A pilot study of sleep scholar: A single-session, internet-based insomnia intervention for college students with a history of suicide ideation

OBJECTIVE

Establish the feasibility and acceptability of Sleep Scholar, a single-session, self-guided, internet-based insomnia intervention.

PARTICIPANTS

College students with a lifetime history of suicide ideation and at least subclinical insomnia symptoms.

METHODS

Participants (N = 38) completed pretreatment sleep diaries, Sleep Scholar, and post-treatment feasibility, acceptability, and clinical measures.

RESULTS

Approximately 33 students could be recruited per semester, the overall attrition rate was 47%, Sleep Scholar was completed in approximately 30 minutes, and the majority of treatment information was retained. Participants reported positive acceptability and satisfaction, and approximately half of participants adhered to their prescribed time in bed recommendations. Most clinical measures had adequate variability and internal consistency, and post-hoc analyses revealed clinically significant reductions in several mental health symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

Sleep Scholar is feasible in college settings, acceptable for college students, and produced reductions in mental health symptoms during an uncontrolled trial. Implications for a randomized-controlled trial are discussed.

Academic skills, self-perceptions, and grades in university students with a history of multiple concussions: The mediating roles of processing speed and psychological symptoms

This study determined if university students with a history of multiple concussions may be at risk for academic difficulties and poor academic performance. We investigated if executive functioning, processing speed, and/or psychological symptoms might partially account for differences in academic performance of students with and without a history of multiple concussions.

University students with a history of three or more concussions (n = 58), one concussion (n = 57), or no concussion (n = 57) completed academic, cognitive, and psychological assessments.

Students with a history of multiple concussions read fewer words per minute and reported more learning difficulties than the no concussion group. Processing speed mediated the association between concussion status and reading rate. Psychological symptoms mediated the association between concussion status and self-reported learning difficulties.

University students with a history of multiple concussions may be at risk for poor academic outcomes due, at least in part, to slower processing speed and psychological symptoms.Treatment of psychological symptoms, cognitive rehabilitation to augment processing speed, and academic accommodations might improve academic outcomes for students with a history of three or more concussions.

Disgustingly perfect: An examination of disgust, perfectionism, and gender

High levels of disgust and perfectionism co-exist in some clinical disorders raising questions about the relationship between the two. This research evaluated socially-related and physically-related disgust in people with varying levels of perfectionism. In Study 1, 120 college students participated in a state emotion-eliciting scenario task, then completed both the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised and the Three Dimensions of Disgust Survey (TDDS). In Study 2, 380 Qualtrics users completed the scenarios, along with the TDDS and Multidimensional Perfectionist Scale. Both studies showed that state emotions differed from each other in ways that were unrelated to perfectionism. Gender differences were seen in the perfectionist groups, state disgust responses, and trait sexual disgust. However, Study 2 also showed relationships between trait perfectionism and disgust. The differing state emotional responses show that contextual interpersonal factors are highly important in disgust behaviors. Additionally, the findings suggest that gender could be important in the relationship between disgust and perfectionism.

Reading and alexia

Alexia refers to a reading disorder caused by some form of acquired brain pathology, most commonly a stroke or tumor, in a previously literate subject. In neuropsychology, a distinction is made between central alexia (commonly seen in aphasia) and peripheral alexia (a perceptual or attentional deficit). The prototypical peripheral alexia is alexia without agraphia (pure alexia), where patients can write but are impaired in reading words and letters. Pure alexia is associated with damage to the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT) or its connections. Hemianopic alexia is associated with less extensive occipital damage and is caused by a visual field defect, which creates problems reading longer words and passages of text. Reading impairment can also arise due to attentional deficits, most commonly following right hemisphere or bilateral lesions. Studying patients with alexia, along with functional imaging studies of normal readers, has improved our understanding of the neurobiological processes involved in reading. A key question is whether an area in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex is specialized for or selectively involved in word processing, or whether reading relies on tuning of more general purpose perceptual areas. Reading deficits may also be observed in dementia and traumatic brain injury, but often with less consistent deficit patterns than in patients with focal lesions.

Effect of Text-to-Speech Rate on Reading Comprehension by Adults With Aphasia

Purpose Accessing auditory and written material simultaneously benefits people with aphasia; however, the extent of benefit as well as people's preferences and experiences may vary given different auditory presentation rates. This study's purpose was to determine how 3 text-to-speech rates affect comprehension when adults with aphasia access newspaper articles through combined modalities. Secondary aims included exploring time spent reviewing written texts after speech output cessation, rate preference, preference consistency, and participant rationales for preferences. Method Twenty-five adults with aphasia read and listened to passages presented at slow (113 words per minute [wpm]), medium (154 wpm), and fast (200 wpm) rates. Participants answered comprehension questions, selected most and least preferred rates following the 1st and 3rd experimental sessions and after receiving performance feedback, and explained rate preferences and reading and listening strategies. Results Comprehension accuracy did not vary significantly across presentation rates, but reviewing time after cessation of auditory content did. Visual data inspection revealed that, in particular, participants with substantial extra reviewing time took longer given fast than medium or slow presentation. Regardless of exposure amount or receipt of performance feedback, participants most preferred the medium rate and least preferred the fast rate; rationales centered on reading and listening synchronization, benefits to comprehension, and perceived normality of speaking rate. Conclusion As a group, people with aphasia most preferred and were most efficient given a text-to-speech rate around 150 wpm when processing dual modality content; individual differences existed, however, and mandate attention to personal preferences and processing strengths.

Validation of curriculum-based reading passages and comparison of college students with and without dyslexia or ADHD

Although reading is an essential skill for college success, little is known about how college students with and without disabilities read within their actual college curriculum. In the present article, we report on two studies addressing this issue. Within study 1, we developed and validated curriculum-based oral reading fluency measures using a sample of college students without disabilities (N = 125). In study 2, we administered the curriculum-based measures to four groups (each with n = 25): college students without disabilities, college students with dyslexia, college students with ADHD, and a clinical control group. Study 1 results indicated that the curriculum-based measures demonstrated good reliability and criterion validity. Results from study 2 indicated that college students with dyslexia were substantially slower readers than all groups without dyslexia (ds > 1.8). The curriculum-based measures demonstrated high accuracy in classifying participants with dyslexia and with impaired oral reading fluency (area under the curve > .94). Implications for incorporating curriculum-based measures in postsecondary settings are discussed.

Comparing Age- and Grade-Based Norms on the Woodcock-Johnson III Normative Update

There has been a marked increase in accommodation requests from students with disabilities at both the postsecondary education level and on high-stakes examinations. As such, accurate identification and quantification of normative impairment is essential for equitable provision of accommodations. Considerable diversity currently exists in methods used to diagnose learning disabilities, including whether an impairment is normative or relative. This study investigated the impact on impairment classification if grade-based norms were used to interpret identical raw scores compared with age-based norms. Fourteen raw scores distributed equally across the adult range of the Woodcock-Johnson III Normative Update subtests were scored using norms for either age (18-29 years) or grade (13-17). The results indicate that raw scores receive a significantly lower standardized score (and thus percentile ranking) when grade-based norms are used. Furthermore, the difference between age- and grade-based scores increases dramatically as raw scores decrease, and there is a significant interaction between age and grade in the standard scores obtained. This study provides evidence to suggest that using different norms may result in different decisions about diagnoses and appropriate accommodations.

The 1-min Screening Test for Reading Problems in College Students: Psychometric Properties of the 1-min TIL

Reading is a central cognitive domain, but little research has been devoted to standardized tests for adults. We, thus, examined the psychometric properties of the 1-min version of Teste de Idade de Leitura (Reading Age Test; 1-min TIL), the Portuguese version of Lobrot L3 test, in three experiments with college students: typical readers in Experiment 1A and B, dyslexic readers and chronological age controls in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1A, test-retest reliability and convergent validity were evaluated in 185 students. Reliability was >.70, and phonological decoding underpinned 1-min TIL. In Experiment 1B, internal consistency was assessed by presenting two 45-s versions of the test to 19 students, and performance in these versions was significantly associated (r = .78). In Experiment 2, construct validity, criterion validity and clinical utility of 1-min TIL were investigated. A multiple regression analysis corroborated construct validity; both phonological decoding and listening comprehension were reliable predictors of 1-min TIL scores. Logistic regression and receiver operating characteristics analyses revealed the high accuracy of this test in distinguishing dyslexic from typical readers. Therefore, the 1-min TIL, which assesses reading comprehension and potential reading difficulties in college students, has the necessary psychometric properties to become a useful screening instrument in neuropsychological assessment and research. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How Many Words Do We Know? Practical Estimates of Vocabulary Size Dependent on Word Definition, the Degree of Language Input and the Participant's Age

Based on an analysis of the literature and a large scale crowdsourcing experiment, we estimate that an average 20-year-old native speaker of American English knows 42,000 lemmas and 4,200 non-transparent multiword expressions, derived from 11,100 word families. The numbers range from 27,000 lemmas for the lowest 5% to 52,000 for the highest 5%. Between the ages of 20 and 60, the average person learns 6,000 extra lemmas or about one new lemma every 2 days. The knowledge of the words can be as shallow as knowing that the word exists. In addition, people learn tens of thousands of inflected forms and proper nouns (names), which account for the substantially high numbers of ‘words known’ mentioned in other publications.

Reading front to back: MEG evidence for early feedback effects during word recognition

Magnetoencephalography studies in humans have shown word-selective activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) approximately 130 ms after word presentation ( Pammer et al. 2004; Cornelissen et al. 2009; Wheat et al. 2010). The role of this early frontal response is currently not known. We tested the hypothesis that the IFG provides top-down constraints on word recognition using dynamic causal modeling of magnetoencephalography data collected, while subjects viewed written words and false font stimuli. Subject-specific dipoles in left and right occipital, ventral occipitotemporal and frontal cortices were identified using Variational Bayesian Equivalent Current Dipole source reconstruction. A connectivity analysis tested how words and false font stimuli differentially modulated activity between these regions within the first 300 ms after stimulus presentation. We found that left inferior frontal activity showed stronger sensitivity to words than false font and a stronger feedback connection onto the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT) in the first 200 ms. Subsequently, the effect of words relative to false font was observed on feedforward connections from left occipital to ventral occipitotemporal and frontal regions. These findings demonstrate that left inferior frontal activity modulates vOT in the early stages of word processing and provides a mechanistic account of top-down effects during word recognition.

Extended Time as a Testing Accommodation for Students With Reading Disabilities

Testing accommodations have become a common component of services for students with disabilities at all levels of education. This study examined the effect of a common testing accommodation—extended time—on the reading comprehension test performance of high school students. Sixty-four students, half of whom had learning disabilities (LDs) in the area of reading, were given the Nelson Denny Reading Comprehension subtest under various time conditions. Nondisabled students benefited more from the extended time than students with LDs did. However, extended time did allow students with LDs to attempt as many questions as their nondisabled peers did under standard time conditions. Implications for future research, as well as policy in this area are discussed.