bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Endoscopic treatment of laryngeal and tracheal stenosis—has mitomycin C improved the outcome?
Authors: Perepelitsyn Ilya , Shapshay Stanley M.
Published: July 2004

OBJECTIVE

The management of laryngeal and tracheal stenosis remains a challenging problem despite advances in endoscopic surgical techniques. Scar formation and restenosis is the main cause of failure, and this study assesses the efficacy of two adjuvant treatments: endoscopic steroid injection and topical mitomycin C application.

STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING

This is a retrospective cohort study comparing the efficacy of 3 endoscopic techniques: (1) carbon dioxide (CO2) laser incisions with bronchoscopic dilatation, (2) CO2 laser with dilatation followed by steroid injection into the stenotic area, and (3) CO2 laser with dilatation followed by topical application of mitomycin C. Included in the statistical analysis were 47 procedures performed by the senior investigator in a tertiary medical center between 1994 and 2001 based on their success or failure.

RESULTS

The percentages of successful outcomes in the study groups were 15%, 18.2%, and 75% with the CO2 laser, CO2 laser with steroid injection, and CO2 laser with mitomycin C, respectively. Statistical comparisons reveal that the differences in outcomes were statistically significant (P < 0.05) between the mitomycin group and each of the other two treatment groups, whereas there was no statistically significant difference between the laser only and laser with steroid groups. There were no complications noted with the use of adjuvant medications.

CONCLUSION

These patient group results indicate a statistically significant increase, from <20% to 75%, in the success rate of endoscopic treatment of acquired upper airway stenosis when topical mitomycin C is added to the treatment regimen. No benefit has been demonstrated for using intraoperative local steroid injections as an adjunct to laser treatment.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Mitomycin C appears to be an effective and safe adjuvant treatment in the endoscopic management of laryngeal and tracheal stenosis.
The Church in ‘Red Mexico’: Michoacán Catholics and the Mexican Revolution, 1920–1929
Authors: BUTLER MATTHEW
Published: July 2004

This article recreates the everyday experiences of rural Catholics in Mexico during the Church–State crisis of the 1920s and the cristero revolt (1926–9) against Mexico's post-revolutionary regime. Focusing on the archdiocese of Michoacán in western Mexico, the article contends that the 1920s should be viewed not only as a period of political tension between Church and State, but as a period of attempted cultural revolution when the very beliefs of Mexican Catholics were under attack. It is then argued that the behaviour of many Catholics during the cristero revolt is best described not as overt counter-revolutionism, but as defensive cultural and spiritual resistance designed to thwart the state's secularising aims by reaffirming and reproducing proscribed Catholic rituals and practices in collaboration with the parish clergy. The article then examines Catholic strategies of resistance during the cristero revolt and their consequences, above all the parochialisation and laicisation of the Church.
A Sermon by Robert Barnes, c. 1535
Authors: CRAIG JOHN , MAAS KOREY
Published: July 2004

Robert Barnes is a name well known to historians of the English Reformation. He receives brief mention in most historical surveys, being variously discussed as Coverdale's prior, Luther's friend, Cromwell's protégé, or Henry VIII's martyr. Among scholars whose interests lie primarily with the theology of the Reformation, Barnes has at times received further, more focused attention, his written works being examined in some detail and he himself being painted as a rare English Lutheran. Those interested in the politics of the Henrician Reformation have also found reason to assign Barnes a place of some importance, giving particular attention to his later role as royal ambassador to the princes and theologians of the German Protestant League of Schmalkalden. In contrast to these portraits of Barnes as a theologian and diplomat, and in spite of the fact that Barnes regularly mounted the pulpit while in England, there has been no comparable emphasis on Robert Barnes the preacher. The reason for this lacuna is quite simply that, despite the amount of contemporary commentary on his preaching, none of Barnes's actual sermons has been preserved. This is a fact all the more lamentable since, as those friends and foes who did comment upon his preaching make clear, he was known by contemporaries to be an extraordinarily zealous and effective preacher.
The Anglican Apocalypse in Restoration England
Authors: JOHNSTON WARREN
Published: July 2004

Anglican exegesis in the later seventeenth century of Revelation's prophecies demonstrates that apocalyptic ideas continued to hold currency in England after the mid-century period with which they are most often associated, promoting the very civil and ecclesiastical authorities they had previously been used to oppose. Present in the writings of prominent Restoration scholars and churchmen like Henry More, Gryffith Williams and Gilbert Burnet, as well as lesser-known authors, Anglican apocalyptic interpretation dispels the traditionally-held opinion that such convictions lost their power and validity with the decline of radical fortunes, and confirms that apocalyptic thought was not simply a language of disaffection on the political and religious margins of society.
Effect of symptoms on executive function in bipolar illness
Authors: DIXON T. , KRAVARITI E. , FRITH C. , MURRAY R. M. , McGUIRE P. K.
Published: July 2004

Background. The relationship between cognitive function and symptomatology in bipolar disorder is unclear. This study assessed executive function during the manic, depressed and remitted stages of bipolar I disorder.

Method. Tasks assessing phonological and semantic verbal fluency, the Hayling Sentence Completion Test, the Stroop Neuropsychological Screening Test and the Cognitive Estimates Test were administered to manic (n=15), depressed (n=15), and remitted (n=15) bipolar I patients, and to healthy controls (n=30). Multiple regression analyses and analyses of covariance were used to identify potential determinants of executive dysfunction in the three bipolar groups.

Results. Executive function deficits were particularly associated with the manic state. In general, manic patients performed less accurately than the remitted and depressed groups, and their performance deficit was related to the severity of positive thought disorder. The depressed and remitted bipolar groups showed a less widespread pattern of impairment. Deficits in response initiation, strategic thinking and inhibitory control were evident in all the bipolar groups.

Conclusions. Executive function deficits in bipolar I disorder are most evident during mania, and are particularly associated with formal thought disorder. However, deficits in response initiation, strategic thinking and inhibitory control may be more related to the underlying disorder than a particular symptom profile.
Estimating post-traumatic stress disorder in the community: lifetime perspective and the impact of typical traumatic events
Authors: BRESLAU N. , PETERSON E. L. , POISSON L. M. , SCHULTZ L. R. , LUCIA V. C.
Published: July 2004

Background. Community surveys have assessed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in relation to traumatic events designated by respondents as the worst they have ever experienced. An assessment of PTSD in relation to all reported traumas would impose too great a burden on respondents, a considerable proportion of whom report multiple traumas. The ‘worst event’ method is efficient for identifying persons with PTSD, but may overestimate the conditional probability of PTSD associated with the entire range of PTSD-level traumas. In this report, we evaluate this potential bias.

Method. The Detroit Area Survey of Trauma (n=2181) estimated the PTSD risk from two samples of traumas: (1) a representative sample of traumas formed by selecting a random trauma from each respondent's list of traumas; and (2) traumas designated by respondents as the worst (the standard method).

Results. Both estimation methods converged on key findings, including identifying trauma types with the highest probability of PTSD and sex differences in the risk of PTSD. Compared to the random events, the ‘worst event’ method yielded a moderately higher conditional probability for PTSD (0·136 v. 0·092). The bias was due almost entirely to the deviation of the distribution of the worst events from expected values, if all event types had equal prior selection probabilities. Direct adjustment, setting the distribution equal to expected values and applying the observed probabilities of PTSD associated with individual event types brought the estimate close to the unbiased estimate, based on the randomly selected traumas.

Conclusions. Only the ‘worst event’ method can be used as a short-cut to assessing all traumas. The bias in the estimated risk of PTSD is modest and is attenuated by direct adjustment.
Twelve-month prevalence and disability of DSM-IV bipolar disorder in an Australian general population survey
Authors: MITCHELL P. B. , SLADE T. , ANDREWS G.
Published: July 2004

Background. There have been few large-scale epidemiological studies which have examined the prevalence of bipolar disorder. The authors report 12-month prevalence data for DSM-IV bipolar disorder from the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being.

Method. The broad methodology of the Australian National Survey has been described previously. Ten thousand, six hundred and forty-one people participated. The 12-month prevalence of euphoric bipolar disorder (I and II) – similar to the euphoric-grandiose syndrome of Kessler and co-workers – was determined. Those so identified were compared with subjects with major depressive disorder and the rest of the sample, on rates of co-morbidity with anxiety and substance use disorders as well as demographic features and measures of disability and service utilization. Polychotomous logistic regression was used to study the relationship between the three samples and these dependent variables.

Results. There was a 12-month prevalence of 0·5% for bipolar disorder. Compared with subjects with major depressive disorder, those with bipolar disorder were distinguished by a more equal gender ratio; a greater likelihood of being widowed, separated or divorced; higher rates of drug abuse or dependence; greater disability as measured by days out of role; increased rates of treatment with medicines; and higher lifetime rates of suicide attempts.

Conclusions. This large national survey highlights the marked functional impairment caused by bipolar disorder, even when compared with major depressive disorder.
Temporal stability of saccadic task performance in schizophrenia and bipolar patients
Authors: GOODING D. C. , MOHAPATRA L. , SHEA H. B.
Published: July 2004

Background. Identifying endophenotypes of schizophrenia will assist in the identification of individuals who are at heightened risk for the disorder. Investigators have proposed antisaccade task deficits as an endophenotypic marker of schizophrenia. However, the diagnostic specificity and the temporal stability of the task deficit are unresolved issues. To date, there are few published reports of test–retest stability of antisaccade task performance in psychiatric patients.

Method. Twenty-three schizophrenia out-patients and 10 bipolar out-patients were administered two saccadic (antisaccade and refixation) tasks at two separate assessments, with an average test–retest interval of 33 months.

Results. The schizophrenia patients displayed high test–retest reliabilities of antisaccade task accuracy, despite changes in medication and clinical status. Additionally, the schizophrenia group's saccadic reaction times for antisaccade correct responses and task errors were moderately stable over time. In contrast, the bipolar patients did not show temporal stability in their antisaccade task accuracy or in their response latencies to either correct or incorrect antisaccade responses.

Conclusions. The results are supportive of the trait-like characteristics of antisaccade task deficits in schizophrenia patients. These findings also suggest that antisaccade task deficits may serve as an endophenotypic marker of schizophrenia.
The Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre: its origins, conception and initial accomplishments
Authors: RUTTER MICHAEL , McGUFFIN PETER
Published: July 2004

Background. The Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre was established by the Medical Research Council, in partnership with the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, in 1994.

Method and Results. The paper describes the origins of the Centre; the reasons why a new initiative was needed in the early 1990s; the thinking that led to the proposal for a major interdisciplinary research centre that integrated social, genetic and developmental research perspectives; the approach to international recruitment of world leaders; and the initial research accomplishments with respect to the basic goal of understanding nature-nurture interplay.

Conclusions. The structure and interdisciplinary approach of the Centre have proved a success and the initial accomplishments have begun to meet the objectives of showing how nature-nurture interplay is involved in the development of psychiatric disorders.
The relationship between gender and the psychological impact of urinary incontinence on older people in Hong Kong: an exploratory analysis
Authors: LEE JIK-JOEN
Published: July 2004

Adult incontinence violates social norms and values and undermines the personal expectation of being independent, dry and clean. Urinary incontinence is widely known to have a psychological impact on elderly people. This paper reports the findings of a study of the impact of incontinence on a convenience sample of older people in Hong Kong. Several of the results concur with those of studies in western countries. It was found that the prevalence of urinary incontinence increased with adult age, and that the condition affected women more than men. Over half of both men and women respondents had suffered for less than three years. It appeared that the period of suffering was not strongly associated with the level of incontinence. There were no significant differences between the duration and the level of incontinence, or between health status and years of suffering. About 80 per cent of the incontinent respondents had negative psychological impacts. There were significant differences between the sexes in the impact of urinary incontinence as indicated by the following items: elderly men found incontinence more stressful than their women counterparts; and elderly men more often strove to hide their incontinence from their friends. In summary, older men reported more negative psychological effects than older women. This study is not able to conclude that the psychological suffering of those who reported more negative effects is greater than that of those who reported fewer.
Leisure participation amongst Hong Kong Chinese older adults
Authors: CHOU KEE-LEE , CHOW NELSON W. S. , CHI IRIS
Published: July 2004

Gerontologists have recognised the important influence of leisure activity on the mental and physical health of older adults. To date, however, there have been few studies of the patterns of participation in leisure activity among older adults in Hong Kong. This study examines a large representative sample of Hong Kong older adults and the associations between their socio-economic and health characteristics and their leisure activities. The data are from a cross-sectional survey of 2,180 respondents aged 60 or more years, conducted in 2000 by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. There were full records for 2,144 respondents. Among the participation rates in the seven categories of leisure activities, watching television or listening to radio was the highest, while the lowest was for playing mahjong or cards. The characteristics that significantly correlated with the level of participation differed by the activity. Although no consistent pattern emerged, gender, education, employment status, receiving welfare benefits, self-rated health and functional impairment were the strongest correlates for most types of leisure activity. The paper is concluded by comparing the results with previous findings, and by discussing the service implications of the findings, the limitations of the study, and directions for future research.
The experience of ageing and advanced old age: a ten-year follow-up
Authors: HEIKKINEN RIITTA-LIISA
Published: July 2004

This paper presents, analyses and interprets expressions of the experience of advanced old age based upon the concepts of the French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger. During 1990, 262 older residents of the city of Jyväskylä in central Finland were interviewed. They were born in 1910 and aged 80 years at the time. In addition to collecting epidemiological data, the narrative stories on the ageing experience of a sub-sample of 20 respondents (10 men and 10 women) were tape-recorded. A five-year follow-up was carried out with the same cohort in 1995, when 17 of the original sub-sample of 20 were still alive. Unlike five years previously, most of the narrators said they had now crossed the line into old age. At the ten-year follow-up in 2000, six women and four men were still alive to describe their experience at 90 years of age. Collective history and objective structures had provided a common foundation for my narrators' notions of the world – of right and wrong and of good and bad. Over their lifetime, this socio-cultural background had gradually changed, and they perceived the changes. Moreover, in the earlier stages of the study, they voiced criticisms of these changes. At age 90 years, however, they no longer criticised society or its people. By this time, it seems they felt they had completed the mission of living a life.
Variations in subjective wellbeing: the mediating role of a psychological resource
Authors: WINDLE GILL , WOODS ROBERT T.
Published: July 2004

This study examines the mediating role of psychological resources on life satisfaction, an indicator of subjective wellbeing. The evidence identifies several life events and changing circumstances that can be potentially detrimental to the wellbeing of older adults. Based on the literature, a theoretical model was developed with the hypothesis that adaptation to potentially adverse events draws on psychological resources central to the self. The study participants were a random sample of 423 community-dwelling people aged 70 years and over. All respondents were interviewed in their own homes using a structured schedule. Quantitative data were obtained on age, gender, social support, marital status, physical functioning, bodily pain, loneliness, isolation and housing difficulties. Subjective well-being was assessed by the life satisfaction index, and the psychological mediator was conceptualised as a measure of environmental mastery. The first round of analyses found that variations in well-being were associated with housing difficulties, isolation, loneliness, physical functioning, pain, support networks and marital status. The full model established perfect mediation by environmental mastery occurred for the variables housing problems and physical functioning, and partial mediation occurred for the variable loneliness – supporting the original hypothesis. The results add to the evidence from an increasing number of studies that demonstrates how psychological resources underlie the processes of adaptation to the changing situations that accompany increasing age and prevent negative outcomes.
Inter-generational family support provided by older people in Indonesia
Authors: SCHRÖDER-BUTTERFILL ELISABETH
Published: July 2004

Most social research on ageing in Asia has focused on the support provided by adult children to their parents, and thereby suggests that as a matter of course older people are in need of support. This paper offers a different perspective. Drawing on ethnographic and quantitative data from a village in East Java, it examines the extent of older people's dependence on others and highlights the material and practical contributions that they make to their families. It is shown that only a minority of older people are reliant on children or grandchildren for their daily survival. In the majority of cases, the net flow of inter-generational support is either downwards – from old to young – or balanced. Far from merely assisting with childcare and domestic tasks, older people are often the economic pillars of multi-generational families. Pension and agricultural incomes serve to secure the livelihoods of whole family networks, and the accumulated wealth of older parents is crucial for launching children into economic independence and underwriting their risks. Parental generosity does not generally elicit commensurate reciprocal support when it is needed, leaving many people vulnerable towards the end of their lives.
Reproductive biology of the dioecious understorey palm Chamaedorea radicalis in a Mexican cloud forest: pollination vector, flowering phenology and female fecundity
Authors: Berry Eric J. , Gorchov David L.
Published: July 2004

The reproductive biology of the dioecious understorey palm Chamaedorea radicalis was investigated in order to identify the primary pollen vector and quantify the relationship between female fecundity and local neighbourhood sexual composition. The study was conducted in a montane mesophyll forest within the El Cielo Biosphere Reserve, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The species is considered vulnerable in Mexico and there are concerns about the sustainability of leaf harvest. We determined that wind is the primary pollen vector, based both on floral and pollen morphological characters, and on a pollinator exclosure experiment. Successful wind pollination of this understorey palm was facilitated by the extended flowering period of males, which allows one male to be a source of pollen to receptive females for as long as a month. The number of flowers and fruits borne on a female were dependent on female size, however, no size parameter correlated well with fruit set. Fruit set was also not dependent on local sexual composition, male density or distance to the nearest male, suggesting that in this study area female reproductive success is not limited by the availability of pollen.
Influence of a common palm, Oenocarpus mapora, on seedling establishment in a tropical moist forest in Panama
Authors: Farris-Lopez Krista , Denslow Julie S. , Moser Barry , Passmore Heather
Published: July 2004

Plants often modify microsite conditions important for seedling establishment. In tropical moist forest, advance regeneration in the form of shade-suppressed seedlings is a major component of regrowth in new gaps. Tree seedlings may be filtered by the composition and structure of the forest understorey. In a lowland forest in Central Panama, we examined light availability, litter accumulation and the seedling community (abundance, diversity and composition) under and away from the canopies of a common subcanopy, clonal palm, Oenocarpus mapora, and tested whether seedling abundance varies as a function of changes in understorey light conditions and leaf litter depth. We found evidence that leaf litter was five times deeper and light availability 27% lower under O. mapora canopy than where it was absent. The probability of finding a seedling in plots under O. mapora canopies was 33% lower than in plots without the palm. Plots under O. mapora canopies also had 49% fewer species of seedlings and those seedlings came from significantly larger seeds than seedlings in plots not under the palm. Overall, seedling density was positively correlated with light availability and negatively correlated with leaf litter depth. A transplant experiment confirmed that for at least one large-seeded species of dicot, seedlings are negatively affected by the reduction in light availability and increase in leaf litter. Under O. mapora, seedlings of Gustavia superba (Lecythidaceae) had lower survivorship and biomass accumulation than away from the palm. Thus, site conditions produced by large, clonal, multi-layered palms such as O. mapora may reduce establishment of small-seeded and shade-intolerant species, potentially affecting species composition in the understorey seedling pool.
The effects of Cyclone Waka on the structure of lowland tropical rain forest in Vava'u, Tonga
Authors: Franklin Janet , Drake Donald R. , McConkey Kim R. , Tonga Filipe , Smith Leslie B.
Published: July 2004

On 31 December 2001, Tropical Cyclone Waka passed directly over the Vava'u island group, Kingdom of Tonga, with sustained and maximum wind speeds of 185 km h−1 and 230 km h−1 respectively. During a prior study of forest secondary succession, 44 forest plots on 13 islands had been surveyed in 1995 and their locations marked. Nineteen of the plots were resurveyed and two additional transects established in May–June 2002, 6 mo following the cyclone. Cyclone-related tree mortality averaged 6%, varied from 0–7% for lowland late-successional species, and tended to be higher for early successional plots (8–16%) and species (4–19%). Severe damage (uprooting, snapped stems) affected 25% of the 2030 stems measured. The proportion of snapped stems was disproportionately high in the 10–15-cm stem diameter class. Uprooting was more prevalent than expected by chance among larger trees (>20 cm diameter). The greatest mortality and severe damage (combined,>35% of stems) occurred in plots that were early successional. Over the 6 y prior to the storm, background recruitment and mortality averaged 1.4% and 3.3% respectively. Mortality was greater than recruitment, while basal area was increasing, in most plots that had not experienced additional anthropogenic disturbance.
Severe drought, leafing phenology, leaf damage and lepidopteran abundance in the canopy of a Bornean aseasonal tropical rain forest
Authors: Itioka Takao , Yamauti Manabu
Published: July 2004

Rainfall fluctuation influences the physiology and leaf production of the trees in tropical rain forests (Burslem et al. 1996, Condit et al. 1995, Reekie & Wayne 1992, Reich 1995), and consequently it may have an impact on the community of herbivores that depend on forest trees for their food resources (Aide 1988, 1992; Basset 1991, Coley 1998, Lowman 1985, van Schaik et al. 1993).
Herbivore density and biomass in a semi-arid tropical dry deciduous forest of western India
Authors: Bagchi Sumanta , Goyal Surendra P. , Sankar K.
Published: July 2004

Prey depletion is a major (but often neglected) factor driving the current decline of tigers (Panthera tigris L.) (Karanth & Stith 1999). Thus conservation planning for the tiger in a fragmented, human-dominated landscape requires reliable information on prey densities from various parts of its range. We report numerical and biomass density of six herbivores from the tropical dry-deciduous forests of Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve (RTR, 26°N and 76°E), Rajasthan, India, where these are important prey for tigers (Bagchi et al. 2003).
The acquisition of word connotations: asking ‘What happened?’
Authors: CORRIGAN ROBERTA
Published: July 2004

Although words have both denotative and connotative meanings, there has been little research on the child's acquisition of connotations. In large segments of written texts, connotations can be studied by examining word co-occurrences (collocations). Using this technique, corpus linguists have found, for example, that ‘happen’ has a negative connotation; it most often collocates with negative words (e.g. ‘accidents’, ‘something dreadful’). The current research is a case study of the use of the lemma ‘happen’. Adult production of ‘happen/happens/happening/happened’ was examined in 151 American English-speaking, adult–child dyads from the CHILDES database. Within these dyads, 35 children used ‘happen’ and its variants. Both adults and children were increasingly likely to use ‘happen’ to describe negative contexts as children's language progressed from MLUs around 1·00 to MLUs greater than 4·00. Results are consistent with usage-based theories of language that claim that the relative frequency of information in the input is critical to language learning.
On the use of the connective ‘and’ in oral narration: a study of French-speaking elementary school children
Authors: VION MONIQUE , COLAS ANNIE
Published: July 2004

The study deals with children's use of the connective and to end a story. One hundred and ninety-one children (aged 7;0 to 11;0) who were native speakers of French told two-character comic strip stories with no text to a same-age peer. In the consecutive-display condition, the comic strip was in booklet format with one frame per page, whereas in the simultaneous-display condition, all frames were on the same page. In the arbitrary-sequence condition, the events in each comic strip, although presented as a sequence, could have occurred in any order, whereas in the ordered-sequence condition, the order of the events could not be changed. In the maintained-topic condition, the materials were designed to induce a thematic subject right after the first frame (by the repeated presence of the same character in every picture, up to and including the last one), whereas in the changed-topic condition, the other character appeared alone in the last frame.

The analysis focused on cases where the children began the narration of the last frame using and to change the text pattern established so far. The results showed that and was often used in this way (35·2% of the productions), especially in the experimental conditions that facilitated event interconnection (simultaneous display, ordered sequence, maintained topic). The ordered-sequence condition showed that the nine-year-olds in simultaneous display employed and in co-occurrence with another connective, whereas the eleven-year-olds mainly used and more specifically: when the topic changed. The discussion deals with the specialization during development of the use of and within a speaker's discourse.
Genetic and environmental interactions in determining the early lexicon: evidence from a set of tri-zygotic quadruplets
Authors: McGREGOR KARLA K. , CAPONE NINA C.
Published: July 2004

A set of tri-zygotic quadruplets, three girls and one boy, participated in weekly observations from 1;2 to 1;10 (years;months), a period of transition from prelinguistic gesture to 50 words. In the study, one girl served as a genetic mate to her identical twin and a biological risk mate to her fraternal sister. The biological risk mates achieved milestones in lexical development at similar times; however, the genetic mates demonstrated more similarities in pattern of lexical development and in the modality of their word productions. Degree of similarity changed over the observation period. Imposed upon the natural experiment was a within-subject manipulation of the social environment: The experimenters modelled a core vocabulary via the gesture+verbal modalities to the children during each visit. The modelling resulted in increased rates of word learning for three of the children; the child with the greatest biological risk, the boy, derived the greatest benefit. The findings provide unique support for a dynamic, multi-factorial model of lexical development involving the interaction of genetics, the biological environment and the social environment. Furthermore, they illustrate the robustness of early lexical development in the face of biological risks.
Linguistic indicators of inter-genre differentiation in later language development
Authors: BERMAN RUTH A. , NIR-SAGIV BRACHA
Published: July 2004

The paper examines two types of texts, personal experience narratives and expository discussions, dealing with the shared theme of interpersonal conflict. Both were produced by the same 80 subjects, participants in a crosslinguistic study on developing literacy: gradeschoolers aged 9;0 to 10;0, twelve-to-thirteen-year-old junior high school students, sixteen-to-seventeen-year-old high school students, and graduate-level university students. The study reported here aims to demonstrate that inter-genre differentiation is evident from an early age and is reflected by distinct forms of expression across different interlocking linguistic systems. In keeping with the focus on relations between linguistic forms and discourse functions that motivates our study, we further aim to show how particular grammatical elements can fulfil different discourse functions across development. To this end, we analysed several different lexical and morphosyntactic constructions in 160 Hebrew-language texts as diagnostic of inter-genre distinctiveness: subjectless constructions; verbless copular clauses; verb types and the temporal categories of verb tense and mood, including lexical expressions of modality in the two genres. Results show that narratives are clearly distinguished from expository texts along all these dimensions; these distinctions are evident from the youngest age group we considered; and with age, inter-genre differentiation emerges as more moderately dichotomous. We concluded from this that maturely proficient text construction is able to combine expository-type generalizations with narrative event-description and to intersperse narrative-type illustrative episodes with expository formulation of ideas.
Learnability and linguistic performance
Authors: DROZD KENNETH F.
Published: July 2004

Crain, S. & Thornton, R. Investigations in Universal Grammar. Cambridge: MIT, 1998.

Stephen Crain (C) & Rosalind Thornton (T) have garnered a well-deserved reputation for their unwavering commitment to language learnability as a constraint not only on theories of child language and language development but also on experimental design and the interpretation of experimental findings. In his well-known defense of children's early knowledge of syntactic constraints, Crain (1991) argued for the widely-held position that the best solution to the learnability problem is to assume that grammatical knowledge which cannot be learned on the basis of experience is specified in advance as part of the human biological endowment for language in the form of a UNIVERSALGRAMMAR (UG) (Chomsky, 1965). With respect to experimental design, C&T have strongly maintained that even young children know UG constraints but perform poorly in some experiments-due to the extralinguistic demands associated with experimental tasks, particularly those involved in presupposition accommodation and complex response planning. C&T specifically design their experiments to reduce the impact of extralinguistic demands on children's linguistic performance while at the same time providing felicitous environments for adultlike performance.
Nativist versus constructivist goals in studying child language
Authors: AKHTAR NAMEERA
Published: July 2004

Crain & Thornton (1998: 5) are admirably clear in stating the aims of their research programme: they ‘hope to convince a greater number of students and researchers in child language of the correctness of the Innateness Hypothesis and the theory of Universal Grammar’. As Drozd notes, however, their assumptions under Modularity Matching ‘set the stage for a research programme unlike those typically adopted by developmental psycholinguists’. Whereas C&T are avowedly committed to the continuity assumption (clearly preferring ‘special nativism’ over ‘general nativism’; O'Grady, 1997), constructivists are more interested in the question of how children ‘get from here to there’ (Tomasello, 2003) – that is, from immature levels of language comprehension and use to adultlike levels (and, it is important to note that adultlike levels are not always characterized in generativist terms). Most constructivists are also committed to studying the relations between language development and other simultaneously developing social and cognitive skills (Clark, 2003), whereas nativists tend to be interested in ‘pure’ linguistic ability uncontaminated by nonlinguistic influences. The main goal of nativists then is to verify a specific theory of linguistic competence that suggests that linguistic knowledge is innate and modular and to account for children's linguistic development in terms of UG, whereas the main goal for constructivists is to account for development (change) in the child's language system (beginning from perhaps no predetermined linguistic knowledge) and how it relates to other aspects of development. It is this fundamental difference in goals that makes one quite pessimistic that constructivist and nativist researchers in syntactic development can learn anything from one another; they are simply engaged in separate tasks.
Is Modularity Matching correct or useful?
Authors: ALLEN SHANLEY
Published: July 2004

In his review of Crain & Thornton's (C&T) (1998) Investigations in Universal Grammar (IUG), Drozd raises many substantial concerns that call into question the correctness and usefulness of the Modularity Matching Model, and the adequacy of the experimental designs put forth to support it. My comments will focus on Modularity Matching. First, I elaborate on Drozd's suggestion that C&T's comparisons between Modularity Matching and other (potential) models do not provide convincing support for their model. Second, I suggest that Modularity Matching, while a strong claim, considers such a narrow range of phenomena in child language that its usefulness in explaining language development in general is likewise constrained.
Grammatical competence is not a psychologically valid construct
Authors: BROOKS PATRICIA J.
Published: July 2004

It is not unusual for developmental psychologists to become frustrated with the theory of universal grammar (UG), whose proponents have tended to dismiss most research on children's language production and comprehension as irrelevant to explaining how human languages are acquired. This is because children's actual linguistic behaviour is presumed to reflect factors besides their grammatical competence, rendering most methods of sampling linguistic behaviour unsuitable for evaluating UG theory. This means, in practice, that UG proponents do not view performance errors as evidence against their hypothesis that grammatical knowledge is largely innate. When children perform at ceiling on a given task, this is usually taken as proof of their adultlike grammatical competence, while poor performance is dismissed as due to research design flaws or limitations in information processing capacities (e.g. working memory). Crain & Thornton (1998) attempt to eliminate what they consider to be post hoc processing accounts of children's linguistic behaviour by arguing, counter to Chomsky (1965) and many others, that children and adults share identical language processing mechanisms, and that linguistic performance directly reflects grammatical competence. Therefore, if UG principles are available from an early age, child and adult performance should be the same when tasks are properly constructed to avoid extra-linguistic demand characteristics (excepting adult–child differences predicted by parameter-setting or maturational models). It should not be surprising then that some psycholinguists, such as Drozd (target article), would find C&T to be misguided with respect to these issues, because children's linguistic behaviour surely differs from adults' in seemingly unpredictable ways.
Facing Plato's cave: viewing the shadows of grammatical competence: commentary on learnability and linguistic performance by Ken Drozd
Authors: LUST BARBARA
Published: July 2004

C&T deserve credit for their concern for attaining empirical evidence, in particular evidence from language acquisition, for linguistic theory. They also deserve credit for bringing to the attention of the linguistic community the fact that variations in methodology do indeed produce variations in child behaviours, a fact well appreciated in behavioural sciences such as psychology, but often not fully appreciated outside of it; in particular, not in linguistics, a field which is fundamentally and rightfully ambivalent about its standing as a behavioural science, considering its relation to mathematics and formal theory as well as to sociolinguistics (Lust, Flynn, Foley & Chien, 1999). C&T also deserve credit for their appreciation of the importance of what children do NOT do (constraints) in language, and attempts to empirically verify such.
Multiple influences on children's language performance
Authors: McKEE CECILE , McDANIEL DANA
Published: July 2004

Our commentary concerns the Competing Factors Model (CFM). As Drozd says, the CFM is fictitious and without proponents. (See also McDaniel, 2001.) But we will argue that something like it is necessary to our field. Everyone recognizes multiple influences on language performance, even C&T. Most important, recognizing these factors does not require a denial of the grammar's existence or even of its dominance.
Grammar, processing and acquisition
Authors: O'GRADY WILLIAM
Published: July 2004

Drozd notes that Crain & Thornton's view of children's processing capacities (namely that they are the same as those of adults) is inconsistent both with the more widely held view that there are at least quantitative differences between the performance systems of children and adults, and with what is known about the acquisition of many grammatical phenomena. There is, I believe, an additional consideration that must be brought to bear here: there are highly suggestive parallels among children acquiring their first language, adults acquiring a second language, and Broca's (agrammatic) aphasics with respect to the comprehension of patterns that involve comparatively heavy demands on the processor. These parallels not only seem to confirm that children's processing resources are initially compromised, they point to the possibility of a greater role for processing in understanding grammatical development.
How not to undermine the goal of an acquisition theory
Authors: ROEPER TOM
Published: July 2004

Much of Drozd's penetrating review of Investigations in Universal Grammar (IUG), beyond noting countless lamentable misattributions of ideas and inconsistencies, evaluates its methodology. The standardization of methodology in IUG can, I believe, undermine our understanding of acquisition more than it supports it. It is a pity if we lose the real value of their useful experimental refinements of existing experiments (and several novel ones in semantics).
The relative roles of theory and acquisition studies
Authors: SOBIN NICHOLAS
Published: July 2004

Radford (1988: 2) and others before and after have argued that the core theoretical question (i) ‘How are human languages structured?’ is logically prior to another core theoretical question (ii) ‘How are human languages acquired?’ This is said to be so because the answer to (i), the structure of human language, is the real target of question (ii) – language acquisition is about acquiring the structure of a human language. Thus, we can't ask about how a thing is learned before we know what it is. Bearing this dictum in mind, consideration of both Crain & Thornton (1998) (C&T) and the Drozd critique (present volume) raises an interesting question: is linguistic theory and the data on which it is established sufficiently developed to inform ‘external’ empirical studies in areas such as language acquisition? At this point, it isn't clear that it is. The data of theoretical linguistics is often idealized and sometimes rather narrow. A given construction may be narrowly investigated (cited) for its apparent interest as a side-light on another area or a more general theoretical issue rather than being investigated more fully/paradigmatically in its own right. Further, the latter sort of investigation might shed a very different light on a phenomenon only investigated narrowly. So paradoxically, it is often only in the context of doing experimental work such as acquisition or variation research that such fuller investigation takes place, possibly revealing new and crucial facts which may prove relevant to theory construction.
The Modularity Matching model: a solution to the problem of performance limitations in production?
Authors: THEAKSTON ANNA L.
Published: July 2004

In his review of Crain & Thornton's (C&T) (1998) ‘Investigations in Universal Grammar’ (IUG), Drozd raises the question of how models of children's linguistic competence relate to their linguistic performance. He highlights the use of processing limitations (PLs) to explain children's non-adultlike performance in most models of acquisition that adopt a Universal Grammar (UG) framework. Although the Modularity Matching (MM) model claims to avoid the need for performance-based constraints by assuming that children and adults operate with the same processing resources, Drozd argues that the model lacks predictive power.
The Campaign to “Open Up the West”: National, Provincial-level and Local Perspectives
Authors: Goodman David S. G.
Published: July 2004

The campaign to Open Up the West that started in 2000 has been presented as a major state project of nation-building directed at the interior provincial-level jurisdictions in order to encourage endogenous economic growth, to reduce socio-economic inequalities, and to ensure social and political stability in non-Han areas of the PRC. Despite appearances to the contrary it is more of an adjustment to the PRC's regional development policy than a radical change, not least because of debate and imprecision about its goals, processes and finance. Its impact is perhaps best viewed from provincial and local perspectives. These stress not only the importance of the west's varied social and economic ecology, but also the significance of the sub-provincial as a focus for analysis.
Staged Development in Xinjiang
Authors: Becquelin Nicolas
Published: July 2004

At the turn of the century, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region moved from a phase of accelerated integration by the centre, which typified the decade of the 1990s, to a phase of consolidation of the advances made during this period. The intertwined dimensions of state building and nation building embedded in the campaign to Open Up the West respond to the long-term strategic goal of placating the threat of ethno-nationalist unrest. This “staged development” of Xinjiang reflects in essence a classic process of peripheral territorial integration by the central state. Yet, the dynamics of penetration and resistance between the centre and what still remains an indigenous periphery can be expected to generate at the same time both increased sinicization and increased ethno-national unrest.
Qinghai and the Emergence of the West: Nationalities, Communal Interaction and National Integration
Authors: Goodman David S. G.
Published: July 2004

Qinghai is one of China's poorest provincial-level jurisdictions, least internally integrated and least integrated with the rest of the People's Republic. Its social complexity and fragile environment repeatedly created significant political and economic problems during the first half-century of the PRC, which were then exacerbated by policies that rapidly proved over-simplistic and counter-productive. Since January 2000 the PRC government's new policy initiative to develop the Western Region – the call to “Open Up the West” – has provided the provincial leadership with the opportunity to resolve some of the province's long-term difficulties through adopting markedly different perspectives on development. A more gradual approach has emerged, concentrating on the development of the province's infrastructure and environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, there remains a danger that in concentrating on economic solutions to the province's problems its inherent political, social and cultural contestations may be ignored to the detriment of the leadership's wider goals.