Aging and visual marking: selective deficits for moving stimuli

The selective processing of new visual information can be facilitated by the top-down inhibition of old stimuli already in the visual field, a capacity-limited process termed visual marking (D. G. Watson & G. W. Humphreys, 1997). Three experiments assessed the effects of aging on visual marking using stationary (Experiment 1) and moving (Experiments 2 and 3) items. For young participants, visual marking was observed in all experiments. For older participants, visual marking was observed only with stationary items. The results are not consistent with any simple account of general age-related decrements and provide further support for the deployment of different methods of visual marking depending on the properties of the old items and the current task demands.     

Adaptation to disability: applying selective optimization with compensation to the behaviors of older adults with osteoarthritis

This research extends the use of P. B. Baltes and M. M. Baltes's (1990) theory of selective optimization with compensation (SOC) in an effort to conceptually integrate the adaptational behaviors of 248 older adults with disability arising from osteoarthritis. The authors also studied the relationship of SOC to age, illness variables, disability, illness perceptions, and support. The results highlight the variability and plasticity of older adults' efforts to manage disability, with most efforts aimed at compensation and optimization rather than selection. The benefit of using SOC to study adaptation to chronic illness and disability is discussed.     

Learning where to look for danger: integrating affective and spatial information

Although not previously addressed by researchers of spatial cognition or affect, the combination of spatial and affective information is essential for many approach and avoidance behaviors, and thus for survival. We provide the first evidence that through incidental experience, people form representations that capture correlations between affective and spatial information. Participants were able to do so even when the correlation was weak, they were not told to look for the correlation, and the stimuli varied on multiple other dimensions besides valence. In addition, people were more sensitive to the presented correlation when stimuli were negative than when they were positive. This asymmetry in representation may stem from underlying differences in the activation functions for positive and negative hedonic information processing.     

Pharmacogenetics: ethical issues and policy options

Pharmacogenetics offers the prospect of an era of safer and more effective drugs, as well as more individualized use of drug therapies. Before the benefits of pharmacogenetics can be realized, the ethical issues that arise in research and clinical application of pharmacogenetic technologies must be addressed. The ethical issues raised by pharmacogenetics can be addressed under six headings: (1) regulatory oversight, (2) confidentiality and privacy, (3) informed consent, (4) availability of drugs, (5) access, and (6) clinicians' changing responsibilities in the era of pharmacogenetic medicine. We analyze each of these categories of ethical issues and provide policy approaches for addressing them.     

Ethical dilemmas in testing for late onset conditions: reactions to testing and perceived impact on other family members

This paper examines some of the ethical dilemmas that arise when testing for the late onset, untreatable condition of Huntington disease (HD) specifically now that technology allows us to test younger generations of the family for the mutant gene. Drawing on interview data from families with Huntington disease, the reactions to testing and perceived impact on other family members are considered. These are discussed in the light of the possible lowering of the age of test applicants. This potentially raises problems for a younger generation as they are confronted with reproductive decisions that the older generation did not have to face. It also means that individuals have the prospect of living with knowledge of a future illness for much longer.     

Targets of the memorized position and visual contexts]

The goal of this study was to determine whether a sensorimotor or cognitive encoding is used to encode a target position and save it into iconic memory. The methodology consisted of disrupting a manual aiming movement to a memorized visual target by displacing the visual field containing the target. The nature of the encoding was inferred from the nature and the size of the errors relative to a control. The target was presented either centrally or in the right periphery. Participants moved their hand from the left to the right of fixation. Black and white vertical stripes covered the whole visual field. The visual field was either stationary throughout the trial or was displaced to the right or left at the extinction of the target or at the start of the hand movement. In the latter case, the displacement of the visual field obviously could only be taken into account by the participant during the gesture. In this condition, our hypothesis was that the aiming error would follow the direction of visual field displacement. Results showed three major effects: (1) Vision of the hand during the gesture improved the final accuracy; (2) visual field displacement produced an underestimation of the target distance only when the hand was not visible during the gesture and was always in the same direction displacement; and (3) the effect of the stationary structured visual field on aiming precision when the hand was not visible depended on the distance to the target. These results suggest that a stationary structured visual field is used to support the memory of the target position. The structured visual field is more critical when the hand is not visible and when the target appears in peripheral rather than central vision. This suggests that aiming depends on memory of the relative peripheral position of the target (allocentric reference). However, in the present task, cognitive encoding does not maintain the "position" of the target in memory without reference to the environment. The systematic effect of the visual field displacement on the manual aiming suggests that the role of environmental reference frames in memory for position is not well understood. Some studies, in particular those of Giesbrecht and Dixon (1999) and Glover and Dixon (2001), suggested differing roles of the environment in the retention of the target position and the control of aiming movements toward the target. The present observations contribute to understanding the mechanism involved in locating and grasping objects with the hand.     

Effects of normal aging and Alzheimer's disease on emotional memory

Recall is typically better for emotional than for neutral stimuli. This enhancement is believed to rely on limbic regions. Memory is also better for neutral stimuli embedded in an emotional context. The neural substrate supporting this effect has not been thoroughly investigated but may include frontal lobe, as well as limbic circuits. Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in atrophy of limbic structures, whereas normal aging relatively spares limbic regions but affects prefrontal areas. The authors hypothesized that AD would reduce all enhancement effects, whereas aging would disproportionately affect enhancement based on emotional context. The results confirmed the authors' hypotheses: Young and older adults, but not AD patients, showed better memory for emotional versus neutral pictures and words. Older adults and AD patients showed no benefit from emotional context, whereas young adults remembered more items embedded in an emotional versus neutral context.     

Neuropsychological correlates of recollection and familiarity in normal aging

The dual-process model of recognition memory proposed by Jacoby (1991; see also Mandler, 1980) postulates the existence of two independent components of recognition memory: a conscious retrieval process (recollection) and an automatic component ( familiarity). Older adults appear to be impaired in recollection, but findings with respect to familiarity have been mixed. Studies of the brain bases of these components, using neurological patients, have also been inconclusive. We examined recollection and familiarity, using the process dissociation procedure, in older adults characterized on the basis of both their frontal and their medial temporal lobe function. Findings suggest that only some older adults, depending on their neuropsychological status, are impaired in recollection and/or familiarity: Recollection seems to involve both frontal and medial temporal lobe function, whereas familiarity appears to be dependent only on function associated with the medial temporal lobes.     

Review of quantity and types of spirituality research in three health care databases (1962-1999): implications for the health care ministry

Using computer technology to identify the term "spiritual," these researchers present results of the 2306 citations and compare five criteria discovered with research reported in four pastoral counseling journals. The authors note the limitations of such a search and the possible implications of the findings for health care ministry.     

Family Processes and Treatment Outcome in the MTA: Negative/Ineffective Parenting Practices in Relation to Multimodal Treatment

To elucidate processes underlying therapeutic change in a large-scale randomized clinical trial, we examined whether alterations in self-reported parenting practices were associated with the effects of behavioral, medication, or combination treatments on teacher-reported outcomes (disruptive behavior, social skills, internalizing symptoms) in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 579 children with Combined-type ADHD, aged 7–9.9 years, in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA). We uncovered 2 second-order factors of parenting practices, entitled Positive Involvement and Negative/Ineffective Discipline. Although Positive Involvement was not associated with amelioration of the school-based outcome measures, reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline mediated improvement in children's social skills at school. For families showing the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline, effects of combined medication plus behavioral treatment were pronounced in relation to regular community care. Furthermore, only in combination treatment (and not in behavioral treatment alone) was decreased Negative/Ineffective Discipline associated with reduction in children's disruptive behavior at school. Here, children in families receiving combination treatment who showed the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline had teacher-reported disruptive behavior that was essentially normalized. Overall, the success of combination treatment for important school-related outcomes appears related to reductions in negative and ineffective parenting practices at home; we discuss problems in interpreting the temporal sequencing of such process-outcome linkages and the means by which multimodal treatment may be mediated by psychosocial processes related to parenting.