What “Evidence” in Evidence-Based Medicine?

Topoi - The concept of evidence has gone unanalysed in much of the current debate between proponents and critics of evidence-based medicine. In this paper I will suggest that part of the...     

Witch‐hunt as enlightenment

Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrel With Science by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt. Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, 314 pages, $25.95 hardback only     

Differentiated forgetting rates of spatial knowledge in humans in the absence of repeated testing

Spatial knowledge, necessary for efficient navigation, comprises route knowledge (memory of the landmarks along a route) and survey knowledge (map-like). Available data on the retention in humans of spatial knowledge show that this does not decline systematically over months or years. Here, two groups of participants elaborated route and survey knowledge during navigation in a complex virtual environment before performing route and survey tasks. Both groups were tested 5 minutes after learning and 3 months later, while one group was also tested 1 week and 1 month later (repeated testing). Performance was similar in both groups on the first testing session, remained stable in the repeated tested group, but decreased in the non-repeated tested group, especially on route tasks. These results are the first to reveal a substantial and selective decline of spatial knowledge, occurring only if there is no possibility of reactivating knowledge along repeated testing.     

When meaning is useless

The aim of this study is to disentangle the relative contribution of semantic and phonological representation in immediate serial recall. Indeed, short-term memory (STM) performance could be enhanced by familiarity with the phonological form of the word only or together with semantic information. Participants learned two sets of words in an unknown language: for one set they acquired both phonology and semantics, while for the other only phonology. After that, they performed two immediate serial recall tasks involving either “phonology and semantics” or “only phonology” words and one with untrained words. The analyses showed that the trained lists did not differ from each other, while they did from the untrained one. These data confirm that familiarity with the phonological form is sufficient for immediate serial recall. Therefore, we argue that semantics is not required for verbal STM, but knowledge of the phonological form is what matters.     

Review of Haydée Faimberg,The telescoping of Generations: Listening to the Narcissistic Links between Generations,London and New York,Routledge, 2005

Abstract

The V Nordic Conference of IFPS, Sweden January 23-24,1993

Activities of The Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society October 1992-June 1993     

Living on the edge: strategic and instructed slowing in the stop signal task

The stop signal task is widely adopted to assess motor inhibition performance in both clinical and non-clinical populations. Several recent studies explored the influence of strategic approaches to the task. In particular, response slowing seems to be a strategic approach commonly adopted to perform the task. In the present study, we compared a standard version with a strategic version of the task, in which participants were explicitly instructed to slow down responses. Results showed that the instructed slowing did not affect the main inhibition measure, thus confirming the robustness of the stop signal index. On the other hand, it apparently changed the nature of the task, as shown by the lack of correlation between the standard and the strategic versions. In addition, we found a specific influence of individual characteristics on slowing strategies. In the standard version, adherence to task instructions was positively correlated with compliant traits of personality. Despite instructions to maximize response speed, non-compliant participants preferred to adopt a slowing strategy in the standard version of the task, up to a speed level similar to the strategic version, where slowing was required by task instructions. Understanding the role of individual approach to the task seems to be crucial to properly identify how participants cope with task instructions.     

Nest membership determines the levels of aggression and cooperation between females of a supposedly communal digger wasp

Females of communal and eusocial Hymenoptera differ greatly in the treatment of conspecifics: communal species lack the nest membership-bias treatment via nestmate (NM) recognition, which is typical of eusocial Hymenoptera. Therefore, an analysis of social interactions can suggest whether a given bee or wasp is communal or eusocial. For this reason, we observed females of the digger wasp Cerceris rubida in experimental dyadic encounters. Because this species had previously been labeled "communal," we expected to find little evidence of a NM bias with respect to cooperation or aggression when paired with NMs and non-nestmates (NNM). Contrary to expectation, females were highly cooperative toward NMs and highly aggressive toward NNMs. Variation in the intensity of aggression toward NNMs partially stems from the degree to which the paired females differed in size. From these results and quantitative comparisons with studies on solitary, communal, and eusocial bee species, it appears that C. rubida has a more complex social organization than previously believed and, in particular, that females of this species exhibit NM recognition, a trait associated with eusociality.     

Newborn preference for a new face vs. a previously seen communicative or motionless face

Newborn infants prefer to look at a new face compared to a known face (still-face). This effect does not happen with the mother-face. The newborns could be attracted by the mother-face because, unlike the still-face, it confirms an expectation of communication.Fifty newborns were video-recorded. Sixteen of them were recruited in the final sample: nine were exposed to a communicative face and seven to a still-face. All the 16 newborns were successively exposed to two preference-tasks where a new face was compared with the known face.Only newborns previously exposed to a still-face preferred to look at a new face instead of the known face. The results suggest that the newborns are able to build a dynamic representation of faces.     

Category Cued Recall Following Controlled Encoding as a Neuropsychological Tool in the Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease: A Review of the Evidence

Aim of the present review paper was to evaluate the hypothesis (included in the proposal of new research criteria for Alzheimer’s disease; Dubois et al., Lancet Neurology, 6, 734–746, 2007) that a neuropsychological tool which provides support for the semantic encoding of memorandum at the time of study and supplies category cues at the time of retrieval (i.e. the Grober-Buschke paradigm) is more effective than traditional measures of free recall in 1) differentiating patients affected by the amnestic form of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or by mild to moderate forms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) from healthy matches, 2) predicting the conversion of individuals with MCI to AD, and 3) differentiating AD patients from individuals affected by other forms of dementia. Results of the review are controversial regarding the superiority of the Grober-Buschke procedure in differentiating individuals affected by AD or MCI from healthy individuals. The only study that evaluated this issue directly found that the Grober-Buschke procedure was more sensitive and specific than more traditional memory tests in predicting the conversion of MCI patients to AD. Finally, two studies reported that patients affected by AD or other forms of dementia showed different performance patterns in the free and cued recall tasks of the Grober-Buschke procedure. In conclusion, although encouraging results are reported in the few studies that investigated the ability of this procedure to predict the evolution of individuals with amnestic MCI and to differentiate AD patients from patients with other forms of cortical and subcortical dementia, more experimental work is needed to confirm these positive findings.