Defects of immediate memory related to the cerebral blood flow distribution

Different forms of memory defects were studied in 16 patients with organic dementia. The test performance was related to the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the left (dominant) hemisphere. Verbal memory (Paired Associates) correlated to the blood flow in temporal and parietal regions. Spatial recognition (Memory for Objects, Memory for Geometrical Design) correlated to the temporal and lower frontal regions. One spatial memory test (Visual Retention test) correlated to the temporal region only. Another spatial memory test (Memory for Design) did not show correlations to any regions of the dominant hemisphere. Finally it was found that the hemisphere mean flow values did not correlate to performance. This emphasizes the main finding—the regional correlations. It is concluded that memory performance involves various extratemporal regions depending upon the specific quality of the memory task to be performed.     

Regional blood flow changes in the left cerebral hemisphere during word pair learning and recall

Regional cerebral blood flow measurements were made in the left hemisphere of 11 young healthy volunteers during learning and during recalling of word pair associates. Compared to the resting baseline, both tasks caused significant increases of average hemispheric flow, indicating an elevated neuronal activity level. Regionally both tasks were accompanied by considerable activation of parietal and occipital regions. The main difference between learning and recalling was that only the former task activated the prefrontal regions.     

Regional cerebral blood flow measurements by 133Xe-inhalation: Methodology and applications in neuropsychology and psychiatry

This review describes methodological improvements of the ¹³³Xe-inhalation technique for measurement of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) comprising correction routines both for scattered radiation from air passages and for remaining activity from previous measurements, as well as a new index of curve fit exactness. Measurements in normals are described showing new characteristics of the resting flow pattern and localized flow changes during activation with a variety of mental tasks. Our clinical applications in psychiatry are reviewed demonstrating the ability of the rCBF technique for differential diagnosis of dementia, for the evaluation of treatment by drugs, ECT, or psychosurgery, as well as for following, cases of toxic influence. The paper finally discusses the potentials as well as the limitations and artifacts of the technique.     

Remembering information related to one's self

How does memory for an incident vary depending on whether, and how, the person relates the information to himself? Trait adjectives are better remembered if they were judged in reference to oneself rather than judged for meaning or sound. Our first experiment found a similar mnemonic advantage of referring a described episode or object to some event from one's life. Pleasant events were remembered better than unpleasant ones. A second experiment found incidental memory for trait adjectives was equally enhanced by judging each directly in reference to one's self-concept or indirectly by retrieving an episode either from one's life or from one's mother's life. Contrariwise, memory was poorer when traits were judged in reference to a less familiar person. Thus, good memory depends on relating the inputs to a well-differentiated memory structure.     

Memory for numbers in monolinguals and bilinguals

Forty-six subjects were assigned to two groups according to a reaction time technique: one monolingual group of 14 subjects with German as the dominant language and one group of 32 German-Swedish bilingual subjects balanced in skills. The subjects were given short-term memory tasks on numbers presented aurally and a visually presented prose text involving both short-term and long-term memory processes. The results provide evidence that two language systems actively used in daily communication affect both speed and memory span for digits: when compared with monolingual subjects, balanced bilinguals read more slowly and showed a higher error rate in the recall of two-digit numbers. The results support a hypothesis of interdependent bilingual storage.     

Nonreaders' awareness of the basic relationship between spoken and written words

One hundred children, in four groups, were presented with 72 word pairs (spoken and written). Each pair consisted of one short and one long word. The subjects were requested to indicate a target word on a card and explain their choice. The basis for a correct nonreading solution was attention to the surface aspects of words and recognition of the relation between sound duration and number of graphemes. A main experimental variable was the relationship between number of graphemes and the size of the denoted object. In the youngest age group (4-year-olds) irrelevant and nonlinguistic solutions predominated. Older children were guided by semantic content. Proper understanding of the relationship between spoken and written words was observed among some of the oldest children (7-year-olds).     

Psychological cost-benefit as an intervening construct in career choice models

A causal model for career choice was outlined, encompassing psychological cost-benefit-profit as a central intervening construct. The model was applied to the career choice (education vs work) after high school graduation and tested on longitudinal data from 173 students. The main problem concerned the relationship among the components in the causal career choice model, using multiple correlation and path analysis as tools. The results showed clear sex differences. For boys, the model was a rather powerful predictor of career choice (R = 0.70), and Psychological profit with regard to continued education had a clear direct effect as well as an indirect effect on career choice. For girls, the predictive validity was low (R = 0.35) and Psychological profit affected career choice only indirectly via Educational aspiration.     

Language performance on visual processing tasks in right hemisphere lesion cases

Seven language tests were constructed or adapted to assess the performance of three groups of 10 right-handed adult subjects: a right hemisphere lesion (RHL) group, a left hemisphere lesion (LHL) group, and a neurologically normal (NN) control group. Both the LHL and RHL groups produced poorer scores than the NN group on six of the seven tests. On two of the six significant tests, the RHL performed more poorly than the NN group. Analyses of words uttered during an oral story telling test indicated that the RHL group told significantly fewer complete stories using significantly more nouns, adjectives, and conjunctions than the NN group. On a 7-point scale, three judges rated the overall communication abilities of the RHL group as having “mild problems,” a significantly different rating than the ratings of the LHL and NN groups. The findings suggest that underlying visual spatial and perceptual deficits may be accompanied by clearly recognizable language differences in certain subjects.     

Generality of persistence: The role of stimulus and response factors in persistence to punishment

Previous research has shown that intermittent punishment of a response increases its persistence to continuous punishment and that intermittent punishment training in one situation produces persistence to continuous punishment in other situations. Experiment 1 showed that as long as the instrumental response and punishing stimulus were held constant from intermittent to continuous punishment marked differences between these situations had no decremental effect on persistence. Experiment 2 showed that intermittent punishment training of one response resulted in substantial persistence to continuous punishment of a different and apparently incompatible response and that such response change had no more than a marginal effect on persistence. The results were seen as requiring some revision to the traditional conditioning-model interpretation of persistence to punishment.     

Right hemisphere superiority in the recognition of famous faces

Words and famous faces were tachistoscopically presented in bilateral view to normal right-handed subjects. A left visual field advantage was obtained for famous faces whether naming or recognition from an array was required and a right visual field advantage was obtained for words. While the finding of a left visual field advantage for the recognition of famous faces is consistent with studies of face recognition deficits in brain-damaged patients, a right visual field advantage for the recognition of famous faces has recently been reported in normal subjects. Possible explanations for this discrepancy are discussed.     

Similar situations—Similar behaviors?: A study of the intraindividual congruence between situation perception and situation reactions

A basic assumption in an interactional model of behavior is that individual behavior is more similar across situations which are perceived and interpreted as similar by the individual than across situations which are perceived as less similar or not similar at all. This proposition was investigated using a psychophysical scaling method for the study of perceived similarity between situations and measures of similarity between reaction profiles as expressions of cross-situational similarity in reactions. Individual data from 39 adolescents were analyzed. Hypothetical anxiety-evoking situations, and self-reported anxiety reactions, were used. The overall outcome of the comparison was in the predicted direction. For about 77% of the subjects the relationship was in the expected direction and for about 40% the relationship was statistically significant.     

Conceptual system and personality: A multivariate study of system stage and personality correlates

Conceptual system as a cognitive-developmental variable in personality has been assumed to relate to different cognitions of self and others and of interpersonal relations at each developmental stage. The assumed relationship between conceptual system and some personality variables was studied in a group of students (N = 85). The “This-I-Believe” test (TIB) [Harvey, O. J. System structure, adaptability and creativity. In O. J. Harvey (Ed.), Experience, structure, and adaptability. New York: Springer, 1966.] for assessing the developmental stage of the conceptual system was administered together with personality scales for traits assumed important in socialization. A modified TIB scoring procedure was used. Highly significant differences in personality were obtained by a MANOVA, using conceptual system for classification. One dimension accounted for discrimination. Measures assumed to relate to sensitivity for and conformity to a social environment contributed most to the discrimination.     

The smoked plastic screen: An alternative to the one-way mirror

A double thickness, smoked plastic screen is presented as an alternative to the one-way mirror. Relative to the glass mirror, the use of the plastic screen provides a safe, nondistracting, durable, light weight, and inexpensive method for unobserved viewing without an appreciable loss in light transmission.     

Imagery and verbal encoding in left and right hemisphere damaged patients

Neuropsychological aspects of imaginal and verbal encoding in memory were explored in two forced-choice recognition memory experiments with patients suffering from left and right anterior cerebral hemisphere damage. In the first experiment stimulus type and rate of presentation were varied. Predictions of patient performance based on the hypothesis that left anterior hemisphere pathology impairs verbal memory coding and right anterior hemisphere pathology impairs imaginal coding were confirmed. In a second recognition memory experiment for pictures of common objects, system-specific (imaginal or verbal) interference and distractor effects were demonstrated by analyzing the effects of interpolated tasks and the nature of false-recognition errors.     

Multiple sessions of systolic blood pressure biofeedback: Its effects on ability to control systolic pressure during training,after training,and its effects on pulse rate

Seventy-one normotensive subjects participated in four training sessions in which they were either (a) instructed to increase their blood pressure, (b) instructed to decrease their blood pressure, or (c) not instructed to change their blood pressure. The subjects either (a) were provided with biofeedback concerning systolic blood pressure or (b) were not provided with biofeedback concerning systolic blood pressure. After the last training session, subjects participated in a transfer session in which they were again instructed concerning changes in pressure but were not provided with biofeedback. Analyses conducted on data from the training and transfer sessions indicated that subjects who were instructed to increase pressure and given biofeedback to aid them showed higher pressure than subjects in other conditions and that there were no differences among those other conditions; that is, biofeedback was effective for teaching subjects to increase pressure but was not effective for teaching subjects to decrease pressure. Additional training sessions did not add to the effect achieved in the first training session. During training sessions, subjects who were instructed to increase pressure showed higher heart rates than subjects in other conditions. The results raise questions concerning the interpretation of earlier experiments that did not include no-treatment, instructions-only, and attention control conditions.     

Neuroelectrical correlates of hemisphere and handedness factors in a cognitive task

Principal-components analysis was performed on a set of averaged evoked potentials in order to extract components of cerebral activity functionally related to hemisphere, handedness, processing task, and stimulus feature variables. Eight such components were isolated. Degree of dextrality, hemispheric differences, and cognitive operations in processing distinct stimulus characteristics were identified as reflected in functionally distinct components of brain activity.     

The effect of auditory input on cerebral laterality

Cerebral laterality was examined for third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade deaf and hearing subjects. The experimental task involved the processing of word and picture stimuli presented singly to the right and left visual hemifields. The analyses indicated the deaf children were faster than the hearing children in overall processing efficiency, and that they performed differently in regard to hemispheric lateralization. The deaf children processed the stimuli more efficiently in the right hemisphere, while the hearing children demonstrated a left-hemisphere proficiency. This finding is discussed in terms of the hypothesis that cerebral lateralization is influenced by auditory processing.     

Left hemisphere selectivity for processing duration in normal subjects

The role of the left cerebral hemisphere for the discrimination of duration was examined in a group of normal subjects. Two tasks were presented: the first required a reaction-time response to the offset of monaural pulse sequences varying in interpulse duration, and the second required the discrimination of small differences in durations, within a delayed-comparison paradigm. In each task a right-ear advantage was obtained when the durations were 50 msec or less. No ear advantage was obtained for the larger durations of 67 to 120 msec. Since the perceptual distinctiveness of phonemes may be provided by durations approximating 50 msec, the nature of the relationship between the left hemisphere's role in temporal processing and speech processing may be elaborated.