Cognitive Impairment and Personality Adjustment in Vietnam Veterans

This study investigated the intellectual functioning and personality characteristics of 81 Australian ex-servicemen, 42 of whom had served in Vietnam. A Cognitive Impairment Model (SCIM) developed by Savage (1978, 1981, 1984) enabled intellectual functioning levels, intellectual deterioration and learning ability in the verbal and performance modalities to be asses. The Clinical Analysis Questionnaire (CAQ) of Krug (1980) based 00 Cattell's theory and personality measurement techniques provided an assessment of normal personality characteristics and clinical factors. The data suggested that the two groups, Australian ex-servicemen and Australian Vietnam veterans, were relatively homogeneous with regard to cognitive functioning and gave no indication of impairment in their intellectual levels or of their learning ability. Significant personality differences were, however, found between the two groups of ex-servicemen. The Vietnam veterans showed significantly more tension, depression, guilt, resentment, alienation and hypochondriasis than their colleagues who had remained in Australia. They were more withdrawn from others and from reality and had more abnormal thought than the ex-servicemen who had not been to Vietnam. The cognitive data do not support the view that Vietnam veterans suffered from any serious cognitive impairment. The personality data, however, suggest a significant “Psycbological Stress Syndrome” in these Vietnam veterans which required professional psychological treatment.     

Midi-level measurement of social anxiety in psychiatric and non-psychiatric samples

This paper reports the development and assessment of midi-level behavioral measures of social anxiety in the context of two experiments, one studying an analog student sample, the other a psychiatric sample. Judgments on nine categories of clinically practical midi-level behaviors (e.g. Facial Expression, Orienting, Sense of Timing), based on a review of the literature on human ethology and on pilot research, were compared to global judgments of social anxiety and social skill and to physiological arousal. Intraclass correlations exceeded 0.80 for judgments of the global and midi-level behavioral ratings on both samples. Results of correlational analyses indicated that while there were several significant predictors of global skill and anxiety among the midis, the magnitude of the relationship between midis and globals was stronger for the patient than the student sample. Further analyses based on S's heart rate (HR) reactivity suggested that while global ratings did not significantly predict H R in a high social anxiety situation, one midi-level behavioral rating (self-manipulations) did. The clinical utility of the newly developed measures is discussed with particular attention to their practicality for behavior therapy.     

Dietary concern, weight fluctuation and weight status: further explorations of the restraint scale

The theory of restrained eating predicts that the Dietary Concern and Weight Fluctuation factors of the Restraint Scale should correlate with percentage overweight. However, Drewnowski, Riskey and Desor (1982) recently found that only Weight Fluctuation did in fact. The current study replicated that of Drewnowski el al. using a population which more closely resembled the one used in prior research on restraint. Correlations were computed between Restraint scores and both overweight and weight suppression, a second validational criterion with which indices of restraint should be related. Furthermore, since Drewnowski et al.'s results imply that it is Weight History rather than Dietary Concern which might be responsible for behavioral differences in restrained and unrestrained normals, the history of overweight among these two groups was examined. Contrary to Drewnowski et al., Dietary Concern was more strongly related to overweight than was Weight Fluctuation. Both factors correlated with weight suppression. Restrained normals had a much greater history of overweight than unrestrained normals, suggesting that previously observed similarities in behavior between restrained normals and obese individuals might be due to characteristics associated with the former group's prior overweight rather than with their current level of cognitive restraint.     

Coping behavior in depression: report on a new scale

The Coping Strategies Scales (COSTS) were developed to provide a means of measuring how depressed persons cope with depression and to identify the behavior which they find to be most or least helpful. Items were rated by eight psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers. Those items achieving 75% level of agreement on scale assignments were included. The COSTS was then administered to 100 depressed outpatients and inpatients currently in psychotherapy. A replication study of 64 patients was also completed. Nine of the 10 scales had acceptable internal reliability, ranging from 0.70 to 0.86. An initial factor analysis of the 10 scale scores showed there to be three primary factors. Internal reliability coefficients for these three factorially-derived scales ranged from 0.86 to 0.91.     

Effects of simulated stuttering on listener recall

In an investigation of the effects of simulated stuttering on listener recall, a presentation was varied on two factors: degree of stuttering (mild or severe) and information value of stuttered words (low or high). A control presentation featuring non-stuttered speech also was prepared. Five groups of 16 subjects were randomly assigned to, and participated in, one of the five listening conditions. Then they completed a 20-item recall test. A one-way analysis of variance revealed sognificant differences among the five conditions. Two-way analysis of variance disclosed no main effects. However, a significant interaction showed that recall was lowest in the severe stuttering-high information condition. The results are discussed in terms of attention to critical information.     

Factors influencing readability of rapidly presented text segments

Experiment 1 compared paragraph comprehension for texts shown either as normal pages on a computer terminal screen or as rapid serial visual presentations (RSVPs) of small text segments to a common location. Over several days of practice, reading comprehension was equivalent in the normal presentation mode and the RSVP format. When successive RSVP segments contained some information in common, to mimic the experience of successive parafoveal and foveal views of words in normal reading, comprehension was somewhat worse than when successive segments contained no overlapping information. Experiment 2 used a variety of segment size and segment duration combinations to investigate the optimal means of presenting text in the RSVP format. Across a variety of presentation rates and text difficulties, comprehension was maximal for segments averaging about 12 character spaces in length. In Experiment 3, texts were divided into short idea units or into random segments of equal average length. Comprehension was shown to be greater in the structured condition than in the random condition. An optimal means of presenting text in the RSVP format could be superior to normal presentation methods for reading and other text-processing tasks.     

Two stages in postcategorical filtering and selection

Memory &; Cognition - In a modified Stroop paradigm, Kahneman and Henik (1981) varied the spatial location of incompatible color words in relation to the position of the ink color to be named. A...     

Comprehension of directly and indirectly stated main ideas and details in discourse by brain-damaged and non-brain-damaged listeners

Aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged, and non-brain-damaged subjects heard short narrative paragraphs. Each paragraph contained four main ideas and one or more details related to each main idea. After each paragraph was presented, subjects' comprehension and retention of main ideas and details from the paragraph were tested. Some of the test items directly restated information from paragraphs and others paraphrased information from paragraphs. All groups of subjects remembered main ideas better than they remembered details, and no group of subjects was significantly affected by whether test items directly or indirectly stated information from paragraphs. Disfluent aphasic and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects' overall paragraphs comprehension scores were not significantly poorer than those of non-brain-damaged subjects. Fluent and mixed aphasic subjects' overall paragraph comprehension scores were significantly worse than those of non-brain-damaged and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects. Token Test and Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination auditory comprehension scores did not predict aphasic subjects' paragraph comprehension scores. right-hemisphere-damaged subjects' overall paragraph comprehension scores were not significantly those of non-brain-damaged and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects. Token Test and Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination auditory comprehension scores did not predict aphasic subjects' paragraph comprehension scores.     

The processing of the sounds and meanings of ongoing speech by aphasic subjects

The ability of aphasic subjects to process the sounds and meanings of ongoing speech was tested. Subjects, 10 aphasic and 20 control, heard test sentences which contained one member of phonemically similar word pairs in one of three semantic contexts: congruent, neutral, and noncongruent. Immediately after hearing a sentence, subjects were to indicate which member of the word pair had been in the sentence. All subject groups had similar overall patterns of response to the different semantic contexts. The division of aphasic subjects into groups of high and low comprehenders revealed response differences. High comprehending aphasic subjects, like control subjects, demonstrated interactive processing of the sounds and meaning of speech while low comprehending aphasic subjects did not.