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Biomedical subjects

D B Greenfield

Publications and source records attributed to D B Greenfield.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1991

Group differences and individual classification accuracy associated with letter/word oddity problems.

The ability of 27 pairs of mildly mentally retarded and normally achieving 6- through 8-year-old students to apply an oddity rule to an experimental set of letter and word oddity problems was assessed. The mildly retarded group evidenced a markedly lower level of performance on all five experimental oddity problems, but they did evidence successful generalization to oddity arrays that visually were very different from those used in training. High levels (greater than 90%) of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive accuracy, and negative predictive accuracy were observed using only six cards. Only slightly lower (greater than or equal to 85%) values were obtained when using a cut-off score. This subset of six cards is, therefore, an excellent candidate for inclusion in a cognitive preschool screening test being developed for the early detection of children with mild mental retardation.

Achievement↗
PubMed1989

Early assessment of sensorimotor and cognitive development in high-risk infants.

Assessed 88 infants at risk for mental retardation on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and a measure of visual recognition memory at 3 months corrected age. Bayley scales were administered again when the infants were 1-year-old. At 3 months of age the Bayley scales and the measure of visual recognition memory were not significantly correlated. Both measures, however, showed significant correlation to the Bayley scales administered at 1 year of age. Results from regression analyses indicated that each measure at 3 months of age was related to a different source of variance in the 1-year measure. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that at 3 months of age the visual recognition memory measure is a better early window into later cognitive development than the Bayley scales.

Child Development↗
PubMed1989

Classification of normally achieving and mildly mentally retarded students on the basis of their oddity transfer performance.

Forty mildly retarded, 6- through 9-year-old children selected from educable mentally retarded (EMR) classes and 40 normally achieving students of the same age were pretrained on the oddity solution and then given eight different, six-trial oddity transfer problems. A higher level of transfer was associated with the older (8- and 9-year-olds) and with the normally achieving students. The students' performance on the oddity transfer trials was used to classify them into their two respective groups. High levels of classification accuracy were observed in the discriminant function analyses. On both the group comparison and the individual student classifications, all eight oddity types were sensitive to differences between the normally achieving and mildly retarded grade school students.

Child↗
PubMed1986

Perceptual and conceptual variants of the oddity task as a predictor of learning disability.

This paper compares LD and non-LD peers on eight variants of the oddity task. This study is part of a larger programmatic research effort aimed at the development of a screening test to detect preschool children who currently pass existing screening tests but, nonetheless, subsequently experience school failure. The theoretical orientation of this approach is to assess active, ongoing cognitive processing ability. The oddity task, which can be structured to assess such processing ability, was evaluated in the present study as a potential component of this screening test. Consistent with a priori predictions, the data resulted in strong group and developmental differences. Oddity performance increased over age, with the non-LD children performing consistently better than their LD peers at each age. Perceptual and conceptual factors were manipulated across the oddity variations, and both factors contributed to group differences. These results were discussed in relationship to early diagnosis and prognosis for learning disabilities that might result from deficiencies in abstract processing ability.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1985

Facilitating mentally retarded children's relational learning through novelty-familiarity training.

The relationship between novelty-familiarity learning and oddity-matching learning by developmentally young (MA 3 to 6 years) mentally retarded children was investigated. Delayed oddity-matching was shown to be easier to learn than simultaneous oddity-matching. This difference was attributed to the influence of the novelty-familiarity dimension. In a transfer task simultaneous problem performance was higher for subjects initially trained on delayed problems than for subjects initially trained on the identical simultaneous task. Results showed that learning one type of relational problem increases attentional sensitivity to other types of relations, suggesting an efficient training strategy. Finally, data were presented to support the argument that novelty-familiarity and oddity-matching are not simply variants of a common underlying mechanism but differ in an important respect.

Attention↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Development and validation of the Hogan Grief Reaction Checklist.

The purpose of this article is to provide data on a recently developed instrument to measure the multidimensional nature of the bereavement process. In contrast to widely used grief instruments that have been developed using rational methods of instrument construction, the Hogan Grief Reaction Checklist (HGRC) was developed empirically from data collected from bereaved adults who had experienced the death of a loved one. Factor analysis of the HGRC revealed 6 factors in the normal trajectory of the grieving process: Despair, Panic Behavior, Blame and Anger, Detachment, Disorganization, and Personal Growth. Additional data are provided that support reliability and validity of the HGRC as well as its ability to discriminate variability in the grieving process as a function of cause of death and time lapsed since death. Empirical support is also provided for Personal Growth as an integral component of the bereavement process. The article concludes by considering the substantive as well as psychometric findings of this research for such issues as traumatic grief, anticipatory grief, change in the bereaved person's self-schema, and spiritual and existential growth.

Adult↗