Are lay people good at recognising the symptoms of schizophrenia?

©2013 Erritty, Wydell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the general public’s perception of schizophrenia symptoms and the need to seekhelp for symptoms. The recognition (or ‘labelling’) of schizophrenia symptoms, help-seeking behaviours and public awareness of schizophrenia have been suggested as potentially important factors relating to untreated psychosis. Method: Participants were asked to rate to what extent they believe vignettes describing classic symptoms (positive and negative) of schizophrenia indicate mental illness. They were also asked if the individuals depicted in the vignettes required help or treatment and asked to suggest what kind of help or treatment. Results: Only three positive symptoms (i.e., Hallucinatory behaviour, Unusual thought content and Suspiciousness) of schizophrenia were reasonably well perceived (above 70%) as indicating mental illness more than the other positive or negative symptoms. Even when the participants recognised that the symptoms indicated mental illness, not everyone recommended professional help. Conclusion: There may be a need to improve public awareness of schizophrenia and psychosis symptoms, particularly regarding an awareness of the importance of early intervention for psychosis

Developmental changes in the role of different metalinguistic awareness skills in Chinese reading acquisition from preschool to third grade

Copyright @ 2014 Wei et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.The present study investigated the relationship between Chinese reading skills and metalinguistic awareness skills such as phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness for 101 Preschool, 94 Grade-1, 98 Grade-2, and 98 Grade-3 children from two primary schools in Mainland China. The aim of the study was to examine how each of these metalinguistic awareness skills would exert their influence on the success of reading in Chinese with age. The results showed that all three metalinguistic awareness skills significantly predicted reading success. It further revealed that orthographic awareness played a dominant role in the early stages of reading acquisition, and its influence decreased with age, while the opposite was true for the contribution of morphological awareness. The results were in stark contrast with studies in English, where phonological awareness is typically shown as the single most potent metalinguistic awareness factor in literacy acquisition. In order to account for the current data, a three-stage model of reading acquisition in Chinese is discussed.National Natural Science Foundation of China and Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Visual-motor integration and reading Chinese in children with/without dyslexia

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Reading and Writing. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-018-9876-zNational Natural Science Foundation of China; Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Imaging Technology; Scientific Foundation of Institute of Psychology; Chinese Academy of Sciences

The representation and attainment of students with dyslexia in UK higher education

Using a database of all students in higher education in the UK in 1995–1996, students with dyslexia and those with no reported disability were compared in terms of demographic properties, programmes of study and academic attainment. Students with dyslexia constituted 0.42% of all students resident in the UK. Their representation varied with age, gender, ethnicity and entrance qualifications and with their level, mode and subject of study. Students with dyslexia were more likely to withdraw during their first year of study and were less likely to complete their programmes of study, although with appropriate support the completion rate of students with dyslexia can match that of students with no disabilities. In addition, students with dyslexia who completed first-degree programmes tended to gain a poorer class of honours than students with no reported disability, but 40%obtained first-class or upper second-class honours. In short, dyslexia may have deleterious consequences for progression, completion and achievement in higher education, but it is by no means incompatible with a high level of success, given appropriate commitment on the part of the students and appropriate resources on the part of their institution

Participant responses (frequency and percentages) per vignette across the ‘agree’, ‘not sure’ and ‘disagree’ response categories, with chi-square analyses.

*<p><i>P<0.001</i>.</p

Treatment Suggestion - frequencies, percentages and chi-square analyses of treatment suggestions made by participants.

<p>Treatment Suggestion - frequencies, percentages and chi-square analyses of treatment suggestions made by participants.</p

The Cross-Script Length Effect: Further Evidence Challenging PDP Models of Reading Aloud

The interaction between length and lexical status is one of the key findings used in support of models of reading aloud that postulate a serial process in the orthography-to-phonology translation (B. S. Weekes, 1997). However, proponents of parallel models argue that this effect arises in peripheral visual or articulatory processes. The authors addressed this possibility using the special characteristics of the Serbian and Japanese writing systems. Experiment 1 examined length effects in Serbian when participants were biased to interpret phonologically bivalent stimuli in the alphabet in which they are words or in the alphabet in which they are nonwords (i.e., the visual characteristics of stimuli were held constant across lexical status). Experiment 2 examined length effects in Japanese kana when words were presented in the kana script in which they usually appear or in the script in which they do not normally appear (i.e., the phonological characteristics of stimuli were held constant across lexical status). Results in both cases showed a larger length effect when stimuli were treated as nonwords and thus offered strong support to models of reading aloud that postulate a serial component

The visual magnocellular pathway in Chinese-speaking children with developmental dyslexia

Previous research into the cognitive processes involved in reading Chinese and developmental dyslexia in Chinese revealed that the single most important factor appears to be orthographic processing skills rather than phonological skills Also some studies have indicated that even in alphabetic languages some dyslexic individuals reveal deficits in orthographic processing skills which are linked to a deficit in the visual magnocellular pathway The current study therefore employed a visual psychophysical experiment together with visual and auditory event-related potential (ERP) experiments eliciting mismatch negativity (MMN) to investigate the link between visual magnocellular functional abnormalities and developmental dyslexia in Chinese The performance levels of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia (DD) from the behavioural and electrophysiological experiments were compared to those of the chronological age-matched (CA) children and those of the reading level matched (RL) younger children Both the behavioural and electrophysiological results suggest that the orthographic processing skills were compromised in the Chinese developmental dyslexics which in turn is linked to a deficit in the visual magnocellular system (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserve