Adynamic Aphasia: A Transcortical Motor Aphasia with Defective Semantic Strategy Formation

Adynamic aphasia is a form of transcortical motor aphasia characterized by sparse but otherwise normal spontaneous speech that may improve when concepts are introduced by external stimuli. Akinesia, impaired concept formation, inertia of concept generation, a defective semantic network, damage or impaired access to the verbal output lexicon, and defective semantic strategy formation have been proposed to account for this disorder. We studied a patient with adynamic aphasia and frontal lobe systems dysfunction due to bilateral striatocapsular infarctions. The patient was not akinetic but did demonstrate inertia of concept generation that could be overcome with prompting. However, prompting did not improve the number of concepts generated. He demonstrated a generally intact verbal lexicon and semantic network and normal lexical priming. However, his ability to sort closely related items into different classes without prior cuing regarding the nature of the classes was defective. Although his verbal memory was normal, he appeared to use a serial rather than a semantic strategy to recall items. Finally, despite normal lexical priming, he was impaired on a letter fluency task. These results most clearly demonstrate a defect in semantic strategy formation but indicate an additional and possibly related deficit in concept formation and a partial deficit in lexical strategy formation. All of these deficits appear to reflect impairment in the hierarchical organization of knowledge specific to the task at hand. This appears to be a key component of executive functions supported by frontal lobe systems.     

Complementary and Symmetrical Interaction in the Present Day Mental Health Institute

Expanding an idea begun by Rosenhan (1973), ratings of communication from psychiatric aides to patients at a psychiatric hospital were obtained using Leather's Feedback Rating Instrument. As compared to a comparison group composed of aide to aide interactions, aide to patient interactions were characterised as more inflexible, withdrawn, concise, personal, irrelevant, and automatic. Implications were offered concerning the training of mental health workers.     

Post-training brain catecholamine levels: lack of response to water-motivated training

Rats were trained in a one-trial appetitive task using water motivation. Brain catecholamine and metabolite levels were assessed in samples collected 10 min after training. There was no evidence that brain NE levels were modified by training, although catecholamine levels increased when the animals were placed in a novel environment. These results differ from those obtained after avoidance training where the extent of a post-training decrease in brain norepinephrine predicts later retention performance.     

Personality test reliability: correlates for older subjects

This study reports the findings of an investigation of psychological and social factors related to test-retest stability and change in scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory given to 167 older men and women. Higher reliability coefficients on the Eysenck were associated with better scores on a measure of well being and higher levels of education.     

Worry and emotionality components of test anxiety

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between trait measures of Worry and Emotionality and test anxiety related variables. Ninety-eight undergraduate students completed the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) and the following self-report measures toward the end of the psychology exam: Checklist of Positive and Negative Thought, Checklist of Body Sensations (CBS), and Subjective Units of Discomfort Scale (SUDS). Further, the students' scores on the psychology exam and the students' grade point averages (GPA) served as outcome measures of test anxiety. In general the results supported the discriminant validity of the Worry and Emotionality subscales of the TAI. Worry was found to be correlated with measures of internal dialogue and Emotionality was found to be correlated with the self-reported arousal measures.     

Leisure patterns among retired workers: Spillover or compensatory trends?

Leisure behavior patterns after retirement were compared retrospectively with those of the preretirement period. The data, which related to former industrial and service workers in Israel, were examined within the context of the spillover and compensatory hypotheses, with retirement representing a non work sphere. Findings revealed a spillover effect, characterized by a high degree of passive, solitary leisure behavior both before and after retirement.     

Facilitatory spatial interaction with percutaneous electrical stimuli

To measure the effect of a rectangular percutaneous conditioning shock to one finger on subjective magnitude of a suprathreshold test shock to an adjacent finger, Ss equated a contralateral matching stimulus to the test shock. The conditioning shock generally increased the apparent intensity of the test shock. This facilitation was a negatively accelerated function of test-shock current. Larger conditioning stimuli produced greater facilitation. Over limited intervals, time between conditioning and test or test and matching stimuli had no systematic effects.     

Sexual behaviour in injecting drug users

A survey of the self-reported sexual behaviors of 1239 intravenous drug users recruited off the streets in Sydney, Australia, highlighted the impact of both sexual orientation and gender on the risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in this population. The sample included 908 men (mean age, 27.9 years) and 331 women (mean age, 26.3 years), the majority of whom were unemployed or receiving social security benefits. Among male respondents, 50 were homosexual, 117 were bisexual, and 719 were heterosexual; for females these numbers were 10, 95, and 220, respectively. Oral and vaginal sex were the most commonly reported practices among heterosexuals, while homosexuals primarily reported manual stimulation and oro-genital contact. The regular sexual partners of male intravenous drug users tended not to be addicts, while female drug users were primarily involved with male partners who also abused drugs. Among male respondents, condom use was highest among homosexuals, followed by bisexuals, and lowest among heterosexuals; there were no significant differences by sexual orientation in female respondents' condom use. Overall, condoms were most likely to be utilized in anal sex and least likely in the case of oral sex. Condom use was about 5% lower when a regular as opposed to casual sexual partner was involved. Most of the 64 HIV-positive respondents were homosexuals, suggesting that sexual orientation rather than drug abuse was the primary risk factor. Given the finding that there is substantial variation in condom use among subgroups of intravenous drug abusers, it is recommended that HIV prevention programs adopt a diversified rather than uniform approach.     

Anterograde and retrograde enhancement of 24-h memory by glucose in elderly humans.

The present experiment examined anterograde and retrograde enhancement of memory storage by glucose in elderly humans. Glucose (50 g) or saccharin was administered shortly before or immediately after acquisition of a narrative prose passage. Recall was tested 24 h later. Glucose administration before or after presentation of the material to be learned significantly improved recall 24 h later compared to performance in the saccharin condition. These findings suggest that glucose retroactively enhances memory storage processing in elderly humans and that the enhancement of memory outlasts the transient elevations in blood glucose levels after glucose ingestion.