Biomedical subjects

Martial Van der Linden

Publications and source records attributed to Martial Van der Linden.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Directed forgetting in frontal patients' episodic recall.

The aim of this study was to examine the performance of a group of patients with lesions of the prefrontal cortex in directed forgetting in episodic memory, i.e. the capacity to actively forget irrelevant information. Four lists of 24 intermixed to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) words were presented for retention. Restricted (TBR only) and unrestricted (TBR and TBF) recall were tested. The results showed that prefrontal patients presented with a general reduction in episodic memory but a normal ability to selectively recall the TBR items during restricted and unrestricted recall. These results are consistent with previous reports of intact directed forgetting in frontal patients and are discussed in terms of their implications for the current debate on the neural substrate of executive functions.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Which dimensions of impulsivity are related to cigarette craving?

Cigarette smoking is a very important health problem and represents the largest preventable risk factor for premature death in developed countries. A considerable body of research indicates that impulsivity is a central etiological concept in many theoretical models of tobacco addiction. The aim of this study is to analyse which dimensions of impulsivity are related to cigarette craving. To this end, 40 undergraduate psychology students were screened using the revised Questionnaire on Smoking Urges (QSU-12) and the French adaptation of the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale (UPPS). This scale identifies four distinct components associated with impulsive behaviour: urgency, lack of premeditation, lack of perseverance, and sensation seeking. The results showed that urgency is a significant predictor of tobacco cravings, while depression and anxiety are not.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Controlled processes account for age-related decrease in episodic memory.

A decrease in controlled processes has been proposed to be responsible for age-related episodic memory decline. We used the Process Dissociation Procedure, a method that attempts to estimate the contribution of controlled and automatic processes to cognitive performance, and entered both estimates in regression analyses. Results indicate that only controlled processes explained a great part of the age-related variance in a word recall task, especially when little environmental support was offered.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

The contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition memory performance in chronic pain patients.

This study examines the selective impact of chronic pain on memory functioning in a recognition task. Thirty chronic pain patients and 30 healthy control subjects performed a yes-no word recognition test. The contribution of recollection and familiarity to both groups' performance was compared by means of the Remember/Know (R/K) procedure, which distinguishes recognition based on the recollection of the encoding episode (R responses) and recognition accompanied by a feeling of familiarity (K responses). Chronic pain patients showed a decrease in recollection together with an increase in familiarity: indeed, they reported less R and more K responses than control subjects. This pattern of performance was not related to the overall recognition ability. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis of the attentional cost of chronic pain, suggesting a selective impact of chronic pain on the most attention-demanding cognitive processes, such as recollection. This study emphasises the relevance of specific procedures distinguishing the underlying components of memory functioning rather than solely global indicators.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Associations between delusion proneness and personality structure in non-clinical participants: comparison between young and elderly samples.

BACKGROUND: Few studies have explored the prevalence of delusions in the non-clinical, elderly population. In addition, the association between personality structure and delusions remains poorly investigated. The aims of the present study were, first, to explore the relation between age and the prevalence of delusion proneness and, second, to examine the association between personality and delusion proneness in young and elderly participants. SAMPLING AND METHODS: A sample of young (n = 343; aged 18-30 years) and elderly (n = 183; aged 60-75 years) non-clinical participants completed the 21-item version of the Peters et al. Delusions Inventory (PDI-21), an elaborated and validated version of the Launay-Slade Hallucinations Scale, and the revised version of the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). RESULTS: Mean scores on the PDI-21 for the young and elderly participants were compared. An independent t test revealed that the total mean scores were significantly higher for young participants compared to elderly participants. PDI-21 items were then re-grouped into previously validated factors. Independent t tests revealed that young participants had significantly higher scores for items related to suspiciousness and persecutory ideas, thought disturbances and jealousy, grandiose ideas, paranormal beliefs and apocalyptic ideas. In contrast, elderly participants scored significantly higher than young participants on the religious ideation factor. Associations between scores on the NEO-PI-R and the PDI-21 were then examined for the two groups. For the young sample, correlational analyses revealed a significant relationship between the total score on the PDI-21 and scores on the openness, neuroticism and agreeability facets of the NEO-PI-R. For the elderly sample, correlational analyses revealed a significant relationship between the total score on the PDI-21 and the openness facet of the NEO-PI-R. DISCUSSION: Results from the study reveal that delusional ideation is a relatively common experience for both young and elderly non-clinical participants. In addition, findings are in line with studies suggesting that neuroticism and aspects related to neuroticism increase the risk for the development of psychotic symptoms such as delusions. However, it is important to mention that, because the present study includes non-clinical subjects and is a cross-sectional study, more research is needed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Use of the Hayling task to measure inhibition of prepotent responses in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease.

This study measures the effect of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and normal aging on the inhibition of prepotent responses. AD patients, normal aged controls, and young subjects were tested with the Hayling task, which measures the ability to inhibit a semantically constrained response, and with the Stroop procedure. AD patients showed a severe deficit in both error rates and response time on the Hayling task. Inhibition was also impaired on the Stroop procedure, both when using raw performance and when using an inhibition score that controlled for reading and naming speed. Normal aged participants showed modest impairment relative to young controls on both tests. Examination of individual performance in AD patients indicated that the impairment was found in most patients on the Hayling test but in only a subgroup of patients on the Stroop test.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

How is impulsivity related to depression in adolescence? Evidence from a French validation of the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire.

The aim of this study was to validate a French version of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ; Garnefski, N., Kraaij, V., & Spinhoven, P., 2001. Negative life events, cognitive emotion regulation and emotional problems. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 1311-1327) and to explore its relationships with impulsivity and depression. Teenagers from a junior secondary (n=107, 13-16 years) and a secondary school (n=110, 15-19 years) completed the CERQ, which assesses regulation strategies in response to negative events. The secondary school adolescents also completed the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale (Whiteside, S. P., & Lynam, D. R., 2001. The five factor model and impulsivity: Using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 669-689) and the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (Reynolds, W. M., 1987. Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale: Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources). Factor analysis for the CERQ confirmed the presence of the nine original regulation strategies. In the secondary school students, impulsivity was related to depression. A path analysis revealed that regulation strategies mediated this relationship. The role of emotion regulation in the development of adolescent psychopathology is discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

The effects of angry and happy expressions on recognition memory for unfamiliar faces in delusion-prone individuals.

Numerous studies suggest a cognitive bias for threat-related material in delusional ideation. However, few studies have examined this bias using a memory task. We investigated the influence of delusion-proneness on identity and expression memory for angry and happy faces. Participants high and low in delusion-proneness were presented with happy and angry faces and were later asked to recognise the same faces displaying a neutral expression. They also had to remember what the initial expressions of the faces had been. Remember/know/guess judgments were asked for both identity and expression memory. Results showed that delusion-prone participants better recognised the identity of angry faces compared to non-delusional participants. Also, this difference between the two groups was mainly due to a greater number of remember responses in delusion-prone participants. These findings extend previous studies by showing that delusions are associated with a memory bias for threat-related stimuli.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Variability in the impairment of recognition memory in patients with frontal lobe lesions.

Fourteen patients with frontal lobe lesions and 14 normal subjects were tested on a recognition memory task that required discriminating between target words, new words that are synonyms of the targets and unrelated distractors. A deficit was found in 12 of the patients. Moreover, three different patterns of recognition impairment were identified: (I) poor memory for targets, (II) normal hits but increased false recognitions for both types of distractors, (III) normal hit rates, but increased false recognitions for synonyms only. Differences in terms of location of the damage and behavioral characteristics between these subgroups were examined. An encoding deficit was proposed to explain the performance of patients in subgroup I. The behavioral patterns of the patients in subgroups II and III could be interpreted as deficient post-retrieval verification processes and an inability to recollect item-specific information, respectively.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories for social and non-social events in social phobia.

Previous studies failed to show clear differences between people with social phobia and non-anxious individuals regarding the specificity and affective intensity of their autobiographical memories for social events. However, these studies did not assess the subjective experience associated with remembering. In this study, people with social phobia and non-anxious control participants recalled social and non-social events, and rated the phenomenal characteristics of their memories. The memories of people with social phobia for social events contained fewer sensorial details but more self-referential information than controls' memories. In addition, people with social phobia remembered social situations from an observer perspective, viewing themselves as if from outside, to a greater extent than controls. By contrast, the two groups did not differ concerning their memories for non-social events. These findings are discussed in relation to cognitive models of social phobia.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Individual differences in the phenomenology of mental time travel: The effect of vivid visual imagery and emotion regulation strategies.

It has been claimed that the ability to remember the past and the ability to project oneself into the future are intimately related. We sought support for this proposition by examining whether individual differences in dimensions that have been shown to affect memory for past events similarly influence the experience of projecting oneself into the future. We found that individuals with a higher capacity for visual imagery experienced more visual and other sensory details both when remembering past events and when imagining future events. In addition, individuals who habitually use suppression to regulate their emotions experienced fewer sensory, contextual, and emotional details when representing both past and future events, while the use of reappraisal had no effect on either kind of events. These findings are consistent with the view that mental time travel into the past and into the future relies on similar mechanisms.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Reality monitoring and motor memory in checking-prone individuals.

Studies concerning reality monitoring and motor memory abilities in checkers have provided mixed results. The aim of this study was to re-examine this question by asking 75 undergraduate students to perform, watch the experimenter perform, imagine themselves performing, imagine the experimenter performing, or verbally repeat different daily actions. Two groups were created (checking-prone and nonchecking-prone subjects) based on participants' checking subscores on the revised version of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory. First, results suggested that checking-prone subjects have a poorer motor memory than nonchecking-prone participants. Second, our data indicated that checking-prone participants confused actions they had performed with actions the experimenter had performed more often than nonchecking-prone participants. In other words, checking-prone participants remembered events from an observer's viewpoint. Finally, our findings suggest that dissociation could be a mediating variable between some of the reality monitoring abilities and checking.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Mere exposure effect: A consequence of direct and indirect fluency-preference links.

In three experiments, picture quality between test items was manipulated to examine whether subjects' expectations about the fluency normally associated with these different stimuli might influence the effects of fluency on preference or familiarity-based recognition responses. The results showed that fluency due to pre-exposure influenced responses less when objects were presented with high picture quality, suggesting that attributions of fluency to preference and familiarity are adjusted according to expectations about the different test pictures. However, this expectations influence depended on subjects' awareness of these different quality levels. Indeed, imperceptible differences seemed not to induce expectations about the test item fluency. In this context, fluency due to both picture quality and pre-exposure influenced direct responses. Conversely, obvious, and noticed, differences in test picture quality did no affect responses, suggesting that expectations moderated attributions of fluency only when fluency normally associated with these different stimuli was perceptible but difficult to assess.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Relations between vocabulary development and verbal short-term memory: The relative importance of short-term memory for serial order and item information.

Although many studies have shown an association between verbal short-term memory (STM) and vocabulary development, the precise nature of this association is not yet clear. The current study reexamined this relation in 4- to 6-year-olds by designing verbal STM tasks that maximized memory for either item or serial order information. Although empirical data suggest that distinct STM processes determine item and serial order recall, these were generally confounded in previous developmental studies. We observed that item and order memory tasks were independently related to vocabulary development. Furthermore, vocabulary development was more strongly associated with STM for order information in 4- and 6-year-olds and with STM for item information in 5-year-olds. These data highlight the specificity of verbal STM for serial order and item information and suggest a causal association between order STM processes and vocabulary development, at least in 4- and 6-year-olds.

Child↗

PubMed2005

A quantitative and qualitative assessment of verbal short-term memory and phonological processing in 8-year-olds with a history of repetitive otitis media.

UNLABELLED: Language outcome in children experiencing fluctuant hearing loss due to otitis media (OME) remains highly equivocal. In the current study, we assessed performance on highly sensitive verbal short-term memory (STM), new word learning and phonological processing tasks in 8-year-old children who had suffered from recurrent OME before the age of 3. Relative to a control group with no history of OME, we observed strictly normal performance for different STM and new word learning tasks. Performance on these tasks was also normally influenced by phonotactic, lexical and semantic variables. However, at the level of phonological processing, a small but significant decrease of performance was found in a speeded nonword identification task and a rhyme judgment task. The results of this study suggest that outcome of OME is characterized by subtle impairments at the level of perceptual-phonological analysis, but there is no significant impact on verbal STM and new word learning abilities. LEARNING OUTCOMES: As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to (1) explain the outcome of recurrent OME before age 3 on later language and verbal STM development, (2) be aware of the complex relationships that link language development and verbal STM, (3) explain how fluctuant hearing loss during infancy and early childhood could affect verbal STM development and learning capacity for new phonological information, (4) describe different verbal STM measures that distinguish retention capacities for phonological and lexico-semantic information, and (5) explain the influence of phonotactic frequency on nonword processing in language and verbal STM tasks.

Child↗

PubMed2005

Self-referential reflective activity and its relationship with rest: a PET study.

This study used positron emission tomography (PET) to identify the brain substrate of self-referential reflective activity and to investigate its relationship with brain areas that are active during the resting state. Thirteen healthy volunteers performed reflective tasks pertaining to three different matters (the self, another person, and social issues) while they were scanned. Rest scans were also acquired, in which subjects were asked to simply relax and not think in a systematic way. The mental activity experienced during each scan was assessed with rating scales. The results showed that, although self-referential thoughts were most frequent during the self-referential task, some self-referential reflective activity also occurred during rest. Compared to rest, performing the reflective tasks was associated with increased blood flow in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the left anterior middle temporal gyrus, the temporal pole bilaterally, and the right cerebellum; there was a decrease of blood flow in right prefrontal regions and in medial and right lateral parietal regions. In addition, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) (1) was more active during the self-referential reflective task than during the other two reflective tasks, (2) showed common activation during rest and the self-referential task, and (3) showed a correlation between cerebral metabolism and the amount of self-referential processing. It is suggested that the VMPFC is crucial for representing knowledge pertaining to the self and that this is an important function of the resting state.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Involvement of both prefrontal and inferior parietal cortex in dual-task performance.

This PET study explored the neural substrate of both dual-task management and integration task using single tasks that are known not to evoke any prefrontal activation. The paradigm included two simple (visual and auditory) discrimination tasks, a dual task and an integration task (requiring simultaneous visual and auditory discrimination), and baseline tasks (passive viewing and hearing). Data were analyzed using SPM99. As predicted, the comparison of each single task to the baseline task showed no activity in prefrontal areas. The comparison of the dual task to the single tasks demonstrated left-sided foci of activity in the frontal gyrus (BA 9/46, BA 10/47 and BA 6), inferior parietal gyrus (BA 40), and cerebellum. By reference to previous neuroimaging studies, BA 9/46 was associated with the coordinated manipulation of simultaneously presented information, BA 10/47 with selection processes, BA 6 with articulatory rehearsal, and BA 40 with attentional shifting. Globally similar regions were found for the integration task, except that the inferior parietal gyrus was not recruited. These results confirm the hypothesis that the left prefrontal cortex is implicated in dual-task performance. Moreover, the involvement of a parietal area in the dual task is in keeping with the hypothesis that a parieto-frontal network sustains executive functioning.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2005

Exploring the unity and diversity of the neural substrates of executive functioning.

Previous studies exploring the neural substrates of executive functioning used task-specific analyses, which might not be the most appropriate approach due to the difficulty of precisely isolating executive functions. Consequently, the aim of this study was to use positron emission tomography (PET) to reexamine by conjunction and interaction paradigms the cerebral areas associated with three executive processes (updating, shifting, and inhibition). Three conjunction analyses allowed us to isolate the cerebral areas common to tasks selected to tap into the same executive process. A global conjunction analysis demonstrated that foci of activation common to all tasks were observed in the right intraparietal sulcus, the left superior parietal gyrus, and at a lower statistical threshold, the left lateral prefrontal cortex. These regions thus seem to play a general role in executive functioning. The right intraparietal sulcus seems to play a role in selective attention to relevant stimuli and in suppression of irrelevant information. The left superior parietal region is involved in amodal switching/integration processes. One hypothesis regarding the functional role of the lateral prefrontal cortex is that monitoring and temporal organization of cognitive processes are necessary to carry out ongoing tasks. Finally, interaction analyses showed that specific prefrontal cerebral areas were associated with each executive process. The results of this neuroimaging study are in agreement with cognitive studies demonstrating that executive functioning is characterized by both unity and diversity of processes.

Adolescent↗