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PubMed1990

Knowing the meaning, getting the point, bridging the gap, and carrying the message: aspects of discourse following closed head injury in childhood and adolescence.

Pragmatic communication or discourse was studied in 33 children and adolescents following closed head injury. Three-quarters of the sample was impaired on at least one of four discourse tests (knowing the alternate meanings of ambiguous words in context; getting the point of figurative or metaphoric expressions; bridging the inferential gaps between events in stereotyped social situations; and producing speech acts that express the apparent intentions of others). Resolution of ambiguity was correlated with word fluency and verbal domain knowledge, but not with object naming; understanding of metaphor was correlated with verbal domain knowledge, but not with literal sentence comprehension or with the formation of analogies; making inferences was correlated with working memory capacity but not with social knowledge; and producing speech acts was not correlated either with sentence construction or with social knowledge. These associations and dissociations reveal some of the correlates of impaired discourse processing after closed head injury in childhood and adolescence, as well as bearing on theoretical questions concerning the nature of normally developing discourse processes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Mechanisms for accessing lexical representations for output: evidence from a category-specific semantic deficit.

We report the performance of a neurologically impaired patient, JJ, whose oral reading of words exceeded his naming and comprehension performance for the same words--a pattern of performance that has been previously presented as evidence for "direct, nonsemantic, lexical" routes to output in reading. However, detailed analyses of JJ's reading and comprehension revealed two results that do not follow directly from the "direct route" hypothesis: (1) He accurately read aloud all orthophonologically regular words and just those irregular words for which he demonstrated some comprehension (as indicated by correct responses or within-category semantic errors in naming and comprehension tasks); and (2) his reading errors on words that were not comprehended at all (but were recognized as words) were phonologically plausible (e.g., soot read as "suit"). We account for these results by proposing that preserved sublexical mechanisms for converting print to sound, together with partially preserved semantic information, serve to mediate the activation of representations in the phonological output lexicon in the task of reading aloud. We present similar arguments for postulating an interaction between sublexical mechanisms and lexical output components of the spelling process.

Aged↗
PubMed1985

EEG activity during cognitive processing: influence of attentional factors.

The research draws upon two separate areas of inquiry: that of lateralized electrocorical processing of cognitive material; and that of psychophysiological information processing studies related to foci of attentional demands. Eighteen subjects on each of three separate days were presented with tasks considered to be 'right hemispheric' or 'left hemispheric'. These tasks were paired in a 2 X 2 design with an attentional factor requiring attention to the environment or to internal processing. All subjects received all types of tasks. Bilateral EEG measures were taken from the frontal and parietal areas referenced to linked ears. Major frequency bands were determined by a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and appropriate ANOVAs performed. The results suggest that task factors (left vs right hemisphere tasks) and attentional demands (internal vs external) are differentially represented in terms of EEG functioning. In general the higher beta frequencies were more sensitive to the hemispheric tasks demands and the middle frequencies (alpha and low beta) more sensitive to the attentional demands especially in the parietal areas.

Alpha Rhythm↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Event-related potential correlates of color selection and lexical decision: hierarchical processing or late selection?

In a series of experiments, a color discrimination task was combined with a lexical decision task. Words and non-words that appeared in the relevant color elicited attention-related event-related potential (ERP) components (anterior positivity, posterior N2 and N2b). The results of the recognition tasks, that investigated the retention of the words, were not closely related to the emergence of these ERP components. These findings show that instead of being the correlates of a filtering mechanism confining lexical processing to stimuli in relevant color, the attention-related ERP components are correlates of late selection processes, ensuring task-related stimulus evaluation.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Computerized measurement of the content analysis of natural language for use in biomedical and neuropsychiatric research.

Over several decades, the senior author, with various colleagues, has developed an objective method of measuring the magnitude of commonly useful and pertinent neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological dimensions from the content and form analysis of verbal behavior and natural language. Extensive reliability and validation studies using this method have been published involving English, German, Spanish and many other languages, and which confirm that these Content Analysis Scales can be reliably scored cross-culturally and have construct validity. The validated measures include the Anxiety Scale (and six subscales), the Hostility Outward Scale (and two subscales), the Hostility In Scale, the Ambivalent Hostility Scale, the Social Alienation-Personal Disorganization Scale, the Cognitive Impairment Scale, the Depression Scale (and seven subscales), and the Hope Scale. Here, the authors report the development of artificial intelligence (LISP based) software that can reliably score these Content Analysis Scales, whose achievement facilitates the application of these measures to biomedical and neuropsychiatric research.

Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted↗
PubMed1983

Parent-child interaction training for parents with a history of mental retardation.

The purpose of the present report was to describe parent-child interaction among families with a history of parental retardation and to explore the possibility of modifying the interaction through parent training. Subjects were six parents who attended eight small group sessions designed to teach relationship building skills. Parents learned to describe, praise, and reflect and to interact nondirectively by refraining from commands during play sessions with their child. Parents decreased directiveness (p less than .01) and increased positive verbal behavior (p less than .01) between pretraining and posttraining, but at one-month follow-up only the decrease in directiveness was maintained (p less than .01). Mentally retarded parents at follow-up were similar to a normative comparison group in number of praises used, but continued to lag behind in descriptive statements. Results suggested that parents with a history of mental retardation can acquire subtle attentional skills, but that they continue to use only the nondirective skills when training is discontinued. It was concluded that additional efforts to understand family interaction patterns and to provide parent training for parents with a history of mental retardation are worthwhile.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Developmental changes in infant pain expression during immunization injections.

Developmental changes in pain expression provoked by routine immunization injections during the first 2 years of life were examined. An interval-sampling, behavioral observation system was developed to code categories of expressive behavior in infants, their mothers and the nurse responsible for the injection. Qualitative changes were observed in the infants' behavior, with those less than 12 months of age responding in a more spontaneous, diffuse manner, whereas the older infants displayed more anticipatory distress, descriptive language and goal-directed movement. Mothers and the nurse actively interacted with each other and the infant with a range of vocal and nonvocal actions. The findings justified the use of unobtrusive, naturalistic observation as a means of assisting practitioners who suffer from an inadequate knowledge-base on pain in children.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1989

Cognitive processing deficits in reading disabilities: a prefrontal cortical hypothesis.

Much research investigating the neuropsychological underpinnings of reading disabilities has emphasized posterior brain regions. However, recent evidence indicates that prefrontal cortex may also play a role. This study investigated cognitive processes that are associated with prefrontal and posterior brain functions. Subjects were 12-year-old reading disabled and nondisabled boys. Discriminant analysis procedures indicated that measures of prefrontal functions distinguished between the two groups better than measures of posterior functions. The results suggest that reading disabled boys have difficulty with cognitive processes involving selective and sustained attention, inhibition of routinized responses, set maintenance, flexibility in generating and testing alternative hypotheses, and phonemically based language production.

Attention↗
PubMed1992

Short-term memory and verbal learning with auditory phonological coding defect: a neuropsychological case study.

A patient is described with a rarely reported linguistic syndrome: he could repeat words but not nonwords. The patient produced semantic paraphasias in repetition and could read both words and nonwords flawlessly. His basic difficulties were localized in auditory phonological coding, identifying a clinical picture called "phonemic deafness." Short-term memory and verbal learning results suggested that a standard, selective short-term memory defect can be induced by auditory phonological coding deficits as well as by "pure" short-term memory capacity limitation and other phonological deficits. Findings also provided evidence that lexical-semantic code can allow normal verbal learning.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Autonomic reactions to social and neutral stimuli in subjects high and low in public speaking fear.

People with specific animal phobias react with increased autonomic activity when exposed to fear-relevant stimuli. The present study examined whether individuals having a less circumscribed fear (public speaking fear) also react with increased autonomic responses when exposed to fear-relevant i.e. social stimuli. A High-fear and a Low-fear group, as indicated by the PRCS questionnaire, were exposed to pictures of faces (social stimuli) and mushrooms (neutral stimuli) while heart rate (HR) and skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured. It was found that: Social stimuli evoked larger SCRs as compared to neutral stimuli only in the High-fear group; SCR magnitude to social stimuli was positively correlated with self-reported fear in the High-fear group; the High-fear group showed larger overall SCRs compared with the Low-fear group; the High-fear group showed slower SCR habituation to social stimuli as compared to the Low-fear group; the High-fear group displayed more nonspecific electrodermal fluctuations than did the Low-fear group. Both the High-fear and the Low-fear group displayed HR deceleration to social but not to neutral stimuli. Thus, subjects high in public speaking fear reacted with increased skin conductance activity when exposed to social stimuli compared to low-fear subjects. The two groups did not differ in heart rate responses. These results are discussed in terms of orienting, defense and species-specific response patterns.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Relationships between nurses' observations and patients' self-reports of pain.

Pain researchers and clinicians alike are often troubled by a lack of correspondence between non-verbal behavior and patients' self-reports of level of pain. This paper discusses some of the variables which can effect the relationship between these measures. In addition, the paper reports on the reliability of nurses' observations of pain behavior and of their inferences about the intensity of a patient's pain. In general, though these observations and inferences have adequate reliability, the correspondence between such inferences and patients' reports of pain intensity are modest, though significant. Discrepancies between observers' and patients' ratings of pain are greater in a chronic pain sample (N = 37) than in an acute pain sample (N = 34). Theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

Behavior↗
PubMed1991

The relationship between testosterone levels and cognitive ability patterns.

The cognitive performance of normal men and women was studied, grouped according to whether the subjects had relatively high or low salivary testosterone (T) concentrations. Men with lower T performed better than other groups on measures of spatial/mathematical ability, tasks at which men normally excel. Women with high T scored higher than low-T women on these same measures. T concentrations did not relate significantly to scores on tests that usually favor women or that do not typically show a sex difference. These results support suggestions of a nonlinear relationship between T concentrations and spatial ability, and demonstrate some task specificity in this respect.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Early mother--infant interaction and somatic growth.

This study tests the proposition that selected behaviors of both mother and infant during feeding are predictors of weight gain during the 1st mth of life. 40 normal mother--neonate pairs were studied, and the target behaviors were examined using an adaptation of the techniques developed by Brown and Bakeman [18]. Aggregate scores of 4 specific maternal and infant behaviors accounted for over 32% of the variance in total weight gain. These findings indicate that the availability of nutrients is not, in itself, a sufficient condition to meet the infant's nutritional needs. Implicit in these findings are the possibilities that infants at risk of failure-to-thrive can be identified, and measures to prevent this syndrome can be introduced.

Anesthesia, Obstetrical↗
PubMed1987

The effects of intermittent drug therapy on stereotypy and collateral behaviors of mentally retarded persons.

A double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted to assess the effects of intermittent drug therapy on stereotyped and collateral behaviors of six profoundly mentally retarded, institutionalized, adult males. The subjects, all of whom had received antipsychotic medication for more than three years, had their maintenance dosages gradually reduced by almost half during the eight-month study. A multiple baseline across subjects design was utilized to assess drug effects on object and body stereotypy and a range of collateral behaviors. While there was individual variation across behaviors and subjects, the main finding was that despite the marked reduction in medication, there were no general changes of clinical significance in any of the behaviors. This finding is of considerable therapeutic importance since a very large number of institutionalized mentally retarded persons receive similar long-term medication for behavior problems and there is some concern regarding the adverse side effects of such treatment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

An epidemic of abuse and violence: nurse on the front line.

This commentary paper highlights the every day reality for nurses facing episodes of violence and aggression while working in the health care system in Western Australia and identifies future research necessary to address the problem. Nurses, in a range of work environments, face the terrifying possibility of being victims of aggressive and violent incidents while caring for patients. The consequences of these events are far reaching and include an increased cost to the health care system, loss of experienced nurses from the workforce and the inability to attract nurses back to the bedside. Although the West Australian government has attempted to address the problems with quick fixes, no current initiatives have been effective and nurses are still experiencing assault in ever increasing numbers. To ensure that nurses stop being the victims of these events it is essential that nurses, government and the community refuse to accept that violence and aggression are 'just part of the job'. Sound research is important in raising awareness and providing direction for hospital policy and practice. Furthermore, future research in the area has to investigate the phenomenon as a whole taking into consideration all aspects of these events. The results of this research must then form the framework for future education programs, policies and best-practice guidelines for safety of nurses and ultimately patient care.

Benchmarking↗
PubMed2004

Remote memory in advanced Alzheimer's disease.

The present study investigated remote memory functioning in advanced dementia of Alzheimer type (DAT). Remote memory measures included the Autobiographical Memory Enquiry (AME) and autobiographical fluency (AF), as well as recognition of remote public events and famous faces. Ten DAT patients were selected with Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) scores less than 15. Compared to healthy controls, DAT patients were impaired on all measures of remote memory, although autobiographical fluency for names was only borderline impaired. There was no clear evidence of a monotonic temporal gradient with the AME; however, both subjects groups showed better preserved early compared to more recent public-event memory. A measure of semantic fluency was correlated with autobiographical and remote public-event memory among the patients only. Overall, results indicate a minimal outline of preserved remote memory in advanced DAT, with evidence of an association between remote memory performance and executive functioning.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

RBANS analysis of verbal memory in multiple sclerosis.

Patients with neurodegenerative diseases that cause mainly subcortical pathology often exhibit impairment when required to recall lists of unrelated words, but their memories are supposedly improved by test procedures that promote retrieval such as recognition or improve the organization of the to-be-remembered materials. Difficulties with floor effects on free recall and ceiling effects on recognition and other methodological concerns raise doubts about the validity of existing studies that tested these ideas. Using the verbal memory subtests of the RBANS, we [Arch. Clin. Neuropsychol. 18 (2003) 509] expressed each patient's performances on Story Memory, List Learning, Story Recall, List Recall, and List Recognition as Z scores relative to his or her age group. Then, the Z scores were subtracted pairwise to test hypotheses about the nature of memory in Parkinson's disease (PD). Contrary to expectation, patients with PD did not show better immediate or delayed recall of stories relative to lists and they did not show better recognition than recall. In the present investigation, the same methodology was used to study verbal memory in multiple sclerosis, a disease that primarily affects subcortical structures. In contrast to previous results for patients with PD, the patients with MS exhibited better recall of stories than of lists and better List Recognition than Recall. Differences in the pathology of entorhinal regions in PD and MS may contribute to the differing patterns of memory impairment of these patients. The results emphasize that most patients with MS with memory impairments have deficits that are relatively mild and potentially remediable.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

The effect of Alzheimer's disease and aging on conceptual combination.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) subjects, healthy elderly, and young adults interpreted a series of novel noun-noun expressions composed of familiar object words. Subjects interpreted each item by selecting one of three possible definitions: a definition in which the referents of each noun were associated together in a particular context (e.g., rabbit cat: a cat that is raised by rabbits); a definition based on integrating the semantic attributes from each noun into a single referent (e.g., rabbit cat: a cat that has long ears and hops); and a semantic foil. The results show that the AD subjects selected significantly fewer integrational definitions and significantly more foils than healthy elderly subjects. Healthy elderly participants were also found to select significantly more foil definitions than the young adult subjects. These findings suggest that AD individuals have difficulty in integrating semantic features when interpreting novel noun-noun expressions and that both AD and healthy elderly individuals have morphosyntactic impairments related to the identification of the modifying and head nouns of noun-noun expressions.

Adult↗