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Biomedical subjects

S Weintraub

Publications and source records attributed to S Weintraub.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Disturbances in prosody. A right-hemisphere contribution to language.

In addition to grammar and semantics, prosody constitutes a third element of speech. Modulations of prosody can produce alterations in the meaning and affective tone of spoken language. Previous studies have suggested that right-hemisphere lesions may selectively disrupt a patient's ability to interpret and express the affective component of prosody. On the other hand, this study shows that the effect of right-hemisphere damage on prosody is more widespread. Thus, when discrimination, repetition, and spontaneous production of nonemotional prosody were tested in nine patients with right-sided brain injuries and ten control subjects without brain damage, the patients were found to be significantly worse than the control subjects in their ability to distinguish and express prosodic features that provide phonemic or emphatic information. These results suggest that right-hemisphere damage may affect prosody in a more general manner than was previously assumed.

Adult↗

Cognitive and attentional deficits in children vulnerable to psychopathology.

Cognitive and attentional deficits were assessed in children with either a schizophrenic, and affectively disordered or a normal parent. The children were grouped both by their parents' DSM-II diagnoses (broadly defined group of schizophrenics and heterogeneous group of depressives)and by a new set of diagnoses (narrowly defined group of schizophrenics, unipolar depressive group and bipolar group). Children whose parents met the more stringent criteria for schizophrenia performed somewhat more deviantly than children whose parents met only DSM-II criteria. In addition, the importance of splitting the heterogeneous depressive group into more homogeneous subgroups is indicated by the findings that children of unipolar parents generally could not be distinguished from children whose parents are schizophrenic. On the other hand, children of bipolar parents performed reliably better than children of schizophrenics. These findings are viewed within the context of current high-risk studies and psychological deficit literature and suggest that diagnostic issues require more attention by researchers in these areas.

Adolescent↗

Narrative strategies of aphasic and normal-speaking subjects.

A Picture Story Test for eliciting narrative speech was administered to five patients in each of the subgroups of Broca's and Wernicke's aphasic subjects and matched controls. While Wernicke's subjects and normal-speaking subjects did not differ significantly total output, the proportion of significant target lexemes was four times as great for normal-speaking subjects as for Wernicke's aphasic subjects. Broca's aphasic subjects, in spite of their telegraphic output, also had a smaller proportion of target lexemes than normal speakers. The proportion of nouns to verbs was elevated in the speech of Broca's asphasic subjects and depressed in the speech of Wernicke's aphasic subjects. Grammatical complexity was reduced in Wernicke's aphasic subjects, who used simple concatenation much more often than normal-speaking subjects. The Picture Story Test is suggeted as a clinically useful technique.

Aphasia↗

Cognitive slippage in children vulnerable to schizophrenia.

Psychological deficit research with adult schizophrenics has been hindered by numerous methodological problems that may be avoided by the prospective study of children vulnerable to the disorder. An object sorting task was administered to 156 children of schizophrenic patients, 102 children of depressed patients, and 139 children of normal parents. The children were between 6 and 15 years old. The children of schizophrenic parents made fewer "superordinate" sorting responses than those of normal parents, and more "complex" sorts (a category of inadequate responses) than children of either normal and depressed parents. Our analyses showed that these deficits could not be explained by differences in intelligence. These deficits in conceptual performance may reflect the genotypic predisposition to schizophrenic and/or represent an early precursor of later maladjustment.

Adolescent↗

Peer evaluations of the competence of children vulnerable to psychopathology.

Peer evaluations of the behavior of 75 children of schizophrenic mothers, 57 children of depressed mothers, and 153 controls were collected using the Pupil Evaluation Inventory. The children, both boys and girls, were in grades 2 through 9. Both male and female children of schizophrenics were viewed more deviantly than controls on Aggression and Unhappiness-Withdrawal factors. Only the female children of schizophrenics were viewed as less likable than controls. In general, children of schizophrenics did not differ from children of depressives. The exception was the older daughters of schizophrenics, who were rated as more deviant than members of both the remaining groups.

Adolescent↗

ASSESS: Adjustment Scales for Sociometric Evaluation of Secondary-School Students.

The Adjustment Scales for Sociometric Evaluation of Secondary-School Students (ASSESS) was designed to assess peer ratings of the behavior of male and female adolescents. Five scales were developed and cross-validated: Aggression-Disruptiveness, Withdrawal, Anxiety, Social Competence, and Academic Difficulty. Evidence of adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability was presented. Evaluations by male and female classmates were highly correlated. Sex and age differences accounted for only a small proportion of the total variance.

Achievement↗

Midgut volvulus with secondary thrombosis of superior mesenteric vessels in a pregnant woman.

An anomaly of the position of the midgut in a pregnant woman predisposes to volvulus. Vascular repair, despite the abdominal catastrophe, sometimes allows parts of the intestine to be saved. A case of volvulus in a pregnant woman is described. At operation, 18 hours after onset, two anomalies were found: reverse rotation of the midgut and an anomaly of the collecting system of the superior mesenteric vein. Most of the midgut was infarcted. Thrombi were removed from the superior mesenteric vessels, and a portion of the anamalous superior mesenteric vein was reconstructed. All but 3 M. of the small bowel and the entire right colon were resected. Prolonged treatment with parenteral hyperalimentation enabled us to control the appearance of a moderate degree of malabsorption. To our knowledge, no similar case has been reported previously in the literature.

Adult↗

The Pupil Evaluation Inventory. A sociometric technique for assessing children's social behavior.

The Pupil Evaluation Inventory was developed to assess peer ratings of the behavior of male and female children in grades one through nine. Three homogeneous and stable factors emerged from a factor analyss: Aggression, Withdrawal and Likeability. High interrater agreement between male and female raters, stability of factorial structure, high internal consistency, and moderate concurrent validity were found across sex and grade levels. Test-retest reliability was high for a separate sample of third and sixth graders. There was a tendency for higher internal consistency and teacher-peer correlations for the Aggression factor.

Adolescent↗

The "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon in aphasia.

Forty-two male aphasics, classified as Broc's, Wernicke's, anomic, and conduction, were examined for their ability to partially retrieve acoustic features of words they could not provide in a confrontation naming task (the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon). The results indicated that conduction aphasics were superior to Wernicke's and anomic asphasics in their ability to identify both the first letter and the syllabic length of the words they could not name. Since the aphasic groups were comparable in their naming difficulty, the findings could not be attributed to degree of wordfinding impairment. The difference between groups that were obtained using the TOT technique are discussed with regard to differences in the word finding process.

Aphasia↗