depression and externalizing behavior problems are included as controls. Follow-up analyses indicate that increases in loneliness indirectly affect self-harm behaviors and suicidal thoughts through depression and externalizing behavior problems. These findings are consistent with other studies on peer relationships and adolescent suicidality, suggesting that experiences with peers indirectly affect risk for suicidality through mental health problems. These findings highlight the importance of considering how experiences in middle childhood peer relationships affect risk for suicide in consecutive developmental periods, particularly adolescence.

All letters are not equal: subgraphemic texture in orthographic working memory.

A central issue in the study of reading and spelling has been to understand how the consistency or frequency of letter-sound relationships affects written language processing. We present, for the first time, evidence that the sound-spelling frequency of subgraphemic elements of words (letters within digraphs) contributes to the accuracy with which these letters are produced in spelling. We report findings from 2 studies that demonstrate that letters within digraphs display differential susceptibility to error under conditions of disruption to orthographic working memory (O-WM). In the 1st, O-WM was disrupted as a result of neurological damage; in the 2nd, O-WM disruption was produced in neurologically intact, skilled spellers under dual task conditions with a shadowing task carried out during spelling. In both studies, segments with low versus high levels of sound-letter convergence, a measure of the frequency of sublexical mappings, were more vulnerable to disruption even when factors such as letter position, consonant-vowel context, and phoneme-to-grapheme mapping probability of the digraphs were controlled. These results contribute to our understanding of the internal texture of orthographic representations, providing evidence that individual letters differ in their activation strength and, as a result, in their susceptibility to error.

The purpose of lexical/sublexical interaction during spelling: further evidence from dysgraphia and articulatory suppression.

We investigated how the lexical and sublexical processes interact in spelling using an articulatory suppression task to disrupt the sublexical process in a dysgraphic patient (JDO). Using a similar task, Folk et al. (2002) found evidence that the sublexical process interacts with the lexical process by strengthening a target word's graphemes. We replicated the findings of Folk et al. in a patient with a more severe deficit to the lexical process. We compared the error patterns produced under normal spelling conditions versus spelling during articulatory suppression and found an increase in lexical substitution errors ("thaw"-->T-H-O-U-G-H) under articulatory suppression. These findings indicate that by strengthening a target word's graphemes, the sublexical process helps to create an advantage for a target word over form-related word neighbours that compete with it for output.