Demenz – Ein syndromatologisches Chamäleon

psychopraxis. neuropraxis - Wir präsentieren den Fall eines Patienten, bei dem nur durch eine jahrelange Verlaufskontrolle eine relativ exakte Diagnosestellung möglich war. Der Patient...     

Direct Application of Specially Formulated Scent Compositions (AromaStick®) Prolongs Attention and Enhances Visual Scanning Speed

Recently, a series of experiments demonstrated that direct stimulation of the olfactory system by means of an odor inhaler targets brain areas associated with stress reduction and pain relief. This paper follows up on these findings and investigates whether such effects can also be found for inhalers specially designed to increase attention and concentration. In a three‐armed, randomized, controlled experiment participants' cognitive ability to discriminate between similar visual stimuli was tested either with or without the use of an odor inhaler. Concentration, visual scanning speed, and accuracy were assessed to gauge differential effects. Both odor inhalers outperformed the control condition where no odor was used. The effects were large and showed in all parameters. The direct application of specially designed essential oil compositions enhances attention and concentration when used during short‐term breaks in a stressful and attention‐demanding cognitive task.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimizing preoperative expectations in cardiac surgery patients is moderated by level of disability: the successful development of a brief psychological intervention

Patients’ expectations have shown to be a major psychological predictor of health outcome in cardiac surgery patients. However, it is unclear whether patients’ expectations can be optimized prior to surgery. This study evaluates the development of a brief psychological intervention focusing on the optimization of expectations and its effect on change in patients’ expectations prior to cardiac surgery. Ninety patients scheduled for coronary artery bypass graft were randomly assigned to (1) standard medical care, (2) additional expectation manipulation intervention (EMI), and (3) additional attention control group. Therapists’ fidelity to intervention manuals and patients satisfaction with the intervention were assessed for both active intervention conditions. Patients’ expectations about post-surgical disability, treatment control, personal control, and disease duration were assessed before and after the psychological intervention. Demographical, medical, and psychosocial characteristics and disability were assessed at baseline. Treatment fidelity and patient satisfaction was very high in both intervention conditions. Only patients receiving EMI developed higher personal control expectations and longer (more realistic) expectations of disease duration. The effect of intervention group on patients’ disability expectations and patients’ personal control expectations was moderated by patient’s level of disability. EMI patients with low to moderate disability developed positive expectations whereas patients with high disability did not. This study shows the successful development of a short psychological intervention that was able to modify patients’ expectations, especially in those with low to moderate disability. Given the robust association of expectations and surgery outcome, such an intervention might offer the opportunity to enhance patients’ health following cardiac surgery.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Two Measures of Speed of Information Processing and their Relation to Psychometric Intelligence: Evidence from the German Observational Study of Adult Twins

Speed of information processing, as measured by reaction times (RTs) in elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs), has been found to be an important correlate of human psychometric intelligence. While the heritability of psychometric intelligence is well understood, we know only a little about genetic and environmental influences on ECT performance, particularly about genetic and environmental contributions to ECT–intelligence relation. These questions were studied by employing two widely used ECTs (Sternberg's memory scanning and Posner's letter-matching task) as well as two psychometric intelligence tests (Advanced Progressive Matrices and Leistungs–Prüf System) in a large sample of 169 monozygotic (MZ) and 131 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. As expected, RTs correlated negatively with psychometric intelligence. Moreover, heritability estimates were substantial for both psychometric intelligence and RTs in ECTs. Finally, multivariate genetic analyses suggested that most of the phenotypic correlation between mental speed and intelligence is due to genetic factors.     

Epistemology Culturalized

The anti-metaphysical intentions of naturalism can be respected without abandoning the project of a normative epistemology. The central assumptions of naturalism imply that (1.) the distinction between action and behaviour is spurious, and (2.) epistemology cannot continue to be a normative project. Difficulties with the second implication have been adressed by Normative Naturalism, but without violating the naturalistic consensus, it can only appreciate means-end-rationality. However, this does not suffice to justify its own implicit normative pretensions. According to our diagnosis, naturalism succumbs to the lure of an absolute observer's stance and thereby neglects the need for participation in communal practice. By contrast, methodical culturalism ties down the concepts of epistemology to the success of such practice. Only from this perspective, the normative force of epistemology can be appreciated. Also, the mind-body problem loosens its hold and the distinction between action and behaviour is reestablished. In the last section, the mutual relation between philosophy andscience is reconsidered. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Subitizing and its subprocesses

 When people are presented with small sets of elements such as dots they can very easily determine their number. This ability has been called subitizing. The present paper reports results from four experiments. The discussion focuses on the question whether one or two psychological processes have to be assumed for this task of subitizing. Taken together our results support the two-process theories. In particular, a distinction between a process of separation and a process of enumeration is suggested. Experiments 3 and 4 support the canonical pattern hypothesis. Canonical patterns are processed substantially faster than noncanonical patterns. Furthermore, if a complex pattern can be broken down into small canonical patterns, then participants follow a partition and add strategy. Accepted: 22 December 1999     

Dyad Gender Differences in Preadolescents' Creative Stories

This study extended research on gender differences in creative stories written by individuals to creative stories written in collaboration with a same- or an other-gender peer partner. Participants were 104 preadolescent sixth graders, mostly White and middle class. Same- and other-gender peer partners (18 girl, 16 boy, and 17 mixed-gender dyads) worked together for 4 weeks to write creative stories based on mystery pictures. Story ideas were coded into one of seven categories (i.e., overt aggression, verbal aggression, relational aggression, prosocial behavior, negative emotion, positive emotion, and neutral/other). Boy dyads' stories included a greater proportion of overtly aggressive story ideas and a lesser proportion of prosocial story ideas than did girl dyads' stories. Mixed-gender dyads' stories contained a greater proportion of prosocial ideas than did boy dyads' stories. Findings are discussed in light of a social-contextual approach to gender differences and similarities.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Personality: A Study of Twins Reared Together Using the Self- and Peer Report NEO-FFI Scales

ABSTRACT Previous behavior-genetic research on personality has been almost exclusively based on self-report questionnaire measures. The purpose of this research was to measure personality constructs via self- and peer reports on the items of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1989). The sample included 660 monozygotic and 200 same sex and 104 opposite sex dizygotic twin pairs. We collected self- and two independent peer reports for each of the twins. Our analysis of self-report data replicates earlier findings of a substantial genetic influence on the Big Five (h²= .42 to .56). We also found this influence for peer reports. Our results validate findings based solely on self-reports. However, estimates of genetic contributions to phenotypic variance were substantially higher when based on peer reports (h²= .51 to .81) or self- and peer reports (h²= .66 to .79) because these data allowed us to separate error variance from variance due to nonshared environmental in-fluences. Correlations between self- and peer reports reflected the same genetic influences to a much higher extent than identical environmental effects.