Reliability and validity of the Cognitive Slippage Scale in two populations.

Analyses of responses from a clinical sample of 120 patients (primarily schizophrenics) and from 158 college students to the Cognitive Slippage Scale, a scale designed by Miers and Raulin to identify speech deficits and confused thinking in schizophrenic and schizotypal personality disorders showed high internal reliability; Cronbach's coefficients alpha were .89 and .86 in the clinical and college student samples, respectively. The mean scale scores significantly differentiated the two samples. Also, change scores over 4 wk. showed adequate stability for both samples. Item analysis indicated Items 11, 20, 21, and 28 may not reliably discriminate between schizophrenic and college student samples. Over-all, these preliminary results are consistent with the reliability and validity of the scale.     

Modulatory role of serotonin in neural information processing: implications for human psychopathology.

Investigation of the role of 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HT), which functions as a modulator in the central nervous system, across behavioral contexts suggests that a general principle of transmitter function may be derived that is independent of specific behaviors and specific neural loci. A functional principle of 5-HT action in neural information processing in the central nervous system is proposed. Extremes deviations in 5-HT activity result in biases in information processing that may have direct effects on behavior. Such biases may predispose to pathological conditions such as violent suicide and aggression.     

From concepts to lexical items.

In this paper we address the question how in language production conceptual structures are mapped onto lexical items. First we describe the lexical system in a fairly abstract way. Such a system consists of, among other things, a fixed set of basic lexical entries characterized by four groups of information: phonetic form, grammatical features, argument structure, and semantic form. A crucial assumption of the paper is that the meaning in a lexical entry has a complex internal structure composed of more primitive elements (decomposition). Some aspects of argument structure and semantic form and their interaction are discussed with respect to the issue of synonymy. We propose two different mappings involved in lexical access. One maps conceptual structures to semantic forms, and the other maps semantic forms to conceptual structures. Both mappings are context dependent and are many-to-many mappings. We present an elaboration of Levelt's (1989) model in which these processes interact with the grammatical encoder and the mental lexicon. Then we address the consequences of decomposition for processing models, especially the nature of the input of lexical access and the time course. Processing models that use the activation metaphor may have difficulties accounting for certain phenomena where a certain lemma triggers not one, but two or more word forms that have to be produced with other word forms in between.     

Picture naming.

Picture naming has become an important experimental paradigm in cognitive psychology. To name a picture can be considered an elementary process in the use of language. Thus, its chronometric analysis elucidates cognitive structures and processes that underlie speaking. Essentially, these analyses compare picture naming with reading, picture categorizing, and word categorizing. Furthermore, techniques of double stimulation such as the paradigms of priming and of Stroop-like interference are used. In this article, recent results obtained with these methods are reviewed and discussed with regard to five hypotheses about the cognitive structures that are involved in picture naming. Beside the older hypotheses of internal coding systems with only verbal or only pictorial format, the hypotheses of an internal dual code with a pictorial and a verbal component, of a common abstract code with logogen and pictogen subsystems, and the so-called lexical hypothesis are discussed. The latter postulates two main components: an abstract semantic memory which, nevertheless, also subserves picture processing, and a lexicon that carries out the huge amount of word processing without semantic interpretation that is necessary in hearing, reading, speaking and writing.     

Efficient pain assessment in clinical settings.

The need for efficient and practical assessment techniques of the multidimensional nature of chronic pain remains paramount in clinical settings. Visual analogue scales (VASs) and simple behavioral observation methods have been proposed as efficient, reliable, and valid measures of the subjective (sensory and affective) and overt behavioral aspects of the pain experience. The relationships among VASs and the UAB Pain Behavior Scale were examined among 48 chronic pain patients. Ratings of overt behavior were significantly related to both the VAS sensory and VAS affective ratings. Regression analysis indicated that the VAS scores accounted for significant amount of the variance (27.7%) in UAB scores. Moreover, the affective dimension of self-reported pain tended to be more strongly related to the visible manifestations of pain than were ratings of pain intensity.     

The debt of neuropsychology to the epilepsies.

Both neuropsychology and psychology in general have been enhanced markedly by brain-behavior models derived from the study of the epilepsies. A significant body of neuropsychological concepts originated or were confirmed through epilepsy-based treatment and research. These concepts include the peri-Rolandic homunculus, the role of the hippocampal-temporal lobe complex in cognitive memory, hemisphere plasticity for speech in childhood, the intracarotid amytal procedure for determining hemisphere memory patency, and hemisphere-based models of cognition confirmed through human commissurotomy. Personality and social-emotional research in epilepsy are additional areas in which new conceptual models grounded in psychological science can both repay our debt to the epilepsies and provide much needed psychological research and treatment.     

Are insomniacs sleepy during the day? A pupillometric assessment.

A biodevelopmental model of insomnia is articulated specifying coordinated nighttime (disturbed sleep pattern) and daytime (no excessive daytime sleepiness) characteristics defining an insomnoid classification in at-risk groups: short sleepers and older adults. Pupillometry is proposed as a useful means of discriminating degree of daytime sleepiness to aid in the differential diagnosis of insomnia and insomnoid states, and the present study tested the discriminative validity of this approach. Noninsomniac (n = 34) and insomniac (n = 29) college students submitted to four 10 min pupillometry sessions tracking daytime sleepiness from morning arising to bedtime. Pupil diameter proved to be an able discriminator of these two groups though substantial overlap of the two distributions was also noted. The results supported the sensitivity of pupillometry in detecting daytime sleepiness, but yielded alternative interpretations. We observed statistical differentiation in insomniac and noninsomniac daytime sleepiness, but substantial, functional overlap between these groups. Assessment and treatment implications arising from the biodevelopmental model were hypothesized.     

Reaction time to threat stimuli in panic disorder and social phobia

Two studies assessed response time among clinically anxious subjects and normal controls when presented with threat, positive and neutral stimuli under perceptual (lexical decision) and semantic (category decision) task conditions. In Study 1, panic disorder subjects' (n = 14) performance was compared to that of matched normal controls (n = 14) while in Study 2 social phobic subjects (n = 24) were compared to matched normal controls (n = 24). Relative to matched normal controls, panic disorder subjects but not social phobics tended to show greater slowing in performance on the more cognitively complex (category) task. A second finding, consistent across both studies was that, compared to the normal control groups, both panic and social phobic groups showed significantly slowed responses to threat words in both the perceptual and semantic tasks. Such findings are directly counter to the predictions of a mood congruence hypothesis. This apparent contradiction is resolved by a review of the literature which indicates that mood-related facilitation effects are obtained only in tasks which tap awareness of threat information rather than speed of response. It is suggested that while anxiety may produce enhanced awareness of threat, it may inhibit responsiveness to it. The results of these studies are seen as consistent with ethological theories of inhibited motoric responses under certain threat conditions. Furthermore, the findings suggest that caution is indicated in interpreting slowed reaction time to threat stimuli in tasks such as the Stroop color naming task as purely the result of attentional processes.     

One-trial backward excitatory fear conditioning transfers across contexts.

One path to human phobia may be one-trial backward fear conditioning. Human phobias transfer readily across contexts. However, animal studies of one-trial backward fear conditioning have yet to demonstrate such transfer. The present study sought to do so. It used a lick-suppression procedure with 84 naive male albino rats. Two conditioning contexts, designated O and V, were crossed factorially with two test contexts, O and V. Within each cell of the factorial design, rats received in the conditioning context either a single 12 sec tone backward paired with a single 4 sec 1 mA shock or the same tone explicitly unpaired with shock. Fear of context and fear of tone were subsequently assessed in terms of the suppression of licking that they evoked. Test results suggested that (1) the rats discriminated between contexts O and V, and (2) despite such discrimination, one-trial backward fear conditioning transferred across the two contexts. The results enhance the plausibility of one-trial backward fear conditioning as a source of human phobia.     

From mechanistic to functional behaviorism.

A shift from mechanistic behaviorism to functional behaviorism is presented against the background of two historical traditions, one with an emphasis on form, the other with an emphasis on function. Skinner's work, which made more contributions to a functional behaviorism than to a mechanistic behaviorism, exemplifies this shift. The two traditions and an account of Skinner's development of functional relations are presented in order to show Skinner's contributions to aligning modern behavior analysis with the functional tradition.