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Biomedical subjects

B G Rule

Publications and source records attributed to B G Rule.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Communicative function in patients with questionable Alzheimer's disease.

The communicative skills of patients with questionable Alzheimer's disease (AD) were examined by having patients describe events shown in a silent video cartoon. As anticipated, questionable AD patients provided fewer clauses in their descriptions than did education- and age-matched controls. This finding was independent of differences in word finding ability. More important, the patients failed to describe as many of the thematically important events as did the controls, a difference that affected the overall informativeness of the communication. Even though the patients were sensitive to event importance, there was no evidence of compensation in their descriptions (i.e., a greater concentration of important events). Several interpretations are presented that focus on possible deficits in the pragmatic or semantic systems of language or both as an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease.

Aged↗
PubMed1992

The impact of pacemaker implantation on cognitive functioning in elderly patients.

OBJECTIVE: To describe and quantify the impact of pacemaker implantation on cognitive functioning in the elderly. DESIGN: Prospective case-control, non-randomized trial. Data were collected from clinical and family interviews and from a psychological test battery. SETTING: Pacemaker clinic in a tertiary care hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Nineteen elderly (65+ years) patients undergoing new or replacement pacemaker implantation for dysrhythmias and volunteer controls matched for age, sex, and short Mental Status Questionnaire test results, without dysrhythmia or intervention. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Subjective and clinical impressions based on family interviews; results of psychological test battery before and 6-12 months after pacemaker implantation. RESULTS: Prior to pacemaker implantation, three patients met DSM-III criteria for dementia and two for delirium. Paced patients demonstrated deficiency in immediate memory, language, memory for less structured information, and learning of abstract materials. These deficits were due primarily to the poor performance of patients with complete heart block. Despite clinical and subjective impressions of improvement, there was no change in psychologic test performance subsequent to pacemaker implantation. CONCLUSIONS: Impaired cognitive functioning is not always clinically apparent but appears common in patients with cardiac dysrhythmias; it is not altered 6-12 months after pacemaker implantation.

Aged↗
PubMed1989

Adult age differences in working memory.

Active and passive measures of short-term memory over a large segment of the adult life span were compared. Two hundred twenty-eight volunteers, aged 30 to 99 years, performed the digit span forward and backward task, the Peterson-Peterson task, and a new working memory task in which active manipulation of information is emphasized. Age differences were slight for passive tasks. For the working memory task, significant declines were found between the ages of 60 to 69 and 70+ years. It is suggested that the age differences may be due to a decrease in the flexibility with which processing changes are made.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Laypersons' knowledge about the sequelae of minor head injury and whiplash.

Even minor head injuries can result in the post traumatic syndrome, a symptom complex that includes physical discomfort and sleep, sexual, affective, and memory disturbance. Little is known about the layperson's knowledge of the syndrome but this may influence judgements about malingering and attitudes towards victims of minor head injury. Descriptions of rear-end automobile accidents were presented to two groups. One group (n = 22) rated the likelihood of a variety of physical, affective, cognitive, and distractor (never or rarely reported by trauma victims) symptoms. A second group (n = 21) judged the speed necessary to cause each of the symptoms. The results indicated that highly exaggerated speeds were thought necessary to produce even the most common physical symptoms. Moreover, cognitive symptoms were thought to be no more likely than were distractor symptoms. In contrast, the knowledge about physical symptoms, the effects of loss of consciousness and whiplash versus direct head injuries was consistent with what is known from research literature.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Children's evaluations of retaliatory aggression.

The present study examined how 5-10-year-old children's judgments of retaliation were affected by its severity relative to the initial provocation and by the causal nature of the initial provocation. 72 boys and girls first received information about property-damaging provocations that were portrayed as accidental, foreseeable, justifiably intended, or unjustifiably intended in nature. They were subsequently informed that the victim responded with interpersonal aggression or with a verbal reprimand. Children's perceptions of the causal nature of the provocation and their naughtiness and punishment judgments of the retaliator were assessed. 2 major findings were obtained, both of which were unrelated to age. First, children's perceptions of the initial provocation were more differentiated than has been reported in the past, but these perceptions did not correspond uniformly to the manipulations of causality. Second, although children's evaluations of the retaliator were not an inverse function of their own perceptions of the initial provocation, they did vary systematically according to these perceptions and the extremity of the retaliator's response.

Aggression↗
PubMed1986

Mitigating circumstance information, censure, and aggression.

One hundred men received one of two levels of mitigating circumstance information either before or after being insulted or not insulted by a co-worker. Participants were then provided with an opportunity ostensibly to deliver aversive noise to the co-worker under either high or low social censure conditions. Physiological data and self-report measures revealed that participants who learned of mitigating circumstance information before being provoked exhibited smaller increases in physiological arousal and reported less annoyance than did those who learned of mitigating circumstance information after insult. Aggression data showed that angered participants evaluated their provoker more favorably and retaliated less when they learned of mitigation before rather than after being insulted. These findings supported attribution theory assumptions that mitigating circumstance information known before the provoking incident influences the individual's interpretation of harm, thereby reducing anger and the instigation to aggression. The reduced impact of information on aggression that is acquired after provocation may reflect the provoked individual's shift of attention from cues surrounding harm to a consideration of inhibitory factors for aggression.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Effect on retaliation of causal attributions concerning attack.

In two studies, men were defeated on either 17%, 50%, or 83% of reaction time trials, received aversive noise, and could ostensibly retaliate by delivering shock to their partner. The noise level delivered was described in Experiment 1 as typical of most other people (high consensus) or atypical of most other people (low consensus) and in Experiment 2 as from a partner who knew (high foreseeability) or did not know (low foreseeability) the kind and level of stimulation controlled by the switches delivering reinforcement to the recipient. Hypotheses were based on the notion that retaliation increases as more personal causality is attributed to a provoker and that more personal causality is inferred in highly foreseeable--or low consensus--50% defeat conditions. As expected, greater differences in aggression between high and low consensus and between high and low foreseeability were displayed in the 50% defeat condition than in the other defeat conditions. Anticipated differences in inferences were obtained.

Aggression↗