The joint WAIS-III and WMS-III factor structure: development and cross-validation of a six-factor model of cognitive functioning

During the standardization of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (3rd ed.; WAIS-III) and the Wechsler Memory Scale (3rd ed.; WMS-III) the participants in the normative study completed both scales. This "co-norming" methodology set the stage for full integration of the 2 tests and the development of an expanded structure of cognitive functioning. Until now, however, the WAIS-III and WMS-III had not been examined together in a factor analytic study. This article presents a series of confirmatory factor analyses to determine the joint WAIS-III and WMS-III factor structure. Using a structural equation modeling approach, a 6-factor model that included verbal, perceptual, processing speed, working memory, auditory memory, and visual memory constructs provided the best model fit to the data. Allowing select subtests to load simultaneously on 2 factors improved model fit and indicated that some subtests are multifaceted. The results were then replicated in a large cross-validation sample (N = 858).     

Modeling unipolar depression as a chaotic process

This study inspected the deterministic structure of unipolar depression. Two women self-monitored sadness hourly 10 times a day for 6 months. One woman had a recurrent history of unipolar depression, and the other did not. Data were analyzed by visual inspection, examination of the Fourier transforms of the time plots, and the correlation dimension. Results suggested that in addition to a strong periodic component that existed only within the depressed subject's mood time series, a low-dimensional chaotic process might have been operating. In the nondepressed control subject, no such periodicity or process could be identified. The findings support maladaptive deterministic theories of mood disorders and have implications for the assessment of unipolar depression.     

The time-based word length effect and stimulus set specificity

The word length effect is the finding that short items are remembered better than long items on immediate serial recall tests. The time-based word length effect refers to this finding when the lists comprise items that vary only in pronunciation time. Three experiments compared recall of three different sets of disyllabic words that differed systematically only in spoken duration. One set showed a word length effect, one set showed no effect of word length, and the third showed a reverse word length effect, with long words recalled better than short. A new fourth set of words was created, and it also failed to yield a time-based word length effect. Because all four experiments used the same methodology and varied only the stimulus sets, it is argued that the time-based word length effect is not robust and as such poses problems for models based on the phonological loop.     

Functional neuroanatomy of emotions: A meta-analysis

The application of functional neuroimaging to the study of human emotion has yielded valuable data; however, the conclusions that may be drawn from any one study are limited. We applied novel statistical techniques to the meta-analysis of 106 PET and fMRI studies of human emotion and tested predictions made by key neuroscientific models. The results demonstrated partial support for asymmetry accounts. Greater left-sided activity was observed for approach emotions, whereas neural activity associated with negative/withdrawal emotions was symmetrical. Support was also found for affect program emotion accounts. The activation distributions associated with fear, disgust, and anger differed significantly. These emotions were most consistently associated in activity in regions associated with selective processing deficits when damaged: the amygdala, the insula and globus pallidus, and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, respectively. In contrast, the distributions for happiness and sadness did not differ. These findings are considered in the context of conceptualizations of the neural correlates of human emotion.     

Intensive care units: a systemic perspective

There are no systemic accounts of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) nor is there much to guide the systemic therapist working within these units. This paper attempts to develop an analysis of ICUs and proposes two working models describing the various levels at which the therapist can intervene.     

Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Nature: Theological and Philosophical Reflections

I develop a multilevel, holistic view of persons, emphasizing embodiment, emotions, consciousness, and the social self. In successive sections I draw from six sources: 1. Theology . The biblical understanding of the unitary, embodied, social self gave way in classical Christianity to a body-soul dualism, but it has been recovered by many recent theologians. 2. Neuroscience . Research has shown the localization of mental functions in regions of the brain, the interaction of cognition and emotion, and the importance of social interaction in evolutionary history and child development. 3. Artificial intelligence . Some forms of robotics use embodied systems that learn by interacting with their environment, but the possibilities for emotion, socialization, and consciousness in robots remain problematic. 4. Relations between levels . Concepts that can help us relate studies of neurons and persons include the hierarchy of levels, the communication of information, thebehavior of dynamic systems, and epistemological and ontological emergence. 5. Philosophy of mind . Two-aspect theories of the mind-brain relation offer an alternative between the extremes of eliminative materialism and the thesis that consciousness is irreducible. 6. Process philosophy . I suggest that process thought provides a coherent philosophical framework in which these themes can be brought together. It combines dipolar monism with organizational pluralism, and it emphasizes embodiment, emotions, a hierarchy oflevels, and the social character of selfhood.     

Perceptual asymmetry differences between major depression with or without a comorbid anxiety disorder: a dichotic listening study.

Predictions that anxious and nonanxious depression would differ in perceptual asymmetry (PA), as well as in sensitivity for perceiving emotional words, were evaluated using dichotic listening tasks. A total of 149 patients having a major depressive disorder (51 with and 98 without an anxiety disorder) and 57 healthy controls were tested on fused-word and complex tone tasks. The anxious and nonanxious depression groups showed a consistent difference in PA across tasks; that is, the anxious group had a larger left-ear advantage for tones and a smaller right-ear advantage for words when compared with the nonanxious group. There was no group difference in sensitivity for perceiving emotional words. Patients having an anxious depression appear to have a greater propensity to activate right than left-hemisphere regions during auditory tasks, whereas those having a nonanxious depression have the opposite hemispheric asymmetry.     

Modelling the Disruptive Effects of Irrelevant Speech on Order Information

The feature model (Nairne, 1990) is extended to include order information by incorporating aspects of Estes' (1972, 1997) perturbation theory. Order information is encoded with other cues in primary memory and precision is gradually lost due to drift along the appropriate dimension. Recall begins with the cue whose positional uncertainty gradient indicates it was in the first position with the highest probability. Order errors occur primarily because cues can “perturb” to adjacent positions: Although the appropriate secondary memory target is sampled, it is sampled out of order. However, cues that have not perturbed can also sample an incorrect secondary memory item, which is then recalled out of order. Thus, both order errors and item errors can give rise to recalling an item from the list in an incorrect position. A simulation shows that with the addition of the perturbation mechanism, the feature model can produce the appropriate order error gradients for short and long words recalled in quiet, accompanied by irrelevant speech, or accompanied by articulatory suppression.     

Reverse causation in activity-cognitive ability associations: the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

Active lifestyles might protect cognitive abilities; however, studies rarely consider the reverse causal direction. Activity-cognition associations might reflect stable intelligence differences rather than a protective effect of activity. The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (n = 1091) completed cognitive tests aged 70, having taken an intelligence test aged 11. Activity (assessed by participation in 15 activities that produced a socio-intellectual activity factor, and by physical activity) was positively associated with cognition (r = .08 to .32, p ≤ .05). When age-11 IQ and adult social class were controlled, only physical activity remained significantly associated with general cognitive ability and processing speed.