Ming Lui

Task and sex modulate the brain response to emotional incongruity in Asian listeners.

In order to recognize banter or sarcasm in social interactions, listeners must integrate verbal and vocal emotional expressions. Here, we investigated event-related potential correlates of this integration in Asian listeners. We presented emotional words spoken with congruous or incongruous emotional prosody. When listeners classified word meaning as positive or negative and ignored prosody, incongruous trials elicited a larger late positivity than congruous trials in women but not in men. Sex differences were absent when listeners evaluated the congruence between word meaning and emotional prosody. The similarity of these results to those obtained in Western listeners suggests that sex differences in emotional speech processing depend on attentional focus and may reflect culturally independent mechanisms.

The development of co-speech gesture and its semantic integration with speech in 6- to 12-year-old children with autism spectrum disorders:

Previous work leaves open the question of whether children with autism spectrum disorders aged 6–12 years have delay in producing gestures compared to their typically developing peers. This study examined gestural production among school-aged children in a naturalistic context and how their gestures are semantically related to the accompanying speech. Delay in gestural production was found in children with autism spectrum disorders through their middle to late childhood. Compared to their typically developing counterparts, children with autism spectrum disorders gestured less often and used fewer types of gestures, in particular markers, which carry culture-specific meaning. Typically developing children’s gestural production was related to language and cognitive skills, but among children with autism spectrum disorders, gestural production was more strongly related to the severity of socio-communicative impairment. Gesture impairment also included the failure to integrate speech with gesture: in particular, supplementary gestures are absent in children with autism spectrum disorders. The findings extend our understanding of gestural production in school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders during spontaneous interaction. The results can help guide new therapies for gestural production for children with autism spectrum disorders in middle and late childhood.

The application of subliminal priming in lie detection: Scenario for identification of members of a terrorist ring

We studied a lie detection protocol immune to countermeasures. The 4 stimulus conditions were (1 and 2) supraliminal acquaintance name primed by subliminal acquaintance name (A-A) versus subliminal nonacquaintance name (N-A) and (3 and 4) supraliminal nonacquaintance name primed by subliminal acquaintance name (A-N) versus subliminal nonacquaintance name (N-N). In Experiment 1 and replication, principal components analysis-derived event-related potential components revealed significant differences between dishonestly answered supraliminal acquaintance conditions with differing primes (A-A vs. N-A). In Experiment 2 subjects were required to lie in A-N and N-N conditions, in contrast to Experiment 1, in which subjects lied in A-A and N-A conditions. No significant effects were found. In Experiment 3, the lying task was removed and no significant differences were found. We conclude that subliminal primes modulate ERPs in conditions with supraliminal acquaintance name when the task involves lying.

The Use of Hand Gestures to Communicate About Nonpresent Objects in Mind Among Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

PURPOSE The current study examined whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), in comparison with typically developing children, perceive and produce gestures to identify nonpresent objects (i.e., referent-identifying gestures), which is crucial for communicating ideas in a discourse. METHOD An experimenter described the uses of daily-life objects to 6- to 12-year-old children both orally and with gestures. The children were then asked to describe how they performed daily activities using those objects. RESULTS All children gestured. A gesture identified a nonpresent referent if it was produced in the same location that had previously been established by the experimenter. Children with ASD gestured at the specific locations less often than typically developing children. Verbal and spatial memory were positively correlated with the ability to produce referent-identifying gestures for all children. However, the positive correlation between Ravens Children Progressive Matrices score and the production of referent-identifying gestures was found only in children with ASD. CONCLUSIONS Children with ASD might be less able to perceive and produce referent-identifying gestures and may rely more heavily on visual-spatial skills in producing referent-identifying gestures. The results have clinical implications for designing an intervention program to enhance the ability of children with ASD to communicate about nonpresent objects with gestures.

Knowledge and perceived social norm predict parents’ attitudes towards inclusive education

Parents are key stakeholders in education and their support is pivotal to policy implementation. Through a large-scale survey, the present study investigated the validity of a structural model describing the relationship between attitude, knowledge, and perceived social norm among parents of children with special needs. Results revealed that knowledge and perceived social norm were powerful predictors of parents’ attitudes towards inclusion and the two predictors were intercorrelated. Exploratory analyses on the effect of demographic variables on parents’ attitudes demonstrated that male parents exhibited more positive attitudes towards inclusion than female parents; and parents of children at a higher grade level indicated less positive attitudes. Cultural issues of parents’ concerns about inclusive practice are discussed.

Left-frontal brain potentials index conceptual implicit memory for words initially viewed subliminally

Neural correlates of explicit and implicit memory tend to co-occur and are therefore difficult to measure independently, posing problems for understanding the unique nature of different types of memory processing. To circumvent this problem, we developed an experimental design wherein subjects acquired information from words presented in a subliminal manner, such that conscious remembering was minimized. Cross-modal word repetition was used so that perceptual implicit memory would also be limited. Healthy human subjects viewed subliminal words six times each and about 2 min later heard the same words interspersed with new words in a category-verification test. Electrophysiological correlates of word repetition included negative brain potentials over left-frontal locations beginning approximately 500 ms after word onset. Behavioral responses were slower for repeated words than for new words. Differential processing of word meaning in the absence of explicit memory was most likely responsible for differential electrical and behavioral responses to old versus new words. Moreover, these effects were distinct from neural correlates of explicit memory observed in prior experiments, and were observed here in two separate experiments, thus providing a foundation for further investigations of relationships and interactions between different types of memory engaged when words repeat.

MELD-SCH: A megastudy of lexical decision in simplified Chinese

Here we report on MELD-SCH (MEgastudy of Lexical Decision in Simplified CHinese), a dataset that contains the lexical decision data of 1,020 one-character, 10,022 two-character, 949 three-character, and 587 four-character simplified Chinese words obtained from 504 native Chinese users. It also includes a number of word-level and character-level variables. Analyses showed that the reliability of the dataset is satisfactory, as indicated by split-half correlations and comparisons with other datasets. Item-based regression showed that both word-level and character-level variables contributed significantly to the reaction times and error rates of lexical decision. Moreover, we discovered a U-shape relationship between word-length and reaction times, which has not been reported in Chinese before. MELD-SCH can facilitate research in Chinese word recognition by providing high quality normative data and information of different linguistic variables. It also encourages researchers to extend their empirical findings, which are mostly based on one-character and two-character words, to words of different lengths.

Parents’ Perspective of the Impact of School Practices on the Functioning of Students with Special Educational Needs

Abstract Students with special educational needs (SEN) are at an elevated risk of psychological and behavioural dysfunctions. In this study, we conducted a survey of parents of students with SEN in Hong Kong to examine the impact of two school practices – learning support and school climate – on the psychological and behavioural functioning (PBF) of students with SEN. We also examined the mediating effects of social participation and academic engagement. Questionnaires were distributed to 586 parents in 139 primary schools. The results of structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis show that perceived school climate has a direct effect on perceived PBF, while perceived learning support does not. Perceived learning support has two indirect effects on perceived PBF, with perceived academic engagement or social participation as a mediator. The findings have implications for the effective use of educational resources to support the inclusive education of students with SEN.

Neural evidence for reduced automaticity in processing emotional prosody among men with high levels of autistic traits

This study aimed to examine individual differences in the integration of emotional prosody when processing semantic meaning in speech among men with high and low levels of autistic traits, as measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). The behavioral and neural responses of high- and low-AQ men during semantic valence judgment were compared. The stimuli were positive or negative words spoken with either happy or sad prosody; in other words, the prosody was either congruous or incongruous to the valence of meaning. Participants were required to judge the (positive vs. negative) valence of word meaning as accurately and as quickly as possible while ignoring emotional prosody. Behavioral results showed that high-AQ men responded significantly more slowly than low-AQ men in all stimulus conditions, indicating lower automaticity in processing emotional speech. Neural data revealed that low-AQ men (but not high-AQ men) had significantly increased N200 and N400 amplitudes for incongruous (compared to congruous) stimuli spoken with happy prosody. Our findings supported our hypotheses that high levels of autistic traits are associated with reduced behavioral automaticity and less differential neural resources allocated to processing emotional speech stimuli with different cognitive demands.