Word production and comprehension in Alzheimer's diseáse: The breakdown of semantic knowledge

Relatively mildly impaired patients with suspected Alzheimer's disease (N = 14; Verbal IQ = 96) and normal controls of similar age and education (N = 11) were administered tests requiring production (naming and fluency) and comprehension of single words. Word comprehension was assessed on a superordinate level (rating words for degree of “pleasantness”) and on a more specific level (matching abstract pictorial representations with printed words denoting objects, actions, emotions, and modifiers). Performance on standardized measures of semantic knowledge (Vocabulary and Similarities subtests of the WAIS) was also evaluated. The naming and fluency abilities of the Alzheimer's patients were found to be highly correlated (r = .80) and impaired. Naming errors often consisted of semantic field errors which were either hierarchically or linearly related to the target name. In comparison with normals, verbal fluency was characterized by a tendency to generate proportionally more category names concurrent with reduced production of items within a category. Single-word comprehension was also impaired, except when judgments of affective meaning were required. It was argued that these results suggest that Alzheimer's disease may lead to a specific disruption in semantic knowledge characterized by a difficulty in differentiating between items within the same semantic category concurrent with the relative preservation of broader categorical information.     

The voice of confidence: Paralinguistic cues and audience evaluation

A standard speaker read linguistically confident and doubtful texts in a confident or doubtful voice. A computer-based acoustic analysis of the four tapes showed that paralinguistic confidence was expressed by increased loudness of voice, rapid rate of speech, and infrequent, short pauses. Under some conditions, higher pitch levels and greater pitch and energy fluctuations in the voice were related to paralinguistic confidence. In a 2 × 2 design, observers perceived and used these cues to attribute confidence and related personality traits to the speaker. Both text and voice cues are related to confidence ratings; in addition, the two types of cue are related to differing personality attributes.     

Adolescent correlates of occupational stability and change

Using Super's Career Pattern Study data, this study investigated the high-school age correlates of occupational stability and change among 148 men between the ages of 25 to 35. Only high-school grades were positively, though weakly, associated with both occupational stability and the degree of vocational progress that resulted from changing fields. In contrast to previous, shorter-term prediction studies, the lack of consistent relationships between high-school age correlates and adult occupational stability and change was probably due to the overriding effects of intervening events and experiences occurring between the high-school years and adulthood.     

Memory for companions in preschool children

Memory of preschool children (4 years of age) for companions was investigated by comparing interview data using a picture sociometric technique with observational data on actual play companions. Accuracy decreased with successive nominations, and length of recall period. However children were able to name companions played with today, yesterday, last week and at the beginning of term, at well above chance levels. Accuracies improved during the term. The relevance of friendships and social experience for memory and cognitive processes in young children is discussed.     

Children's use of sequence information in partially predictable reaction-time sequences

Second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children and adults performed a four-choice reaction time task with partially predictable sequences and 250-, 500-, and 750-msec response-to-stimulus intervals. The relative advantage for in-sequence as opposed to out-of-sequence events was independent of the response-to-stimulus interval for all ages. Children, but not adults, were slower for nonrepeated than repeated out-of sequence events and this advantage for repeated signals decreased as age increased. A second experiment extended the range of intervals tested to zero. Second graders and adults responded to four-choice partially predictable sequences with 0-, 250-, and 500-msec response-to-stimulus intervals. As in the first experiment, the difference between in-sequence and out-of-sequence events did not vary with the response-to-stimulus interval. The results suggest that both children and adults are able to process advance sequence probability information about a subsequent event in parallel with an ongoing response.     

Is peer victimization related to body esteem in 10-year-old girls and boys?

Several studies show that a history of exposure to appearance-related teasing is linked to body dissatisfaction. This study extends those findings by examining the impact of bullying, and other forms of peer victimization, on different aspects of 10-year-old girls’ and boys’ body esteem. Participants were 960 Swedish 10-year-olds, 515 girls and 445 boys. Principal results show that social exclusion is related to 10-year-olds’ evaluations of their general appearance, to evaluations of their weight, and to beliefs about how others perceive their appearance. Furthermore, bullied girls have poorer body esteem in terms of beliefs of how others perceive their appearance than do bullied boys. Appearance teasing was associated with girls’ poorer body esteem in terms of general appearance and beliefs of others views of their appearance. For boys, teasing was associated with poorer body esteem on all dimensions. Thus, this study implies that a wider range of peer victimization relates to children's negative self-perceptions than was former known.     

Treating the “Wise Baby”

In a previous examination of Ferenczis concept of the Wise Baby (1996), I had noted both its applications and its limitations in the analytic treatment of an unusually intelligent adult. Ferenczis concepts of the origin of intellect in trauma and of the wise baby have often left the indistinct impression of being interrelated phenomena. In this paper, I regard as arguable the notion that very high intelligence is pathological when it is precocious. This return visit to the territory of the wise baby extends Ferenczis ideas about the origin and use of the intellect to include a consideration of what may constitute effective treatment for those who suffer from giftedness.Judith E. Vida, M.D. edits On the Arts for this journal. She is a Founding Member and Faculty of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, CA, a member of both American and International Psychoanalytic Associations, and of the Sándor Ferenczi Society of Budapest. Her private practice is in Pasadena, CA.Address correspondence to Judith E. Vida, 301 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 406A, Pasadena, CA 91105, USA; e-mail: jvida@spence.net     

On the nature of the verbal memory deficit in Alzheimer''s disease

Verbal memory was investigated in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) with previously documented deficits in word production and comprehension. Procedures were employed to evaluate word recall and recognition within the context of both "multistore" and "levels of processing" models of memory. In addition, memory abilities were evaluated with respect to performance on measures of verbal fluency and language comprehension. As expected, the AD patients performed significantly worse than normal individuals on all tasks. However, in each experiment their pattern of recall across conditions was found to be qualitatively similar to that produced by normal subjects. It was argued that the memory impairment associated with Alzheimer's disease may be largely due to an inability to encode a sufficient number of stimulus features or attributes. Furthermore, this encoding deficit includes, but is not limited to, semantic attributes. Similarities between the performance of the AD patients and reported findings with Korsakoff patients and normal subjects with "weak" memory were discussed.     

The CORE‐10: A short measure of psychological distress for routine use in the psychological therapies

Background: There is a need for a generic, short, and easy‐to‐use assessment measure for common presentations of psychological distress in UK primary care mental health settings. This paper sets out the development of the CORE‐10 in response to this need. Method: Items were drawn from the CORE‐OM and 10 items were selected according to a combination of usefulness, coverage of item clusters, and statistical procedures. Three CORE‐OM datasets were employed in the development phase: (1) a primary care sample, (2) a sample from an MRC platform trial of enhanced collaborative care of depression in primary care, and (3) a general population sample derived from the Office of National Statistics Psychiatric Morbidity Follow‐up survey. A fourth dataset comprising a sample from an occupational health setting was used to evaluate the CORE‐10 in its standalone format. Results: The internal reliability (alpha) of the CORE‐10 was .90 and the score for the CORE‐10 correlated with the CORE‐OM at .94 in a clinical sample and .92 in a non‐clinical sample. The clinical cut‐off score for general psychological distress was 11.0 with a reliable change index (90% CI) of 6. For depression, the cut‐off score for the CORE‐10 was 13 and yielded sensitivity and specificity values of .92 (CI=.83–1.0) and 0.72 (CI=.60–.83) respectively. Conclusion: The CORE‐10 is an acceptable and feasible instrument that has good psychometric properties and is practical to use with people presenting with common mental health problems in primary care settings.     

α系数的区间估计方法比较

多数情况下,α系数可以用来评价测验信度。诸多研究建议,在报告测验信度的时候应当包括其置信区间。通过蒙特卡洛模拟研究,比较了7种α系数区间估计方法,包括Fisher法、Bonett-02法、Bonett-10法、精确Koning-Franses法、渐近ID法、渐近Koning-Franses法和ADF法。结果发现Bonett-10法和精确Koning-Franses法较好,它们的结果相差很小。这两种方法都比较简单,只需要样本的α值、测验题数、被试人数及F临界值,通过简单的运算便可得到α系数的置信区间。