Practical help for the millions who suffer. Over 6 million Americans and millions more around the world suffer from some degree of obsessive compulsive behavior. For the vast majority of these people, this behavior impacts the quality of their lives. However, OC behavior can be difficult to understand and even harder to change. The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Conquering Obsessive Compulsive Behavior is a practical guide created specifically for middle range sufferers to help them overcome OC behavior and take back control of their lives. *Millions of people from teens to seniors suffer from OC behavior *Written by a well-respected and acknowledged author in this field *Heightened awareness of the disorder thanks to the popular TV series Monk

Communication is vital for social participation. However, communication often takes place under suboptimal conditions. This makes communication harder and less reliable, leading at worst to social isolation. In order to promote participation, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms underlying communication in different situations. Human communication is often speech based, either oral or written, but may also involve gesture, either accompanying speech or in the form of sign language. For communication to be achieved, a signal generated by one person has to be perceived by another person, attended to, comprehended and responded to. This process may be hindered by adverse conditions including factors that may be internal to the sender (e.g. incomplete or idiosyncratic language production), occur during transmission (e.g. background noise or signal processing) or be internal to the receiver (e.g. poor grasp of the language or sensory impairment). The extent to which these factors interact to generate adverse conditions may differ across the lifespan. Recent work has shown that successful speech communication under adverse conditions is associated with good cognitive capacity including efficient working memory and executive abilities such as updating and inhibition. Further, frontoparietal networks associated with working memory and executive function have been shown to be activated to a greater degree when it is harder to achieve speech comprehension. To date, less work has focused on sign language communication under adverse conditions or the role of gestures accompanying speech communication under adverse conditions. It has been proposed that the role of working memory in communication under such conditions is to keep fragments of an incomplete signal in mind, updating them as appropriate and inhibiting irrelevant information, until an adequate match can be achieved with lexical and semantic representations held in long term memory. Recent models of working memory highlight an episodic buffer whose role is the multimodal integration of information from the senses and long term memory. It is likely that the episodic buffer plays a key role in communication under adverse conditions. The aim of this research topic is to draw together multiple perspectives on communication under adverse conditions including empirical and theoretical approaches. This will facilitate a scientific exchange among individual scientists and groups studying different aspects of communication under adverse conditions and/or the role of cognition in communication. As such, this topic belongs firmly within the field of Cognitive Hearing Science. Exchange of ideas among scientists with different perspectives on these issues will allow researchers to identify and highlight the way in which different internal and external factors interact to make communication in different modalities more or less successful across the lifespan. Such exchange is the forerunner of broader dissemination of results which ultimately, may make it possible to take measures to reduce adverse conditions, thus facilitating communication. Such measures might be implemented in relation to the built environment, the design of hearing aids and public awareness.

Hearing – From Sensory Processing to Perception presents the papers of the latest “International Symposium on Hearing”, a meeting held every three years focusing on psychoacoustics and the research of the physiological mechanisms underlying auditory perception. The proceedings provide an up-to-date report on the status of the field of research into hearing and auditory functions. The 59 chapters treat topics such as: the physiological representation of temporal and spectral stimulus properties as a basis for the perception of modulation patterns, pitch and signal intensity; spatial hearing and the physiological mechanisms of binaural processing in mammals; integration of the different stimulus features into auditory scene analysis; physiological mechanisms related to the formation of auditory objects; speech perception; and limitations of auditory perception resulting from hearing disorders.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this first annual accountability hearing with Monitor, the Health Committee welcomes the strengthened role given to the hospital regulator in the approval and regulation of Foundation Trusts. The Committee strongly supports the view that the standards for authorizing Foundation Trusts must not fall as a result of the Government's desire to see all remaining NHS Trusts become Foundation Trusts. It welcomes the extension of Monitor's oversight powers for Foundation Trusts to 2016; that the powers will then be reviewed; and the fact that Monitor's new role, as set out in the Health and Social Care Bill, has been more clearly defined. The Committee believes Monitor has established a reputation as an effective regulator of Foundation Trusts and that it is important to safeguard that hard-won reputation. That means insisting on the maintenance of a rigorous approvals system. It also means maintaining an effective oversight regime in what are likely to be increasingly challenging times. Finally, following government amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill which were tabled at Commons Report Stage, it means the operation of an effective distress and failure regime for Foundation Trusts.