Nicotine exposure effects on ADHD in young adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD)

This study investigated whether ingestion of nicotine could enhance cognitive performance in people with ADHD. Participants with ADHD (n = 17) and without ADHD (n = 22) were contrasted for nicotine use. Cognitive performance was measured using selected subtests of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). Baseline cognitive performance data were collected prior to experimental nicotine exposure. The ADHD group with nicotine exposure performed significantly better than the non-exposure group post-intervention. Nicotine exposure appears to boost cognitive performance in subjects with ADHD.     

Simultaneity in Processing of Verbal and Spatial Information

Recent studies involving recall of verbal and spatial information produced conflicting results. In some cases investigators found males recalled verbal and spatial information equally well whereas females did less well on spatial than verbal information, but in other cases no sex differences were found. They also differed in that one study found processing of verbal and spatial information to be independent whereas others suggested trade-offs might occur. Using college-age subjects (17-25 yrs) with equal numbers of males and females (total n = 186) two experiments were performed to examine these differences. Although overall differences were found favoring verbal recall, females’ recall of spatial information was relatively poorer than males. Using a procedure designed to avoid possible artifactual depression of combined performance, we concluded that processing of spatial and verbal information is simultaneous in nature.

     

Sex differences in the generalization of attraction

The effects of intergroup evaluations on intragroup attraction were assessed in a situation involving two-person teams that were all of the same sex. Male (N=123) and female (N=118) group members separately reported their political views to another dyad and then received either unfavorable, favorable, or no feedback regarding their team as a whole on the basis of this information. The results indicated that females evidenced more anger in response to the out-group's unfavorable feedback than did males. These anger responses were related to attraction to ward a teammate for males but not for females. Moreover, males evidenced less attraction toward an in-group member after receiving unfavorable rather than favorable intergroup evaluations, whereas females did not. On the other hand, only for females was attraction to ward a teammate related to the perceived similarity of that individual within experimental conditions. Apparently, the greater cognitive orientation of females as compared to males to ward another ingroup member resulted in their being less susceptable to the influence of situationally induced affect.This research was performed as part of the author's doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology, Purdue University. Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association held in Boston, 1977.It should be noted that the views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect those of the Army or any other government agency.     

Effect of Sex and Joystick Experience on Pursuit Tracking in Adults

Using a joystick, adults (n = 39 males, 40 females in Experiment 1; n = 35 males, 40 females in Experiment 2; and n = 18 males, 18 females in Experiment 3) performed a computerized pursuit tracking task. Contrary to previously reported findings, the males were not more accurate than the females when performance was adjusted for prior perceptual-motor experience. Although no sex differences were found in a speeded tracking task, in an inverted tracking task the males exhibited a significant performance advantage; that advantage remained after several blocks of practice. Because participants' performance was adjusted statistically for prior perceptual-motor experience, the male advantage in inverted tracking was not related to experience. Rather, more proficient inverted tracking performance was associated with higher 3-dimensional mental rotations scores. In sum, sex differences in normal pursuit tracking may be better explained by differences in perceptual-motor experience. Inverted tracking, however, may depend on proficiency with spatial transformations.     

Promoting adolescent sense of coherence: Testing models of risk,protection, and resiliency

Sense of coherence (SOC) is a dispositional trait that has been linked to well‐being in a broad range of populations and contexts. Little is known, however, about the factors associated with SOC development and maintenance across the lifespan. Conceptualized as a condition of resiliency, SOC in adolescents was explored via measures of risk and protection as reported on by 8th and 10th grade students (N = 1619). Employing cumulative indexes of protection and risk, analyses focused on testing four models of resiliency. Further, the relative and cumulative effects of protection and risk were explored across ecological domains. Analyses revealed support for the compensatory model of resiliency for males and females, while the challenge model also was supported for females. Analyses also revealed that protection and risk influencing SOC emerge at multiple domains for males and females. In addition, protective factors present at multiple domains were related to higher SOC while risk factors present at multiple domains were related to lower SOC regardless of gender. Results suggest a resiliency framework that considers multiple ecological domains is useful for understanding SOC in adolescents. Implications for additional research are presented. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intelligence and neural efficiency: The influence of task content and sex on the brain–IQ relationship

In studying physiological correlates of human intelligence, new brain imaging techniques like positron emission tomography (PET) and electroencephalography (EEG) mapping methods focus on the level and topographical distribution of cortical activation. Actually, there is strong empirical evidence that more intelligent individuals display a more focused cortical activation during cognitive performance resulting in lower total brain activation than in less intelligent individuals (i.e., neural efficiency hypothesis). Former studies have used only single, homogeneous tasks and most of the studies have been performed using males. Therefore, here the influence of different task content and of sex on the relationship between intelligence and cortical activation has been tested. In a sample of 26 males and 25 females, we administered verbal, numerical, and figural versions of a well-known elementary cognitive task, the so-called Posner task. Our results suggest a comparatively low cortical activation in brighter as compared to less intelligent individuals but this expected neural efficiency pattern interacted with sex and task content: In the verbal Posner task, the females were more likely to produce cortical activation patterns in line with the neural efficiency hypothesis, whereas in the figural task, primarily the males displayed the expected inverse relationship between IQ and cortical activation.     

The influence of gender, handedness, and performance level on specialized cognitive functioning

Individual differences in performance on neuropsychological tests were analyzed across age (prepubertal to adult), gender, and handedness groups and examined for performance level as a moderating variable. No differences were observed for the factor structure of these tests across ages and between genders, suggesting similar cognitive structures among these groups. Significant differences in performance were observed between males and females and, to a lesser extent, between right and left handers. Of interest, were significant Gender x Handedness and Gender x Handedness x Level (of performance) interactions seen especially in the older (postpubertal and adult) subjects. High performing, right handed males and left handed females performed better on visuospatial tasks while left handed males and right handed females performed better on verbosequential tasks.     

Performance on creativity measures with examination‐taking instructions intended to induce high or low levels of test anxiety

The major purpose of this investigation was to ascertain whether differential levels of performance on three tests of creativity portraying divergent production of verbal (semantic), figural (visual), and mathematical (symbolic) responses would be associated with two sets of test‐taking instructions: (a) one intended to induce a relatively high level of anxiety or stress and (b) the other designed to minimize the degree of anxiety or stress in the testing experience. Participants were 132 private secondary school students (82 females and 50 males) in a college preparatory program who were divided into experimental and control groups. On the basis of three univariate four‐way factorial designs at each of two levels per variable (treatment x sex x test anxiety x mathematics anxiety) with the pretest serving as a covariate, it was observed that only in the instance of a mathematics fluency test did the experimental group exposed to anxiety‐inducing test‐taking instructions achieve a significantly lower mean score on the posttest than did the control group that had been administered instructions intended to minimize anxiety (p < .001). A marginally significant interaction occurred between gender and mathematics anxiety on the mathematics fluency test with highly‐anxious males showing a greater decrement in performance than highly‐anxious females when exposed to anxiety‐inducing instructions. The results were interpreted primarily within a conceptual framework developed by Tobias (1985), who proposed an integration of cognitive capacity and interference as explanatory constructs for decrements in the performance of tasks involving anxiety.     

Expectations and Attributions in Social Anxiety Disorder: Diagnostic Distinctions and Relationship to General Anxiety and Depression

Contemporary cognitive models suggest that social anxiety disorder arises from a number of cognitive factors, including tendencies to form pessimistic (rather than optimistic) attributions and expectations for socially-related events. These models also assume that the strengths of such attributions and expectations are more closely linked with social anxiety than with general anxiety or depression. To test these assumptions, a battery of self-report measures was completed by participants with a primary diagnosis of generalized social anxiety disorder (n?=?75), panic disorder with agoraphobia (n?=?44), or post-traumatic stress disorder (n?=?59). To examine differences on these cognitive variables, group comparisons were performed controlling for general anxiety, depression and medication status. Social anxiety disorder, compared with panic disorder with agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, was characterized by lower expectations for positive social events and higher expectations for negative social events. There was no difference among the groups on expectations for non-social positive or negative events. Stable and global attributions for social negative events were more closely associated with social anxiety disorder than with panic disorder with agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder. Correlational analyses also revealed specific relationships among social-cognitive measures and social anxiety, even after controlling for general anxiety and depression. The results are consistent with cognitive models of social anxiety disorder.     

How am I doing? Performance feedback mitigates the effects of mental fatigue on endurance exercise performance

Mental fatigue induced by an earlier cognitive task can impair performance on a subsequent physical task. The current study investigated whether such performance impairment could be mitigated by performance feedback. In an experimental sequential-task design, 63 sport science students completed a series of three tasks: 5-min physical (pre-test), 20-min cognitive, 5-min physical (post-test). Participants were randomly allocated to one of three groups: feedback (n = 23), no feedback (n = 20), control (n = 20). The physical tasks, which assessed force production during a self-paced rhythmic handgrip task as a measure of physical endurance performance, were performed with (feedback group) or without (no feedback group, control group) visual performance feedback. The cognitive tasks involved either completing a 2-back memory task to induce mental fatigue (feedback and no feedback groups) or watching a didactic film (control group). Self-report measures (fatigue, exertion, vigor, motivation) were collected throughout. The 2-back cognitive task increased mental fatigue, mental exertion and general fatigue in the feedback and no feedback groups compared to the control group. Relative to the pre-test physical task, post-test endurance performance declined in the no feedback group (−14.4%) but did not change in the control (−2.6%) and feedback (−2.4%) groups. This mitigation of performance effect was not accompanied by parallel changes in fatigue, exertion, vigor, or motivation. In conclusion, visual performance feedback mitigates the negative effects of mental fatigue on physical endurance performance.     

Normative indications for Xhosa speaking unskilled workers on the Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test

The aim of this study was to establish normative indications for the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (RCF) copy, incidental recall and delayed recall tasks, administered in English on a non-clinical population of Xhosa, unskilled workers (N?=?33) (females n?=?21; males n?=?12), with a background of relatively disadvantaged quality of education up to Grades 11 and 12. The sample was stratified into two age groupings (18 – 29 years, n?=?17; 30 – 40 years, n?=?16), equally distributed for sex and level of education. Within group statistical analyses compared subgroup test performances for sex and age within the total sample. Between group analyses were used to compare the performance of the present sample with age equivalent data derived from a meta-analysis of US normative data on the RCF task. There was an age effect in favour of the younger group for both the immediate and delayed recall tasks. The local data for all RCF tasks were significantly lower than the US normative data, with the indication that higher levels and/or quality of formal school education might advantage performance on this complex visuoperceptual copy and recall task.     

Sex role orientation, level of cognitive development and mathematics performance in late adolescence

Sex differences in mathematics performance are found in late adolescence. This study investigates the effects of psychological sex role orientation (BSRI: masculine, feminine, undifferentiated, androgynous) and level of cognitive development (concrete, formal) on performance in mathematics. ANOVA analysis (N = 69; 18 males, 51 females) revealed significant effects for level of cognitive development and for masculine by feminine sex role orientation interaction. Subjects whose BSRI masculine and feminine scores were either both low or both high scored significantly lower on the mathematics test than subjects whose scores on either masculine or feminine scales were high. This indicates lower mathematics performance for androgynous and undifferentiated subjects. This result is hypothesized to be a function of the particular age level of these subjects and their concomitant overconcern with appropriate sex role development.     

Normative and reliability data for the children's depression inventory

The present study was undertaken to examine some of the psychometric properties of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), a self-report inventory devised by Kovacs and Beck (1977) to measure depression in children and adolescents. Normative and reliability data were obtained from three independent samples taken from eight public schools in central Pennsylvania. Age- and gender-related differences in reported characteristics of depression were also investigated. The subjects were 594 males and 658 females whose ages ranged from 8 to 16 years and whose combined mean age was 11.67 years (SD=1.91). The CDI was group-administered to all 1,252 subjects; 155 fifth-grade subjects (77 males and 78 females) were retested after 3 weeks, and 107 seventh- and eight-grade subjects (45 males and 62 females) were retested after 1 year. The distribution statistics for the combined samples yielded an overall CDI mean of 9.09, a standard deviation of 7.04, and a cutoff score of 19 for the upper 10% of the distribution. Reliability assessed through coefficient alpha, item-total score product-moment correlations, and test-retest coefficients proved acceptable. Gender differences were obtained for several item-total score correlations and for test-retest reliability of CDI scores.     

青少年应激下皮质醇应答与风险决策相关性的性别差异

本研究旨在探讨中国青少年应激下皮质醇应答和风险决策相关性的性别差异。本研究以健康初中生为被试者, 采用特里尔社会应激测试(Trier Social Stress Test, TSST)诱发机体应激反应, 测试唾液皮质醇在应激前后不同时间段的水平, 并要求被试者在应激状态下完成气球模拟风险决策任务(Balloon Analogue Risk Task, BART)。结果发现, 男性在TSST诱导下皮质醇反应度显著高于女性, 男性中高皮质醇应答者BART表现为更高程度的冒险行为和更低的总奖励金额, 而女性中高皮质醇应答者BART表现为更高的总奖励金额。研究结果提示,中国青少年应激条件下皮质醇应答与风险决策之间的联系存在性别差异, 尤其在男性, 高皮质醇应答者更具有冒险行为。     

The Effects of Age,Sex and Alzheimer's Disease on Strategy Use During Verbal Fluency Tasks

ABSTRACT

Clustering and switching strategies during phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks were investigated in healthy adults (n = 193, 86 males, 20–90 years) in young, middle-aged, young–old, and old–old age groups (Study 1). Older groups produced fewer total words and lower switching scores; males relied more on clustering and females on switching to produce equivalent output. In Study 2, early Alzheimer's disease participants, compared to healthy older adults, (n = 26 per group) produced fewer total words and smaller average clusters. Sex, age, and clinical differences on switching and clustering strategies support a dual processing model of verbal fluency.     

Sex-role orientation as related to psychological and physiological responses during achievement and orthostatic stress

The Bem sex-role inventory was used to select, from an Irish student population, females and males who differed with regard to feminine and masculine personality characteristics. Four groups were established for each sex: (1) subjects with low scores in both femininity and masculinity, i.e., undifferentiated subjects; (2) subjects with high scores in both femininity and masculinity, i.e., androgynous subjects; (3) subjects with high scores in femininity and low scores in masculinity; (4) subjects with high scores in masculinity and low scores in femininity. The Cattell 16 PF scale showed that the undifferentiated groups were more reserved and detached and more cautious and taciturn than the androgynous groups. Each subject was exposed to mental stress in one session and orthostatic stress in another session. Mental stress was induced by five different intellectual performance tests. Males and females differed significantly only on a test of perceptual speed, with females performing better than males, as expected. The group of androgynous females was superior to all other groups on four of the five performance tasks. The group of androgynous males was not superior in terms of objective performance but reported feeling more confident andThis collaboration was made possible by a twinning grant to Dr. John Cullen and Professor Marianne Frankenhaeuser from the European Training Programme in Brain and Behaviour Research, European Science Foundation. Financial support was also obtained by grants from the Swedish Medical Research Council (Project No. 997) and the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. satisfied with their performance than most other groups, particularly the undifferentiated males. Blood pressure and heart rate were significantly elevated in all groups during both stress conditions. Heart rate was significantly higher in the high-femininity and androgynous females than in the other female groups.     

Symptoms,blood-pressure information and mood effects on symptom recall

Abstract

After completion of an illness symptom checklist (PILL) covering the previous three months, 97 nor-motensives were allocated to either experimental (false pressor feedback, n=42), or information control (accurate pressor feedback, n = 55), groups. The median reported symptom score divided high from low symptom subjects. All were given standard cuff blood pressure (BP) assessment and were normotensive. However, experimental subjects were misinformed that their BP was raised while information control subjects were told their BP was normal. Subsequently, subjects completed the state anxiety form of the State-Trait Personality Inventory, the PILL, and were asked about their belief of the ascribed BP label (normo/hypertensive) and then any perceived causal relationship between their BP and symptoms. Experimental subjects had significantly higher anxiety scores but no change in symptom recall after pressor feedback, whereas control subjects showed lower anxiety scores and decreases in symptom recall.

A post hoc treatment control (no pressor information) group (n = 20) excluded effects of BP labeling on post-BP scores, and a post hoc symptom control group (n = 55) ensured that symptom levels were representative of the normal population. The majority of subjects in both groups rejected any association between BP labels and symptoms. Data are discussed in the light of Leventhal's models of illness representation.     

Effectiveness of a mental training program for novice scuba divers

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess the effects of a mental training program on state anxiety, respiration rate and performance of novice scuba divers. Forty-four participants enrolled in novice open water diving courses served as participants. An intervention group (n = 15), in addition to scuba training, received an audiotaped mental training program designed to reduce anxiety and improve diving performance. A placebo-control group (n = 15) followed the same procedures except that their audiotape contained general information about scuba diving. A control group (n = 14) received only scuba training. The intervention group reported lower pre-dive scores for cognitive anxiety, higher pre-dive scores for self-confidence, performed better on bail-out and mask removal tasks, and showed lower respiration rate than either control group. Respiration rate and somatic anxiety scores significantly predicted bail-out performance. Respiration rate also predicted mask removal performance. These results suggest that novice divers may benefit from mental training as part of their pre-dive instruction.     

Relationships between anxiety,self-consciousness,and cognitive failure

Abstract

Two studies of correlates of the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) are reported. The first study tested for empirical personality correlates of the CFQ; the second study investigated the role of self-consciousness as a possible mediator of the association betyeen cognitive failures and stress vulnerability. Study 1 (n = 60) showed significant correlations between CFQ score and several 16PF primary and secondary traits, notably anxiety. Study 2 (n = 100) used multiple regression to verify the hypothesis that the positive association between CFQ score and anxiety is at least partially mediated by individual differences in self-consciousness. It is concluded that high CFQ subjects are vulnerable to stress because self-attentional processing disrupts their coping strategies.     

Sex differences and the factor of time in solving Vandenberg and Kuse mental rotation problems

In accounting for the well-established sex differences on mental rotation tasks that involve cube stimuli of the Shepard and Metzler (Shepard & Metzler, 1971) kind, performance factors are frequently invoked. Three studies are presented that examine performance factors. In Study 1, analyses of the performance of a large number of subjects (n=1765) that performed the Vandenberg and Kuse (1976) mental rotation test (MRT) under standard conditions showed that the magnitude of the sex differences increases as subjects proceed through the sequence of problems, and that fewer females than males reach the last problems in a problem set. This supports the role of time constraints in sex differences on the MRT. Study 2 compared the magnitude of sex differences for subjects (n=212) who did the MRT under standard conditions (T1), and with double the time (T2) allowed for the test. No significant reduction in the magnitude of sex differences was observed-even though the overall scores under T2 increased markedly for both sexes. Study 3 examined the suggestion by that mental rotation differences arise because females spend more time than males in assuring that stimuli that do not match do indeed not match, with no sex differences for matching stimuli. This hypothesis was not supported for a sample of 20 males and 26 females. We conclude that performance factors may play a role in sex difference on mental rotation tasks, but do not account for all of the differences.