The effects of repeating a recognition test in lorazepam-induced amnesia: Evidence for impaired contextual memory as a cause of amnesia

In two experiments, a recognition test for an earlier presented list was given twice in immediate succession (Test 1 and Test 2). On the hypothesis that anterograde amnesia for episodic memory involves a deficit in contextual memory, amnesic subjects should confuse familiarity with distractor items gained during Test 1 with familiarity gained during original list presentation. As a result, they should think that they recognize more items on Test 2. This will lower recognition efficiency in Test 2 by increasing false alarms rather than by reducing hits. For subjects with an amnesia induced by lorazepam, but not for control subjects, recognition efficiency was substantially reduced in Test 2 in both experiments. As predicted, this impairment was due to a large increase in false alarms, with no decrease in the number of hits. The impairment could not be explained by a difference in recognition level between lorazepam and control subjects on Test 1. These findings therefore support the contextual memory deficit hypothesis of anterograde amnesia. Their implications for understanding the relationship between recall and recognition in amnesia are discussed.     

Use of Out-of-Home Care Among a Statewide Population of Children and Youth Enrolled in Medicaid

System-wide research on the use of out-of-home care among children and youth is needed to inform the development of policies and services. We used Medicaid claims from North Carolina to examine patterns of out-of-home care, identify demographic and diagnostic differences between those who received care in residential treatment, psychiatric hospitals, or general hospitals, and determine whether demographic or diagnostic characteristics were associated with having more than one out-of-home stay during the year. Among those who received out-of-home care during a 1 year period, 36% received care in residential treatment only, 32.4% in general hospitals only, and 17.6% in psychiatric hospitals only, while 14.0% used more than one sector of out-of-home care. Boys, teenagers, and youth in foster care or diagnosed with emotional disturbance or hyperkinetic syndrome had higher odds of receiving care in residential treatment only whereas girls, youth age 19–21, and those with depressive and stress and adjustment disorders had higher odds of receiving care from hospitals only. Teenagers and youth in foster care had higher odds of having more than one stay. Among those with more than one stay, there were 300 patterns of care and nearly half received care from more than one service sector. The implications for services and policy are discussed. Further research is needed to understand patterns of out-of-home care and the factors that influence placement decisions.     

Neural and behavioral effects of interference resolution in depression and rumination

Individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) often ruminate about their depression and their life situations, impairing their concentration and performance on daily tasks. We examined whether rumination might be due to a deficit in the ability to expel negative information from short-term memory (STM), and fMRI was used to examine the neural structures involved in this ability. MDD and healthy control (HC) participants were tested using a directed-forgetting procedure in a short-term item recognition task. As predicted, MDD participants had more difficulty than did HCs in expelling negative, but not positive, words from STM. Overall, the neural networks involved in directed forgetting were similar for both groups, but the MDDs exhibited more spatial variability in activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region critical for inhibiting irrelevant information), which may contribute to their relative inability to inhibit negative information.     

The historical context of G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence (1904)

G. Stanley Hall's magnum opus, Adolescence, published in 1904 in two hefty volumes I herein submit to historical analysis. I am concerned with how it did "fit" into the notions and practices of the larger culture as well as into the discourses of science and of child nurture of that time. There is plenty of evidence of Hall's ethnic, racial, and gender attitudes as expressed in the book being typical of the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant middle class stratum to which he belonged. His discussions of the extant discourses of science and of child nurture show a man quite conversant with these discourses, and not merely in American and British, but also in French and German publications as well. Probably any book, idea, or historical circumstance or phenomenon is chiefly a historical artifact, and we should not bend it much to "prove" that it is in any important sense a part of a different age. It is one thing to say that a certain idea has a contemporary resonance; to claim there is a straight line from it to today is problematic and meaningless.     

An implicit test of the associations between children and sex in pedophiles

Pedophiles are motivated to disguise their thoughts and feelings about their sexual beliefs and attraction toward children. New developments using implicit measures of associations have been successful in accessing socially stigmatic beliefs, even in cases in which the participant is resistant to this disclosure. Using an implicit measure, the authors show that pedophiles have an association between children and sex, whereas nonpedophilic offenders have an association between adults and sex. The task can therefore identify a core cognitive abnormality that may underpin some pedophilic deviant sexual behavior.     

"I could see, and yet, mon, I could na' see": William Macewen, the agnosias, and brain surgery

Two little noticed cases in which William Macewen used symptoms of visual agnosia to plan brain surgery on the angular gyrus are reviewed and evaluated. Following a head injury, Macewen's first patient had an immediate and severe visual object agnosia that lasted for about 2 weeks. After that he gradually became homicidal and depressed and it was for those symptoms that Macewen first saw him, some 11 months after the accident. From his examination, Macewen concluded that the agnosia clearly indicated a lesion in "the posterior portion of the operculum or in the angular gyrus." When he removed parts of the internal table that had penetrated those structures the homicidal impulses disappeared. Macewen's second patient was seen for a chronic middle ear infection and, although neither aphasic nor deaf, was 'word deaf.' Slightly later he became 'psychically blind' as well. Macewen suspected a cerebral abscess pressing on both the angular gyrus and the first temporal convolution. A large subdural abscess was found there and the symptoms disappeared after it was treated. The patients are discussed and Macewen's positive results analysed in the historical context of the dispute over the proposed role of the angular gyrus as the visual centre.     

Fear information and social phobic beliefs in children: a prospective paradigm and preliminary results

This paper presents a first attempt to develop a prospective paradigm to test Rachman's (Behav. Res. Ther. 15 (1977) 375) theory of fear acquisition for social fears. Following the prospective paradigm for animal fears developed by Field et al. (Behav. Res. Ther. 39 (2001) 1259) an attempt is made to adapt this paradigm to look at the effect of fear information in the development of social fears. A large group of normal children (N=135) who were at an age (10-13 years) at which social concerns are most pertinent were tested using this paradigm. They were given positive, negative or neutral information about three social situations: public speaking, eating in public, and meeting a new group of children. Children's fear beliefs were measured before and after the information was given and the information was given by a teacher, a same age peer or no information was given (a control). The results indicate that although information can change social fear beliefs it is dependent upon the type of social activity and who provides the information. The implications of these initial results for our understanding of both the role of fear information in the development of social fear beliefs, and the limitations of this current paradigm are discussed.     

Effects of Defendant Ethnicity on Juries' Dispositions of Felony Cases1

This research examined jury decisions in 317 noncapital felony cases in El Paso, Texas, and assessed the impact of juror ethnicity on jury trial outcomes. Results revealed that there was no relation between defendant ethnicity and the probability of conviction. Anglo American defendants, however, received sentences that were approximately twice as severe as Hispanic defendants. Sentences imposed by juries were significantly related to defendant ethnicity and type of crime for which they were tried. Sentences were also influenced by defendant ethnicity in interaction with jury ethnic composition. Important differences appeared when there was a critical mass of 6 or more Hispanics on juries. This study, using criminal court data, provides a unique opportunity to examine the utility of social psychological theories for understanding actual trial outcomes.