During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals were asked to stay home and restrict outings to limit the spread of the virus. Physical isolation was particularly emphasized for older adults over the age of 60 who, because of their age and related medical conditions, were at increased risk of severe disease and death from the virus. This led to reduced spread of the virus but also to social and emotional health challenges for older adults. Protecting the physical health of older adults was of the utmost importance during the pandemic but supporting social and mental health must not be overlooked. This patient-oriented qualitative study involved 40 interviews with older adults, conducted in the early stages of the pandemic, followed by a thematic analysis. Three themes were derived from the findings: subverted life plan, emotional impacts, and creating a path forward. The findings from this study will help inform current physical and social distancing guidelines during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, findings indicate that social and emotional challenges with ongoing physical and social isolation must be taken into consideration for future pandemics.

Hill (Twin Research and Human Genetics, Vol. 21, 2018, 84–88) presented a critique of our recently published paper in Cell Reports entitled ‘Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets’ (Lam et al., Cell Reports, Vol. 21, 2017, 2597–2613). Specifically, Hill offered several interrelated comments suggesting potential problems with our use of a new analytic method called Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS (MTAG) (Turley et al., Nature Genetics, Vol. 50, 2018, 229–237). In this brief article, we respond to each of these concerns. Using empirical data, we conclude that our MTAG results do not suffer from ‘inflation in the FDR [false discovery rate]’, as suggested by Hill (Twin Research and Human Genetics, Vol. 21, 2018, 84–88), and are not ‘more relevant to the genetic contributions to education than they are to the genetic contributions to intelligence’.

Scholars attribute the growth and decline of Classic period (AD 200–900) settlements in the semi-arid northern frontier zone of Mesoamerica to rainfall cycles that controlled the extent of arable land. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this claim. We present phytolith, organic carbon, and magnetic susceptibility analyses of a 4000-yr alluvial record of climate and human land use from the Malpaso Valley, the site of one such Classic frontier community. The earliest farming occupation is detected around 500 BC and appears related to a slight increase of aridity, similar to the level of the modern day valley. By AD 500, the valley's Classic period Mesoamerican settlements were founded under these same dry conditions, which continued into the Postclassic period. This indicates that the La Quemada occupation did not develop during a period of increased rainfall, but rather an arid phase. The most dramatic changes detected in the valley resulted from the erosion associated with Spanish Colonial grazing and deforestation that began in the 16th century. The landscape of the modern Malpaso Valley is thus primarily the product of a series of intense and rapid transformations that were concentrated within the last 400 yr.

Using data from The National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, the strength of social networks and the association of self-reported health among American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) and non-Hispanic Whites (NHW) were compared. Differences in social network–health relationships between AI/ANs and NHWs were also examined. For both groups, those with fewer network members were more likely to report fair or poor health than those with average or more network members, and persons with the fewest types of relationships had worse self-reported health than those with the average or very diverse types of relationships. Furthermore, small social networks were associated with much worse self-reported health in AI/ANs than in NHWs.

The ability to detect dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) in a community-dwelling sample of elderly individuals on the basis of neuropsychological test performance was examined. Three hundred sixty community-dwelling individuals were identified by neurological examination as having probable or possible Alzheimer’s disease, being at risk for Alzheimer’s disease, or having no cognitive impairment. A logistic model comprised of tests of verbal and nonverbal memory, mental flexibility, and confrontation naming correctly classified 82% of DAT subjects and 98% of normal elderly subjects. The logistic model classified 77% of subjects who were diagnosed as at risk for Alzheimer's disease as being cognitively normal. A cross-validation with a clinically based sample of subjects correctly classified 89% of DAT patients and 100% of normal control subjects. The results suggest that psychometric discrimination of dementia may be less accurate in community-dwelling populations than in clinically based samples. (JINS, 1995, I, 252–260.)

The function of motherese has become a pivotal issue in the language-learning literature. The current research takes the approach of asking whether the prosodic characteristics that are distinctive to motherese could play a special role in facilitating the acquisition of syntax. Hirsh-Pasek, Kemler Nelson, Jusczyk, Cassidy, Druss & Kennedy (1987) showed that infants aged 0;7–0;10 are sensitive to prosodic cues that would help them segment the speech stream into perceptual units that correspond to clauses. The present study shows that infants' sensitivity to segment-marking cues in ongoing speech holds for motherese but not for adult-directed speech. The finding is that, for motherese only, infants orient longer to speech that has been interrupted at clausal boundaries than to matched speech that has been interrupted at within-clause locations. This selective preference indicates that the prosodie qualities of motherese provide infants with cues to units of speech that correspond to grammatical units of language – a potentially fundamental contribution of motherese to the learning of syntax.

Infants' sensitivity to word units in fluent speech was examined by inserting 1 sec pauses either at boundaries between successive words (Coincident versions) or between syllables within words (Noncoincident versions). In Experiment 1, 24 11-month-olds listened significantly longer to the Coincident versions. In Experiment 2, 24 four-and-a-half-and 24 nine-month-olds did not exhibit the preference for the Coincident versions that the 11-month-olds showed. When the stimuli were low-pass filtered in Experiment 3, 24 11-month-olds showed no preference for the Coincident versions, suggesting they rely on more than prosodic cues. New stimulus materials in Experiment 4 indicated that responses by 24 11-month-olds to the Coincident and Noncoindent versions did not depend solely on prior familiarity with the targets. Two groups of 30 11-month-olds tested in Experiment 5 were as sensitive to boundaries for Strong/Weak words as for Weak/Strong words. Taken together, the results suggest that, by 11 months, infants are sensitive to word boundaries in fluent speech, and that this sensitivity depends on more than just prosodic information or prior knowledge of the words.

Two studies investigated whether four-year-old children (12 in Experiment 1 with a mean age of 4;8 and 36 in Experiment 2 with a mean age of 4;7) invent names for new artifacts based on the objects' functions as opposed to their perceptual properties. Children informed about the intended functions of novel objects provided more name innovations that were clearly function-based than perception-based. This tendency was observed when children were shown the objects' functions, even if they were also given verbal descriptions of the objects' perceptual properties and parts. Only when ignorant of the objects' intended functions did children tend to use perceptual features to create substantial numbers of names. Accordingly, results from this name-innovation methodology converge with findings from some recent studies of lexical categorization suggesting that functional information is critical to how preschoolers extend artifact names. Children appear to appreciate an intimate relation between the functions of artifacts and how they are named.