Neuropsychological executive functioning in children at elevated risk for alcoholism: findings in early adolescence

One component of individual risk for alcoholism may involve cognitive vulnerabilities prodromal to alcoholism onset. This prospective study of 198 boys followed between 3 and 14 years of age evaluated neurocognitive functioning across three groups who varied in familial risk for future alcoholism. Measures of intelligence, reward-response, and a battery of neuropsychological executive and cognitive inhibitory measures were used. Executive functioning weaknesses were greater in families with alcoholism but no antisocial comorbidity. IQ and reward-response weaknesses were associated with familial antisocial alcoholism. Executive function effects were clearest for response inhibition, response speed, and symbol-digit modalities. Results suggest that executive deficits are not part of the highest risk, antisocial pathway to alcoholism but that some executive function weaknesses may contribute to a secondary risk pathway.     

Houses built on sand: effects of exemplar stability on susceptibility to attitude change

Attitude representation theory (C. G. Lord & M. R. Lepper, 1999) explains both attitude-behavior consistency and attitude change with the same principles. When individuals respond evaluatively to an attitude object, they activate and combine assumptions about the attitude object with perceptions of the immediate situation. The assumptions activated can vary across time, even without additional information. Previous research has shown that individuals activate exemplars when answering attitude questions, attitude reports vary with the valence of the assumptions activated, and activating differently liked exemplars reduces attitude-behavior consistency. The present research completed study of the theoretical implications of exemplar stability by showing that individuals with temporally unstable exemplars, whether spontaneous (Experiment 1) or manipulated (Experiments 2 and 3), are more susceptible to subsequent attitude change than are individuals with stable exemplars.     

Sustained attention and visual processing speed in children and adolescents with bipolar disorder and other psychiatric disorders

To investigate the cognitive functioning of children and adolescents with bipolar illness, 112 child and adolescent psychiatric inpatients and day-hospital patients at a state psychiatric hospital were administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (WISC-III) as part of an admission psychological assessment. There were 22 patients with Bipolar Disorder and 90 with other psychiatric disorders; all were between 8 and 17 years of age. The patients with Bipolar Disorder had a mean age of 14 yr., a mean Verbal IQ of 78, a mean Performance IQ of 76, and a mean Full Scale IQ of 75. When their WISC-III scores were compared with those who had Schizophrenia Spectrum disorders (Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective Disorder), Psychosis Not Otherwise Specified, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder, there were no significant between-group mean differences for Verbal IQ, but patients with Bipolar Disorder had a significantly lower mean Performance IQ than those with ADHD and those with Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Contrary to the expectation that the patients with Bipolar Disorder might have better sustained attention (higher Digit Span scores) than those with Schizophrenia Spectrum disorders and worse visual processing speed (lower Coding scores) than the other diagnostic groups, the bipolar patients' Digit Span and Coding scores did not differ significantly from those of the other groups. The patients with Psychosis, Not Otherwise Specified had significantly lower mean Performance IQ, Full Scale IQ, and Coding than the ADHD and the Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Disorder groups.     

Parent-adolescent relations and adolescent functioning: self-esteem, substance abuse, and delinquency

The present study examined parental support and monitoring as they relate to adolescent outcomes. It was hypothesized that support and monitoring would be associated with higher self-esteem and less risky behavior during adolescence. The diverse sample included 16,749 adolescents assessed as part of the National Educational Longitudinal Study. Both high parental support and parental monitoring were related to greater self-esteem and lower risk behaviors. The findings partially confirm, as well as extend, propositions in attachment theory.     

Coping through emotional approach: a new look at emotion, coping, and health-related outcomes

Researchers studying stress and coping processes have attempted to identify which coping strategies are most adaptive in stressful encounters. A generally accepted conclusion has been that emotion-focused coping processes are associated with dysfunctional outcomes. Studies from our and other research teams challenge the "bad reputation" of emotion-focused coping by demonstrating that items measuring emotion-focused strategies in published coping questionnaires are confounded with distress and self-deprecation. We have developed and validated new instruments to assess coping though acknowledging, understanding, and expressing emotion, that is, coping through emotional approach. Longitudinal and experimental studies using these new scales have documented the adaptive potential of emotional-approach coping in the context of several types of stressors, including infertility, breast cancer, and chronic pain. However, characteristics of the environmental context, stressful experience, and individual are important moderators of the relations of emotional-approach coping and health-related outcomes. Potential mediators and moderators of coping through emotional approach, clinical relevance of the construct, and directions for research are discussed.     

Measurements of auditory-verbal STM span in aphasia: effects of item, task, and lexical impairment

In the first part of this study, we investigated effects of item and task type on span performance in a group of aphasic individuals with word processing and STM deficits. Group analyses revealed significant effects of item on span performance with span being greater for digits than for words. We also investigated associations between subjects' lexical-semantic and phonological processing abilities and performance on four measures of verbal span (digit and word span, each varied for type of response, verbal vs. pointing) as well as one measure of nonverbal span. We predicted and found that the patterns of association between verbal span tasks and lexical abilities reflected the integrity of language processes and representations deployed in each paradigm used to assess span. Performance on the pointing span task, which engages both lexical-semantic and phonological processes, correlated with measures of both lexical-semantic and phonological abilities. Performance on repetition span, which engages primarily input and output phonological processes, correlated with measures of phonological abilities but not measures of lexical-semantic abilities. However, when partial correlations were performed for two subject groups based on their relative preservation of lexical-semantic ability (less or more than phonological ability), repetition span correlated with lexical-semantic measures only in the subgroup with relatively impaired lexical-semantics. Additionally, performance on the nonverbal span task correlated with measures of phonological abilities, suggesting either a general cognitive deficit affecting verbal and nonverbal STM or possibly, the use of a verbal strategy to perform this task. Our discussion focuses on the interpretation of span measurements in clinical practice and research, as well as the implications of these data for theories of short-term memory and word processing.     

Cue-focused and reflexive-associative processes in prospective memory retrieval

Several theories of event-based prospective memory were evaluated in 3 experiments. The results depended on the association between the target event and the intended action. For associated target-action pairs (a) preexposure of nontargets did not reduce prospective memory, (b) divided attention did not reduce prospective memory, (c) prospective memory was better than when the target event and intended action were not associated, and (d) prospective memory was characterized by retrieval of the precise intended action. These results converge on the view that retrieval is mediated by a reflexive-associative process. In contrast, for unassociated pairs (a) preexposure of nontargets reduced prospective memory, and (b) divided attention reduced prospective memory. These results implicate cue-focused retrieval processes and are most consistent with a discrepancy-plus-search model. The entire pattern implicates both cue-focused and reflexive-associative processes and more generally supports a multiprocess framework of prospective memory (M. A. McDaniel & G. O. Einstein, 2000).     

Hypothesis generation,probability judgment,and individual differences in working memory capacity

This research examined the role of working memory (WM) in probability judgment and hypothesis generation using a simulated task that involved estimating the likelihood that particular menu items would be ordered by customers at a dinner. Five main findings were observed. First, judgments of the likelihood of individual items were made relative to alternatives retrieved from long-term memory. Second, the number of alternatives retrieved was positively correlated with a measure of WM-capacity (the operation-span task). Third, participants' probability judgments were subadditive (summing to well over 100%). Fourth, the degree to which participants' judgments were subadditive was affected by the number and strength of the alternatives retrieved from long-term memory. Fifth, the degree to which participants were subadditive was negatively correlated with WM-capacity. The results suggest that individual differences in WM-capacity are fundamental to hypothesis generation and probability judgment.