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PubMedDate not supplied

Sleep automatism: clinical study in forensic nursing.

The authors describe sleep automatism as it pertains to forensic nursing. A plea of sane automatism may result in an acquittal and, as a defense, creates a very interesting medical legal circumstance. A case study is presented to illustrate the necessity for nursing to know how to assess for this dissociative state, to understand the legal implications, and to identify nursing issues relevant to sleep automatism defenses. The clinical and personality characteristics on which evaluations should be based are also outlined.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Automaticity in speech perception: some speech/nonspeech comparisons.

Three experiments used sine-wave replicas of speech sounds to explore some differences between speech perception and general auditory perception. The experiments compared patterns of behavior in categorization and discrimination tasks for listeners reporting either speech or nonspeech percepts of sine-wave replicas of speech. We hypothesized that the perception of speech sounds is automatized, while the perception of less familiar sounds is not. The first experiment was designed to investigate the perception of relatively long initial consonant transitions using a synthetic /wa/-/ya/ sine-wave analog continuum. Speech listeners perceived the continuum categorically, but nonspeech listeners could not consistently categorize the items in the continuum. In the second experiment, both speech and nonspeech listeners could consistently categorize stimuli having final glides (an/ay/-/aw/ sine-wave replica continuum), but differences between speech and nonspeech listeners were found in the slopes of the identification functions, in reaction times, and in the effect of context. These differences are consistent with the hypothesis that speech perception is automatized. In the third experiment, nonspeech listeners' discrimination sensitivity was greater than speech listeners'. The observed pattern of results suggests that speech perception is accomplished by a fast, obligatory, and thus automatic perceptual mechanism.

Automatism↗
PubMed2006

Psychometric properties of a Persian-language version of the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire: ATQ-Persian.

AIMS: To examine the psychometric properties of a Persian-language version of Hollon and Kendall's (1980) Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ-Persian)--a measure of negative automatic thoughts in depression. METHODS: In a sample of 125 student volunteers from two Iranian universities we assessed the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of ATQ-Persian, and examined its concurrent validity against the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et al., 1996). We also examined the factor structure of the test through comparing the fit of various proposed factor-analytic models to the data using confirmatory factor analysis. RESULTS: ATQ-Persian had excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.96), test-retest reliability (r = 0.84) and correlation with the Beck Depression Inventory (r = 0.77). Using a receiver operating characteristics curve, a score of 53 on ATQ-Persian was associated with a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 78% for detecting moderate to severe depression defined through Beck Depression Inventory. None of the proposed factorial models fitted the data well. However, models with correlated factors generally provided better fit than models with orthogonal factors, suggesting that the latent factors underlying ATQ-Persian are highly correlated. CONCLUSIONS: These data support the reliability and validity of ATQ-Persian as a measure of negative automatic thoughts in depression.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Choosing social situations: the relation between automatically activated racial attitudes and anticipated comfort interacting with african americans.

This research explored how White students' automatically activated racial attitudes and motivations to control prejudiced reactions (MCPR) related to their self-reported comfort and willingness to interact with Black partners in a variety of situations. Participants completed the MCPR scale and a priming task that provides an unobtrusive measure of automatically activated racial attitudes. In a later session, participants rated their comfort and willingness to enter eight situations varying in their degree of intimacy and scriptedness and then rerated each situation while imagining different interaction partners, including a Black individual. When the situations were scripted or participants were low on the restraint to avoid dispute factor of the MCPR scale, participants expressed willingness to interact with Black partners. When the situation was unscripted and participants were characterized by higher restraint scores, anticipated comfort varied as a function of automatically activated racial attitudes and the concern with acting prejudiced factor of the MCPR scale.

Black or African American↗
PubMed2006

Reducing automatically activated racial prejudice through implicit evaluative conditioning.

The authors report a set of experiments that use an implicit evaluative conditioning procedure to reduce automatically activated racial prejudice in White participants in a short period and with relatively few trials. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants were unaware of the repeated conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) pairings of Black-good and White-bad. In Experiment 2, the procedure was found to be effective in reducing prejudice as indicated by an evaluative priming measure of automatically activated racial attitudes. In Experiment 3, this reduction in prejudice was found to persist throughout a 2-day separation between the conditioning procedure and the administration of the dependent measure. The implications of the present findings for the persistence of automatically activated racial prejudice are discussed.

Attitude↗
PubMed2005

Brain death-associated reflexes and automatisms.

BACKGROUND: In several instances, the diagnosis of brain death has been questioned due to the presence of movements. This case report and review of the literature illustrates the spectrum of movements that have been encountered in brain death. METHODS: A case report and review of the literature on movements seen in brain death was conducted. RESULTS: Movements in brain death are common and have a wide range of phenomenology. Several movements wax and wane over time, making movements in brain death difficult to classify. In addition, varying terminology has been used (e.g., Lazarus sign, spinal man, spinal reflexes, spinal automatisms). Although evidence points to a spinal origin for such movements, the pathophysiology in many cases remains speculative. Characteristics of movements in brain death have been identified that can help differentiate them from brainstem or voluntary origin. CONCLUSIONS: Based on our review, we suggest referring to stimulus-provoked movements as reflexes and spontaneous movements as automatisms. We propose using the terms brain death-associated reflexes and brain death-associated automatisms as two main categories for movements that occur in brain death. These terms do not imply a specific pathophysiology, but consistent clinically oriented nomenclature may be useful when reporting such phenomena.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Strategy use, the development of automaticity, and working memory involvement in complex multiplication.

Participants practiced a set of complex multiplication problems (e.g., 3 x 18) in a pre-/postpractice design. Before, during, and after practice, the participants gave self-reports of problem-solving strategies. At prepractice, the most common strategy was a mental version of the standard multidigit algorithm, and dual tasks revealed that working memory load was high and heavier for problems solved via nonretrieval strategies. After practice, retrieval was used almost exclusively, and participant variability, automaticity level of problems (proportion of trials on which retrieval was used over the entire experiment), and error rates were significant predictors of problem-solving latencies. Practice reduced working memory involvement to minimal levels, and there was no relationship between automaticity level and working memory load. The commonalities between the present findings and findings related to automaticity development in simple arithmetic are discussed.

Automatism↗
PubMed2003

Automatic vigilance for task-related information: perseverance after failure and inhibition after success.

In three experiments, the influence of failure and success on persistent automatic vigilance task-related information was investigated. Participants first had to work on a series of synonym selection problems for which negative and positive feedback was given independently of their performance. In the second part of the experiments, words from the synonym selection problems were presented as distractors in a dual task with speeded responses. Interference effects of the distractors served as a measure of automatic vigilance for the previous synonym selection problems that was unbiased by strategic processes. Interference effects were stronger for words from failure tasks than for words from success tasks. Comparing the success and failure conditions against a neutral baseline suggested that this difference was due to both a perseverance of automatic vigilance for failure tasks and an inhibition of cognitive accessibility after success.

Arousal↗
PubMed1993

The loss of repetition priming and automaticity over time as a function of degree of initial learning.

Two experiments were performed to investigate the buildup of repetition priming in a lexical decision task with repeated presentations and its decline over the course of 2 months. Priming was found to accumulate as a power function of presentations and to decline as a power function of time. Accuracy measures indicated that the loss rate of priming was unaffected by the amount of initial priming. Response time measures indicated the same result when the experiments were analyzed separately; however, when the data were combined, increased initial priming was associated with greater losses in priming over time. The data were interpreted in terms of automaticity, and the power function decline in priming was taken as support for memory-based models of automaticity. Possible ways to incorporate forgetting into memory-based theories of automaticity are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

The origins of levels-of-processing effects in a conceptual test: evidence for automatic influences of memory from the process-dissociation procedure.

In three experiments, we explored automatic influences of memory in a conceptual memory task, as affected by a levels-of-processing (LoP) manipulation. We also explored the origins of the LoP effect by examining whether the effect emerged only when participants in the shallow condition truncated the perceptual processing (the lexical-processing hypothesis) or even when the entire word was encoded in this condition (the conceptual-processing hypothesis). Using the process-dissociation procedure and an implicit association-generation task, we found that the deep encoding condition yielded higher estimates of automatic influences than the shallow condition. In support of the conceptual processing hypothesis, the LoP effect was found even when the shallow task did not lead to truncated processing of the lexical units. We suggest that encoding for meaning is a prerequisite for automatic processing on conceptual tests of memory.

Automatism↗
PubMed2003

[Automatism and the law in Norway 1981-2000].

BACKGROUND: Automatism in criminal cases is a medical, legal and ethical challenge in most countries, as it often leads to acquittal in criminal cases. In Norway it is also a semantic problem; the term "unconsciousness" is used in criminal law in a meaning that differs from its normal sense of coma. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In the years 1981-2000 the conclusion "unconsciousness"/automatism was reached in 42 cases by forensic psychiatrists. We have scored their assessments regarding demographic, social, criminological and psychiatric variables in the felons. RESULTS: The main reasons for concluding that automatism was present were: toxic (mainly alcohol) in 64%, psychogenic in 24%, and organic in 12% of the cases. The two most frequent crimes in the sample were manslaughter (29%) and intoxicated driving (21%). In 33% of cases the court did not return an acquittal based on automatism. In 29 % of the cases we disagree with, and in a further 36% we are in doubt about, the conclusions reached by the forensic psychiatrists. INTERPRETATION: Many assessments were of insufficient quality; this may give rise to questions regarding equal treatment under criminal law. We propose some changes that are called for to Norwegian legislation and practice in the field.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

[Pedaling automatism in atypical West syndrome: a case report].

A seven-month-old girl with atypical West syndrome with pedaling automatism was reported. She started to have early infantile epileptic encephalopathy with suppression-burst (EIEE) at age 14 days followed by infantile spasms at 3 months of age. She began to have spasms with automatism at 4 month, mainly consisting of pedaling movements of both feet associated with tonic spasms of upper extremities and writhing of trunk. Ictal EEG showed irregular slow waves with occasional spikes predominantly over the right hemisphere mixed with artifacts. Interictal EEG during sleep showed suppression-burst patterns. Cerebral atrophy and microcephaly were revealed on brain CT, immature myelination on MRI and decreased blood flow in the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes on the right on PET scan. Pedaling automatism is rare in infancy and its clinical significance was discussed in relation to West syndrome and complex partial seizures.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1979

[Oral automatism in acute coma].

Of 98 patients in ai acute state of coma different etiology, 18 (or 18.4 percent) showed series of rhythmic oral motions ("chewing automatisms"). Only one of these patients was observed to develop an apallic syndrome. The characteristic features of chewing automatisms and their concomitant symptoms are described, and the need for delimiting them from more differentiated oral-motor patterns is emphasized. Both forms are of different importance to an assessment of the respective course of disease. The observation of chewing automatisms in acute states of coma does not allow the incipient development of an apallic syndrome to be inferred.

Acute Disease↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Specifying the relations between automaticity and consciousness: a theoretical note.

The relations between automatic processing and (the absence of) consciousness are discussed in this paper. It is argued that automatic processing should not be identified with the absence of consciousness. The organism has access to representations resulting from automatic processing, but these representations, in contrast to the representations resulting from nonautomatic processing, are not propositional. Therefore monitoring of the process, the defining feature of nonautomatic processing, is not possible.

Automatism↗
PubMed1992

The automatic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. Long-term clinical experience and outcome at a hospital without an open-heart surgery program.

From November 1982 through April 1989, 111 patients with refractory sustained ventricular tachycardia/fibrillation had the automatic cardioverter-defibrillator implanted at our institution, the first community hospital involved in implantation of such a device. We have reviewed our long-term clinical experience to assess the feasibility, learning curve, and efficacy of device implantation in a facility with cardiac electrophysiology expertise but without open-heart surgery facilities. All patients were considered inoperable or at high risk for other concomitant surgery. Eighty-six patients (77%) underwent uneventful implantation. Nine patients (8%) died prior to hospital discharge. Operative mortality declined from 10.9% to 5.4% during the first half (55 patients; November 1982 through September 1986) and second half (56 patients; October 1986 through April 1989) of the experience. Other postoperative complications occurred in 16 patients (14%), 12 of whom experienced complications during the first half of the experience. At 22 +/- 20 (mean +/- SD) months' follow-up, 78 (76%) of 102 patients discharged were alive, and 24 patients (24%) had died. Fifty patients (49%) had experienced at least one automatic cardioverter-defibrillator discharge associated with hypotensive symptoms. The actuarial incidence of sudden death at 1, 2, and 3 years was 1.2%, 5.5%, and 6.2%, respectively. We concluded that the automatic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator is an effective therapy for refractory ventricular tachycardia/fibrillation and that device implantation at community hospitals with an experienced cardiac electrophysiology team is both feasible and practical.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Automatic memory processes in patients with multiple sclerosis.

To better understand the nature of the memory deficit in patients with multiple sclerosis, we designed a study to compare automatic vs effortful memory processes. Forty-one patients with definite multiple sclerosis and 45 demographically matched normal control subjects were administered two tasks designed to assess both automatic (monitoring frequency and modality) and effortful (free and cued-recall) processing. Results indicated that patients with multiple sclerosis, as expected, were significantly impaired on memory measures requiring effort, but performed normally on automatic measures. Performance on the memory indexes did not correlate with self-reported depression. The implications of these findings for delineating the locus of the memory impairment in multiple sclerosis is discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Automatic postoperative monitoring of infrainguinal bypass procedures.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the usefulness of a portable, computer-based, oscillometric, noninvasive blood pressure monitor for the automatic surveillance of postoperative infrainguinal bypasses. DESIGN: Prospective unblinded study. SETTING: Regional tertiary care Veterans Affairs medical center. PATIENTS: A total of 60 limbs were examined in 3 groups (n = 20 in each group): normal, asymptomatic volunteers; older patients with symptomatic peripheral vascular disease; and patients who had undergone infrainguinal bypass procedures. INTERVENTIONS: Noninvasive blood pressure monitor pressures, complete lower extremity arterial studies with Doppler ankle-brachial index (ABI), segmental pressures, and pulse volume recordings were performed in all groups. The patients who had undergone surgery also had hourly noninvasive blood pressure measurements taken. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Ankle-brachial indices obtained with the noninvasive blood pressure monitor were compared with simultaneous manual Doppler ABIs and pulse volume recordings. RESULTS: There was a significant overall correlation between the Doppler-derived ABIs and automatic oscillometric values (r = 0.89, P < .001). Although there was a slight difference in absolute values (+/-SEM) (0.90 +/- 0.03 vs 0.84 +/- 0.03, respectively), an excellent correlation was found between the 2 methods in the clinically relevant range of ABI values between 0.60 and 1.10. The oscillometric method, however, overestimated the ABI when it was less than 0.60 by the Doppler method (0.61 +/- 0.02 vs 0.44 +/- 0.03, P < .001) and underestimated it when it was more than 1.10 (1.05 +/- 0.02 vs 1.16 +/- 0.01, P < .001). (All values given as +/-SEM.) Oscillometric overestimation correlated with depressed pulse volume recording waveforms (P < .001) or diminished pulse volume recording amplitudes of less than 10 mm (P < .001). CONCLUSION: The automatic oscillometric monitor provides a useful, accurate, objective, and quantitative method for postoperative bypass graft surveillance.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Automatic vessel segmentation using active contours in cine phase contrast flow measurements.

The segmentation of images obtained by cine magnetic resonance (MR) phase contrast velocity mapping using manual or semi-automated methods is a time consuming and observer-dependent process that still hampers the use of flow quantification in a clinical setting. A fully automatic segmentation method based on active contour model algorithms for defining vessel boundaries has been developed. For segmentation, the phase image, in addition to the magnitude image, is used to address image distortions frequently seen in the magnitude image of disturbed flow fields. A modified definition for the active contour model is introduced to reduce the influence of missing or spurious edge information of the vessel wall. The method was evaluated on flow phantom data and on in vivo images acquired in the ascending aorta of humans. Phantom experiments resulted in an error of 0.8% in assessing the luminal area of a flow phantom equipped with an artificial heart valve. Blinded evaluation of the volume flow rates from automatic vs. manual segmentation of gradient echo (FFE) phase contrast images obtained in vivo resulted in a mean difference of -0.9 +/- 3%. The mean difference from automatic vs. manual segmentation of images acquired with a hybrid phase contrast sequence (TFEPI) within a single breath-hold was -0.9 +/- 6%.

Adult↗