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PubMed2005

Memory for fact, fiction, and misinformation: the Iraq War 2003.

Media coverage of the 2003 Iraq War frequently contained corrections and retractions of earlier information. For example, claims that Iraqi forces executed coalition prisoners of war after they surrendered were retracted the day after the claims were made. Similarly, tentative initial reports about the discovery of weapons of mass destruction were all later disconfirmed. We investigated the effects of these retractions and disconfirmations on people's memory for and beliefs about war-related events in two coalition countries (Australia and the United States) and one country that opposed the war (Germany). Participants were queried about (a) true events, (b) events initially presented as fact but subsequently retracted, and (c) fictional events. Participants in the United States did not show sensitivity to the correction of misinformation, whereas participants in Australia and Germany discounted corrected misinformation. Our results are consistent with previous findings in that the differences between samples reflect greater suspicion about the motives underlying the war among people in Australia and Germany than among people in the United States.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

Interdisciplinary integration in medical education: theory and method.

The concept of integration of the medical curriculum is analysed in terms of three principles: (i) the philosophical principle of the unified universe; (ii) the theory of the structure of knowledge; and (iii) development creative thinking through 'pattern' formation and flow of relevant associations. The proposal is discussed to describe and classify methods of integration in six parameters: 1. scope of material integrated; 2. time of commencement; 3. teaching-learning environment; 4. mental processes involved; 5. the student's role; and 6. direction. A description of integrating methods follows, all simultaneously used in the Faculty of Health Science, Ben-Gurion University of Negev. The conclusion is that there is no 'right' and 'wrong' way to integrate subject matter; each medical school may select a method appropriate for its goals, structure and constraints.

Curriculum↗
PubMed1996

Apolipoprotein E e4 allele in the normal elderly: neuropsychologic and brain MRI correlates.

The presence of the apolipoprotein E e4 allele has been considered to be a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia. We therefore used demanding neuropsychologic testing and brain MRI to determine if elderly normals with at least one e4 allele demonstrate subclinical changes in cognition and a higher frequency of brain atrophy or silent ischemic brain damage. The study population consisted of 214 randomly selected individuals aged 50 to 75 years without neuropsychiatric or general disease. There were 175 (81.8%) subjects without and 39 (18.2%) with at least one e4 allele. The two groups were comparable for age, length of education, verbal intelligence, mood and major vascular risk factors. Apolipoprotein E e4 carriers performed significantly worse than non-carriers when assessed for learning and memory abilities, while there were no differences in test results of conceptualization, attention, speed of mental processing and visuopractical skills. There were no between-group differences for thromboembolic and lacunar infarcts, white matter hyperintensity grading and the semiautomatically measured white matter hyperintensity area. The extent of sulcal and ventricular widening as well as hippocampal and parahippocampal volumes were also similar between the comparative subsets. We conclude that the apolipoprotein E e4 allele is associated with subtle learning and memory deficits in normal elderly persons and may therefore be suggested a marker for accelerated cognitive aging. In this group of subjects it was not associated with brain parenchymal changes as demonstrated by MRI.

Aged↗
PubMed1984

Ventilatory and mental effects of alfentanil and fentanyl.

Forty healthy, young volunteers received intravenously, in a double-blind and random fashion, 7.5 or 15 micrograms/kg of alfentanil, 1.5 or 3 micrograms/kg of fentanyl, or saline. The ventilatory response to CO2 was measured before and at 4, 20, 30, 50, 80, and 120 min post-treatment. Mental and psychomotor functions were measured before and at 10, 40, 100, 130, and 180 min post-treatment. Low and high-dose fentanyl caused significant respiratory depression up to 30 and 80 min post-treatment, respectively, while there was no depression with low-dose alfentanil and only at 4 min with high-dose alfentanil. The fentanyl to alfentanil potency ratio for respiratory depression was 13:1. High-dose fentanyl caused more intense and prolonged mental effects than other treatments. Neither drug affected learning or recall, although high-dose fentanyl impaired motor activity. Nausea and vomiting rates were similar between high-dose alfentanil and low-dose fentanyl.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Sensory gating impairment in development of post-concussive symptoms in mild head injury.

Post-concussive symptoms reported by mild head injury (MHI) patients have been inadequately understood. Post-concussive symptoms reported by patients with MHI have so far been explained in terms of impairment in neurocognitive functions or deficits in modulation of flow of information. There are no studies that have looked into sensory gating impairment in MHI and its relation to post-concussive symptoms. The purpose of the present paper was to investigate the role of sensory gating impairment in post-concussive symptoms in mild head injury patients. Thirty MHI patients were evaluated for their neuropsychological functions, sensory gating deficits, and post-concussive symptoms. Neuropsychological functions were in the domain of attention, executive functions, and learning and memory. Sensory gating was assessed by Structured Interview for Assessing Perceptual Anomalies and post-concussive symptoms were assessed using the Neurobehavioral Rating Scale. Multiple regression method was used to identify predictors for post-concussive symptoms. Post-concussive symptoms were predicted by sensory gating deficits when sensory gating deficit was one of the predictors along with neuropsychological functions. Post-concussive symptoms were predicted by scores of Digit Vigilance and Digit Symbol Substitution Test, when predictors were restricted to neuropsychological functions. Sensory gating deficits were correlated with performance on Digit Symbol Substitution test. Post-concussive symptoms reported by MHI patients are the result of poor modulation of incoming sensory information.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Enhancement of learning behaviour by a potent nitric oxide-guanylate cyclase activator YC-1.

Memory is one of the most fundamental mental processes, and various approaches have been used to understand the mechanisms underlying this process. Nitric oxide (NO), cGMP and protein kinase G (PKG) are involved in the modulation of synaptic plasticity in various brain regions. YC-1, which is a benzylindazole derivative, greatly potentiated the response of soluble guanylate cyclase to NO (up to several hundreds fold). We have previously shown that YC-1 markedly enhances long-term potentiation in hippocampal and amygdala slices via NO-cGMP-PKG-dependent pathway. We here further investigated whether YC-1 promotes learning behaviour in Morris water maze and avoidance tests. It was found that YC-1 shortened the escape latency in the task of water maze, increased and decreased the retention scores in passive and active avoidance task, respectively. Administration of YC-1 30 min after foot-shock stimulation did not significantly affect retention scores in response to passive avoidance test. Administration of scopolamine, a muscarinic antagonist, markedly impaired the memory acquisition. Pretreatment of YC-1 inhibited the scopolamine-induced learning deficit. The enhancement of learning behaviour by YC-1 was antagonized by intracerebroventricular injection of NOS inhibitor L-NAME and PKG inhibitors of KT5823 and Rp-8-Br-PET-cGMPS, indicating that NO-cGMP-PKG pathway is also involved in the learning enhancement action of YC-1. YC-1 is thus a good drug candidate for the improvement of learning and memory.

Animals↗
PubMed2007

Attention genes.

A major problem for developmental science is understanding how the cognitive and emotional networks important in carrying out mental processes can be related to individual differences. The last five years have seen major advances in establishing links between alleles of specific genes and the neural networks underlying aspects of attention. These findings have the potential of illuminating important aspects of normal development and its pathologies. We need to learn how genes and experience combine to influence the structure of neural networks and the efficiency with which they are exercised. Methods for addressing these issues are central to progress in the decade ahead.

Animals↗
PubMed1989

Developing theories of the mind: children's and adults' concepts of mental activities.

8-year-olds', 10-year-olds', and adults' concepts of mental activities involved in acts of knowing were examined in an attempt to gain insight into developmental changes in underlying theories of mind. Subjects rated the similarity of how the mind is used in a variety of common activities, each of which primarily involved either memory, comprehension, attention, or inference. Analyses of conceptual structure revealed 2 developmental changes. Between 8 and 10 years of age, children came to see the most important relation among mental activities to be the degree to which they involved memory. Between 10 years of age and adulthood, Comprehension and Attention first appeared as distinct, coherent concepts. At all ages, Memory and Inference were seen as distinct types of mental activities. These findings suggested that a sophisticated understanding of the representational nature of the mind might not be acquired before the latter part of middle childhood and might be mediated by an understanding of the central role played by memory.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Visual selective attention and the effects of monetary rewards.

Outcomes of actions, in the form of rewards and punishments, are known to shape behavior. For example, an action followed by reward will be more readily elicited on subsequent encounters with the same stimuli and context -- a phenomenon known as the law of effect. These consequences of rewards (and punishments) are important because they reinforce adaptive behaviors at the expense of competing ones, thus increasing fitness of the organism in its environment. However, it is unknown whether similar influences regulate covert mental processes, such as visual selective attention. Visual selective attention allows privileged processing of task-relevant information, while inhibiting distracting contextual elements. Using variable monetary rewards as arbitrary feedback on performance, we tested whether acts of attentional selection, and in particular the resulting aftereffects, can be modulated by their consequences. Results show that the efficacy of visual selective attention can be sensibly adjusted by external feedback. Specifically, although lingering inhibition of distractors is robust after highly rewarded selections, it is eliminated after poorly rewarded selections. This powerful feature of visual selective attention provides attentive processes with both flexibility and self-regulation properties.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Updating imagined translational movements.

The aim of this study was to examine the mental processes involved in changes that are the result of imagined translational movements. Participants were presented with a single view of a small spatial display. In a computer-based reaction-time task, spatial judgments were then made relative to four imagined headings that were either the study view or novel views that differed from the study view in terms of imagined rotational and/or translational movements. The main finding was that translational shifts detrimentally affected performance in the absence of concurrent rotations suggesting that imagined translations require additional processing time.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Drinking during pregnancy decreases word attack and arithmetic scores on standardized tests: adolescent data from a population-based prospective study.

Women (1529) were interviewed in midpregnancy, and a cohort of their children has been examined at various ages. The two standardized tests presented herein are part of a large battery of tests administered when the children were 14 years old. "Word Attack" (n = 462) measures phonological processing on a task involving the reading of pseudowords in nontimed performance. "Arithmetic" (n = 191) measures auditorily processed mental computations in timed performance. Scores on both tests were associated with prenatal alcohol exposure in a dose-dependent fashion. These effects were robust when considered in relation to a wide variety of potentially confounding variables, such as prenatal exposure to tobacco and other drugs, sociodemographic characteristics, and traumatic postnatal events. A variety of alcohol scores were related to these two performance measures, but those involving a massing of drinks on a given occasion had the strongest association. The higher the average number of drinks/occasion, the poorer the offspring performance on tasks thought to underlie numerical problem solving and reading proficiency. Earlier reports of prenatal, alcohol-related neurobehavioral deficits in childhood have now been extended into adolescence.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Helping me, helping you: self-referencing and gender roles in donor advertising.

BACKGROUND: Donor advertising typically emphasizes altruism, but an appeal to individual self-interest may be more effective in heightening blood donation intentions among youthful nondonors. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: A total of 292 undergraduate business students at a Canadian university provided complete data in response to a between-subjects full-factorial advertising experiment with sex, self-referencing, and message strategy factors. Self-referencing, or mental processing that links information to the self-concept, was elicited at either a low or moderate level, whereas the message strategy was either agentic (donate blood because you may need it yourself) or communal (donate blood because someone close to you may need it). Dependent variables included identification with the ad, donation intentions, and a discrimination measure of recognition memory. RESULTS: A three-way interaction among sex, self-referencing level (low or moderate), and message (agentic or communal) was found. Two-way self-referencing by message graphs of donation intentions and ad identification showed a parallel structure for males in that their responses were generally more favorable when self-referencing was at a moderate level, regardless of the message type. Among women, however, crossover interactions between the level of self-referencing and the message type (agentic vs. communal) were observed, such that the message's effect differed with the level of self-referencing. For both men and women, the agentic message was more effective than communal ad copy when a moderate level of self-referencing was achieved. CONCLUSION: Collection agencies should consider appealing to young nondonors by suggesting that they give blood to make it available for themselves if required.

Advertising↗
PubMed1991

An interactionistic integrating view of depressive disorders and their treatment.

The development of a depressive disorder is often considered from the perspective of biological causation, mental processes, or with a focus on possible social determinants, even though the possible concomitance of factors belonging to the different domains is generally acknowledged. In this article, a further development of an interactional model previously described is presented. The model is focused on the concept of individual vulnerability, which is assumed to result from a continuous interplay of the individuals with their environment, and from the effect of factors belonging to different domains that interact. A closer definition of individual vulnerability suggests that it consists of the interaction of biological characteristics of the person and a basically dysfunctional self-schema. Empirical studies in support of some of the hypotheses which can be derived from the model are briefly reviewed, and the implications of the model for the treatment of depression is underscored.

Depressive Disorder↗
PubMed1991

Dementia associated with human immunodeficiency virus: subcortical or cortical?

Two different types of dementia and corresponding neuropathological findings of patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection are presented. In one case, "subcortical" dementia with slow movements and mental processes as well as problems in active recall but without focal defects corresponded to diffuse leukoencephalopathy. In another case, "cortical" dementia with impaired abstraction and memory as well as several focal defects corresponded to microglial nodules in cortical and in deep grey matter, with only a mild diffuse leukoencephalopathy. Thus, in contrast to earlier interpretations, subcortical dementia does not appear to be the only form of dementia in HIV-infected patients, and cortical dysfunction may also occur.

AIDS Dementia Complex↗
PubMed1989

Influence of malnutrition on cognitive development assessed by Piagetian tasks.

Cognitive development of 1336 children (6-8 yr) was studied in relation to their nutritional status. Seven Piagetian tasks covering the mental process of a concrete operational period were given to each child to assess the cognitive development. Weschler intelligence scale for Indian Children was used to assess the IQ of each child. The percentage of malnourished children in stage I of development (preoperational) was significantly higher as that of wellnourished children. A higher percentage of children in the latter group was in stage III of development (concrete operation). In boys performance on all the tasks was influenced by undernutrition except for class inclusion. In girls this was true only for conservation of liquid, substance and ordinal relation. The results of the regression analysis showed that nutrition was the only factor weakly associated with the poor performance of the children in various tasks. Further, the effect of nutrition was more pronounced in conservation tasks indicating poor verbal reasoning and comprehension in malnourished children. Information was also collected regarding the parental education and occupation, socio-economic status, caste, economic sufficiency, psychosocial stimulation and home environment. However, these environmental factors did not influence the development of rural children. This might be due to the fact that the population in the present study did not vary much with regard to these variables.

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Psychological evaluations, referrals, and follow-up of adolescents after their exposure to Hurricane Hugo.

PROBLEM: There is little understanding of adolescent appraisal of stress and crisis intervention for adolescents who are exposed to major stress such as that of a natural disaster. METHODS: A description of the psychological evaluations, referrals, and follow-up assessments made by nurse practitioners (NPs) and a nurse psychotherapist (NPT) of adolescents (N = 507) in two South Carolina high schools who experienced Hurricane Hugo. FINDINGS: The NPs' evaluations concluded that 63 adolescents (12%) exhibited symptoms of psychological distress. The NPs referred 36 of these adolescents to high school counselors for minor distress or school-related problems and 27 for more intensive clinical evaluation by an NPT. Of the 27 adolescents who were referred to the NPT, 10 had symptoms associated with adolescent adjustment reaction, 8 showed symptoms of depression, 5 revealed symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, and 4 complained of serious family problems. CONCLUSIONS: Based on these data and the mental processes described by these adolescents, the authors propose a model and suggest adolescent appraisal of stress and crisis is a critical issue to consider when intervening with adolescents who are exposed to major stressors, including those associated with a disaster.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

A comfortability level scale for performance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

The major purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to appraise the comfortability level of college students toward cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) performance. The Purdue CPR Comfortability Scale was designed to measure five major areas of possible discomfort that are experienced while performing CPR on a human victim in an actual emergency situation. A table of specifications was constructed to establish content validity. This table presented the appropriate balance of emphasis on attitudinal topics in accord with the areas to be measured. Three subconcepts were developed for each of the five major areas specified. Therefore, the summated scale included a total of 15 items. A higher score indicated a higher level of comfortability toward CPR performance. An analysis of the mental processes required by the scale items in expressing affective reactions to the selected circumstances, and a comparison of student comfortability levels before and after CPR training indicated construct validity of the instrument. The scale was administered as a pretest to gather data on 317 first aid students at Purdue University. After five weeks of CPR training, the scale was readministered as a posttest. Split-half reliability methods were used to determine the internal consistency of the scale. High internal consistency (.84 Spearman-Brown) and a high level of scale administrability were demonstrated and it was concluded that the Purdue CPR Comfortability Scale is a valid self-report instrument for appraising the comfortability level of college students toward CPR performance.

Adult↗