News Wrap-up for July 24 — July 30

Social Acumen Equals Spatial Skills, Psychologist Finds
Study leader Dr. Amy Shelton John Hopkins University.	July 25, 2011 Baltimore, Maryland — People who are socially skilled – who are adept at metaphorically putting themselves in someone else’s shoes – are also more proficient when it comes to spatial skills, according to a new study led by a Johns Hopkins University psychologist. The study found that the more socially accomplished a person is, the easier it is for him or her to assume another person’s perspective (literally) on the world. “The results were striking: there was a profound difference in this ability among people with better social skills and those with weaker ones,” said study leader Amy Shelton, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Shelton said that the study results could eventually lead to improved strategies to help people on the autism spectrum – notable for their lack of social awareness and skills – compensate for this weakness Continue reading.

Tablet as Therapy, The Big Play

Apple’s iPad. Courtesy Apple

July 26, 2011 New York, NY — In a report by the Wall Street Journal reports on several applications for use on touch-tablets or iPhones to help those with autism. Griffin Wajda, a 10-year-old boy, was drawing with a touchscreen tablet computer with his brother. They were using an interactive storytelling program designed to teach those with autism how to interact with others. The application came from Iowa researchers. Using another program called Photogoo designed to allow children to learn facial gestures/emotions, an 8-year-old autistic boy was manipulating a face. A third program developed by Amsterdam-based developer David Niemeije is called Proloquo2Go. It is a multitouch therapy-aiding application designed to help non-communicative people. The application speaks whatever symbols or sentences the user enters into their iPhone or iPad. Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal.

Social deficits associated with autism, schizophrenia induced in mice with new technology

Lab Mouse. Rama

July 27, 2011 Stanford, California — Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have been able to switch on, and then switch off, social-behavior deficits in mice that resemble those seen in people with autism and schizophrenia, thanks to a technology that allows scientists to precisely manipulate nerve activity in the brain. In synchrony with this experimentally induced socially aberrant behavior, the mice exhibited a brain-wave pattern called gamma oscillation that has been associated with autism and schizophrenia in humans, the researchers say. Continue reading.

Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability

Tyler Perrachione. MIT

July 29, 2011 Boston, Massachusetts — Distinguishing between other people’s voices may seem like a trivial task. However, if those people are speaking a language you don’t understand, it becomes much harder. That’s because you rely on individuals’ differences in pronunciation to help identify them. If you don’t understand the words they are saying, you don’t pick up on those differences. That ability to process the relationship between sounds and their meanings, also known as phonology, is believed to be impaired in people with dyslexia. Therefore, neuroscientists at MIT theorized that people with dyslexia would find it much more difficult to identify speakers of their native language than non-dyslexic people. People with dyslexia had a much harder time recognizing voices than non-dyslexics. In fact, they fared just as poorly as they (and non-dyslexics) did when listening to speakers of a foreign language. Continue reading.

Links:

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Should social savvy equal good spatial skills? The interaction of social skills with spatial perspective taking. Nature: Neocortical excitation/inhibition balance in information processing and social dysfunction Science: Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability

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~ by Phoenix on July 31, 2011.