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- Alm, Jan, 1947-
(author)
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Dyslexia: Relevance of Concepts, Validity of Measurements, and Cognitive Functions
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis opens with an exposition of different uses of the term dyslexia. In that context its conceptual relevance is discussed. The empirical studies investigate a) different aspects of validity of cognitive and achievement instruments often used in diagnostic assessment of dyslexia, b) different cognitive profiles for adults with dyslexia, and c) the relationship between cognitive and achievement measures.Study I demonstrated the factor structure of the Swedish WAIS-R to be in close agreement with results of comparable analyses on normal and clinical groups in many countries world-wide, giving strong support for the construct validity of the Swedish WAIS-R for a group of adults diagnosed with dyslexia. The results from the three-factor solution were interpreted in terms of theoretical constructs, notably those posited by Carroll (1993) and Horn (1989).The cognitive profiles of a sample of Swedish adults diagnosed with dyslexia—when using the three factors, the ACID profile, and the four-category Bannatyne profile—all resemble closely the profiles observed for a wide array of U.S. samples of children and adults diagnosed with dyslexia or learning disabilities. Gender differences on Digit Symbol, favoring females, were substantial in magnitude for the present sample, consistent with a bulk of research on gender differences for samples of normal individuals and of those identified with learning problems.In Study II, factor analysis of nine Swedish achievement tests often used for dyslexia assessment yielded five meaningful factors in a group of adults diagnosed with dyslexia. Factors appeared to measure decoding, visual speed, reading comprehension, reading fluency, and phonological ability. The relationship between the five achievement factors and WAIS-R variables was subsequently examined. The Visual Speed and Reading Comprehension factors each correlated significantly with four of six global WAIS-R scores (two of three IQs and two of three factor scores). Visual Speed tended to correlate significantly with nonverbal scores and Reading Comprehension with verbal scores. Although the Phonological Ability factor did not correlate significantly with any verbal or nonverbal global score, it did correlate significantly with the Freedom from Distractibility factor and with all its component subtests—Digit Span, Arithmetic, and Digit Symbol. Decoding (technical reading skill) showed no significant relationship to any WAIS-R variable studied. More surprisingly, the Reading Fluency factor failed to show significant relationships to the WAIS-R.Study III examined the validity of The Word Chain Test, a frequently used instrument in Swedish screening and diagnostic assessments of dyslexia. Different sources of validity evidence were evaluated. In summary, the results failed to support validity both for the WRI-index and the Wordchain subtest, suggesting that the instrument seems to be of questionable value in screening or diagnostic assessment of dyslexia.
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- Andersson, Jonas
(author)
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Essays on financial time series models : Stochastic volatility and long memory
- 1999
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This work consists of five articles about the statistical aspects of financial time series models. The first three papers investigate and develop the inverse normal Gaussian stochastic volatility (NIGSV) model, initially suggested by Barndorff- Nielsen (1997). In the first paper, Barndorff-Nilsen's model is generalized in order to be able to produce a more flexible lag structure. The moments of the squared process, important properties of volatility models, are derived. The topic of the second paper is the performance of the maximum likelihood estimator of the NIGSV model. In the third paper a comparison of the NIGSV model with two other commonly used volatility models is made.The long memory property is the topic of the last two papers. In the fourth paper two improvements of the commonly used GPH-estimator of Geweke and Porter-Hudak (1983) are proposed and studied by means of a Monte Carlo study. In the fifth paper the problem of distinguishing between short term and long term memory in volatilityis investigated.
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- Andersson, Jenny, 1972-
(author)
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Older Women and Food : Dietary Intake and Meals in Self-Managing and Disabled Swedish Females Living at Home
- 2002
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the present thesis was to study elderly self-managing and disabled women’s dietary intake and meals in relation to age, household structure (single-living or cohabitant), disability and cooking ability. The women were aged 64-88 years and living at home, in the mid-eastern part of Sweden. The self-managing women were randomly selected. The disabled women – suffering from Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid arthritis or stroke – were selected from patient records. A total of 139 self-managing and 63 disabled women participated. Two dietary assessment methods were used: a repeated 24-h recall and a three-day estimated food diary, providing dietary intake for five non-consecutive days. The results indicate that elderly women still living in their homes seem to manage a sufficient dietary intake despite disability and high age. The reported energy intakes in all groups of women were low, which might be explained by an actual low intake and/or under-reporting. The portion sizes seemed to be smaller in the highest age group, leading to lower intakes of some nutrients. Thus also the nutrient density of the food should be given greater consideration. The meal pattern was shown to be regular and the distribution of main meals and snacks was found to be satisfactory. Meals and snacks that were defined as such by the women themselves thus seem to be more significant from an energy and nutritional perspective. Perceived cooking ability co-varied with energy and nutrient intake as well as with meal pattern.Further, a qualitative dietary assessment method, FBCE, was analysed. It was concluded that it must be supplemented with a dietary assessment method providing energy intake figures to ensure a sufficient intake, especially when studying groups at risk for low energy intake.Furthermore, the aim was to perform a dropout analysis. When studying older women and food, a low participation rate might be expected since the most active, the very ill as well as the disabled tend to decline participation, but also since food is a gender issue. Food could, especially for women, be a sensitive area of discussion, even though older women seem to choose "healthy foods" and eat "proper meals".
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- Andersson, Kerstin
(author)
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Reactions to novelties : Developmental aspects
- 1999
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The present thesis considers different aspects of infants' and children's reactions to novelties, that is, unfamiliar persons, objects, and situations. In Study I, the developmental phenomenon stranger wariness was investigated from a temperamental perspective. Stranger wariness at age 10 months was found to be marginally predicted by 5-month individual variation in reactions to frustration, to sensory stimulation, and to novelties and to be predictive of 2-year social inhibition. These results indicate that 10-month stranger wariness does not only reflect a developmental transition but also an individual disposition to be responsive to social novelties.In line with what has been suggested for the behavioral inhibition construct, Study II showed that 2-year-olds' reactions to social and non-social novelties should be considered as belonging to one construct. Furthermore, the relations within and between latency, negative/inhibited and positive/approaching reactions to social and non-social novelties were found to be very similar, implying that identifying children as uninhibited means that they are disposed not only towards lack of negative/inhibited reactions, but also towards approaching/positive reactions when confronted with novelties. Study III concerned preschool social inhibition in relation to attachment security and social experiences in terms non-parental care. The relative contributions of the three variables to school-age social competence with peers and social self-esteem were also investigated. It was found that attachment security and social inhibition were unrelated to each other and that they made significant independent contributions to the explanation of social competence, whereas social self-esteem was only predicted by preschool social inhibition.
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- Araya, Tadesse
(author)
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Stereotypes: Suppression, Forgetting, and False Memory
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis presents four studies investigating (1) whether incidentally primed control-related words can attenuate the impact of activated stereotypes on subsequent evaluation of a target person, (2) the impact of motivated forgetting on the recall of stereotypically congruent and incongruent information, and (3) the impact of a directed forgetting instruction on the false recall and recognition of nonpresented stereotypical information.In three experiments, Study I showed that participants initially primed with the social category, immigrant, and subsequently primed with words that were evocative of control or self-control made less negative impression of a target displaying ambiguous behaviors than participants not exposed to such words.Study II, using a directed-forgetting paradigm, demonstrated in two experiments that participants subliminally primed with Swedish facial photographs who later studied stereotypically incongruent words roughly recalled an equal number of items regardless of the forget or remember instructions. Study III showed that participants primed with the social category, immigrant and then studied a list of stereotypically related and unrelated words falsely recognized more nonpresented stereotypical words when they were furnished with a forget than a remember instruction. Similarly, Study IV (Experiment 2) demonstrated that participants primed with the social category, immigrant, but not with a neutral category, falsely recalled more nonpresented stereotypical words when their cognitive capacity was depleted through a concurrent memory load task. The thesis presents a review and a discussion of some of the theoretical underpinnings of the extant literature on stereotyping and intergroup relations and of the social implications of the present findings.
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