PubMed HealthSearch

Biomedical subjects

C P Garbin

Publications and source records attributed to C P Garbin.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

Dispelling the stigma of schizophrenia: what sort of information is best?

This study investigated what type of information reduces stigmatization of schizophrenia. Subjects were presented with one of six varying descriptions of a hypothetical case in which a target individual had recovered from a mental disorder. Subjects were asked if they knew someone with a mental illness. Those individuals who had no previous contact perceived the mentally ill as dangerous and chose to maintain a greater social distance from them. In general, knowledge of the symptoms associated with the acute phase of schizophrenia created more stigma than the label of schizophrenia alone. In contrast, more information about the target individuals post-treatment living arrangements (i.e., supervised care) reduced negative judgments. Implications for public education and future research are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living

Histological evaluation of interleukin-1 beta and collagen in gingival tissue from untreated adult periodontitis.

Interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta) may be related to the pathological processes associated with periodontitis, primarily due to its ability to induce collagenase, increase neutrophil chemotaxis, and stimulate bone resorption. This study was designed to histologically quantitate IL-1 beta positive cells from various histologic fields in untreated gingivitis/early periodontitis (G/EP) versus moderate/severe periodontitis (M/SP) gingival tissues, and associate these with collagen loss. Two gingival biopsies from 8 patients were collected, one from a G/EP site and one from a M/SP site. Mouse monoclonal antibodies in combination with an avidin-biotin-peroxidase system were used to stain for IL-1 beta, while the van Gieson method was used to stain for collagen in serial sections. Collagen loss in G/EP (35%) and M/SP (52%) fields was consistent with gingivitis and periodontitis, respectively. IL-1 beta positive cells in combined coronal/sulcular (Co/Su) and apical/sulcular (Ap/Su) fields (nearest the bacterial insult) were significantly more numerous compared to combined coronal/middle (Co/Mi) and apical/middle (Ap/Mi) fields (p < 0.05). While numbers and percentages of IL-1 beta positive cells were generally higher in M/SP biopsies, differences were not significant. Further, there was no correlation between the number of IL-1 beta positive cells and percent collagen loss. However, a significant correlation between IL-1 beta positive cells and corresponding gingival crevicular fluid IL-1 beta concentrations was noted (r = 0.65, p = 0.01). Through the use of immunohistochemistry, this study demonstrated that the presence of IL-1 beta + cells does not appear to have a direct association with collagen loss.

Adult

Cross-gender perceptions of facial attributes and their relation to attractiveness: do we see them differently than they see us?

Examination of perceptions of human facial attributes revealed that individual attributes are similarly perceived by males and females. However, patterns of attribute interrelationships differ as a function of gender of the face. Undergraduate students (N = 280) rated pictures of 40 male or female Caucasians on 12 physical attributes (e.g., nose size, face width) and overall attractiveness. The four sets of attribute ratings (defined by rater gender and picture gender) were submitted to principal components analyses, and five-factor solutions were found for each condition (accounting for about 76% of the variance). Comparisons of the four component solutions using confirmatory factor procedures revealed that male and female raters share one factor structure when rating photographs of female faces and another factor structure when rating photographs of male faces. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the patterns of attribute interrelationships were not "perceptual units" in the perception of attractiveness, and that different "rules" are used to assess the attractiveness of male and female stimuli faces. The importance of these results for models of facial attractiveness and interfacial similarity judgements are discussed.

Attention

Visual-touch perceptual equivalence for shape information in children and adults.

Although there has been substantial developmental research which has compared shape information processing performance under visual and touch conditions, there has been little work that bears on the shape attributes that are routinely employed, or on the similarity between shape attributes employed by adults and those employed by children. The present research was carried out to investigate the visual-touch perceptual equivalence of young children, using multidimensional scaling techniques, and to compare the visual and touch perceptual structures of this age group with those of adults. The results provide evidence for adult-like perceptions of shape among 6-year-olds, in terms of both the patterns of interstimulus similarities and the shape attributes attended to by children using each modality. In addition, it was found that children have somewhat more visual-touch perceptual equivalence than adults do.

Attention

Cognitive abnormalities in schizophrenic patients and schizotypal college students.

Twenty schizotypal college students, identified by the MMPI-168, were compared with 127 institutionalized or postinstitutional psychiatric patients with chronic schizophrenia, 140 normal control subjects, and 19 students with nonschizotypal MMPI elevations. The comparison measures were indices of cognition derived from COGLAB, a multiparadigmatic cognitive test battery. COGLAB includes measures of preattentional, attentional, conceptual, and psychomotor performance. As expected, the patients were deficient on all but one of the measures. The nonschizotypic elevation group was not different from the normal control group. Schizotypal subjects were found to have deficits in three areas of information processing: preattentional processing, response biasing, and concept attainment and manipulation. However, their performance was just as good as and less variable than that of normal subjects on psychomotor and attentional tasks. The results do not support the hypothesis that schizotypy is characterized by pervasive cognitive deficits which are simply less severe than those of other psychiatric groups. Rather, there are discrete deficits in specific areas and possibly compensatory abnormalities associated with primary deficits. The results are further discussed with regard to the hypothesis that schizotypy shares a common neurophysiological and/or developmental substrate with more severe psychiatric disorders.

Analysis of Variance

Visual-haptic perceptual nonequivalence for shape information and its impact upon cross-modal performance.

The issues of visual-haptic perceptual equivalence and the impact of nonequivalence upon cross-modal performance were explored. A measure of cross-modal nonequivalence was developed from multidimensional scaling models of the perceptual structures of 24 nonrepresentative three-dimensional stimuli. In Experiment 1 the visual and haptic perceptual structures and measures of cross-modal nonequivalence were shown to be replicable. Experiments 2 and 3 employed sets of stimuli selected as cross modally similar or dissimilar (based upon the results of Experiment 1) and tested the impact of perceptual nonequivalence upon cross-modal performance with shape information. The experiments used somewhat different tasks and produced converging results. There was poorer cross-modal performance when cross modally dissimilar stimuli were involved than when only cross modally similar stimuli were involved, but there was no such pattern for intramodal performance. The findings are related to the theoretical notions of perceptual equivalence (Gibson, 1966; Marks, 1978) and the theoretical and practical importance of understanding the perceptual properties of stimuli used in cognitive tasks (Garner, 1970; Monahan & Lockhead, 1970).

Form Perception

Invariance in the MMPI's component structure.

Bernstein and Garbin (1985b) suggested that the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory's major clinical scales (excluding Scales ? and 5) can be approximated by an oblique three-component structure: (a) Profile Elevation, (b) Test-taking Attitudes, and (c) Optimism-Pessimism, collectively termed the salient weight model. In this study, we found that both this model and the MMPI's principal component structure remain invariant across race, sex, and, as previously noted, context of testing (job applicants vs. inmates in correctional institutions). We further noted that several alternative definitions of Profile Elevation provide equally satisfactory representation of the relations among the scales. This factor invariance is necessary, but not sufficient, for the MMPI to be viewed as unbiased.

Adult

Behavioral effects of pergolide mesylate on food intake and body weight.

In a crossover design experiment, pergolide mesylate significantly suppressed food intake and body weight in spayed female rats. Inhibition of food intake by a constant dose of pergolide progressively diminished with repeated administrations. Pergolide continued to suppress body weight with no indications of tolerance. When pergolide was discontinued, body weight increased sufficiently to compensate for the loss and failure to gain during drug treatment. A second experiment investigated the observation that animals injected first with vehicle showed greater anorexia when subsequently injected with pergolide than did animals injected first with pergolide. In addition, tolerance was further assessed by administering on two occasions a higher dose of pergolide. Following chronic pergolide treatment, this dose was insufficient to reinstate anorexia; however, after a period of abstinence, this dose produced anorexia comparable to that observed at the beginning of pergolide treatment. Due to pergolide mesylate's action as a postsynaptic dopamine agonist, a dopaminergic neural system is implicated in pergolide induced anorexia.

Animals