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Biomedical subjects

M Kinsbourne

Publications and source records attributed to M Kinsbourne.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1986

Presentation rate effects on paired associate learning by attention deficit disordered children.

2 methods of varying presentation rate during paired associate learning were contrasted in attention deficit disordered (ADD) children. Previous studies have varied presentation rate across different (fixed rate) lists, and they have demonstrated that ADD children perform poorly at slower rates. In the present study, this method of presentation was contrasted with one in which half the items within a single list were presented at a fast rate and half at a slow rate. The debilitating effect of the slow rate was obtained in ADD children (but not in normal controls) only with the fixed list method. This finding suggests that the rate effects occur in ADD children because they are vulnerable to the experimental context created when items are presented at a slow rate over an extended time period.

Attention↗
PubMed1985

The effect of visual guidance and hemispace on lateralized vocal-manual interference.

When right-handers speak while performing manually, their right-hand performance declines disproportionately to their left. The present study shows that this is true for a sequentially homogeneous activity--repetitive single finger tapping; does not depend on the hemispace location of the performing hand; is not abolished by viewing the performing hand; and is not an artifact of trade-off with rate of concurrent speech production. These findings contradict some suggested models for such effects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Effects of eye movements on the recognition and localization of dichotic stimuli.

Three experiments examined the effect of gaze shifts on overall performance and ear differences in dichotic listening. In the first two experiments, lights were switched on and off so as to induce rightward, leftward, or upward gaze during dichotic stimulation. The dichotic material consisted of musical passages in Experiment 1 and two kinds of verbal material in Experiment 2. Vertical eye movements enhanced the accuracy of identification of music but not verbal material. The lateral direction of eye movements affected subjects' ability to localize targets in Experiment 1: localization was more accurate in the direction toward which subjects were looking. In the third experiment it was found that optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) influenced the asymmetry of performance on a dichotic consonant-vowel (CV) test. The right-ear advantage was greatest when the OKN drum rotated from left to right and least when it rotated from right to left. The effect was due to corresponding variation in left-ear scores. Possible mechanisms through which shifts of gaze affect auditory identification and localization are proposed.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Pathological left-handedness and familial sinistrality in relation to degree of mental retardation.

The relationship between personal and familial hand preference and mental retardation was examined. Six unimanual tasks were performed by 232 subjects within four mental retardation severity groups. Family handedness histories were obtained. Right hand preference varied inversely with severity of mental retardation. The handedness of mentally retarded groups at the different functional levels paralleled, but tended much more to the sinistral, than that of the corresponding parent groups. The parent-proband handedness correlations were largely insignificant, especially in lower functioning groups. The findings support both pathological left-handedness theory and an association between brain damage causing mental retardation and familial sinistrality.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1982

Methylphenidate increases selectivity of visual scanning in children referred for hyperactivity.

Visual scanning patterns were investigated in 32 children referred for symptoms of hyperactivity in a double-blind crossover comparison of methylphenidate and placebo treatments. Total errors, response latency, and visual fixations were recorded as the child scanned computer-generated visual matching-to-sample problems. Results indicated that the number of fixations on the standard stimulus in the matching task was significantly larger in the methylphenidate state. Drug treatment also resulted in a significant increase in the number of systematic comparisons between the standard and the variants in the task. However, the increased selectivity of attention to the standard stimulus was not accompanied by a reduction of total errors. It was suggested that the stimulant drug may increase attentional selectivity even when such a shift fails to produce improvement in task performance.

Association Learning↗
PubMed1982

Effect of laterality of orientation on verbal memory.

This study investigated the interaction between separate control centers within a cerebral hemisphere. When subjects listen to and verbally rehearse sentences with head and eyes turned right, they subsequently show better cued recall than do subjects who were turned left. The direction of turning did not affect recall by subjects instructed to use imagery. The results suggest that the previously demonstrated effect of lateralized cognitive activity on lateral orienting is reversible.

Attention↗
PubMed1982

Cognitive style and dichotic asymmetries of disabled readers.

On a test of cognitive stylistic preference backward readers exhibited a less verbal style than did age-matched controls. The groups did not differ significantly in asymmetry on a verbal dichotic test. Relative spatial rather than verbal preference could contribute to difficulty in learning to read. It seems unnecessary to implicate lateralization differences in explanations of reading disability.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

Cognitive deficit and the unity of brain organization: Goldstein's perspective updated.

Goldstein's ideas resolve the paradox of functional specialization within an integrated brain. Conceiving the human brain as a differentiated network, we show how some of his generalizations can be operationalized, and we review some experimental tests. The results encourage us to view cerebral symptomatology as often representing not loss but suppression of abilities by lesion-induced bias in brain organization. We discuss remedial methods that might help latent abilities reassume control over behavior.

Aging↗
PubMed1981

Does age of menarche affect the ultimate level of verbal and spatial skills?

Waber's claim that individual differences in cognition reflect variations in rate of maturation was tested by correlating the performance of 50 right-handed females in verbal and spatial tasks with their age of onset of menstruation. No significant relationships emerged. This suggested that Waber's findings, obtained on adolescents who were still maturing, do not apply to subsequent cognitive outcomes during adulthood.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

The effect of cuing on release from proactive interference in korsakoff amnesic patients.

Korsakoff amnesic and alcoholic control patients were asked to recall successive lists of nine nouns of the same category. The expected progressive decrease in recall was reversed by a category shift on the fifth list for controls but not for amnesics. A context shift on the fifth list (changed color of words and background) led to improved performance by amnesics but not by controls. However, amnesics did show "release from proactive interference" at category shift if it was the second shift in a sequence (on trial nine) or if they were told to expect the shift. These findings relate amnesics' known vulnerability to proactive interference to an impaired use of available cues to segregate new from old material--unless the cues are made additionally salient. This difficulty could operate both during learning and at retrieval.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗
PubMed1980

Food dyes impair performance of hyperactive children on a laboratory learning test.

Forty children were given a diet free of artificial food dyes and other additives for 5 days. Twenty of the children had been classified as hyperactive by scores on the Conners Rating Scale and were reported to have favorable responses to stimulant medication. A diagnosis of hyperactivity had been rejected in the other 20 children. Oral challenges with large doses (100 or 150 milligrams) of a blend of FD & C approved food dyes or placebo were administered on days 4 and 5 of the experiment. The performance of the hyperactive children on paired-associate learning tests on the day they received the dye blend was impaired relative to their performance after they received the placebo, but the performance of the nonhyperactive group was not affected by the challenge with the food dye blend.

Child↗