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PubMed1988

Integrity of semantic fields in Alzheimer's disease.

It has been suggested that Alzheimer patients retain general semantic knowledge about concrete objects (e.g., category membership) but lose information about objects' distinctive features and functions. To test this hypothesis, normal young and old subjects and Alzheimer patients were given a concrete concept. They were then shown a series of words and for each had to say whether it was related to the concept. Of the words that were related to a given concept, one was a physical feature, another a function, another the object's superordinate category, and another a generally associated concept. In comparison to the normals, Alzheimer patients were not disproportionately worse at making decisions about features and actions than they were about categories and general associates. Also, while Alzheimer patients were less accurate in generating features, actions and associates to a given concept than were normals, they were not differentially more impaired on any one type.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Lexical retrieval in healthy aging.

Lexical retrieval for common nouns and verbs was measured using 2 picture naming tests in 162 healthy female and male subjects aged 30 to 79 years. Responses were scored for correctness, responsivity to cueing, and response type. The ability to name both word types declined with age, especially after age 70 in healthy subjects. More errors were made on object names than action names, especially for older subjects. Subjects of all ages were equally able to utilize phonemic cues. With increasing age subjects produced more circumlocutions and fewer semantic errors. Response type difference need not reflect qualitative differences in lexical retrieval; rather, they reflect the quantitatively greater difficulty of the task for healthy older people as compared to younger adults. The naming difficulty for healthy aging, we conclude, is at the label retrieval stage.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Dyscalculia in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

OBJECTIVE: To study mathematical deficits in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHODS: Sixty-eight patients with mild AD and 242 normal controls (NC) received a standardized battery (EC 301-R) assessing number processing and calculation abilities. AD patients also received testing for language, memory, visuo-spatial and executive-attentional domains. RESULTS: Sixty-four AD patients (94.1%) showed impaired performances on the EC 301-R. Mathematical deficits were evident both on calculation and number processing skills. Performance on the single tasks was related to attentional-executive resources and to impaired number representations. Heterogeneous patterns of preserved/impaired mathematical abilities were also observed in single cases. CONCLUSION: Dyscalculia is an early sign of AD. It should be included among the reliable clinical hallmarks for the diagnosis of AD. Identification of dyscalculic symptoms in these patients requires composite assessment procedure.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

The relative timing of syntactic and semantic processes in sentence comprehension.

The functional primacy of syntactic over semantic processes was put to test in an auditory event-related brain potentials study using sentences in which the final words were semantically and/or syntactically incongruent with the prior context. Crucially, these words encoded the syntactically relevant word category information in the suffix, available only after the word stem which carried the semantic information. Semantic violations elicited an N400 and syntactic violations a biphasic LAN-P600 pattern. Words that were semantically and syntactically incongruent with the context evoked a biphasic LAN-P600 ERP pattern, but no N400. The similarity of the ERP pattern for the pure syntactic and the double violation condition provides strong evidence for a functional primacy of initial syntactic over lexical-semantic processes.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1996

Differences in susceptibility to the "blending illusion" among Native Hebrew and English speakers.

This study was designed to explore whether native Hebrew and English speakers differ in their susceptibility to the blend illusion and in their lip-reading of words and cliché sentences. Four lip-reading tests, designed to assess recognition of syllables, words, and overlearned sentences, were administered to two groups of subjects who were matched for age, sex, and educational level. The English-speaking group showed significantly higher susceptibility to the blending illusion. The source of the effect was in the enhanced sensitivity to the auditory input in males along with reduced number of auditory biases in females. No sex differences in lip-reading of any item of the lip-reading battery was obtained in native Hebrew speakers. Subjects in both groups performed at the same level in recognizing the words and overlearned sentences. The result is attributed to the shorter Voice Onset Time values of Hebrew when native listeners would hear acoustic messages prior to discernable lip movements.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Event-related potential indices of semantic processing in schizophrenia.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while schizophrenic patients and healthy controls read congruous and incongruous sentences in anticipation of a memory test. The schizophrenic group performed more poorly in both recognition memory and cued recall tests. The two groups did not differ in the amplitude of the N400 component of the ERP but the difference between the ERPs to congruous and incongruous sentences persisted longer in the schizophrenic sample. The schizophrenic sample also showed reduced parietal positivity and a reduced effect of congruity on the late positive component that follows N400. Within the schizophrenic sample, measures of attentional impairment and positive thought disorder were correlated with mean amplitude of both the N400 and the subsequent positivity. The results imply that the structure and spread of activation within semantic memory is not impaired in schizophrenia. Rather, impairments appear to lie in processes required to integrate activated information with the current context.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

How do syllables contribute to the perception of spoken English? insight from the migration paradigm.

The involvement of syllables in the perception of spoken English has traditionally been regarded as minimal because of ambiguous syllable boundaries and overriding rhythmic segmentation cues. The present experiments test the perceptual separability of syllables and vowels in spoken English using the migration paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 show that syllables migrate considerably more than full and reduced vowels, and this effect is not influenced by the lexicality of the stimuli, their stress pattern, or the syllables' position relative to the edge of the stimuli. Experiment 3 confirms the predominance of syllable migration against a pseudosyllable baseline, and provides some evidence that syllable migration depends on whether syllable boundaries are clear or ambiguous. Consistent with this hypothesis, Experiment 4 demonstrates that CVC syllables migrate more in stimuli with a clear CVC-initial structure than in ambisyllabic stimuli. Together, the data suggest that syllables have a greater contribution to the perception of spoken English than previously assumed.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2006

Abnormal typicality of responses on a category fluency task in schizotypy.

Existing hypotheses about semantic processing in schizophrenia and schizotypy suggest that both conditions are associated with a less than normal difference in the degree to which some concept activates the mental representation of other concepts that are strongly versus weakly related to it in meaning. To seek further evidence for this, we examined response typicality on the Category Fluency Test (CFT) as a function of schizotypy. Individuals from a non-clinical population verbally generated as many exemplars as they could in 1 min for each of four categories (fruits, four-footed animals, articles of clothing, vehicles). Participants subsequently completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). SPQ score was not significantly correlated with the total number of responses generated for any of the categories. Individuals with higher (as opposed to lower) SPQ scores, however, generated more atypical members of the fruit category both in their initial responses and overall (as indexed by the average ratio of each response's ordinal position to its position in population typicality norms). These results support the hypothesis that semantic memory organization in non-clinical individuals with higher schizotypy is functionally altered.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Verbal memory in mania: effects of clinical state and task requirements.

OBJECTIVES: Manic patients exhibit impaired verbal learning and memory, particularly following longstanding illness. However, it is unclear whether recognition and recall performance are differentially influenced by a manic mood state. METHODS: To examine this issue, we administered the California Verbal Learning Test and symptom-rating scales to inpatients with pure or mixed mania, euthymic outpatients, and healthy comparison subjects. RESULTS: An overall performance difference was identified between groups. Manic and euthymic patients performed more poorly than healthy subjects on recall. However, manic patients performed more poorly than euthymic patients and healthy subjects on recognition. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that verbal retrieval deficits are stable vulnerability indicators in bipolar disorder, whereas verbal encoding deficits are manic episode indicators. The known subcortical dysfunction in this disorder may produce stable retrieval deficits while acute mood symptoms attenuate encoding during affective episodes only.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Students classified as LD and the college foreign language requirement: replication and comparison studies.

Two studies examined students classified as having learning disabilities (LD) who had received course substitutions for the college foreign language (FL) requirement. In the first study, 42 students at one university were divided into groups and compared on measures of IQ, academic achievement, FL aptitude, college grade point average (GPA), and FL and English grades. Findings showed that most of the 42 students had been classified as LD in college after experiencing problems in FL courses. Comparisons based on students' performance on measures of FL aptitude, native language skill, and performance in FL courses showed few significant group differences. In the second study, the 42 students from the first study were compared with 86 students at another university who had also been classified as LD and received course substitutions for the college FL requirement. Comparisons on demographic information and measures of IQ, academic achievement, FL aptitude, college GPA, and FL GPA showed few significant differences between the two groups. Both studies suggest that students classified as LD at different universities exhibit similar demographic, cognitive, academic achievement, and FL aptitude profiles and that educators should not make the a priori assumption that students classified as LD require course substitutions for the FL requirement or experience problems with FL learning.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Selective decline in memory function among healthy elderly.

OBJECTIVE: To use longitudinally acquired data to establish whether aging is associated with memory decline. BACKGROUND: Memory loss is one of the most frequent complaints among the elderly. Nevertheless, age-related memory decline remains controversial in large part because it has been established with cross-sectional studies. METHODS: A total of 212 community-based healthy people were followed prospectively and evaluated annually with a neuropsychological battery testing memory and other cognitive domains. To control for the learning effect-the improvement in test performance associated with repeated exposure-longitudinal performance was compared between two age groups. RESULTS: The older age group displayed a relative decline in memory performance with time. In contrast to memory, a relative age-related decline was not observed in tests of language, visuospatial ability, and abstract reasoning. Furthermore, within the memory domain, age-related decline was restricted to a specific aspect of memory, manifesting only in a measure sensitive to the acquisition and early retrieval of new information, and not in a measure of memory retention. This profile of age-related cognitive decline anatomically localizes to the hippocampal formation. CONCLUSION: This study establishes age-related memory decline using longitudinal data, and shows that this decline does not occur diffusely across multiple cognitive domains. Both early AD as well as non-AD processes likely contribute to age-related memory decline, and continued follow-up may reveal distinguishing features between these two.

Aged↗
PubMed1988

Effects of alcohol on lexical access.

Two experiments investigated the effect of alcohol on retrieval of lexical information. In each, volunteers received alcohol (1 ml per kg body weight) in one session and no alcohol in another in counterbalanced order. Experiment 1 was a computerised version of the Mill Hill vocabulary test in which subjects were required to define words by making multiple choice responses as fast as possible. As expected, correct decision time increased with item difficulty and tended to increase with alcohol, but there was no interaction between these effects. Experiment 2 was a lexical decision task involving words of low, medium and high frequency. Alcohol significantly increased correct response time but this did not interact with word frequency. In both experiments, decision times for individual items varied, indicating that lexical access is more difficult for rare than for frequent items. However, alcohol slowed easy and difficult decisions equally, which suggests that its locus of effect is not primarily on speed of access to semantic information, but rather on other aspects of the decision process.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

The development of four unselected 47,XYY boys.

Four infants identified through neonatal screening programs are an unselected sample of 47,XYY boys. No consistent physical stigmata or medical disorders were identified. Three have increased height. All four demonstrated problems in motor and language development. Although their intelligence is within the average range, all four have language-related learning disorders requiring special education. Mild depression was apparent in all four, perhaps as a secondary result of their learning disorders. Some of the problems seen in the propositi are found in milder forms in other family members, leading to the hypothesis that their karyotype may heighten vulnerability to pre-existing familial conditions. Similarities between these findings and results from seven other study centers with a total of 42 47,XYY boys are noted. Parents of a prenatally diagnosed 47,XYY fetus seen in our center are informed that the extra Y chromosome represents a risk factor for these problems, but that environment remains a primary force in shaping their child's development.

Child Development↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Does memory constrain utilization of top-down information in spoken word recognition? Evidence from normal aging.

Young and elderly adults heard recorded words that had been computer-edited from connected speech so as to be heard in isolation from their linguistic surround. Word identification was tested for words in isolation and when heard with increasing amounts of linguistic context that had either preceded or followed them in their original utterances. Although the elderly subjects were poorer in identifying the words in isolation compared to young adults, both age groups showed similar increases in correct word identification as increasing amounts of prior context were presented. By contrast, context that followed the target words was less effective for the elderly subjects than it was for the young. It is argued that a memory trace of the unclear stimulus must be maintained for effective utilization of following context in a retrospective analysis. The elderly subjects' relative inability to utilize following context implicates an age-related memory deficit operating at the sentence level.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Effect of fragile X on physical and intellectual traits estimated by pedigree analysis.

A maximum likelihood scoring technique for analysis of pedigree data, which allows for estimation of random effects (variance components) concurrently with other "fixed" effects in a quantitative trait, was applied to establish the effect of the fragile X condition in the variation of intellectual and physical traits. In 52 fragile X families, intellectual status was represented by measures of vocabulary knowledge (PPVT) and of nonverbal visuospatial skills (BDT), and physical status by a combined physical (anthropometric) score, and jaw length. The fixed effects included fragile X and sex and their interaction on the mean and covariances between relatives for the intellectual and physical scores. The random effects included environmental (common and individual) and genetic (additive and dominance) components. Different genetic models were tested by the likelihood ratio criterion, and the maximum likelihood parameters for each of the three scores were based on the most appropriate models. The effect of fragile X on the mean values was found to be significant for all the traits, and much more conspicuous in male than in female individuals, the effects in the PPVT and the anthropometric score being intercorrelated. The effect of fragile X on growth of a single physical trait relative to height was demonstrated using jaw length as an example. We have also demonstrated an effect of fragile X on genetic (additive) variance, as well as on the mean of the BDT score, and the effect of age on the nongenetic variance of PPVT, and jaw length.

Anthropometry↗
PubMed1992

Message-encoding techniques for augmentative communication systems: the recall performances of adults with severe speech impairments.

This study investigated the cognitive and linguistic processing demands of message-encoding techniques used to retrieve prestored messages from computer-based augmentative communication systems. Twelve physically disabled adults with severe speech impairments participated in six counterbalanced experimental conditions, consisting of three encoding techniques (salient letter, letter category, and iconic codes), each in a personalized condition in which subjects selected their own codes and in a nonpersonalized condition in which codes were preselected by a clinician. In each of the experimental conditions, the subjects participated in five learning and testing sessions. During these sessions, the subjects learned the codes for lists of 80 messages, half of which involved concrete referents and half abstract concepts. Results indicated that the subjects were more accurate in recalling the codes to retrieve preprogrammed messages when using the two letter encoding techniques than when using the iconic technique. No reliable differences were found between recall performances with personalized codes and with nonpersonalized ones for any of the three encoding techniques. Code recall improved consistently across the series of learning sessions; there were no significant differences in the rates of learning across the encoding techniques. Subjects were found to be more accurate at recalling the codes to retrieve concrete messages than those to retrieve abstract messages.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Is the prioritization of postural control altered in conditions of postural threat in younger and older adults?

Background. The purpose of this study was to determine if the prioritization of postural control over secondary task performance is altered in younger and older adults under different conditions of postural threat. Methods. Fifteen healthy older adults (mean age = 69.53 +/- 5.78) and 15 younger adults (mean age = 22.00 +/- 2.17) performed Brooks' Spatial Letter Task (BST) while standing in four conditions of postural threat. Galvanic skin conductance (GSC) was collected to measure changes in physiological arousal. BST task duration was used to measure changes in cognitive performance, and center of pressure (COP) area was used to determine changes in postural stability across each of the testing conditions. A prioritization index was calculated based on the relative change in BST and COP across testing conditions. This measure was used to quantify changes in the relationship between postural control and secondary task performance under conditions of postural threat. Results. Measures of GSC increased in younger and older adults in response to conditions of increased postural threat. Prioritization index scores revealed that a greater number of older adults than younger adults prioritized postural control over secondary task performance under conditions of increased postural threat. Conclusions. Environmental contexts that alter postural threat may lead to modifications in the prioritization between postural control and secondary task performance among older adults. This relationship may have implications for postural control under situations that do not afford deterioration in secondary task performance.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

Sentence comprehension in elderly listeners: the factor of rate.

The study was designed to test the clinical observation that sentence comprehension in elderly listeners is enhanced when rate is slowed (time-expanded) and that comprehension is affected adversely when rate is speeded (time-compressed). Twenty normally-active elderly persons who ranged in age from 65 through 88 years listened to four matched sets of 10 sentences each that were modified electronically to produce the following four rate-alteration percentages: 100% (normal rate), 60% compression, 140% expansion, and 180% expansion. Sentences were presented binaurally to listeners who responded by selecting pictures that matched the sentences heard. Results indicated that sentence comprehension scores were significantly higher (p less than .01) at both the 60% and 140% alteration rates than at the normal speaking rate. Possible effects of the stimulus upon comprehension performance are discussed.

Aged↗