Reversal operations after brain damage

The ability to perform reversals—that is, the appreciation of the relationship between original and transformed states of knowledge—is critical to human thought processes. In order to assess whether a number of “special-purpose processors” are responsible for reversal operations, depending on the particular context in which the reversal is couched, or whether a single “core processing mechanism” subserves a critical aspect of reversal operations regardless of the specific context, patients with localized brain damage were asked to solve eight reversal problems. Visual and auditory reversals mediated by linguistic and non-linguistic symbol systems were presented. The findings demonstrate that patients with insult to the anterior portion of the right hemisphere encounter more difficulty performing reversals than patients with right posterior insult, Broca's aphasics, and fluent aphasics. This is regardless of the symbol system mediating the reversal, regardless of the modality of presentation, and regardless of the amount of available processing time. Subjects with insult to the posterior region of the left hemisphere or the right hemisphere also exhibit some difficulty solving reversal problems, although their difficulties appear modality specific. These data lend support to the claim that a core processing mechanism may play a critical role in the performance of reversal operations.     

Leadership of antireligious propaganda in the Soviet Union

Re-emergent scientific atheism bears the marks of its historical origins in the efforts of Bon-Bruevi and Jaroslavskij. The disciples of the Lenin generation use their fathers somewhat as second-level classics.     

A psychometric study of stereotypes: assessment of malingering in a criminal forensic group

This research investigates the validity of the stereotype of insanity defendants as malingerers by analyzing the proportions of insanity defendants who exaggerate psychopathology at the pre- and postacquittal stages of the legal process and by assessing the severity of psychopathology among preacquittal defendants. We administered the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to 49 insanity defendants evaluated for fitness to stand trial and/or sanity at the time of the alleged crime and to 52 subjects previously found not guilty by reason of insanity. Results indicated: (a) Contrary to the stereotype, a minority (14% to 41%) of insanity defendants clearly malingered, whereas 22% to 39% showed evidence of minimizing psychopathology. (b) Eighty-one percent of these subjects had MMPI profiles suggestive of psychosis, but relatively few showed evidence of primarily antisocial behavior. Thus, the malingering stereotype may be application to only a minority of insanity defendants and is specifically inapplicable to a substantial proportion who minimized psychopathology or showed evidence of psychosis consistent with the claim of insanity.     

The game of the name: An examination of linguistic reference after brain damage

Two aspects of naming have generally been examined in aphasics: the appreciation of a single property of a concept and the ability to use the names of fully elaborated concepts. In applying to aphasics a recently proposed model of semantic organization—one which allows the simultaneous examination of these two aspects—two studies were conducted: Anterior and posterior aphasics were asked (1) to name members of superordinate categories, their responses being converted into prototypicality scores (the degree to which a member of a category resembles an ideal member of that category) and (2) to differentiate between more or less prototypical members of a category and their superordinates. The results revealed that, while anterior and posterior aphasics differ in their use of the names representing fully elaborated concepts, these groups show no differences in terms of the appreciation of a single property of a concept. The implications of these findings for reference were discussed.     

Schizophrenic tendencies and memory deficits in normals

The report tests the hypothesis that normals who exhibit schizophrenic tendencies are likely to show verbal-memory deficits of the types observed in schizophrenics. Thirty-four middle-aged men were tested using the MMPI 2–7–8 schizophrenic-tendency scales, the Sorting Consistency Task and the Physical Anhedonia Scale. The dependent variables were four memory tests selected on the basis of their known discriminating power and their relevance. The results showed the Schizophrenia (8) and Psychasthenia (7) scales of MMPI, and the Sorting Consistency Task effectively detected memory deficits in normals. When partialling out intelligence, as a measure of general current cognitive functioning, it appeared that one of the deficits reflecting encoding difficulty disappeared. This suggests that normal ‘high-risk’ subjects for schizophrenia show a ‘generalized deficit’, which affects memory in addition to a ‘differential deficit’ in retention. Though tentative, the results can be taken as an indication that ‘high-risk’ subjects indeed show memory deficits and that detecting these deficits requires relatively sensitive tools.