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Biomedical subjects

J Cantor

Publications and source records attributed to J Cantor.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

The reliability and validity of the SF-36 health survey questionnaire for use with individuals with traumatic brain injury.

In order to examine the reliability and validity of the SF-36 for use with individuals with TBI, the SF-36 and three measures of health-related problems in persons with TBI (BDI-II, TIRR Symptom Checklist, Health Problems List) were administered to 271 individuals without a disability, 98 individuals with mild TBI, and 228 individuals with moderate-severe TBI. Internal consistency (reliability) was demonstrated for all SF-36 scales. Significant correlations were found between the SF-36 scales and the other measures, with stronger correlations emerging in the TBI groups. The TBI groups obtained significantly lower SF-36 scores than the comparison group, and the mild TBI group scored lower than the moderate-severe group. For the most part, the differences between the TBI groups disappeared when BDI-II scores were controlled for. These findings suggest that the SF-36 is a reliable and valid measure for use with persons with TBI.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Young & old.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2000

Analysis of selection effects in New York City's Medicaid managed care population prior to mandatory enrollment.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that over the next several years the majority of Medicaid patients in many states will become enrolled in managed care plans, some voluntarily, but most as the result of mandatory initiatives. An important issue related to this development is the extent to which this movement to managed care is accompanied by serious selection effects, either across the board during the phase in or among individual plans or plan types with full-scale implementation. This paper examines selection effects in New York City between 1993 and 1997 during the voluntary enrollment period prior to implementation of mandatory enrollment pursuant to a Section 1115 waiver. No substantial selection bias was documented between patients entering managed care and those remaining in the fee-for-service system among the largest rate groups, although some selection effect was found among plans and plan types (with investor-owned plans enrolling patients with lower prior utilization and expenses).

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Media violence.

Research on the effects of media violence is not well understood by the general public. Despite this fact, there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific literature about the unhealthy effects of media violence. Meta-analyses show that media-violence viewing consistently is associated with higher levels of antisocial behavior, ranging from the trivial (imitative violence directed against toys) to the serious (criminal violence), with many consequential outcomes in between (acceptance of violence as a solution to problems, increased feelings of hostility, and the apparent delivery of painful stimulation to another person). Desensitization is another well-documented effect of viewing violence, which is observable in reduced arousal and emotional disturbance while witnessing violence, the reduced tendency to intervene in a fight, and less sympathy for the victims of violence. Although there is evidence that youth who are already violent are more likely to seek out violent entertainment, there is strong evidence that the relationship between violence viewing and antisocial behavior is bidirectional. There is growing evidence that media violence also engenders intense fear in children which often lasts days, months, and even years. The media's potential role in solutions to these problems is only beginning to be explored, in investigations examining the uses and effects of movie ratings, television ratings, and the V-chip, and the effects of media literacy programs and public education efforts. Future research should explore important individual differences in responses to media violence and effective ways to intervene in the negative effects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Confabulation, memory deficits, and frontal dysfunction.

This paper explores potential cognitive deficits underlying confabulation of patient, G.S., following an anterior communication artery aneurysm. G.S.'s performance on tasks assessing memory for temporal duration, temporal order, and speaker identification is examined as is his recollection of autobiographical events. We compare G.S. with three nonconfabulating patients matched with him for age, education, and neuropsychological measures of memory and frontal deficits and with three age- and education-matched control subjects. Like frontal control patients, G.S. underestimated temporal durations and showed poor source monitoring (speaker identification). In addition, G.S. showed an even more pronounced deficit in recall of autobiographical memories and relatively more detailed reports of laboratory-induced memories for imagined events. We suggest that this configuration of deficits rather than any single factor accounts for G.S.'s tendency to confabulate.

Amnesia↗
PubMed1994

Full-time attending physician coverage in a pediatric emergency department. Effect on risk management.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect on risk management of full-time attending physician coverage in a pediatric emergency department. DESIGN: Retrospective, with data collected through a review of malpractice cases from August 1, 1984 through July 31, 1990. SETTING: Large urban teaching hospital's pediatric emergency department. RESULTS: Malpractice cases from August 1, 1984 to July 31, 1987, when there was part-time attending physician coverage, were compared with those of 1987 through 1990, when full-time attending physician coverage was instituted. Medical records from the pediatric emergency department, subsequent hospital records, and abstracts of claims were reviewed. Disbursements and the types of lawsuits were also analyzed. There was a 41.7% decrease in the number of claims filed and a 44.3% reduction in payments with full-time coverage. CONCLUSIONS: Full-time attending physician coverage in a pediatric emergency department was associated with a decrease in the number of malpractice claims and the amounts of disbursements. Further research in this area on a larger study sample is advisable.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Working-memory capacity as long-term memory activation: an individual-differences approach.

One explanation of the correlation often observed between working-memory span scores and reading comprehension is that individuals differ in level of activation available for long-term memory units. Two experiments used the fan manipulation to test this idea. In Experiment 1, high- and low-working-memory Ss learned a set of unrelated sentences varying in the number of shared concepts (fan) and then performed speeded recognition for those sentences. Low-working-memory Ss showed a larger increase in recognition time as fan increased. When the slope of the fan effect was partialed out of the relationship between working-memory span and verbal abilities, the relationship was reduced to nonsignificance. In Experiment 2, Ss learned thematically related sentences that varied in fan. Low-span Ss showed the positive fan effect typically found with thematically unrelated sentences, whereas high-span Ss showed a negative fan effect. The results are discussed in terms of a general capacity theory.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Concomitant eyeblink and heart rate classical conditioning in young, middle-aged, and elderly human subjects.

Pavlovian heart rate (HR) and eyeblink (EB) conditioning were assessed in 4 groups of Ss who differed in age: young = 19-33 years, young middle-aged = 35-48 years, old middle-aged = 50-63 years, and old = 66-78 years. A 100-ms corneal airpuff was the unconditioned stimulus and a 600-ms tone was the conditioned stimulus. A nonassociative control group received explicitly unpaired tone and airpuff presentations. All Ss were studied for 2 100-trial sessions separated by approximately 7 days. An impairment in acquisition of both the EB and HR responses occurred in the old and middle-age Ss, but all age groups showed significantly greater conditioning than did the control group. Slight increases in performance resulted from a 2nd session of training. These findings suggest an age-related impairment in a general associative process.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Individual differences in working memory and comprehension: a test of four hypotheses.

A relationship has consistently been found between measures of working memory and reading comprehension. Four hypotheses for this relationship were tested in 3 experiments. In the first 2 experiments, a moving window procedure was used to present the operation-word and reading span tasks. High- and low-span subjects did not differentially trade off time on the elements of the tasks and the to-be-remembered word. Furthermore, the correlation between span and comprehension was undiminished when the viewing times were partialed out. Experiment 3 compared a traditional experimenter-paced simple word-span and a subject-paced span in their relationship with comprehension. The experimenter-paced word-span correlated with comprehension but the subject-paced span did not. The results of all 3 experiments support a general capacity explanation for the relationship between working memory and comprehension.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Children's understanding of adverbs denoting degree of likelihood.

Two studies were conducted to examine children's understanding of three terms that denote different degrees of likelihood: possibly, probably and definitely. In Study I, children in preschool, and first, third and fourth grade completed a comparison task involving pairs of likelihood terms. Twelve stories were created that described the likelihood that each of two children would participate in an activity, and subjects judged which of the two children actually participated. In Study 2, children in preschool, and first, third and fifth grade evaluated separate statements describing three different children, each of whom was said to have a different estimate of the likelihood that a scary event depicted in a movie would actually occur. Subjects rated how scared each of the three children felt. The results of the two studies revealed that preschoolers showed very little comprehension of the meaning of any of the three words, but by fourth grade the majority of children distinguished among all three terms. Children understood the distinction between definitely and both of the other terms (possibly, probably) better than they understood the distinction between possibly and probably. This finding is consistent with research on the development of children's understanding of probability concepts. Unexpectedly, the distinction between probably and definitely seems to emerge at a younger age than the distinction between possibly and definitely. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for communicating verbal messages to children.

Child↗
PubMed1989

The influence of concurrent load on mouthed and vocalized modality effects.

A visual search task was coupled with the serial recall of words to assess the extent to which modality effects mediated by vocalizing and silent mouthing reflect an automatically activated preattentive process. Overall, serial position functions systematically changed as concurrent task demands increased, but the magnitude of the modality effect associated with both mouthing and vocalizing was not altered, regardless of whether or not subjects simultaneously searched for digits. These results support the notion that modality effects index a preattentive process that can be activated automatically by either spoken input or gestural cues associated with speech.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Developmental differences in empathy with a television protagonist's fear.

An experiment was conducted to determine whether children at different ages (3-5 vs 9-11) differ in their tendency to share the emotion of a television character. Subjects were shown a videotape of either a frightening stimulus alone or a character's fear in response to a threatening stimulus that was suggested rather than shown directly. Contrasting predictions were made based on a cognitive-developmental view of the process of empathy vs an automatic conception. Both self-reported emotional reactions and physiological responses were consistent with the cognitive-developmental approach: The younger children were less emotionally aroused by the character's fear than by the fear-provoking stimulus, while the older children responded emotionally to both versions of the videotape. The younger children's lack of empathy was not due to a failure to recognize the nature of the character's emotion. There was some evidence that the older children exhibited a greater tendency to role take than did the younger children.

Arousal↗