Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An exploratory study of the influence of load and practice on segmental and articulatory variability in children with speech sound disorders

ABSTRACT This exploratory treatment study used phonetic transcription and speech kinematics to examine changes in segmental and articulatory variability. Nine children, ages 4 to 8 years old, served as participants, including two with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), five with speech sound disorder (SSD) and two who were typically developing. Children practised producing agent + action phrases in an imitation task (low linguistic load) and a retrieval task (high linguistic load) over five sessions. In the imitation task in session one, both participants with CAS showed high degrees of segmental and articulatory variability. After five sessions, imitation practice resulted in increased articulatory variability for five participants. Retrieval practice resulted in decreased articulatory variability in three participants with SSD. These results suggest that short-term speech production practice in rote imitation disrupts articulatory control in children with and without CAS. In contrast, tasks that require linguistic processing may scaffold learning for children with SSD but not CAS.
Grammatical case-marking in Japanese children with SLI

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not Japanese children with specific language impairment (henceforth; SLI) would in fact experience difficulty with grammatical case-marking. The participants were 10 Japanese children with SLI, aged 7;7 to 11;4, and 25 Japanese children with typical language development (henceforth; TLD), aged 8;11 to 9;11. In this study, a sentence completion task was used, which involved both active and passive sentences with canonical and scrambled word order. The children with SLI were significantly less accurate than those with TLD with the use of grammatical case-markers. Moreover, the majority of the errors that the children with SLI made with case-marking consisted of canonical case-marking patterns. These results suggest that Japanese children with SLI do in fact appear to experience difficulty with grammatical case-marking and furthermore that they seem to rely on canonical case-marking patterns to compensate for their deficits.
Distress and Quality of Life in Cancer Patients Receiving Chemotherapy

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the levels of distress and quality of life in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy and to identify the relationship between distress and quality of life. Methods: Data were collected during 2013 from 128 cancer patients receiving chemotherapy at a hospital located in Seoul, South Korea. Distress thermometer and problem list were used to measure distress, and the Functional Assessment Cancer Therapy-general questionnaire was used to measure quality of life. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, one-way ANOVA, the post-hoc Scheffe test, and Pearson’s correlation coefficients were used to analyze the data. Results: Among the 128 participants, 68 (53.1%) were male and the mean age was 52.55 years. Forty two (32.8%) were diagnosed with stage 4 and 73 (57.0%) were having recurrence or metastasis. The mean score for distress was 4.01 out of 10. Seventy four (57.8%) participants had a score of 4 or higher, indicating clinically significant distress. Emotional problems had the highest item mean among five domains. The mean score for quality of life was 68.51± 14.22 out of 108. Distress and quality of life were negatively correlated (r= -.52, p< .001). Conclusion: Distress level with specific problems should be regularly assessed to relieve distress and improve the quality of life of cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.
How affective states, task difficulty, and self-concepts influence the formation and consequences of performance expectancies

Positive versus negative affective states are associated with the use of broad versus specific knowledge structures. We predicted that specific self-concepts and task difficulty would affect performance expectancies only for individuals in a negative mood; for individuals in a positive mood, only the general self-concept, but not task difficulty, would affect performance expectancies. In an experiment, we manipulated task difficulty and mood, and we assessed self-concepts, performance expectancies, and task performance. The expected interactions for the formation of performance expectancies (mood×general self-concept, mood×specific self-concept, mood×difficulty) were found. Concerning the consequences of performance expectancies, we predicted that expectancies would affect actual performance only if the task was difficult and if task difficulty was taken into account when the expectancy is generated. This hypothesis was supported: The relationship between performance expectancies and actual performance was significant only for difficult tasks and given negative mood.
Deliberate real-time mood regulation in adulthood: The importance of age, fixation and attentional functioning

While previous research has linked executive attention to emotion regulation, the current study investigated the role of attentional alerting (i.e., efficient use of external warning cues) on younger (N=39) and older (N=44) adults’ use of gaze to regulate their mood in real time. Participants viewed highly arousing unpleasant images while reporting their mood and were instructed to deliberately manage how they felt and to minimise the effect of those stimuli on their mood. Fixations toward the most negative areas of the images were recorded with eye tracking. We examined whether looking less at the most negative regions, compared to each individual's own tendency, was a beneficial mood regulatory strategy and how it interacted with age and alerting ability. High alerting older adults, who rely more on external cues to guide their attention, experienced a smaller decline in mood over time by activating a less-negative-looking approach (compared to their own average tendency), effectively looking away from the most negative areas of the images. More negative gaze patterns predicted better mood for younger adults, though this effect decreased over time. Alerting did not moderate gaze–mood links in younger adults. Successful mood regulation may thus depend on particular combinations of age, fixation, and attention.
Emotion regulation through listening to music in everyday situations

Music is a stimulus capable of triggering an array of basic and complex emotions. We investigated whether and how individuals employ music to induce specific emotional states in everyday situations for the purpose of emotion regulation. Furthermore, we wanted to examine whether specific emotion-regulation styles influence music selection in specific situations. Participants indicated how likely it would be that they would want to listen to various pieces of music (which are known to elicit specific emotions) in various emotional situations. Data analyses by means of non-metric multidimensional scaling revealed a clear preference for pieces of music that were emotionally congruent with an emotional situation. In addition, we found that specific emotion-regulation styles might influence the selection of pieces of music characterised by specific emotions. Our findings demonstrate emotion-congruent music selection and highlight the important role of specific emotion-regulation styles in the selection of music in everyday situations.
The relationship between blushing propensity, social anxiety and facial blood flow during embarrassment

To investigate blushing in relation to blushing propensity scores and core elements of social anxiety, facial blood flow was monitored in 86 normal volunteers during an embarrassing task (singing a children's song). Increases in facial blood flow were greater in women than men, as were scores on the Blushing Propensity and Fear of Negative Evaluation scales. In addition, high scores on the Blushing Propensity and Social Interaction Anxiety scales were associated with large increases in facial blood flow during singing. However, this appeared to be due primarily to social anxiety because the association between blushing propensity scores and changes in facial blood flow disappeared when social interaction anxiety scores were taken into account. These findings suggest that people generally base their beliefs about blushing on cues other than changes in facial blood flow. Social anxiety may augment increases in facial blood flow during embarrassment, independently of expected or perceived blushing.
Contextual fear conditioning predicts subsequent avoidance behaviour in a virtual reality environment

Avoidance behaviour is a crucial component of fear and is importantly involved in the maintenance of anxiety disorders. Presumably, fear conditioning leads to avoidance of the feared object or context. A virtual reality contextual fear conditioning paradigm was used to investigate the association between explicit conditioning effects and subsequent avoidance behaviour. Mild electric shocks were administered in one context (anxiety context), but never in a second context (safety context). Subsequent avoidance behaviour was assessed by asking participants to choose two out of three contexts (a neutral context was added) to visit again. Participants avoided the anxiety context, but did not prefer the safety over the neutral context. Participants with substantial conditioning effects, as reflected in differential valence, arousal and anxiety ratings, avoided the anxiety context but not the safety context. In sum, we demonstrated an association between context conditioning effects on an explicit level and later avoidance behaviour.
Differential effects of trait anger on optimism and risk behaviour

It has been proposed that angry people exhibit optimistic risk estimates about future events and, consequently, are biased towards making risk-seeking choices. The goal of this study was to directly test the hypothesised effect of trait anger on optimism and risk-taking behaviour. One hundred healthy volunteers completed questionnaires about personality traits, optimism and risk behaviour. In addition their risk tendency was assessed with the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), which provides an online measure of risk behaviour. Our results partly confirmed the relation between trait anger and outcome expectations of future life events, but suggest that this optimism does not necessarily translate into actual risk-seeking behaviour.
Mycobacterial infection induces the secretion of high‐mobility group box 1 protein

High‐mobility group box protein 1 (HMGB1) is a non‐histone nuclear protein that acts as a pro‐inflammatory cytokine and is released by monocytes and macrophages. Necrotic cells also release HMGB1 at the site of tissue damage which induces a variety of cellular responses, including the expression of pro‐inflammatory mediators. This study investigated the secretion of HMGB1 in mycobacterial infection by macrophages in vitro and in the lungs of infected guinea pigs. We observed that infection by mycobacterium effectively induced HMGB1 release in both macrophage and monocytic cell cultures. Culture filtrate proteins from Mycobacterium tuberculosis induced maximum release of HMGB1 compared with different subcellular fractions of mycobacterium. We demonstrated that HMGB1 is released in lungs during infection of M. tuberculosis in guinea pigs and increased HMGB1 secretion in lungs of guinea pigs was delayed by prior vaccination with Mycobacterium bovis BCG. The secretion of cytokines like tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF‐α) and Interleukin‐1β was significantly increased when M. bovis BCG‐infected cultures of J774A.1 cells were incubated with HMGB1. Among different mycobacterial toll‐like receptor ligands, heat‐shock protein 65 (HSP65) was found to be more potent in inducing HMGB1 secretion in RAW 264.7 cells. Pharmacological suppression of p38 or extracellular signal‐regulated kinase 1/2 mitogen‐activated protein kinases with specific inhibitors failed to inhibit HSP65‐induced HMGB1 release, but inhibition of c‐Jun NH2‐terminal kinase activation attenuated HMGB1 release. Inhibition of the inducible NO synthase and neutralizing antibodies against TNF‐α also reduced HMGB1 release stimulated by HSP65. We conclude that HMGB1 is secreted by macrophages during tuberculosis and it may act as a signal of tissue or cellular injury and enhances immune response.
Of mice and monkeys: new advances in animal models to study HIV-1 therapy and prophylaxis

One of the most significant contemporary challenges in combating HIV-1 infection is the persistence of the virus in infected persons despite potent antiretroviral therapy. Uncovering the requirements for HIV-1 persistence and the development of antiviral drug resistance may be aided by experimental therapy manipulations or invasive procedures best studied within animals. While animal models for HIV-1 infection have revealed important facets of viral pathogenesis and anti-HIV-1 vaccines, they have been less effective in studying HIV-1 therapeutics, drug resistance and persistence. Recent improvements in animal models now enable such investigation. Here, we discuss new and established animal models for HIV-1 infection, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses and suitability for therapeutic studies. A better understanding of HIV-1 replication in response to therapy in vivo will improve regimens needed to manage a possibly lifelong illness, may minimize the development of antiviral resistance and may open s.
Iron Deficiency Anemia due to Long-time Bloodletting Using Cupping

We report three cases of iron deficiency anemia due to long-time bloodletting using cupping. Case 1 was a 52-year-old man who sought evaluation at the Health Promotion Center in our hospital due to fatigue and dyspnea on exertion (DOE). There were no abnormal findings on his general health examination, except anemia. He has performed self-bloodletting for a long time with cupping on his back and extremities for fatigue, myalgias, or polyarthralgias. Case 2 was a 52-yearold woman with fatigue and DOE. The physical examination revealed a systolic murmur at her left lower anterior chest and pale conjunctiva. The initial hematocrit was 22.4% and the hemoglobin was 6.4 g/dL. She has self-bloodletted using cupping 2 to 3 times a week when she felt tired or had myalgias. Case 3 was a 35-year-old man with sudden onset fatigue and DOE. He had severe DOE during a challenging physical test. He frequently received bloodletting using cuppings on his back and extremities by a doctor of Oriental medicine. There were no abnormal findings on the general health examination, except anemia. All three patients were diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia due to chronic blood loss. We recommended stopping bloodletting using cupping and prescribed oral iron supplements.
Attention bias in youth: Associations with youth and mother's depressive symptoms moderated by emotion regulation and affective dynamics during family interactions

Recent research has highlighted the potential role of attention bias for emotional stimuli as a possible cognitive risk factor for depression in youth. However, differences in youth emotion regulation or maternal affect may moderate the association between maternal and youth depression and youth attention biases. The current study investigated the relationship between maternal and youth depressive symptoms and youth (aged 11–17 years) attention bias for sad and happy faces in 59 mother–youth dyads, examining whether positive and negative maternal affect observed during structured interaction tasks or youth emotion regulation tendencies moderated associations between maternal and youth depression and attention biases. Youth suppression interacted with maternal and youth depression to predict sad attentional biases in youth, while maternal positive affect interacted with maternal depression to predict happy attention biases in youth.
Featural processing in recognition of emotional facial expressions

The present study aimed to clarify the role played by the eye/brow and mouth areas in the recognition of the six basic emotions. In Experiment 1, accuracy was examined while participants viewed partial and full facial expressions; in Experiment 2, participants viewed full facial expressions while their eye movements were recorded. Recognition rates were consistent with previous research: happiness was highest and fear was lowest. The mouth and eye/brow areas were not equally important for the recognition of all emotions. More precisely, while the mouth was revealed to be important in the recognition of happiness and the eye/brow area of sadness, results are not as consistent for the other emotions. In Experiment 2, consistent with previous studies, the eyes/brows were fixated for longer periods than the mouth for all emotions. Again, variations occurred as a function of the emotions, the mouth having an important role in happiness and the eyes/brows in sadness. The general pattern of results for the other four emotions was inconsistent between the experiments as well as across different measures. The complexity of the results suggests that the recognition process of emotional facial expressions cannot be reduced to a simple feature processing or holistic processing for all emotions.
Factor structure and validation of the attentional control scale

The Attentional Control Scale (ACS; Derryberry & Reed, 2002) has been used to assess executive control over attention in numerous studies, but no published data have examined the factor structure of the English version. The current studies addressed this need and tested the predictive and convergent validity of the ACS subscales. In Study 1, exploratory factor analysis yielded a two-factor model with Focusing and Shifting subscales. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analysis supported this model and suggested superior fit compared to the factor structure of the Icelandic version (Ólafsson et al., 2011). Study 3 examined correlations between the ACS subscales and measures of working memory, anxiety, and cognitive control. Study 4 examined correlations between the subscales and reaction times on a mixed-antisaccade task, revealing positive correlations for antisaccade performance and prosaccade latency with Focusing scores and between switch trial performance and Shifting scores. Additionally, the findings partially supported unique relationships between Focusing and trait anxiety and between Shifting and depression that have been noted in recent research. Although the results generally support the validity of the ACS, additional research using performance-based tasks is needed.
Pharmacological ascorbate induces cytotoxicity in prostate cancer cells through ATP depletion and induction of autophagy

Recent studies have revealed the scientific basis for the use of intravenous (i.v.) vitamin C or ascorbic acid (ascorbate) in treating cancers, and raised the possibility of using i.v. ascorbate as a prooxidant anticancer therapy. Through the production of H2O2, pharmacologic ascorbate can induce some cancer cell death in vitro and inhibit a number of types of tumor growth in animal models. However, the mechanism of cell death triggered by ascorbate is not well understood. In this study, we investigated the cytotoxicity of pharmacological concentrations of ascorbate to human prostate cancer cells and the mechanisms involved. The results showed that ascorbate in the millimolar range induced cytotoxicity in five of the six tested prostate cancer cell lines. The IC50 values in the sensitive prostate cancer cells ranged from 1.9 to 3.5 mmol/l, concentrations clinically achievable with i.v. ascorbate use. All tested androgen-independent cells were sensitive to ascorbate treatment. The ascorbate-insensitive cell line LaPC4 is hormonally dependent. Whereas the reasons for sensitivity/resistance to ascorbate treatment need to be investigated further, cell death in sensitive cells was dependent on H2O2. Ascorbate treatment depleted ATP and induced autophagy in sensitive prostate cancer cells, resulting in cell death. Taken together with previous studies, high-dose ascorbate has the potential to be a novel treatment option to hormone-refractory prostate cancer.
Embodied simulation as part of affective evaluation processes: Task dependence of valence concordant EMG activity

Drawing on recent findings, this study examines whether valence concordant electromyography (EMG) responses can be explained as an unconditional effect of mere stimulus processing or as somatosensory simulation driven by task-dependent processing strategies. While facial EMG over the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major was measured, each participant performed two tasks with pictures of album covers. One task was an affective evaluation task and the other was to attribute the album covers to one of five decades. The Embodied Emotion Account predicts that valence concordant EMG is more likely to occur if the task necessitates a somatosensory simulation of the evaluative meaning of stimuli. Results support this prediction with regard to Corrugator supercilii in that valence concordant EMG activity was only present in the affective evaluation task but not in the non-evaluative task. Results for the Zygomaticus major were ambiguous. Our findings are in line with the view that EMG activity is an embodied part of the evaluation process and not a mere physical outcome.
Anger, Depression, and Anxiety in Cardiac Patients The Complexity of Individual Differences in Psychological Risk*

couple of years ago, a large meta-analytic review conluded that depression can be considered a prognostic factor n coronary heart disease (CHD) (1). Depression has also een associated with increased mortality in heart failure (2). owever, although a recent advisory from a number of ouncils of the American Heart Association recommends outine screening for depression of CHD patients in clinical ractice (3), a systematic review published 1 month later did ot find evidence for or against this recommendation (4). In his issue of the Journal, Chida and Steptoe (5) report on a eta-analysis of prospective studies on the association etween another psychological factor, anger/hostility, and he risk of CHD.
Using facial emotional stimuli in visual search experiments: The arousal factor explains contradictory results

For more than two decades, visual search experiments using pictures of emotional faces as stimuli have generated contradictory results. Evidence of a superior detection of angry faces compared to happy faces have been mixed with an equal amount of evidence in the opposite direction. In this article, we review this literature, and examine the hypothesis that the neglected stimulus factor of emotional arousal may explain these contradictory results. Through an extensive reanalysis of results from our own laboratory as well as from other researchers, we show that the arousal factor systematically influences the outcome of the reviewed visual search experiments, and may thus provide a key to the historical contradictions within this research field.