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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (7 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Irvine Previously Published Works (1990)
A total of 1151 children from indigenous Quechua-speaking families residing in squatter settlements of the city and in two remote rural environments in Peru was given a battery of 16 tests of academic achievement and cognitive abilities. The former tests assessed reading and mathematics achievement and the latter tapped a broad range of cognitive functions. Children were enrolled in first, second, or third grade or did not attend school. "Younger" children were from 6 to 8 years old, and "older" children were from 9 to 12 years old. Large differences in cognitive functioning were associated with attendance at school, grade in school, age, and urban-rural residence. Gender was found to account for less than 5% of the variance in children's performance on cognitive and academic tasks. Gender effects appeared to decline with increased amount of schooling. This was reflected in interactions involving gender and schooling and in a greater number of significant gender effects for children who did not attend school or were in first grade. The results present a complicated picture of various interactional effects of task, location, age, and schooling on the detected gender differences in cognitive abilities and academic achievement. © 1990 Plenum Publishing Corporation.
    Cover page: Influences of schooling and urban-rural residence on gender differences in cognitive abilities and academic achievementCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 28 (2006)
      Cover page: Procedural Learning of an Artificial Script Greater with Explicit Letter Instruction
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UCLA Previously Published Works (2024)
      Prior literature has debated whether syntax is separable from semantics in the brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multi-voxel pattern analysis, our previous studies investigated brain activity during morpho-syntactic versus semantic processing. These studies only detected semantic specialization in activation patterns and no syntactic specialization in 5- to 6-year-old and 7- to 8-year-old children. To examine if older children who have mastered morpho-syntactic skills would show specialization for syntax, the current study examined 64 9- to 10-year-old children using the same design and analyses. We observed that only the left IFG pars opercularis was sensitive to syntactic but not semantic information, supporting the hypothesis that this region serves as a core region for syntax. In addition, the left STG which has been implicated in the integration of semantics and syntax, as well as the left MTG and IFG pars triangularis which have been implicated in semantics, were sensitive to both semantic and syntactic information with no evidence of specialization. These findings suggest a lexicalized view of syntax, which argues that semantically sensitive regions are also critical regions for syntactic processing during language comprehension.
        Cover page: Syntactic and semantic specialization in 9- to 10-year-old children during auditory sentence processing.
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 17 (1995)
        The relative importance of meaiung (semantic context) and spaces between words during reading was investigated. Sub?jects read paragraphs of coherent or incoherent text aloud; some paragraphs were presented normally, others with spaces be?tween words removed. Coherent paragrafrfis were taken from a short story. Incoherent paragraj^ had the same words and punctuation as the coherent paragrajrfis, but the order of these words was randomized, resulting in text devoid of meaning normally provided by context and syntactical structure. As expected, spaced text was read faster and with fewer pronun?ciation errors than unspaced text, and coherent text was read faster and with fewer pronunciation errors than incoherent text, regardless of the presence or absence of spaces between words. Removing spaces slowed reading down less and caused fewer pronunciation errors when the text was meaningful (coherent), than when the text was meaningless (incoherent), so spaces helped more when the text was meaningless than when the text was meaningful. The fact that spaces between words were more important for reading meaningless text than for reading meaningful text suggests that semantics, rather than spaces, are the more important determinants of reading speed and errors.
          Cover page: The Relative Importance of Spaces and Meaning in Reading
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2011)
          The present study examined developmental differences in event-related potentials between second graders and adults in arithmetic. Consistent with previous literature in adults, multiplication for both children and adults produced a greater left anterior negativity from 400 to 900 msec, whereas addition produced a greater right posterior negativity from 400 to 900 msec. Adults showed larger left anterior negativities in the time window suggesting that adults rely more than children on a verbal processing system for solving these problems. Children showed larger right posterior negativities in the time window suggesting that they rely more on quantitative manipulation for solving these problems.
            Cover page: Age-Independent and Age-Dependent Neural Substrate for Single-Digit Multiplication and Addition Arithmetic ProblemsCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 18 (1996)
              Cover page: Effects of Irrelevant Symbols in Text on Word Recognition and Saccadic Programming during Reading
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health, Volume 23, Issue 5 (2022)

              Introduction: Emergency department (ED) boarding, the process of holding patients in the ED due to a lack of inpatient beds after the decision is made to admit, has profound consequences. Increased ED boarding times are associated with adverse patient outcomes, including increased mortality. While previous studies have demonstrated racial disparities with regard to ED boarding, current literature lacks insight into discrepancies that may exist among other demographic groups as it pertains to ED boarding. We sought to review ED boarding times differentiated by demographic characteristics.

              Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of all ED admissions from an academic ED in the Southeast from April–September 2019. The primary outcome assessed was boarding time, defined as time from decision to admit to ED departure. Patient demographic data including race, gender, and age were collected and analyzed. We performed descriptive statistics and chi-square analyses. 

              Results: The study population included 17,606 patients with a mean age of 56.3. Nearly half (49.8%) of the patients were female. Additionally, 43.8% of patients were Black and 48.6% White. For all admissions, there was no difference in mean boarding time among Black and White patients (5.2 ± 8.8 vs 5.2 ± 8.2 hours, P = 0.11). Among Emergency Severity Index (ESI) level I admissions, Black patients boarded longer than White patients (4.1 ± 0.3 vs 2.7 ± 0.3 hours, P = 0.009). Black patients also boarded significantly longer than White patients for psychiatric admissions (22.7 ± 23.7 vs 18.5 ± 19.4 hours, P <0.05). For all admissions, males boarded longer than females (5.5 ± 8.5 vs 4.9 ± 8.2 hours, P <.0001). Patients older than 75 boarded for less time (3.8 ± 6.2 hours) compared to younger groups (15-24: 6.4 ± 10.8 hours; 25-44: 6.6 ± 10.8; 45-64: 5.0 ± 7.6; and 64-75: 4.7 ± 6.7; all P <.05). 

              Conclusion: This analysis demonstrated significant differences in ED boarding times between races among psychiatric and ESI I admissions, gender, and age. This data provides insight into differences in ED boarding times among demographic groups and provides a focal point for examining possible factors contributing to the observed differences.

                Cover page: Race and Other Disparate Demographic Variables Identified Among Emergency Department BoardersCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
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