Neural substrates of cognitive skill learning in Parkinson's disease

While cognitive skill learning is normally acquired implicitly through frontostriatal circuitry in healthy individuals, neuroimaging studies suggest that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) do so by activating alternate, intact brain areas associated with explicit memory processing. To further test this hypothesis, 10 patients with PD and 12 healthy controls were tested on a modified, learning version of the Tower of London task while undergoing positron emission tomography at four different time points over the course of learning. Despite having less accurate problem solving abilities than controls, PD patients were able to acquire the skill learning task. However, as compared to controls, they maintained higher levels of cerebral blood flow activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus and showed an increase in activity in the frontopolar cortex and posterior cingulate over the course of learning. These findings reflect a shift to the explicit memory system in PD patients, enabling them to learn this cognitive skill, which is normally acquired by control subjects using implicit learning strategies and frontostriatal circuitry.     

Clock drawing performance and brain morphology in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease

The Clock Drawing Test (CDT) is a widely used instrument in the neuropsychological assessment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). As CDT performance necessitates several cognitive functions (e.g., visuospatial and constructional abilities, executive functioning), an interaction of multiple brain regions is likely. Fifty-one subjects with mild cognitive impairment, 23 with AD and 15 healthy controls underwent high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging. Optimized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was performed to investigate the putative association between CDT performance and gray matter (GM) density throughout the entire brain. In the first step of analysis (p<.001, uncorrected), VBM revealed a reduced GM density in numerous cortical (temporal lobe, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, cerebellum) and subcortical (thalamus, basal ganglia) brain regions to be associated with poorer CDT performance. When corrected for multiple comparisons (p<.01), the associations remained significant predominantly in the left temporal and--less pronounced--the right temporal lobe. VBM demonstrated CDT performance to depend on the integrity of widely distributed cortical and subcortical areas in both brain hemispheres with accentuation in the left-sided temporal lobe region.     

The Effect of Sport Commentator Framing on Viewer Attitudes

An experimental analysis was conducted to determine the effects of involvement, commentator framing, and gender on viewer attitudes toward female athletes. The sample was comprised of 112 students at a mid-western university in the United States. Hypotheses and research questions were tested through a 2 × 3 multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). Results indicated the overall MANCOVA was significant. Involvement was positively related to viewer attitudes’ towards the dependent variables and explained 27.8% of the variance. Gender explained 39.3% of the variance in attitudes as male viewers had significantly lower mean scores on all dependent variables. Male viewers had significantly lower scores than female viewers in the positive framing condition; the interaction explained 8% of the variance in viewers’ perceptions of respectability of female athletes.     

Sociocultural Predictors of Physical Appearance Concerns among Adolescent Girls and Young Women from China

This research assessed the extent to which sociocultural predictors of body dissatisfaction implicated in Western studies extend to the prediction of physical appearance concerns among young women and adolescent girls in Southwest China. In Study 1, 408 Chinese university-age women completed measures of fatness concern (FC), facial appearance concerns (FAC), sociocultural influence (i.e., appearance pressure, comparison, teasing), and demographics. In hierarchical regression analyses, appearance pressure and comparison predicted both FC and FAC, independent of other factors. In Study 2, effects of appearance pressure and comparison were replicated among middle school (n = 346) and high school (n = 563) girls. Together, findings suggest that appearance pressure and social comparison correspond with specific body image concerns of young females in China.     

The Swedish National Adult Reading Test (NART-SWE): a test of premorbid IQ

The purpose of this study was to construct a Swedish version of the National Adult Reading Test (NART-SWE), a test for assessment of premorbid IQ, and to investigate its validity and reliability on healthy controls and patients with mild Alzheimer's disease. As Swedish pronunciation rules are fixed, NART-SWE was constructed using loan words. NART-SWE has satisfactory psychometric properties: Inter-rater and retest reliability as well as internal consistency are very high. The NART-SWE demonstrates face validity. In addition, high correlation with IQ was obtained. A significant model emerged when using NART-SWE to predict IQ. Furthermore, no significant differences were observed when comparing performance for healthy controls' with that of patients with Alzheimer's disease on NART-SWE. It does appear that reading of irregular words is intact in mild Alzheimer's disease.     

Modeling the Information Preferences of Parents of Children with Mental Health Problems: A Discrete Choice Conjoint Experiment

Although materials informing parents about children’s mental health (CMH) problems can improve outcomes, we know relatively little about the design factors that might influence their utilization of available resources. We used a discrete choice conjoint experiment to model the information preferences of parents seeking mental health services for 6 to 18 year olds. Parents completed 30 choice tasks presenting experimentally varied combinations of 20 four-level CMH information content, transfer process, and outcome attributes. Latent class analysis revealed three segments with different preferences. Parents in the Action segment (43%) chose materials providing step-by-step solutions to behavioral or emotional problems. They preferred weekly meetings with other parents and coaching calls from a therapist. The Information segment (41%) chose materials helping them understand rather than solve their child’s problems. These parents were more sensitive to logistical factors such as receiving information in groups, the location where information was available, the modality in which the information was presented, and the time required to obtain and use the information. The Overwhelmed segment (16%) reported more oppositional and conduct problems, felt their children’s difficulties exerted a greater adverse impact on family functioning, and reported higher personal depression scores than those in the Action or Information segments. Nonetheless, they did not choose information about, or solutions to, the problems their children presented. Simulations predicted that maximizing utilization and realizing the potential benefits of CMH information would require knowledge transfer strategies consistent with each segment’s preferences.

Worship and the Eucharist in Luther Studies

Abstract : In German as well as in international ecumenical discussions Luther's liturgical decision to delete most of the eucharistic prayer and emphasize the words of institution has been regarded as a problematic move. On the other hand, prominent Lutheran theologians continue to argue that this move is theologically sound, and that the ecumenical characterization of the Lord's Supper as the Eucharist is problematic because it stresses the human activity. This paper steers a middle course between these extremes, arguing that Luther's texts also show new possibilities for conceiving the sacrament in terms of thanksgiving and active response.     

Culture-sensitive functional analytic psychotherapy

Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) is defined as behavior-analytically conceptualized talk therapy. In contrast to the technique-oriented educational format of cognitive behavior therapy and the use of structural mediational models, FAP depends on the functional analysis of the moment-to-moment stream of interactions between client and therapist. This distinctive feature makes FAP particularly sensitive to the challenges posed by cultural differences between client and therapist. Core elements of FAP philosophy are invoked to argue that this vulnerability paradoxically implies an increased ability to capture and use relevant issues in the therapy process with culturally different clients. This argument focuses FAP's preference for concrete behavior over theoretical modeling, its emphasis on functional principles rather than topographically defined techniques, and its inclusion of the therapist's behavior in the assessment of clients' clinically relevant behavior. Suggestions are given concerning how academic and practical training and personal experience may be used to foster sound multicultural practice.     

Rigidity in social and emotional memory in the R6/2 mouse model of Huntington's disease

Four experiments were conducted to examine social and emotional memory in the R6/2 transgenic mouse model of Huntington’s disease. First, R6/2 mice were tested in a social transmission of food preference task where they had to acquire a preference for a flavoured food (acquisition) and subsequently to learn a preference for a different flavour (shifted reinforcement). R6/2 mice performed well in the acquisition trial. However, they were impaired in the shifted reinforcement trial and perseverated on the first preference learned. Second, mice were trained in an inhibitory avoidance paradigm, with either one or two footshocks delivered during the training. WT mice given one footshock showed retention levels lower than those of mice trained with two footshocks. By contrast, there was no difference in retention levels of R6/2 mice given either one or two footshocks. Third, mice were tested in an active avoidance task that paired a mild footshock with a warning light. R6/2 mice had a strong age-dependent deficit in this task. Finally, mice were tested in a conditioned taste aversion task that paired a saccharine solution with a nausea-inducing agent (LiCl). R6/2 mice displayed normal aversion, however this was not extinguished following repeated exposure to saccharine solution alone. Our data show that while R6/2 mice have functional hippocampus-based memory, they have deficits in striatum-based memory skills. Further, social and emotional memories appear to be encoded in a rigid way that is not influenced by subsequent learning or by arousal levels.     

Children’s notions of the malleability of their academic competencies

This study set out to examine children’s notions of the malleability of their academic competencies and the relations of these notions to the child’s grade-level and gender and the parent’s educational level. In interviews of a total of 103 boys and girls of the third and the sixth grade, children of academically and vocationally educated parents were asked to rate their potential for improving their competencies in mathematics and Finnish. The children were asked to use intrapersonal and normative criteria in their ratings. The ratings were found to form distinct domains of the notions of malleability, as they did not correlate with each other. The children’s ratings of their current competencies, i.e. their academic self-concepts, turned out to be related to their normative ratings of the malleability of their competencies. The findings further suggested that the children’s notions of the malleability of their academic competencies became more pessimistic in the course of their school years.