Biomedical subjects

B R Rund

Publications and source records attributed to B R Rund.

44 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

PubMed1990

Fully recovered schizophrenics: a retrospective study of some premorbid and treatment factors.

The present study is an exploratory, retrospective examination of 10 schizophrenics who have fully recovered. The subjects were recruited through an inquiry to approximately 100 clinical psychologists and psychiatrists working in two mental hospitals in the Oslo area. These (previous) patients did not fulfill the criteria of a schizophrenia diagnosis at the time but had done so earlier. Further, they had not been admitted to a mental hospital during the last 3 years, had psychosocial functioning that could be called "normal, or nearly normal," and were not on neuroleptic drugs or were on only a low-dose level. The principal questions that were asked were: Do schizophrenics who fully recover have anything in common with respect to premorbid adjustment, family interaction, hospitalization, or treatment? Further, is psychotherapy an absolute precondition for full recovery? These questions were examined using a semistructured interview. The results showed that the age of debut of illness averaged 20 years and most of the patients had a fairly good premorbid psychosocial adjustment. Problematic nurturance during childhood was a factor in many of the interviews. Eight patients had been in psychotherapy and attached great importance to it. Religious belief and psychological support from the spouse were also considered important for recovery. The sample includes three "star cases," one of which is presented thoroughly.

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PubMed1990

Information processing: a new model for understanding cognitive disturbances in psychiatric patients.

Information processing models are influenced by the information sciences and by computer technology, which progressed in the 1960s and 1970s. During the last decade these models have formed the theoretical basis for much of the experimental research on cognitive dysfunctions in psychiatric patients. An essential element in all of these models is that information is processed in several discrete stages. Different experimental paradigms have been developed in order to tap information about the processes taking place in each of these stages. Most of the research so far on pathological groups has been done on schizophrenic patients. Some deficits found in schizophrenics seem to be symptom-related. This is the case with performance deficits on the Continuous Performance Test with low processing load. Other dysfunctions might be vulnerability indicators, such as deficit performance on the forced choice Span of Apprehension task and the Continuous Performance Test with high momentary processing load, backward masking, serial recall for items that involve active rehearsal, and eye movement dysfunctions. However, information processing deficits do not seem to be specifically related to schizophrenia. Deficits can be found in other psychiatric syndromes too, especially in manic patients. Generally speaking, the dysfunctions emerge in a milder form in nonschizophrenic patients.

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PubMed1988

Cognitive disturbances in schizophrenics: what are they, and what is their origin?

Cognitive disorders are neither a unique nor a constant phenomenon in schizophrenia. Among the dysfunctions that may be observed at times, primarily during acute phases and in patients with a non-paranoid symptomatology, certain disturbances in attention-focusing and information processing seem to be most conspicuous. Some of these cognitive dysfunctions may have been transmitted from parent(s) to the patient, either genetically or through simple forms of learning. the empirical evidence for this assumption is to be found in the fact that some of the same cognitive deficits as those found in schizophrenic patients also found in their first-degree relatives, although usually in a milder form. Other forms of cognitive dysfunction may have developed as complementary strategies in response to communication deviances and cognitive behavior found in their parents. A developmental model, in which genetic, physiological and environmental factors are included is described as a way of illustrating how predisposing factors, as well as intermediating and stress factors, contribute to the debut and maintenance of cognitive disorders in schizophrenics.

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PubMed1986

Communication deviances in parents of schizophrenics.

In an attempt to make a multimethod assessment of communication deviance in parents of schizophrenics, a communication conflict situation (CCS) and the TAT were used to obtain qualitative and quantitative measures of communication for a sample of 50 parental couples, 21 of which were parents of schizophrenics, 9 were parents of nonpsychotic psychiatric patients, and 20 were parents of normals. The results were a general confirmation of earlier reports that communication deviance is an outstanding characteristic in families with a schizophrenic offspring. The most important finding, however, was that parents of paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics score very differently on a majority of the communication variables. Parents of nonparanoid schizophrenics form one extreme on a continuum of communication deviance, and parents of paranoid schizophrenics and normals the other. Egocentrism, measured by CCS, turned out to be the single qualitative variable with best discriminating power across all groups.

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PubMed1986

Schizophrenic patients and their parents. A multimethod design and the findings from an illustrative empirical study of cognitive disorders and communication deviances.

The research design and main findings from a multimethod research project, in which cognitive disorders in schizophrenic patients and communication deviances in their parents were examined, are presented. Non-paranoid schizophrenics manifested cognitive disturbances on a majority of the variables examined, while paranoid schizophrenics did not. Likewise, parents of non-paranoid schizophrenics revealed significantly more communication deviance than parents of paranoid schizophrenics as well as the control groups (normal and "neurotics"). Egocentrism appeared to be a prominent characteristic of the communication of non-paranoid schizophrenics' parents. Conspicuous among the cognitive deficits in their offspring were attentional disturbances. Support for the existence of a link between the parents' communication and the offsprings' cognitive functioning was found by correlation- and regression analyses.

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PubMedDate not supplied

The effect of distraction on focal attention in paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenic patients compared to normals and non-psychotic psychiatric patients.

Previous research comparing the performance of schizophrenics and normals in neutral and distractor conditions has indicated that schizophrenics are more vulnerable to distraction. The present study was designed to clarify whether schizophrenics are more distractible than normals and non-psychotic psychiatric patients when the distractor conditions are matched with the neutral conditions for discriminating power and to determine whether paranoid and non-paranoid paranoid schizophrenics, eight non-psychotic psychiatric patients, and 20 normals were tested using neutral and distractor digit-span tests. The results do not support the hypothesis of a differential deviation in all schizophrenics with respect to distractibility. However, significant differences were found between paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenics; the paranoid, in contrast to the non-paranoid schizophrenics, did not appear to be vulnerable to distraction under the conditions of this experiment.

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PubMedDate not supplied

Distractibility and recall capability in schizophrenics. A 4 year longitudinal study of stability in cognitive performance.

Longitudinal study is a well suited, but so far not much used, research strategy to elucidate which cognitive deficits are markers of vulnerability and which are symptom-linked states in schizophrenia. In the present study, 14 schizophrenics, eight non-psychotic psychiatric controls and 20 normals were assessed on recall performance and distractibility twice, at an interval of 4 years. The method was a digit-span test with neutral and distractor condition strings. Results showed that schizophrenics, primarily non-paranoid schizophrenics, were inferior to normals with respect to short-term recall at both instances of assessment, a finding which indicates recall deficiency to be a vulnerability-linked factor in this sub-group of schizophrenics. Paranoid schizophrenics performed better on the distractor strings than on the matched neutral strings at the first assessment, but not at the second. Non-paranoid schizophrenics, as well as the control groups, showed a relatively stable pattern of performance with respect to distractibility. How distracting stimuli are dealt with may thus be a symptom-linked factor in schizophrenia, since most of the paranoid schizophrenics changed symptomatology from the first to the second assessment. The present data cannot, however, be used to draw a definite conclusion on this point.

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PubMedDate not supplied

Attention, communication, and schizophrenia.

The paper starts by drawing the historical lines for and giving an account of the main methods and results from an empirical investigation of cognitive disorders in schizophrenics and communication deviances in their parents. The focus of the report is on the significant correlations that were found between some aspects of parents' style of communication and offsprings' cognitive functioning. On the basis of the empirical study, the relationship between attention and communication is discussed, and the issue of whether attentional processes "change identity" by being embedded in a social context is considered. Furthermore, the influence of deviant communication in parents on attentional processes in offspring is discussed in relation to a main postulate in Vygotsky's theory; namely, that higher mental functions are internalized social relations.

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