Recognition memory deficits in mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACT

There is no agreement on the pattern of recognition memory deficits characteristic of patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Whereas lower performance in recollection is the hallmark of MCI, there is a strong controversy about possible deficits in familiarity estimates when using recognition memory tasks. The aim of this research is to shed light on the pattern of responding in recollection and familiarity in MCI. Five groups of participants were tested. The main participant samples were those formed by two MCI groups differing in age and an Alzheimer's disease group (AD), which were compared with two control groups. Whereas one of the control groups served to assess the performance of the MCI and AD people, the other one, composed of young healthy participants, served the purpose of evaluating the adequacy of the experimental tasks used in the evaluation of the different components of recognition memory. We used an associative recognition task as a direct index of recollection and a choice task on a pair of stimuli, one of which was perceptually similar to those studied in the associative recognition phase, as an index of familiarity. Our results indicate that recollection decreases with age and neurological status, and familiarity remains stable in the elderly control sample but it is deficient in MCI. This research shows that a unique encoding situation generated deficits in recollective and familiarity mechanisms in mild cognitive impaired individuals, providing evidence for the existence of deficits in both retrieval processes in recognition memory in a MCI stage.     

Positive organizational psychology,behavior, and scholarship: A review of the emerging literature and evidence base

The positive psychology movement seems to have stimulated new research and applications well beyond the discipline of traditional psychology. Among the various areas of inquiry, research and scholarship about positive organizations have received considerable attention from both researchers and practitioners. The current review examined the scholarly literature published between 2001 and 2009 on positive organizational psychology to provide a detailed picture of the current state of the field. This review sought to discover the overall growth rate, trends, and prevalent topics in the literature. It also aspired to provide an understanding of the empirical evidence for each topic through in-depth reviews. The findings suggest that there is a growing body of scholarly literature and an emerging empirical evidence base on topics related to positive organizations. Strengths, limitations, and implications of building a practical knowledge base for making significant improvements in the quality of working life and organizational effectiveness are discussed.     

Differential impacts of age of acquisition on letter and semantic fluency in Alzheimer's disease patients and healthy older adults

The degree to which the typical age of acquisition (AoA) of words and word frequency have separable influences on verbal production tasks has been strongly debated. To examine the overlap between these factors in verbal fluency tasks, the performance of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients (N?=?34) and normal elderly controls (N?=?36) was compared on semantic (e.g., vegetables) and letter (e.g., words that begin with F) fluency tasks. These comparisons revealed that words generated for the semantic fluency task had an earlier AoA while words generated for the letter fluency task had a higher word frequency. Differences in AoA between AD patients and controls were larger for semantic than letter fluency. These results suggest that AoA has an effect on verbal production that is independent of word frequency and that AoA has a semantic locus.     

Review of The Supervisor's Guidebook: Evidence-Based Strategies for Promoting Work Quality and Enjoyment Among Human Service Staff (2nd edition) by Dennis Reid,Marsha Parsons,and Carolyn Green

This article summarizes a review of the book The Supervisor's Guidebook: Evidence-Based Strategies for Promoting Work Quality and Enjoyment Among Human Service Staff (2nd edition) by Reid, Parsons, and Green. We describe the book's organization and content. In addition, strengths and areas for improvement are noted. The book provides rich, relevant content to guide supervisory practices within a participative, evidence-based approach that could be applied in various human service settings.     

Predicting Resource Utilization by Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance and Their Families

Our study represents a rural case management agency's use of its data to aid in its transition from being funded by federal grant funds to self-sustainment. We wanted to learn if some characteristics of those children served could predict the resources needed to serve them. We analyzed data on 90 children and adolescents living in a rural community. Using multiple regression analysis we found that CAFAS total and CBCL total problem scores predicted Medicaid reimbursements but not flexible funds spending or case management hours. History of psychiatric hospitalization, however, predicted flexible funds spending and case management hours. Using one-way ANOVA and post hoc analysis we found that the staff members' assessments of each child and family's level of service needs were reflected in differences in mean CAFAS total scores, Medicaid reimbursements and case management hours, but not CBCL total problem scores or flexible funds spending.     

Treatment Adherence in Children with Sickle Cell Disease: Disease-Related Risk and Psychosocial Resistance Factors

To identify disease-related risk factors and psychosocial resistance factors that impact adherence to prescribed treatment in the context of admission to a Hematology Acute Care Unit (HACU) designed to provide acute care for children with sickle cell disease (SCD) presenting with pain or fever. A total of 73 primary caregivers and 24 children (if age 8 or older) completed standardized forms during the HACU admission. Treatment adherence variables (medical staff rating, SCD-related care activities, percentage of agreement between treatment recommendations made and care activities, and attendance at hematology clinic) indicated moderate-to-high adherence. Based on regression analyses, the risk variable of disease-related stress and the resistance variables of family flexibility and less reliance on passive coping accounted for significant portions of the variance in treatment adherence. Empirical evaluation of interventions designed to improve communication regarding expectations for the care of children with SCD and to support active family problem solving during times of SCD-related stress must be ongoing.     

Double bind: An essay on counselling training

Gerard Egan's problem management and opportunity development model is currently in use training prospective counsellors, social workers, nurses, managers, etc. the skills of helping. This essay attempts, experimentally, to depict in three different ways Egan's work and its relationship to operations of power: (1) from a relatively uncritical stance, (2) from a personal experience stance, and (3) from a social constructionist perspective. The whole piece, taken together, attempts to tackle the issue of theory as practice — to ground/unmask/make present the ways in which we are socialised into a profession and the problems inherent in that process. Two themes run through the work: the double bind created for a student on a counselling course which makes some claim to train around Rogers' core conditions, and which is also assessed/accredited; the connections between theory, training and practices.     

A Self-Management Program for Adolescents and Children with Renal Transplantation

This paper describes the development and implementation of a self-management program designed to address noncompliance in adolescents with renal transplants. Transplantation provides the best treatment alternative for End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD), but is a procedure that subsequently demands recipients follow a life-long medication regimen. Nonadherance to medical therapy is a serious problem for adolescents; it is one of the most common causes of chronic graft rejection in this population. To improve compliance rates for this population, a self-management program was designed: (1) to provide social support; (2) to review information about medications and transplant management; and (3) to both teach and provide transplantation patients the opportunity to practice self-management skills. Details about the program, including recruitment issues and session content, are provided. Evaluations by participants indicated that the program was effective in creating a supportive environment for both patients and their parents, and in addressing health-related concerns.     

Presurgical Coping, Depression, and Quality of Life in Persons with Parkinson's Disease

This study describes utilization of coping strategies and evaluates the interaction between coping strategies, depression, and quality of life (QOL) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) who are being considered for neurosurgical intervention. Eighty patients (mean age 61.7 years) with PD being evaluated for possible deep brain stimulation completed self-report instruments of coping strategies (Coping Responses Inventory), depression (Beck Depression Inventory), and disease-specific QOL (Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39). Analyses showed that patients with PD cope with the acute stressor of approaching neurosurgery through a variety of strategies, but particularly avoidant and behavioral strategies. When the correlated but apparently opposing effects of cognitive and behavioral strategies were teased apart, greater use of cognitive strategies was associated with more severe depressive symptomatology (and poorer QOL), while greater use of behavioral strategies appeared to be associated with less depression. Depressive symptomatology, in turn, was associated with poorer QOL. However, coping had minimal direct association with QOL. From this it was concluded that patients with advanced PD generate a variety of coping responses to an acute stressor such as surgery, and the use of behavioral strategies, in particular seeking of alternative enjoyable activities, may be associated with better mood if salutary effects are not overwhelmed by less helpful cognitive coping techniques. The minimization of depressive symptomatology, in turn, is associated with better QOL.     

How Do I Treat My Hungry Lion: A Model for Violence Management in Prison

This theoretical model for the management of violence relies on the notion that there are fundamentally only two kinds of prison violence—provoked and unprovoked—and that all violence is caused by the influence of some fear-causing agent which triggers the autonomic nervous system's Fight or Flight Response (FFR) which in turn causes the release of FFR chemicals to create and enable an action potential for violence in the actor. Provoked violence is an act of violence which occurs in response to an FFR instigated by some external, independent contemporaneous, real or imagined fear causing agent. Treating provoked violence must include suppressing the production of an excess of FFR stimulant chemicals, which at the same time employing psychodynamic therapy to modify the negative behavior learned from a lifetime of excessive responses to FFR chemical releases. Unprovoked violence is the result of an actor's addiction to FFR chemicals. This addiction leads the actor to experience an apperceptive compulsion to engage in thrill seeking as a method of exposing himself to fear causing agents that are calculated to cause the release of FFR chemicals. In order to treat unprovoked violence you must treat both the chemical addiction and the negative pattern of behavior which was learned to support the habit of self-triggering an FFR. Thus any successful treatment of violence must employ both energetic and psychodynamic models for development of fear management strategies.