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Biomedical subjects

E B Ryan

Publications and source records attributed to E B Ryan.

29 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1989

The development of working memory in normally achieving and subtypes of learning disabled children.

Working memory has been proposed as an important component of reading and arithmetic skills. The development of working memory was studied in normally achieving and subtypes of learning disabled children. The performance of reading disabled (RD), arithmetic disabled (ARITHD), and attentional deficit disordered (ADD) children, age 7-13, was compared to normal achievers (NA) on 2 working memory tasks, 1 involving sentences and the other involving counting. There was a significant growth of working memory as a function of age. In addition, the RD children had significantly lower scores on both tasks. The ARITHD children had significantly lower scores only on the Working Memory--Counting task, and the ADD group had scores similar to the normally achieving children except at the youngest age level in the Working Memory--Sentences task. Thus, a reading disability appears to involve a generalized deficit in working memory. Children with an arithmetic disability do not have a generalized language deficit but have a specific working memory deficit in relation to processing numerical information. As children with ADD did not have deficits in these tasks, working memory may not have significant attentional components. An important component of the development of reading and computational arithmetic skills appears to be the growth of working memory for language and numerical information.

Achievement↗
PubMed1987

The influence of communication effectiveness on evaluations of younger and older adult speakers.

Earlier research has shown that young adults exhibit less favorable reactions to older speakers than to their peers, especially for intellectual and social competence. The present study examined the role of age in modifying the evaluations of listeners for effective and ineffective speakers. In a communication paradigm, 80 undergraduate students listened to and followed the taped instructions of a male speaker who was then evaluated. Communication effectiveness was the only significant factor for the speaker's ratings on the dimension of competence. On the benevolence dimension (e.g., trustworthiness, kindness), however, effectiveness interacted with age, such that for younger adults ineffective speakers were viewed significantly less positively than their more effective peers.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

The effectiveness of imagery and sentence strategy instructions as a function of visual and auditory processing in young school-age children.

The relationship between auditory and visual processing modality and strategy instructions was examined in first- and second-grade children. A Pictograph Sentence Memory Test was used to determine dominant processing modality as well as to assess instructional effects. The pictograph task was given first followed by auditory or visual interference. Children who were disrupted more by visual interference were classed as visual processors and those more disrupted by auditory interference were classed as auditory processors. Auditory and visual processors were then assigned to one of three conditions: interactive imagery strategy, sentence strategy, or a control group. Children in the imagery and sentence strategy groups were briefly taught to integrate the pictographs in order to remember them better. The sentence strategy was found to be effective for both auditory and visual processors, whereas the interactive imagery strategy was effective only for auditory processors.

Attention↗
PubMed1983

The development of social cognitive processes among juvenile delinquents and nondelinquent peers.

Using 10-11- and 14-15-year-old delinquents and nondelinquents, the present project was intended to investigate: (a) the extent of delinquent-nondelinquent differences on moral reasoning tasks; (b) whether delinquents display less knowledge about social problem solving, or social metacognition, in comparison to nondelinquents; (c) whether the deficiency by delinquents on a social problem-solving task could be lessened with clues to be more strategic; and (d) whether age differences would be observed on these tasks and whether age would interact with delinquency. Developmental differences for age, but not for delinquency, were observed in mortal judgment and prosocial moral reasoning. Under certain conditions, older nondelinquents performed better than other groups while considering some dimensions of social problem solving. Age differences were also noted on the social problem-solving task. When subjects were provided with clues as an organizing strategy on this latter task, all groups scored at levels higher than their no-clues performances. All groups except younger delinquents displayed comparable knowledge about strategies to solve social problems. The findings are discussed in terms of Flavell's processing model of social cognition.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1980

Performance of bilinguals in a picture-word interference task.

The picture-word interference task was administered to Spanish-English adults in order to determine whether the lexicons of bilinguals are integrated or whether words are stored and accessed separately in semantic memory. Pictures were printed with Spanish words naming other objects, with English translations, and with X's. Spanish and English distractor words were observed to slow down picture naming in both languages. Also, an interaction was detected among subjects naming pictures in English. On the first trial Spanish words produced more interference than English words, whereas the pattern was reversed thereafter. This effect is attributed to task novelty, which disappears with practice. No differential patterns of interference were observed among subjects naming pictures in Spanish, probably because of greater error variance. Results for English picture-naming bilinguals supported the integration hypothesis but suggested that there is less distance between words within a language than between languages in semantic memory.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Age perceptions and evaluative reactions toward adult speakers.

This study was designed to assess listeners' ability to judge a taped speaker's age and to measure the extent to which personality ratings are affected by perceived age. In two experiments, undergraduate subjects demonstrated that speaker age can be reliably estimated over a wide range for both female and male voices. Furthermore, female speakers perceived to be older were viewed to be more reserved, passive, out-of-it, and inflexible than younger ones; males sounding older were viewed as less flexible than those sounding younger. In the light of these results, the experimental procedure employed appears to provide a promising approach to the indirect assessment of age stereotypes.

Adult↗
PubMed1976

Serial habituation in two-, three-, and four-month-old infants.

Serial habituation of visual fixations in 2-, 3-, and 4-month-old infants was investigated through a design permitting cross-sectional, within-subject longitudinal, cohort longitudinal, and time-lag analyses. The components of the standard stimulus were displayed individually before and after successive exposures of the standard for familiarization. Relative saliencies of the components for each child were indexed by magnitude of responding to these parts in the initial presentation. Comparisons of the pre- and postexposure fixation times suggest that for all ages habituation was under way to the parts of the stimulus in orders of the relative saliencies. The nature of the data in general did not appear to be influenced significantly by any 1 methodology.

Attention↗
PubMed1975

Scaling of apparent accentedness by magnitude estimation and sensory modality matching.

In each of three experiments, 24 students judged the accentedness present in the speech of eight Spanish-English bilinguals. Ss gave magnitude estimations and also squeezed a hand dynamometer to indicate the amount of accentedness in the reading of an English passage by each of the speakers. There was significant agreement among Ss regarding the speech samples with each scaling method, and interscale agreement was good. Power functions fitted to the data had exponents falling in the range expected from earlier psychophysical studies. Scale values correlated significantly with the frequency of accented pronunciations by the speakers as judged by two independent judges. The use of these scaling methods for future research on linguistic features of accent and on the relation between accent and language attitudes is discussed.

Auditory Perception↗