On coding non-contiguous letter combinations.

Starting from the hypothesis that printed word identification initially involves the parallel mapping of visual features onto location-specific letter identities, we analyze the type of information that would be involved in optimally mapping this location-specific orthographic code onto a location-invariant lexical code. We assume that some intermediate level of coding exists between individual letters and whole words, and that this involves the representation of letter combinations. We then investigate the nature of this intermediate level of coding given the constraints of optimality. This intermediate level of coding is expected to compress data while retaining as much information as possible about word identity. Information conveyed by letters is a function of how much they constrain word identity and how visible they are. Optimization of this coding is a combination of minimizing resources (using the most compact representations) and maximizing information. We show that in a large proportion of cases, non-contiguous letter sequences contain more information than contiguous sequences, while at the same time requiring less precise coding. Moreover, we found that the best predictor of human performance in orthographic priming experiments was within-word ranking of conditional probabilities, rather than average conditional probabilities. We conclude that from an optimality perspective, readers learn to select certain contiguous and non-contiguous letter combinations as information that provides the best cue to word identity.

Pure-tone auditory thresholds are decreased in depressed people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

BACKGROUND: Depression has been related to sensory modulation and notably to auditory modifications such as alterations in auditory event-related potentials, abnormal patterns of auditory habituation, increased activation of primary and secondary auditory cortex, and higher bilateral auditory thresholds. However, few experiments have considered the exploration of the auditory system in depression. The aim of the experiment is to further explore auditory thresholds across a higher number of frequencies than has previously been undertaken in depressed subjects, to determine whether thresholds are modified as compared to controls, and if so, at which frequencies. METHODS: 25 pure-tones covering a large range of frequencies from 125Hz to 8kHz were used to measure both air and bone conduction (AC and BC respectively) hearing thresholds. 13 patients with depression and post-traumatic disorder matched for age, sex and education level with 13 healthy subjects, were tested. RESULTS: Hearing thresholds were found to be significantly poorer in depressed participants than in controls for frequencies from 2.75Hz to 8kHz in BC, and for 0.5, 0.75, 0.875 and 2.0-8.0kHz pure-tone frequencies in AC. LIMITATIONS: Given that the depressed patients also had comorbid post-traumatic disorder, it should be verified whether their modified pure-tone audiometry is only related to depression. CONCLUSIONS: The AC and BC pure-tone auditory threshold measurement may provide new and different insights into the aetiology and evolution of depression.

Letter position information and printed word perception: the relative-position priming constraint.

Six experiments apply the masked priming paradigm to investigate how letter position information is computed during printed word perception. Primes formed by a subset of the target's letters facilitated target recognition as long as the relative position of letters was respected across prime and target (e.g., "arict" vs. "acirt" as primes for the target "apricot"). Priming effects were not influenced by whether or not absolute, length-dependent position was respected (e.g., "a-ric-t" vs. "arict"/"ar-i-ct"). Position of overlap of relative-position primes (e.g., apric-apricot; ricot-apricot; arict-apricot) was found to have little influence on the size of priming effects, particularly in conditions (i.e., 33 ms prime durations) where there was no evidence for phonological priming. The results constrain possible schemes for letter position coding.