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PubMed2003

Theory of mind deficits in bipolar affective disorder.

BACKGROUND: Bipolar affective disorder patients often show cognitive deficits that are similar to those found in schizophrenia patients. Theory of mind (the ability to understand others' mental states) is compromised in currently ill schizophrenia patients. This study aimed to establish whether similar deficits are found in bipolar patients. METHODS: We measured theory of mind ability in 20 bipolar-manic patients, 15 bipolar-depressed patients, 13 bipolar patients in remission and 15 normal controls. The task, which controlled for memory and comprehension, had previously been used in a study of schizophrenia patients. RESULTS: Impaired performance on theory of mind was found for both bipolar-depressed and bipolar-manic patients, even when memory was controlled for. No impairment was observed in the remitted patients. LIMITATIONS: The manic patients scored lower than the remitted patients on a brief measure of intelligence; no other group differences in IQ were significant. CONCLUSIONS: Theory of mind deficits are found in currently symptomatic bipolar patients. These findings add to growing evidence that common mechanisms may contribute to bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

[Multicenter prospective study of respiratory patient education and instruction in the use of inhalers (EDEN study)].

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate patients' knowledge of the inhalers they use and to assess the effect of knowledge acquired in an instruction session on correct technique. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Multicentric, prospective, descriptive study before and after one instruction session dealing with the technique to apply in using an inhaler: a pressurized canister, an inhalation chamber Autohaler, or one of two dry powder inhalers (the Turbuhaler or the Accuhaler). We studied 349 patients who used their inhalers regularly to treat their respiratory diseases. After assessing their theoretical knowledge of the airways (common), of the particular device they used, and their inhalation technique, we gave instruction in correct technique. Both types of knowledge were then evaluated 2 and 8 months after instruction. RESULTS: Before instruction, common theoretical knowledge was 3.2 (1) on a 6-point scale and knowledge of the device used was 2.7(1) on a 4-point scale. Technique was assessed as 77 (21) on a 100-point scale. After instruction both theoretical knowledge and technique improved significantly. Common knowledge after instruction was assessed as 5.1 (1) at 2 months and 5.2 (1) at 8 months; knowledge of the inhaler was 3.5 (0.6) and 3.6 (0.7), respectively. Technique was assessed at 95 (11) and 96 (11) at 2 and 8 months, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The EDEN study demonstrates that knowledge of inhalers in a large sample of the population of respiratory disease patients in Spain, although acceptable, can be improved by an appropriate instruction program. After a standardized instruction program, correct use of all the inhalers studied was achieved. We believe that we thereby contribute to improving symptoms and quality of life of respiratory disease patients.

Administration, Inhalation↗
PubMed2004

Pigeon's recognition of cartoons: effects of fragmentation, scrambling, and deletion of elements.

J. Cerella [Pattern Recognit. 12 (1980) 1] and more recently S. Watanabe [Behav. Proc. 53 (2001) 3] demonstrated that pigeons showed no decrement in recognizing cartoons that were spatially scrambled, indicating that pigeons' discriminative responding is controlled by local features alone. In contrast Kirkpatrick-Steger et al. [J. Exp. Psychol. Anim. Behav. Proc. 24 (1998) 34] used line drawings as stimuli and demonstrated the importance of spatial organization for picture recognition by pigeons, confirming related findings reported in their previous studies. The present study revisited the recognition of cartoons by pigeons. In Experiment 1, pigeons were trained to discriminate cartoon people on a variety of background scenes. Subsequent tests revealed that discriminative performances with both familiar and novel instances decreased as the objects and object-like parts were progressively fragmented, indicating that search for the targeted cartoon people in the stimulus array might have enhanced the pigeons to attend to global aspects of cartoon people. Experiment 2 used line drawings of cartoon faces as stimuli and examined effects of scrambling and deletion of components. A set of components (eyes and eyebrows) exerted strong control over behavior and scrambling only moderately suppressed responding. The results suggest that pigeons use both global and local aspects, with different mixtures of these types of information depending on the particular perceptual context.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centers.

Humor plays an essential role in many facets of human life including psychological, social, and somatic functioning. Recently, neuroimaging has been applied to this critical human attribute, shedding light on the affective, cognitive, and motor networks involved in humor processing. To date, however, researchers have failed to demonstrate the subcortical correlates of the most fundamental feature of humor-reward. In an effort to elucidate the neurobiological substrate that subserves the reward components of humor, we undertook a high-field (3 Tesla) event-related functional MRI study. Here we demonstrate that humor modulates activity in several cortical regions, and we present new evidence that humor engages a network of subcortical regions including the nucleus accumbens, a key component of the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward system. Further, the degree of humor intensity was positively correlated with BOLD signal intensity in these regions. Together, these findings offer new insight into the neural basis of salutary aspects of humor.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

The appreciation of visual jokes in people with schizophrenia: a study of 'mentalizing' ability.

It has been suggested that certain characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia reflect a specific deficit in the ability to attribute mental states to others ('mentalizing'). Patients with negative features, particularly social withdrawal and blunted affect, those with thought disorder and patients with paranoid symptoms have difficulties when they try to infer what is going on in the minds of other people. This study examines this notion using two sets of cartoon jokes. While the first set can be understood purely using physical and semantic analysis, the second set requires that the viewer appreciates the mental state of the main character in order to 'get' the joke. For control subjects there was no difference in the ability to understand the two types of joke, while the schizophrenic patients found the mental state jokes significantly more difficult to understand. This effect was most marked in patients with behavioural disorders and those reporting passivity experiences. Those with paranoid delusions also showed a selective comprehension deficit with the mental state stimuli. Patients who were symptom free at the time of testing showed normal performance.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Attribution of intentions to others in people with schizophrenia: a non-verbal exploration with comic strips.

Several clinical and experimental data suggest that some people with schizophrenia have an impaired ability to attribute relevant mental states to other people. We tested this notion in 24 schizophrenic patients and two control groups, who performed a task devised to test understanding of the intentions of nonverbal comic strip characters. Only the schizophrenic subjects with thought and speech disorganization had specific difficulties attributing mental states to others. The findings support cognitive models which postulate a link between planning process disorders and a deficit in mentalizing skills. The hypothesis that the more frequent an action is in everyday life, the more easily it is understood by schizophrenic subjects, is discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

The effects of normal aging on humor appreciation.

The importance of humor in healthy aging is being recognized. We compared elderly and young participants on their comprehension and appreciation of, and reaction to, verbal and nonverbal humor tests. Cognitive processes-working memory, cognitive flexibility, verbal abstraction, and visual scanning-were studied in relation to humor. Results indicated a relative deficit in the elderly in the cognitive comprehension of humor-selecting punch lines to jokes and in a cartoon array test. Measures of cognitive function correlated with humor comprehension. In contrast to this deficit in comprehension, the elderly showed intact affective appreciation and emotional reactiveness. Because of the hypothesis of frontal lobe degeneration as a basis for changes with aging, we compared the elderly to patients with focal frontal lesions. In this comparison, the elderly were significantly better than the patients in their comprehension of humor. They also displayed intact appreciation of humor compared to patients with frontal lesions. This preliminary study suggests that preserved affective responsiveness may underlie the success in using humor as a coping mechanism in the elderly.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Measuring health status with the Dartmouth COOP charts in low-functioning elderly. Do the illustrations affect the outcomes?

The Dartmouth COOP method consists of seven questions measuring seven domains of health status: physical fitness, feelings, daily activities, social activities, change in health status, current overall health perceptions and bodily pain. Each question has five response options and each option is accompanied by an illustration. In this paper, we present the results of a randomized study of the effects of the illustrations of the seven Dartmouth COOP charts in a low-functioning elderly sample. In addition, the subjective evaluation of the illustrations was examined. The results showed no significant differences between the outcomes obtained with the illustrated COOP charts and the unillustrated COOP charts: the mean scores, patterns of intercorrelations and associations with other measures for the research participants who filled in the illustrated COOP charts hardly differed from those obtained from the participants who filled in the unillustrated charts. Furthermore, the results showed that approximately three-quarters of the research participants considered the illustrations informative, while approximately 17% of the participants considered the pictures exaggerated. We conclude that, as long as there is no empirical support for the advantages of the COOP charts with respect to cross-cultural standardization or use in subjects who have, for example, difficulty in reading, there seems to be no need for the illustrated COOP charts. The results of our study showed that both types of COOP charts appear to be interchangeable.

Aged↗
PubMed1998

Reliability of the Terry: a mental health cartoon-like screener for African-American children.

Test-retest reliability and internal consistency of the Terry, a cartoon-based child mental health screener developed for African-American children, were measured in 36 boys (age 5 1/2 to 13) in a test-retest design. Reliability of the diagnosis (0.70 < or = k < or = 0.75) was good for ADHD, ODD, CD, and OAD, and excellent for MDD and SAD. Because of low base-rate, no kappa value was calculated for SPh. Both test-retest agreement, and reliability of the symptom scale (0.75 < or = ICC < or = 0.80) were very good for all 7 diagnoses. Internal consistency according to symptom scale (0.78 < or = Cronbach alpha < or = 0.90), was moderate for OAD, good for SPh, MDD, SAD, CD, and ODD, and excellent for ADHD. The Terry is a culturally-sensitive questionnaire with good reliability.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

The comprehension of humorous materials by adolescents with high-functioning autism and Asperger's syndrome.

This study investigated the ability of adolescents with Asperger's syndrome or high-functioning autism and an age-matched group of typical adolescents to comprehend humorous materials. The analysis of humor focused on picking funny endings for cartoons and jokes. As expected, the adolescents with autism had significantly poorer comprehension of cartoons and jokes. Both groups had more difficulty with the joke than the cartoon task, but when compared with the typical group, the adolescents with autism performed significantly poorer. Examination of the error patterns revealed that subjects with autism had difficulty handling surprise and coherence within humorous narratives.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Age differences in the enjoyment of incongruity-resolution and nonsense humor during adulthood.

This study tested a model of the development of incongruity-resolution and nonsense humor during adulthood. Subjects were 4,292 14- to 66-year-old Germans. Twenty jokes and cartoons representing structure-based humor categories of incongruity resolution and nonsense were rated for funniness and aversiveness. Humor structure preferences were also assessed with a direct comparison task. The results generally confirmed the hypotheses. Incongruity-resolution humor increased in funniness and nonsense humor decreased in funniness among progressively older subjects after the late teens. Aversiveness of both forms of humor generally decreased over the ages sampled. Age differences in humor appreciation were strongly correlated with age differences in conservatism. An especially strong parallel was found between age differences in appreciation of incongruity-resolution humor and age differences in conservatism.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Children's recognition of cartoon voices.

We examined developmental changes in talker recognition skills by assessing 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children's recognition of 20 cartoon characters' voices. For each participant, the character set was subdivided into more and less familiar talkers based on the participant's ability to name each character. Four- and 5- year-old children recognized more of the voices (81% and 86%, respectively) than did 3-year-olds (61%), although performance of all age groups was well above chance. All groups of children were more accurate at recognizing more familiar than less familiar characters. These results suggest that indexical information about a talker becomes an integral part of the perceptual record in memory and can be used by children at a very young age. These results are important because children's ability to learn vocal sources may be an important aid to the development of spoken word recognition.

Attention↗