Daily-life difficulties in person recognition reported by young and elderly subjects

Elderly people frequently complain spontaneously about their inability to remember people and their names. Naturalistic methods such as diaries, checklists, etc. provide useful means to study and make more explicit the nature of such memory difficulties among the elderly, as well as to better understand normal memory functioning. We developed a checklist (inspired by a study by Young, Hay and Ellis, 1985) to explore normal young and elderly people's difficulties in person recognition. The checklist is composed of four parts, each one corresponding to a particular context in which the difficulty took place. Each part has the same structure and consists of precise questions about the type of incident, the circumstances, the persons involved, and the way the incident ended. Three groups of normal subjects kept records of their difficulties and errors in recognizing people for 1 month: young subjects with a bad memory for faces, young subjects without particular problems of face memory, and a group of elderly subjects. A total of 299 records were collected. They were classified with respect to the functional components presumably implied in the process breakdown. The elderly subjects experienced difficulties with retrieving names, first names, or nicknames (Name Codes), while the young subjects with a bad memory for faces reported overall the greatest number of incidents and were particularly impaired in access to Face Recognition Units. A characterization of these two kinds of difficulties is proposed. Young subjects without problems of face memory presented equal numbers of difficulties at all stages of person recognition. These patterns of results will be discussed in terms of current cognitive models of person recognition.     

Recollective experience, normal aging, and frontal dysfunction.

This study examined the nature of verbal recognition memory in young and old subjects. Following presentation of a word list, subjects undertook a yes-no recognition test and indicated whether their decision was based on explicit recollection or assessment of familiarity. Explicit recollection declined with age, and familiarity-based recognition increased. Furthermore, the extent to which older subjects relied on familiarity-based recognition correlated with neuropsychological indices of frontal lobe dysfunction. A further experiment indicated that the change from explicit recollection to familiarity-based responding was unrelated to changes in older subjects' confidence about their memory. The data indicate the central role of frontal dysfunction in understanding age-related memory loss.     

Verbal hallucinations in normals,I: People who hear ‘voices’

Two studies are reported that describe the phenomena of verbal hallucinations in the general population and test two explanations of those reports. Subjects were 198 male and 387 female college students who completed a verbal hallucination questionnaire plus one or more additional questionnaires. We found that a large minority reported hallucinations and that nearly half reported having them at least once a month. The present data indicated that these reports were not related to four measures of social conformity. Neither were they related to measures of overt, or incipient, symptoms of psychopathology. We have concluded that the majority of these reports are generally veridical accounts of conscious experience in normal individuals.     

Validation of a clerical test using work samples

zWork simulation performance tests of filing and proofreading were the principal criteria in a validation study of a paper and pencil clerical selection test constructed by content-oriented methods; supervisory ratings were also used. Experiment 1 was a concurrent study using as subjects 59 provisional employees. Experiment 2 was a predictive study using as subjects 184 employees actually selected on the basis of test scores. In both studies, substantial correlations were found between scores on the selection test and performance on the work samples: Estimates of correlations in the original selection group ranged from .4 to .8. Correlations between the selection test and the supervisor ratings were significant in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2; even when significant, they were much lower than the correlations with the work samples. These results suggest the value of using work samples as criteria for validation studies. Implications for other validation efforts are considered.     

Why you don't have a “perfect right” to anything

This paper demonstrates why the kind of rights usually presumed in assertive training most probably do not exist and why acting as if such rights do exist proves problematic. It contrasts these improbable rights with legal rights which do exist for some people in some societies. It concludes by suggesting an alternative scheme, The Picnic Mentality, for dealing with problems others have attempted to address using the concept of rights.Hank Robb is Executive Director for the Pacific Institute for RET and Training Coordinator for the Counseling Psychology Program, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon.I wish to thank four anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.     

Impact of biologically closed electric circuits (BCEC) on structure and function.

The basis of our physical world is electrical. The unified Electromagnetic field can appear to us as particles, i.e., matter, at certain densities of wavelengths. A close interrelation therefore exists between matter and electric energy. This knowledge is extensively utilized in technology. Various tools and instruments are electrically powered, utilizing the exceedingly important principle of closed electric circuits. Corresponding closed electric circuits and functions also exist in biology but are more sophisticated and complex. Unfortunately, these aspects are almost unrecognized. The principle of Biologically Closed Electric Circuits (BCEC) and some of their structural and functional effects are described. The Vascular-Interstitial Closed Circuit (VICC) is one specific BCEC system. It functions as a circulatory system in addition to the mechanical circulation. Its efficiency partly depends on its capacity to provide bidirectional transport of ions. The VICC is an in vivo electrophoretic-dielectrophoretic system that is powered by metabolic energy or injury currents. A VICC activation leads to transports of metabolites, new structuring and healing of an injured tissue. Examples are also presented of the process of healing. An abnormal, e.g., prolonged activation of VICC may also induce pathology. Neoplastic formation of cells and tissue can also be healed by the use of artificially applied electrophoresis or an artificially applied electric field as will be described. Our world once developed from electrical energy. This is probably the reason why the BCEC systems make primary differences between nonbiological and biological matter.