Discordant Conditions Research Articles

Controversial Issues in the Management of Multiple Pregnancies

AbstractThe management of multiple pregnancies represents a true challenge for all sub-specialties concerned with perinatal medicine. Many issues were neglected over the years merely because they were rare and therefore considered not sufficiently important to merit clinical trials. This paper discusses a personal selection of controversial issues, such as multifetal pregnancy reduction of triplets and twins, special cases in multifetal preganncy reduction, need for invasive genetic studies, management of twin-twin transfusion, discordant fetal conditions, the definition of “term” in multiples, and the controversy about the mode of delivery.

Bimodal Speech Perception by Native and Nonnative Speakers of English: Factors Influencing the McGurk Effect

This research provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the factors influencing the process of integrating auditory and visual information in speech perception, and the nature of the mental representations to which speech input is matched for identification. Most previous studies of L2 speech perception had focused on only one source of input—the auditory modality. In this study, however, the occurrence of the McGurk effect (the influence of visual or lip‐read information on speech perception) pointed to the power of visible speech in face‐to‐face communication for L2 learners as well as native speakers. Participants were advanced ESL learners of 4 L1s (Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Malay) and native speakers of English. In this experimental design, six CV syllables with /p, f, w, r, t, k/ were combined on videotape to create concordant and discordant conditions (i.e., where audiovisual cues were matched and mismatched). This design permits the tagging of input according to its source in order to evaluate the relative contributions of each modality to the perceptual outcome. Results indicated that the learners' L1s influenced the relative information value of the auditory and visual cues, and thus their contribution to a single percept. The Japanese and Korean learners' identification accuracy of /f/ and /r/ increased with matched visual cues. It was evident that learners attended to visual cues to identify speech sounds even though they had not received any explicit training.By drawing from the literature on L2 phonology, speechreading, speech perception, attention, similarity, and categorization, this work demonstrates the need for a model of L2 speech acquisition within a cognitive framework to account for bimodal input in the broader context of spoken language processing. Findings also point to the need to incorporate into perceptual training for L2 learners the enhancement of the information value of visual cues as a second channel of input.

Understanding ambiguous words in sentence contexts: electrophysiological evidence for delayed contextual selection in Broca’s aphasia

This study investigates whether spoken sentence comprehension deficits in Broca’s aphasics results from their inability to access the subordinate meaning of ambiguous words (e.g. bank), or alternatively, from a delay in their selection of the contextually appropriate meaning. Twelve Broca’s aphasics and twelve elderly controls were presented with lexical ambiguities in three context conditions, each followed by the same target words. In the concordant condition, the sentence context biased the meaning of the sentence-final ambiguous word that was related to the target. In the discordant condition, the sentence context biased the meaning of the sentence-final ambiguous word that was incompatible with the target. In the unrelated condition, the sentence-final word was unambiguous and unrelated to the target. The task of the subjects was to listen attentively to the stimuli. The activational status of the ambiguous sentence-final words was inferred from the amplitude of the N400 to the targets at two inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs) (100 ms and 1250 ms). At the short ISI, the Broca’s aphasics showed clear evidence of activation of the subordinate meaning. In contrast to elderly controls, however, the Broca’s aphasics were not successful at selecting the appropriate meaning of the ambiguity in the short ISI version of the experiment. But at the long ISI, in accordance with the performance of the elderly controls, the patients were able to successfully complete the contextual selection process. These results indicate that Broca’s aphasics are delayed in the process of contextual selection. It is argued that this finding of delayed selection is compatible with the idea that comprehension deficits in Broca’s aphasia result from a delay in the process of integrating lexical information.

Rôle de la vision dans la direction de mouvements graphiques simples

Summary : The role of vision in simple graphie movement direction. This study examined the role of vision on syntactical organization of drawing production. In accordance with Meulenbroek and Thomassen's point of view (1991), a qualitative difference in the production of horizontals-verticals and obliques is postulated. Right-handed adults were required to copy geometrical figures composed of either three horizontals and verticals or three obliques, in the absence of visual control or under visuo-proprioceptive discordant conditions (mirror-drawing task). Data confirmed the importance of visual feedback on the production of horizontal and vertical directions. The dominance of the visual modality on proprioceptive modality was observed in conflictual situations. The results suggest the importance of visual control on the selection of privileged directions in graphic movements. Key words : vision, mirror-drawing, movement directions, geometrical reference system, anatomical reference system.

The correspondence between self- and image movement as a cue to self-recognition for young children.

The importance of the correspondence between self- and image movement for the development of self-recognition was investigated in a longitudinal study with eleven 18-month old boys and girls who were seen once a month for a minimum of eight months. They were shown two self-images with movement concurrent with their own (Mirror Condition and Simultaneous Condition), two images with movement which did not correspond with their own, one of which was a self-image (Discordant Condition) and one of which was of another child (Other Child Condition), and a self-image without movement (Photograph Condition). The sequence of self-recognition was the same for all children. They recognized themselves in the conditions in which there was a correspondence between self- and image movement before they recognized themselves in the conditions where there was no such correspondence. The children tested the correspondence between self- and image movement by performing repetitive actions while attending to the movement of the image. This movement testing was significantly greater in the Simultaneous Condition than in the other conditions and showed a significant increase in the session prior to self-recognition.