Autobiographical memory deficits in schizophrenia

This study investigated autobiographical memory processes in a group of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and matched controls. The schizophrenia group displayed an overgeneral style of autobiographical memory retrieval on two widely used measures, and displayed problems retrieving both autobiographical facts and events. They showed a specific impairment in the recall of autobiographical events and facts in early adulthood, around the time of onset of their illness. Retrieval deficits were independent of mood state and premorbid intellectual functioning. The magnitude of the deficits in autobiographical memory retrieval specificity were considerably greater than any general impairments in episodic and working memory.     

Editorial

With the aim of increasing knowledge about processes of change in psychodynamic individual child psychotherapy, sessions that could be called turning points were analysed.     

Short review and book note

John McManners, Death and the enlightenment. Changing attitudes to death among Christians and unbelievers in eighteenth-century France, Oxford University Press 1981, vii + 619 pp. £17.50

Richard Swinburne, Faith and reason, Oxford, The Clarendon Press 1981, 206 pp. £16.00

John Coulson, Religion and imagination, Oxford, The Clarendon Press 1981, 193 pp. £12.50

Irving Hexham, The irony of apartheid, the struggle for national independence of Afrikaner calvinism against British imperialism, New York, Edwin Mellen Press 1981, 239 pp

David Tracy, The analogical imagination, London, SCM Press 1981, xii + 467 pp. £12.50

K. D. Sethna Rutherford, The spirituality of the future, a search apropos of R. C. Zaehner's study in Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin, Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses 1981. 314 pp. $28.50     

Audiovisual integration in noise by children and adults

The aim of this study was to investigate the development of multisensory facilitation in primary school-age children under conditions of auditory noise. Motor reaction times and accuracy were recorded from 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults during auditory, visual, and audiovisual detection tasks. Auditory signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of 30-, 22-, 12-, and 9-dB across the different age groups were compared. Multisensory facilitation was greater in adults than in children, although performance for all age groups was affected by the presence of background noise. It is posited that changes in multisensory facilitation with increased auditory noise may be due to changes in attention bias.