Verb deficits in Alzheimer's disease and agrammatism: implications for lexical organization

This study examined the nature of verb deficits in 14 individuals with probable Alzheimer's Disease (PrAD) and nine with agrammatic aphasia. Production was tested, controlling both semantic and syntactic features of verbs, using noun and verb naming, sentence completion, and narrative tasks. Noun and verb comprehension and a grammaticality judgment task also were administered. Results showed that while both PrAD and agrammatic subjects showed impaired verb naming, the syntactic features of verbs (i.e., argument structure) influenced agrammatic, but not Alzheimer's disease patients' verb production ability. That is, agrammatic patients showed progressively greater difficulty with verbs associated with more arguments, as has been shown in previous studies (e.g., Kim & Thompson, 2000; Thompson, 2003; Thompson, Lange, Schneider, & Shapiro, 1997), and suggest a syntactic basis for verb production deficits in agrammatism. Conversely, the semantic complexity of verbs affected PrAD, but not agrammatic, patients' performance, suggesting "bottom-up" breakdown in their verb lexicon, paralleling that of nouns, resulting from the degradation or loss of semantic features of verbs.     

Life and mind: From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology. A tribute to Francisco Varela

This talk, delivered at De l'autopoièse à la neurophénoménologie: un hommage à Francisco Varela; from autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: a tribute to Francisco Varela, June 18–20, at the Sorbonne in Paris, explicates several links between Varela's neurophenomenology and his biological concept of autopoiesis.     

The effects of presession attention on problem behavior maintained by different reinforcers

The effect of presession attention on the later occurrence of problem behavior was examined with elementary-school children with a range of disabilities. Results of analogue functional analyses suggested an escape function, an attention function, or both. Following the analogue functional analyses, the effects of two antecedent conditions (10-min ignore vs. 10-min attention) were compared on problem behavior in subsequent test conditions. For participants who displayed attention-maintained problem behavior, the test condition involved contingent attention for problem behavior. For participants who displayed escape-maintained problem behavior, the test condition involved contingent escape for problem behavior. Results indicated that participants who displayed attention-maintained problem behavior displayed less problem behavior following presession exposure to attention than when ignored. No such effect was found for presession attention on escape-maintained problem behavior. We discuss matching antecedent-based interventions to the results of functional analysis.     

A population-based study of the association between pathological gambling and attempted suicide

The association between pathological gambling and attempted suicide was examined using data from a prevalence study conducted in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The sample size was 7,214, the questionnaire was the Diagnostic Interview Schedule, and diagnoses were made on a lifetime basis according to DSM-III criteria. Logistic regression analysis was performed, with attempted suicide as the dependent variable. The odds ratio for pathological gambling was statistically significant (odds ratio = 4.91; 95% confidence interval = [1.41,17.1]) when major depression was the only comorbid mental disorder in the model. As terms for additional mental disorders were included, pathological gambling ceased to be statistically significant. It was concluded that a history of pathological gambling is associated with previous attempted suicide, and that the association may be due to a common factor--"mental illness."     

Examining the construct validity of the Eating Disorder Inventory

The construct validity of the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) was examined in 3 samples. An archival clinic sample (n = 318) of women completed the EDI, a structured interview, and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II (MCMI-II). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) indicated that neither null nor 1-factor models of the EDI fit item-level or item-parcel data. The proposed 8-factor model did not fit at the item level but did fit item-parcel data. Reliability estimates of the 8 scales ranged from .82 to .93, and low-to-moderate interscale correlations among the eating and weight-related scales provided partial support for convergent validity. EDI personality scales showed moderate interscale correlations and were associated with MCMI-II scales. A final CFA of the EDI scales supported a 2-factor model (Eating and Weight, Personality) of the 8 EDI scales. Strong associations between depression and several EDI scale scores were found in a treatment study sample (n = 50). The archival clinic sample scored significantly higher on the 8 EDI scales than the nonpatient college comparison sample (n = 487).     

Test anxiety, coping strategies, and perceived health in a group of high school students: a Turkish sample

A group of high school juniors and a group of high school seniors in Izmir, Turkey completed measures of test anxiety, coping skills, and perceived health status both before and after a major exam period. Students with high test anxiety used less effective coping mechanisms and tended to have poorer perceptions of their health. Prior to the exams, juniors displayed higher test anxiety and used less effective coping mechanisms than seniors. After the exam periods, improvements were seen for both age groups on perceived health, but scores of younger students remained significantly higher than scores of seniors on one of the key measures of test anxiety. Results of the study lend support to those of previous studies done in other cultural contexts, and findings have implications for the development of interventions designed to help students cope with stress.     

Note on Thorson and Powell: undertakers' sense of humor

Recently Thorson and Powell reported in this journal that morticians scored significantly lower on a multidimensional sense of humor scale than another group of similarly aged men from other occupations. These findings differ markedly with some in 1991 from a 2-yr. ethnographic study conducted with morticians and funeral directors in four states regarding how they managed the stigma associated with their occupation.     

Use of interreflection and shadow for surface contact

The interaction of light with surfaces results in a number of lighting effects that may serve as valuable visual cues. Previous research on shadows has shown them to be effective in determining the three-dimensional (3-D) layout of a scene, but interreflections have been ignored as cues for spatial layout. Interreflections as well as shadows may help to disambiguate the 3-D layout of objects by providing information about an object's contact with a surface. We generated computer images of a box on an extended textured ground plane that was either in contact with the ground or was slightly above the ground. Images were rendered for four conditions: (1) no shadow + no interreflection, (2) shadow only, (3) interreflection only, and (4) shadow + interreflection. A photometrically incorrect condition was also included. The participants rated the degree of contact for each image on a scale, which was used to generate receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and a measure of sensitivity. In the images with no shadows or interreflections, the participants performed at chance levels. Interreflections, shadows, and a combination of interreflections and shadows all resulted in high sensitivity for judging object contact. More important, information from shadows and interreflections can be combined, resulting in near-perfect judgment of surface contact. Interreflections and shadows can be effective cues for object contact.     

Self-injurious behavior: gene-brain-behavior relationships

This paper summarizes a conference held at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development on December 6-7, 1999, on self-injurious behavior [SIB] in developmental disabilities. Twenty-six of the top researchers in the U.S. from this field representing 13 different disciplines discussed environmental mechanisms, epidemiology, behavioral and pharmacological intervention strategies, neurochemical substrates, genetic syndromes in which SIB is a prominent behavioral phenotype, neurobiological and neurodevelopmental factors affecting SIB in humans as well as a variety of animal models of SIB. Findings over the last decade, especially new discoveries since 1995, were emphasized. SIB is a rapidly growing area of scientific interest to both basic and applied researchers. In many respects it is a model for the study of gene-brain-behavior relationships in developmental disabilities.