Narrative discourse after closed head injury in children and adolescents.

This study examined narrative discourse in 20 children and adolescents at least 1 year after sustaining a head injury. Narratives were analyzed along the dimensions of language structure, information structure, and flow of information. Severity of impaired consciousness was associated with a significant reduction in the amount of language and information. The most important finding which emerged was the disruption in information structure. This pattern confirms the impression of disorganized discourse in severely injured children. Explanations for the disruption in information structure are explored in terms of the role of vocabulary, memory, and localization of lesion according to magnetic resonance imaging. In view of recent evidence that frontal lobe damage is associated with discourse formulation deficits in adults and is the most common site of focal lesion in closed head injury, we examined discourse patterns in individual patients with frontal lobe lesions. Preliminary data from our single-case studies suggest discourse patterns similar to those reported for adults with frontal lobe injuries.     

Wayfinding on foot from information in retinal, not optical, flow.

People find their way through cluttered environments with ease and without injury. How do they do it? Two approaches to wayfinding are considered: Differential motion parallax (DMP) is a retinal motion invariant of near and far objects moving against fixation; the information in optical flow (IOF) is a radial pattern of vectors, relying on decomposition of retinal flow. Evidence is presented that DMP guides wayfinding during natural gait, accounting for errors as well as correct responses. Evidence against IOF is also presented, and a space-time aliasing artifact that can contaminate IOF displays is explored. Finally, DMP and IOF are separated, showing they can yield different results in different environments. Thus, it is concluded that (a) DMP and IOF are different, (b) DMP and not IOF is used for wayfinding, (c) moving observers do not usually decompose retinal flow, and (d) optical flow may be a mathematical fiction with no psychological reality.     

Reinstatement of latent inhibition following a reminder treatment in a conditioned taste aversion paradigm.

Reminder treatments have been shown to facilitate the retrieval of a variety of conditioned responses. Whether or not similar results would occur with an experimental paradigm which involves primarily memory for a stimulus, i.e., where no particular response is specified, is unclear. Accordingly, using Sprague-Dawley rats, we employed a latent inhibition paradigm with a long (10 days) retention interval between sucrose (CS) preexposure and sucrose-illness pairing (training). The results demonstrated a loss of latent inhibition following the 10-day retention interval suggesting "forgetting" of the CS preexposure. However, placing a single reminder exposure to the CS within the preexposure-to-training interval reinstated the preexposure effect. Controls indicated that in the absence of the initial preexposure the reminder per se did not produce latent inhibition. Thus, a reminder can reinstate a stimulus attribute (flavor representation) and explicit conditioned responses.     

Design and implementation of a program for AIDS prevention in female prostitutes

The Companeros model of HIV infection prevention in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is presented as conceived by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). 518 women who were IV drug users, sexual partners of drug addicts, or prostitutes were requested to participate, and 232 consented. Initial and follow-up AIDS assessments were utilized along with an assessment of sociodemographic variables, including knowledge, sexual behavior, use and abuse of drugs, and previous health history. Educative sessions about AIDs and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) included group discussions and interaction, video watching, personal experiences, and sociodramas. 61% of prostitutes were 29, 12.6% were 13-19 years old, 31.1% were aged 30-39, and 8.9% were 40. 11% had no formal education, 58% had 6 years of primary and part of 3 years of secondary education, only 18.6% completed secondary education; and 13% had higher education. 19% lived in a hotel or shelter. Family disintegration reached 44%; these women did not live with their children. Only 5.2% thought they had excellent health, 51% said they had good health, 31% stated they had average health, and 12% admitted having had health problems. 14.6% had genital ulcers, 1.3% had herpes, 15% had gonorrhea, and 10% had syphilis. Since IV drug use among these women was almost nonexistent sexual relations constituted the principal risk factor. Responses to a questionnaire showed that the most frequent sexual behavior was vaginal penetration followed by fellatio; anal penetration was less common. 34.9% of the women practiced fellatio without protection, 16.3% had anal intercourse without protection. The proportion of AIDS cases in Mexico in women of reproductive age was growing at an exponential rate, possible because of misinformation about AIDS, a history of STDs, and a low rate of condom use.     

Variations in characteristic perceptual asymmetry: modality specific and modality general components.

The current study investigates sources of between-subjects variation in asymmetry scores on visual half-field and dichotic listening tasks. For each of these presentation modalities, subjects were given multiple laterality tasks. Results indicate that about 50% of the between-subjects variations in asymmetry scores in each modality is attributable to individual differences in perceptual asymmetries that are not stimulus-specific, referred to as "characteristic perceptual asymmetries" in this paper. In addition, the question of whether individual differences in characteristic perceptual asymmetries are modality specific, modality general, or both was investigated by entering subjects' asymmetry scores from visual half-field and dichotic listening tasks into a principal component analysis. The results of this analysis indicate that there are both modality specific and modality general influences on subjects' characteristic perceptual asymmetries.     

Looking at pictures but remembering scenes.

Ss tend to remember close-up photographs as having had extended boundaries (Intraub & Richardson, 1989). Three alternate explanations were tested: object completion, distortion toward a perceptual schema, and normalization toward a prototypic view. In three experiments, 55-130 undergraduates viewed 16 close-up, prototypic, or wide-angle views of objects for 15 s each. Immediately or 48 hr later, they rated test pictures on a 5-point scale as "same", "closer up", or "father away." Results ruled out object completion because boundary extension occurred when the picture contained no incomplete objects. Immediate tests supported the perceptual schema hypothesis because all unidirectional distortions involved boundary extension. Delayed tests were more suggestive of a memory schema effect because wide-angle pictures yielded boundary restriction. A two-component model of picture processing is proposed.     

An exploratory study of videotapes of long-term group psychotherapy of outpatients with major and chronic mental illness

This study explored patterns emerging in videotaped sessions of group psychotherapy with seven outpatients of a large mental health facility. The 22 sessions spanned the 12th to 27th months of the group's existence. Group members had long histories (25–50 years) of symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia. Each session was rated on the Group Environment Scale. One session from a group in its earlier stages was also rated on the same instrument to give some indication of baseline patterns. Analyses of changes across the 15 months were not statistically significant. However, some GES subscales, including Cohesion, Independence, and Self-Discovery, showed relatively high mean levels across the 15-month period. These elevations are discussed as suggesting the codevelopment of orientations that have sometimes been viewed as incompatible and unattainable for schizophrenics. Interpreted clinically, the GES patterns help to elaborate recent findings about the relatively good success of long-term group therapy with such populations. The study, although merely suggestive, illustrates the potential for gleaning solid and clinically useful data from group psychotherapy research.The authors would like to thank Drs. Jill Rierdan, Nina Fieldsteel, Joseph Christy, and an anonymous reviewer for their suggestions, Kendra Bryant for serving as the reliability rater, and Janet Eltinge for her skilled videotaping.     

Progressive and imaginal relaxation training for elderly persons with subjective anxiety.

Elders exposed to either progressive or imaginal relaxation procedures reported significant relaxation effects and showed improvement on measures of personal functioning. The results of the Physical Assessment Scale of the Relaxation Inventory indicated that relaxation responses were acquired within and across sessions. Large, consistent changes in relaxation occurred in all 4 sessions. The Symptom Checklist-90-R, which measures self-reported personal adjustment, showed significant positive changes following relaxation training and at 1-month follow-up. Elders who imagined muscle tension release profited as much as those engaged in actual muscle tension-release activities. This finding is of importance for older adults who may experience physical limitations that contraindicate muscle-tension-release procedures.     

Motion perception and aging.

The authors used a correlated motion paradigm to investigate the effects of aging and gender on motion sensitivity. In 2 experiments with a total of 50 elderly and 50 young subjects, motion thresholds were significantly higher for elderly women. The correlated motion signal, which was embedded in random motion, may have been coherent to subjects in much the same way a form is in Witkin's Embedded Figures Test (EFT). In Experiment 2, EFT scores were obtained. A significant positive relationship between motion thresholds and EFT performance was found within each age group. Although gender-related perceptual style differences may contribute to motion perception effects, the authors argue that a common neural factor contributes to performance on both the EFT and the correlated motion task.     

Cultural practices of Hispanics: implications for the prevention of AIDS

Hispanic Americans have one of the highest rates of HIV seroprevalence among all ethnics groups in the US, with high rates being especially noticeable among women and children. Were it known which cultural factors have the most influence on whether Hispanics engage in high-risk behavior for HIV transmission, prevention interventions could be targeted accordingly. To that end, this study was mounted to identify which Hispanic cultural factors relate to condom use. 117 males and 73 females aged 17-56 years of mean age 25.67 were surveyed in Washoe county, Nevada. These mostly young adults had recently immigrated to the western US. It was initially posited that fate orientation, male- female relationships, family relationships, machismo behavior, and religion would have equal influence with respect to condom use. Analysis found that condom use was largely associated with and determined by men who are the principal buyers of condoms. A machismo attitude toward protecting women by using condoms was also associated with condom use. Neither fate orientation with respect to AIDS, nor religion were important determinants of condom use, even though 86.5% of the respondents were Catholic. The degree to which respondents adhered to traditional Hispanic cultural values was influenced by the degree of education and acculturation. On the basis of these findings, the authors suggest targeting AIDS prevention messages to males, while emphasizing the protection of women through condom use. They also suggest that both education and acculturation levels be assessed before implementing prevention programs.