A-40 Utility of the Spanish Auditory and Visual Naming Test in identifying word- finding difficulty in Spanish-speaking adults with Epilepsy

Objective Although visual naming (VN) and complementary auditory naming (AN) have proven clinically useful in the pre-surgical work-up of adults with epilepsy, they are available only in English, which compromises assessment for many native Spanish-speakers. VN is typically assessed with the Pontón-Satz Boston Naming Test (PS-BNT), yet this measure is of questionable validity due to vocabulary confounds and inclusion of culturally unfamiliar items. This pilot study examines the utility of the Spanish Auditory and Visual Naming Test (S-AVNT) in a small sample of native Spanish speakers with epilepsy. Method 20 adult, native Spanish-speaking patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE; 12 left, 8 right) were recruited (Mage = 41 years, SD = 10.1; Meducation = 12 years, SD = 2.8). Performance measures included: Accuracy (% correct), response time (RT), and tip-of-tongue errors (TOT; i.e., correct responses > 2 seconds or correct following a phonemic cue). Results Results: S-AVNT accuracy was high across RTLE and LTLE groups (93-97%) compared to the PS-BNT (59%; p = .000). There were no significant group-level differences, however within-group analyses revealed that VN was superior to AN across all performance measures (all ps < .01). Conclusions These preliminary findings represent the first step towards valid, culturally appropriate AN and VN tests for use with native Spanish speakers. The significant within-subjects differences are promising, particularly with respect to RT (i.e., slower auditory RT compared with visual RT) and TOT errors (i.e., auditory TOT > visual TOT), and may provide a more complete picture of naming ability than accuracy scores alone. Funded by NAN Clinical Research Grant.

Recency order judgments in short term memory: Replication and extension of Hacker (1980)

The classic finding from short-term relative JOR tasks is that correct response time (RT) depends on the lag to the more recent item but not to the less recent item (Hacker, 1980). For decades, researchers have argued that this finding is consistent with a self-terminating backward scanning model (Muter, 1979; Hacker, 1980; Hockley, 1984; McElree & Dosher, 1993). This finding has taken on new importance in light of recent proposal that many forms of memory depend on a compressed representation of the past (Howard, Shankar, Aue, & Criss, 2015). This paper replicates and extends the results of the classic papers. A Bayesian t-test showed substantial evidence for the null effect of lag to the less recent item on correct RT. In addition, this paper reports that correct RT is a sub-linear function of lag to the more recent probe and replicates the classic finding that error RT depends on lag to the less recent probe. These findings place new constraints on models of short-term memory scanning.

Testing Numerical Models of Glacier Flow

The recent glaciological literature contains a number of numerical simulations of ice-mass flow based on the mass conservation equation. Although rather complex ice masses have been modelled, there has been little discussion of the necessary tests for correct response time and amplitudes in the models. The analytical work of J. F. Nye (1960, 1963[a], 1963[b], 1965[a],1965[b]) on the response of a steady-state glacier to perturbations in its mass balance provides an excellent test of model dynamics. Only when properly verified can the numerical model be used to extend knowledge of glacier response to more general cases where analytical solutions are unavailable. The model in this paper is checked against Nye’s calculations of response to a step increase in mass balance. It is then used to extend Nye’s results by finding the time constants for diffusion parameters other than 0 and 1.

Testing Numerical Models of Glacier Flow

The recent glaciological literature contains a number of numerical simulations of ice-mass flow based on the mass conservation equation. Although rather complex ice masses have been modelled, there has been little discussion of the necessary tests for correct response time and amplitudes in the models. The analytical work of J. F. Nye (1960, 1963[a], 1963[b], 1965[a],1965[b]) on the response of a steady-state glacier to perturbations in its mass balance provides an excellent test of model dynamics. Only when properly verified can the numerical model be used to extend knowledge of glacier response to more general cases where analytical solutions are unavailable. The model in this paper is checked against Nye’s calculations of response to a step increase in mass balance. It is then used to extend Nye’s results by finding the time constants for diffusion parameters other than 0 and 1.