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Nils R Varney

Publications and source records attributed to Nils R Varney.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Is impaired executive function a single or multidimensional disability?

This study was undertaken to determine if certain logical relations might be found in two pairs of similar executive functioning tasks: (a) Design Fluency and Word Fluency, and (b) the Tinker Toy and Story Telling Tests. Overall, the results were "inconsistent," with there being no meaningful relations found between tests with regard to similarities in task demand, theoretical hierarchical relations, or whether the tasks were verbal or nonverbal (with the exception of a very close relation between Design Fluency and Tinker Toy Test.). Despite the apparent entropy of the findings, they have substantial clinical and theoretical importance given the simultaneously rigid and weak-minded definitions and measures of disexecutive disability in current use.

Adult↗

How reading works: considerations from prehistory to the present.

Reading is not a "natural" human ability. Because reading was invented only 6,000 years ago there cannot have developed any central nervous system structures specifically for the purpose of mediating reading. The anthropological concept of preadaptation, which states that the evolution of a structure for one purpose can enable that structure to perform another, must be true for reading. The research discussed in this article looks into the functions that preadapted the brain for reading. Findings suggest that the ancient skills of gestural comprehension and animal tracking were the underpinnings of brain organization that permitted reading to occur.

Basal Ganglia↗