Cognitive function after open-heart surgery: Are postoperative neuropsychological deficits caused by cardiopulmonary bypass?

Despite the many technological developments in arterial perfusion and cardiac surgical procedures, open-heart surgery is still believed to pose a significant risk for cerebral injury. There are several potential causes of brain damage during open-heart surgery, including prolonged or severe arterial hypotension, as well as emboli emanating from the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit or the operative field. This article reviews the available neuropsychological studies of outcome following cardiac valve replacement and coronary artery bypass grafting. Because both procedures are life-saving operations, the research in this area has been quasi-experimental and fraught with methodological problems. Nonetheless, the findings converge to suggest that cognitive dysfunction occurs after open-heart surgery, and that the deficits are attributable, at least in part, to factors specific to the operation or to the patient being maintained on cardiopulmonary bypass. Preliminary findings suggest that embolization is the primary cause of perioperative deficits in uncomplicated operations. Studies have also consistently found preoperative deficits in this population, suggesting that neuropsychological dysfunction is caused by severe chronic cardiac disease as well as open-heart surgery.     

Substitution and caloric regulation in a closed economy.

Three experiments were conducted to study the effect of an imperfect substitute for food on demand for food in a closed economy. In Experiments 1 and 2, rats pressed a lever for their entire daily food ration, and a fixed ratio of presses was required for each food pellet. In both experiments, the fixed ratio was held constant during a daily session but was increased between sessions. The fixed ratio was increased over a series of daily sessions once in the absence of concurrently available sucrose and again when sucrose pellets were freely available. For both series, increases in the fixed ratio reduced food intake, but body weight was reduced only in the no-sucrose condition. In the sucrose condition, body weight and total caloric intake (sucrose plus food) were relatively unaffected by increases in the fixed ratio. At all fixed ratios, food intake was proportionally reduced by the intake of sucrose. In Experiment 3, monkeys obtained food or saccharin by pressing keys; the fixed ratio of presses per food pellet was increased once when tap water was each monkey's only source of fluid, again when each monkey's water was sweetened with saccharin, and a third time when each monkey had concurrent access to the saccharin solution and plain water. Increases in the fixed ratio, but not the intake of the saccharin solution, reduced each monkey's food intake. Because neither rats' sucrose nor monkeys' saccharin intakes affected the slope of the respective demand curves for food, monkeys and rats increased their daily output of presses and thereby defended their daily intake of those complementary elements of food. However, sucrose reduced rats' food intake. The relative constancy of body weight and total caloric intake in the sucrose condition is consistent with the possibility that rats tended to regulate caloric intake.     

汉语阅读困难儿童认知特征研究

为了解汉语阅读困难者的认知特征,本研究从９６７名５年级１１－１３岁学生中抽取了１１８名被试,将他们分成困难组（包括截点组和低成就组）和对照组,并将其在词语理解等８个认知变量上进行了比较。结果表明,图形记忆与加工能力及对词语和一般信息理解能力的缺损是汉语阅读困难者主要的认知特征。研究还表明,一般信息理解能力发展水平是区分一般阅读落后和特殊阅读落后的一个指标。     

7－15岁儿童对友谊关系的认知及其发展

用以承诺为主题的两难推理故事探查７－１５岁儿童对友谊关系的认知及其发展。结果表明,儿童的有关发展制约于社会观点采择能力的发展和调节友谊关系的道德规范的理解,并表现出阶段结构的发展模式,我国儿童的发展具有某种跨文化的普遍性,也显示出自己的特点。     

Behavioral assessment and treatment of acquired visuoperceptual disorders

Visuoperceptual deficits are common sequelae of damage to either hemisphere of the brain, but are typically more pronounced following injuries involving the right cerebral hemisphere. Common visuoperceptual disorders include visual field cuts, hemi-inattention and hemi-spatial neglect, hemi-perceptual deficits, and gaze and visual pursuit disturbances. A number of behavioral interventions have been developed to teach patients to compensate for acquired visual deficits. Studies addressing assessment and treatment issues in this area are reviewed, and future directions for research are outlined.     

The cognitive interview: Its origins,empirical support,evaluation and practical implications

This paper provides a background to current research on the cognitive interview (CI), which is a set of cognitive retrieval techniques designed to facilitate memory search (for example, via reinstatement of contextual cues). One of the principal aims of this research is to identify and develop techniques which police investigators can themselves use. A series of studies were conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles, using police officers as interviewers and students, non-students and children as witnesses to realistic crimes. In all studies the CI elicited significantly more correct information with no apparent increase in errors or confabulations. The CI has been tested in a field study involving police officers in Florida. This paper will critically review this research, as well as more recent unpublished work including CI studies conducted in Germany and the UK. Some important modifications of the original CI procedure are described, and there is a theoretical discussion and explanation of the various components of the CI procedure. Finally, we will consider applications of the CI in clinical and organizational settings.     

Thoughts and feelings and things: A new psychiatric epistemology

Epistemology — the study of knowledge — is a philosophical discipline with close ties to psychiatry. When epistemologists address specific questions about how knowledge is actually realized by human beings, their philosophy must be informed by empirical studies of the sort psychiatrists now take up in a variety of forms. As this paper describes, psychiatrists can likewise improve their understanding of human psychology through a deeper appreciation of philosophical analysis in epistemology.The aim of this article is to introduce a unifying framework within which the experience from different approaches to psychiatry — (1) the conceptual schemas of cognitive psychiatry, (2) the mental structures of psychoanalytic psychiatry, (3) the categorical forms of existential psychiatry, and (4) the neural pathways of biological psychiatry — can all be applied productively to the central question of epistemology. By establishing a broad understanding of the problem of knowledge, this new view of epistemology is developed within the idiom of each psychiatric approach. In addressing themselves to a unitary problem, these diverse psychiatric approaches are themselves revealed, not as competing points of view, but as complementary views of a single subject. The result is a new epistemology that can not only bring the insights of psychiatry to philosophy, but can also contribute to the care of patients when psychiatrists bring this broader view to their clinical work.     

The second offspring of General Process Learning Theory: Overt behavior as the ambassador of the mind

Wasserman suggested in a recent book review that the study of intervening cognitive processes represents a current focus of interest in animal learning and that this has led to a revitalization of comparative psychology. An examination of the volume reviewed suggests that he may have overstated the case. Most of the authors to whom he refers expressed dissatisfaction with traditional stimulus-response associationism but few argued for the extreme (information processing) sort of cognitive approach described by Wasserman.     

PARENT REINFORCEMENT FOR CHILD ACHIEVEMENT: THE USE OF A LOTTERY TO MAXIMIZE PARENT TRAINING EFFECTS

This study describes and evaluates a reinforcement program in which parents earned lottery tickets and won prizes for the progress made by their handicapped children during home-based intervention. An ABAB reversal design replicated across three families was used to assess the effects of the lottery on the children's mastery of language skills. Results showed that the reinforcement of the parents for training accomplishments, as indexed by their children's achievements, produced clinically significant increases in the children's progress when compared with the children's progress under the routine supportive practices of the baseline condition. The implications of the findings for parent training programs in general are discussed.     

PROCEDURAL VARIATIONS IN GROUP CONTINGENCIES: EFFECTS ON CHILDREN'S ACADEMIC AND SOCIAL BEHAVIORS

There has been little research on the effects of the many procedural variables in applied group contingencies. In the present study, an individualized contingency and three group contingencies with different “responder” criteria (e.g., reward based on the group average, reward based on the work of a designated, low-achieving student, or reward based on the work of a randomly selected student) were applied to the academic work of primary grade children in a learning disabilities classroom. Group social interaction during each contingency was measured systematically. Although there were large individual differences in students' academic and social responses to the different contingencies, some consistent effects were observed. Two of the four low-achieving target students did their best academic work during the group contingency which focused on their performance as a designated responder. This type of contingency also produced high levels of positive social interaction in three of four groups of children observed.