The relationship between menopausal status, phase of menstrual cycle, and replacement estrogen on cognition in healthy women without dementia

The authors examined the effect of menopausal status on several aspects of cognition in 4 groups of women (young premenopausal women, middle-aged premenopausal women, naturally postmenopausal women not using hormone therapy, and postmenopausal women using hormone replacement therapy). Participants (N = 48) completed questionnaires designed to assess psychological and physical health. The authors administered a test battery consisting of 10 neuropsychological tests to assess cognitive functioning. Using multivariate analyses of covariance with age as the covariate, the authors found a significant main effect of menopausal status on attention and complex processing abilities. Postmenopausal women using hormone replacement therapy significantly outperformed postmenopausal women not using hormone therapy on the Trail Making Test, Part B of the Halstead-Reitan (R. M. Reitan, 1958). This effect was significant even when the authors controlled for the effects of age, vocabulary levels, and education. Results are consistent with previous findings and may provide further evidence for an ameliorative effect of estrogen replacement therapy on specific cognitive functions.     

Preservation of implicit memory in adult children of alcoholics

The authors investigated implicit memory in 21 adult children of alcoholics (ACAs) and 24 control individuals (all college undergraduates) who performed a serial reaction time task (SRT) to evaluate their implicit memory performance and their formation of new associations. Each group was presented with 5 blocks of 100 trials per block in which Blocks 1-4 contained a 10-item repeating sequence; Block 5 was a pseudo-random sequence. The latency difference between Block 4 and Block 5 presumably measure implicit memory. The amount of implicit memory did not differ (in ms) between the ACAs (M = 55 ms) and the controls (M = 67 ms). Implicit memory (at least as measured by the SRT task) appears to be preserved in ACAs.     

Processing fat-related information in individuals at risk for developing an eating disorder

The authors examined the effect that being at risk for developing an eating disorder has on the lexical processing of words related to fat and words not related to fat. Individuals (n = 17) at risk for developing an eating disorder were compared with controls (n = 31) using a lexical decision task in which fat-related words (e.g., large), unrelated words (e.g., fair), neutral words (e.g., post), and pseudowords (e.g., flirp) were given. The results revealed an expected Group x Stimuli interaction for reaction times indicating that at-risk individuals were significantly faster at processing fat-related words than words unrelated to fat. The authors discuss these results within the context of how fat-related stimuli are processed in at-risk individuals and how models of information processing can aid in the interpretation and understanding of eating disorders.     

Are effects of spelling-to-sound irregularity on pronunciation latency confounded by stimulus familiarity?

Summary This article reports subjective experiential familiarity ratings for the experimental items used by Parkin, McMullen, and Graystone (1986). These data were used to examine the possibility that the regularity effects obtained when measuring pronunciation latencies to these materials arose from a confounding of familiarity. It was shown that Parkin et al.'s materials were controlled along the dimension of subjective familiarity. Correlational analyses showed that there was a significant relationship between familiarity and pronunciation latency — the more familiar a word the shorter the latency. Analysis of co-variance revealed that the regularity effects obtained by Parkin et al. remained when the effects of familiarity on latency were partialled out. It is concluded that effects of spelling-to-sound regularity are not due to unintentional confounding of stimulus familiarity.     

Response differentiation: A psychophysical method for response produced stimuli

Twenty-four rats were reinforced for releasing a lever between t and t + .20 sec after pressing it. Response duration differentiation performance decreased monotonically as t was increased in length from .10 sec to 1.60 sec. A response analogue of Weber’s ratio was constant throughout the middle range of duration bandwidth requirements and increased at the ex tremely short bandwidth—a response-differentiation finding analogous to Weber’s law of stimulus discrimination. This finding was interpreted as support for the conceptualization that response differentiation represents a special instance of response discrimination or discrimination based on response-produced stimuli.     

Creativity, unique designs, and schizotypy in a nonclinical sample

The present study examined whether creativity and novel design construction differ in 60 individuals who scored low and high (based on a median split) on a measure of schizotypy. Groups differed on one measure, total designs made, but not on creativity.     

Gender differences in false memory production

The present study investigated differences in false memory production between men and women, using the Deese/Roedgier McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Five word lists were used (MAN, GIRL, BREAD, BLACK, HIGH) and it was predicted that males would produce more false memories for the MAN word list while females will produce more false memories for the GIRL word list. Results did not confirm our predictions. Gender was neither a significant main effect, nor did it interact with any factors. Test and List x Test were the only significant main or interaction effects, respectively. Results are discussed as they relate to gender differences in cognitive processing.     

Review of controlled psychotherapy treatment trials for binge eating disorder

This paper reviews investigations of psychotherapy outcome studies for binge eating disorder, which has recently been intensively studied as several researchers have undertaken the task of delineating which treatment options are the most effective. Several randomized, controlled clinical trials have provided important findings. A current debate concerns what the initial course of treatment should be, reducing binge eating patterns or reducing weight. Several limitations to this literature are mentioned, including the dearth of studies investigating treatment for men and boys with binge eating disorder.     

An inexpensive retraction mechanism

An electric retraction mechanism, which is adaptable to a wide range of operant manipulanda, was developed. Miniaturized, inexpensive toy railroad equipment was used to simplify construction. The mechanism, utilized as a retractable rat lever, has operated reliably and uniformly over a range of independent retraction and extension times.