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The present study investigates the effects of task difficulty on lexical and syntactic complexity in a narrative task written by Swedish university students of Spanish as a foreign language. Moreover, the relationship between these two features of linguistic complexity is analysed with the aim of finding possible changes in such relationship due to the different degree of task difficulty. The results point towards a positive relationship between lexis and syntax, when these are operationalised as lexical diversity and subordination indexes. Conversely, the correlation between lexical diversity and a coordination index showed a negative relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Revista Internacional de Educacion Musical is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Introduction. Reaction time (RT) deficit exhibited by HIV-1 asymptomatic seropositive individuals cannot always be explained by the effect of a cognitive slowing single factor. Evidence exists that decisional and peripheral components of RT may have differential slowing. Objectives. To assess the hypothesis of a cognitive slowing single factor as the main responsible for RT slowing in these subjects. Methodology. Thirty two (32) HIV-1 neurologically asymptomatic seropositive individuals were compared to 29 seronegative controls in two discriminative reaction time tasks (DRT) having increased cognitive difficulty but equal motor response demands. P300 component of the event-related potential was recorded simultaneously. RT, PPI, errors, and P300 latency were assessed using ANOVA. Results. Seropositives were slower than controls in RT, made more errors and showed delayed latencies of P300 in both tasks. However, while the increase of RT from the easier to the more difficult task was additive, the increase of P300 latencies was multiplicative. Conclusions. These results reveal differences in patterns of slowing between central and motor information processing mechanisms. Such results suggest that a single common factor is not enough to explain cognitive slowing in HIV-1 seropositive subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]