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Biomedical subjects

F R Ferraro

Publications and source records attributed to F R Ferraro.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1997

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome dementia complex.

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has become an epidemic in the United States. AIDS dementia complex (ADC) is a neurological dysfunction which has been indicated in 25-90% of AIDS patients, 30-40% of HIV-infected patients, and may be the only presenting manifestation of AIDS. Researchers have investigated many aspects of ADC including clinical features, etiology, epidemiology and prevalence, diagnosis (psychological parameters and laboratory investigations such as CSF, EEG, CT, MRI, PET, and ERP), assessment, neurological features (including neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological measures, and neuropathology), prognosis, and treatment. The research is controversial, complex, and contradictory. A discussion of the many areas of ADC and many hypotheses will be included.

AIDS Dementia Complex↗
PubMed1997

Do individuals at risk for eating disorders exhibit negative priming deficits?

Fifty people (25 at risk for an eating disorder, 25 controls) performed a simple reaction-time (SRT) task and a negative-priming (NP) task. The two groups did not differ on the SRT task. For the NP task, the controls displayed the NP effect (responses on critical trials were slower than responses on control trials). At-risk participants, however, revealed no such NP effect. Although the pattern of NP performance in the at-risk participants may indicate that they as a group had deficiencies in their ability to inhibit irrelevant information, it is also possible that issues related to obsessionality, perfectionism, and restraint in the at-risk group affected the results.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Tools for assessing chronic pain in rural elderly women.

Assessing chronic pain in rural elderly women is critical in providing pain relief in home care patients. Findings from this study identified the Pain Thermometer as the best indicator of pain in rural elderly women. In addition, the Pain Thermometer is easy for the home health nurse to use with elderly women experiencing pain.

Aged↗
PubMed1997

Stimulus size effects in Boston naming test performance in younger and older adults.

Thirty undergraduates and 31 older adults named the Boston Naming Test (BNT) stimulus pictures. Across younger and older participants, all 60 BNT pictures were presented in their standard size, in sizes 1.5 times larger than standard, and in sizes 1.5 times smaller than standard. BNT picture size had no effect on naming performance accuracy.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1996

Failure to inhibit irrelevant information in non-clinical schizotypal individuals.

The present study compared negative priming performance in a non-clinical sample of individuals based on their schizotypal personality scale (STA) scores. There were 13 High STA and 19 Low STA individuals. High, but not Low, STA individuals displayed deficient negative priming, replicating previous findings. Converging evidence for this claim was observed in the correlation between negative priming and STA score, r = -.64, p < .01, supporting the notion that individuals with high STA scores exhibit an inability to adequately inhibit irrelevant information. Both groups did not differ on a simple reaction time control task, ruling out the possibility that observed negative priming differences across groups were the result of a simple motor reaction time difference.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Preliminary normative data on the Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (GDS-SF) in a young adult sample.

As part of a larger cognitive neuropsychological study, a total of 559 consecutive undergraduates aged 17-30 years completed the shortened form (15 Yes/No items) of the self-report Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (GDS-SF). Approximately 22 individuals (or 4% of the total) obtained a GDS score that was indicative of "probable" depression (i.e., a score of 6 or higher, up to 15). Small but highly significant correlations (all p's < .01) were obtained between GDS-SF and age, education, and self-rated health. Fifty-one additional undergraduates from the same population were given the GDS-SF and the Beck Depression Inventory together, and the resulting correlation coefficient between these two scores was r = .84 (p < .01), thereby establishing concurrent validity of GDS-SF performance with another well-validated and reliable measure of depression in this age group.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Cognitive slowing in closed-head injury.

Mean response times (RTs) from a sample of 13 simple- and choice-reaction time studies (which included 353 Closed-Head Injury (CHI) subjects at various stages of injury and 329 Control, non-CHI, subjects; mean age of both groups, approximately 28 years) were analyzed using Brinley Plot/multiple regression analysis techniques to provide support for the observation that CHI results in a slowing of basic cognitive information processing. Across 101 experimental conditions, the best-fit equation that resulted from regressing the CHI data onto the Control data for matched conditions was Y(CHI)=1.54X(control)-59, and this specific regression equation accounted for approximately 89% of the variance (based on R2). These results suggest that the basic cognition processes involved in simple- and choice-reaction time performance were approximately 1.54 times slower in CHI individuals in this sample as compared to non-CHI individuals. This pattern of performance substantiates the observation the CHI results in a slowing of even very basic cognition information processes.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Allocation of attention during word recognition by good and poor readers.

The current study investigated differences in allocation of attention between good and poor readers, using dual-task methodology. For 54 undergraduates classified as Good Readers and 54 classified as Poor Readers, based on their Nelson-Denny reading comprehension scores, significant main effects and interactions were found for word frequency, lexicality, and stimulus onset asynchrony, but no significant group differences (either in the form of main effects or interaction effects) were found between Good and Poor Readers. Possible explanations include task demands in the conditions and speed-accuracy trade-offs made by some subjects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Implicit memory of nonclinical schizotypal individuals.

In the present study a form of implicit memory performance was examined by employing the serial reaction-time paradigm with a nonclinical sample of 22 hypothetically schizotypal college students and 22 nonschizotypal college students. The formation of new associations was tested; analysis showed no difference between these two groups on this measure of implicit memory.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

An exercise for increasing students' understanding of life-span developmental psychology.

During the first week of a class in developmental psychology, students listed 5 to 7 characteristics they believed represent life-span developmental characteristics for the categories of infants, young children, adolescents, middle-aged adults, and older adults. Students retained their lists which were referred to during discussion throughout the course. Students reported this activity increased their understanding of topics central to life-span developmental psychology.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

On the preservation of syntax in Alzheimer's disease. Evidence from written sentences.

We examined the syntactic complexity of single written sentences elicited from 368 adults undergoing examination for possible Alzheimer's disease. The clause length and composition of the sentences varied with the severity of dementia. The nondemented adults' sentences contained more propositions, main and secondary verbs, and conjunctions than those produced by the mildly and moderately demented adults. Sentence length in clauses, propositional content, and the use of conjunctions and main and secondary verbs discriminated among stages of the severity of the disease. The present results suggest that, while dementia severity affects written linguistic output, such output is, nonetheless, grammatic and coherent.

Aged↗
PubMed1993

Implicit memory and the formation of new associations in nondemented Parkinson's disease individuals and individuals with senile dementia of the Alzheimer type: a serial reaction time (SRT) investigation.

Using the serial reaction time (SRT) task developed by Nissen and Bullemer (1987, Cognitive Psychology, 19, 1-32), implicit memory performance was examined in four groups of subjects: nondemented healthy aged individuals; nondemented Parkinson's disease individuals; very mildly demented senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) individuals; and mildly demented SDAT individuals. The SRT task involved four blocks of a repeated 10-item keypress sequence that tapped general skill development along with a fifth block of a nonrepeated sequence that presumably reflected the impact of switching from a learned set of associations (developed during the first four blocks) to a novel sequence. The increase in response latency from the fourth repeated block to the fifth nonrepeated block was used as the reflection of implicit learning. The results revealed preserved implicit memory performance in the very mildly demented individuals compared to that of the age-matched control individuals. However, the mildly demented SDAT individuals and the nondemented Parkinson's disease individuals showed reliably less implicit learning, compared to the age-matched control individuals. Differences between the past studies using the SRT task to tap implicit memory performance in SDAT individuals and the present study are discussed in some detail. We conclude that nondemented Parkinson's disease individuals and mildly demented SDAT individuals produce some deficit in the formation of new associations in implicit memory, as measured by the SRT task.

Aged↗
PubMed1993

Large-scale demonstration experiment of mental imagery ability.

The present article describes a demonstration experiment used in a large introductory psychology class pertaining to mental imagery ability. The experiment is effective in providing a concrete instance of mental imagery as well as an effective discussion regarding individual differences and gender differences in imagery ability.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

General slowing in semantic priming and word recognition.

Analyses of lexical decision studies revealed that (a) older (O) adults' mean semantic priming effect was 1.44 times that of younger (Y) adults, (b) regression lines describing the relations between older and younger adults' latencies in related (O = 1.54 Y-112 and unrelated conditions (O = 1.50 Y-93) were not significantly different, and (c) that there was a proportional relation between older and younger adults' priming effects (O = 1.48 Y-2). Analyses of word-naming studies yielded similar results. Analyses of delayed pronunciation data (Balota & Duchek, 1988) revealed that word recognition was 1.47 times slower in older adults, whereas older adults' output processes were only 1.26 times slower. Overall, analyses of whole latencies and durations of component processes provide converging evidence for a general slowing factor of approximately 1.5 for lexical information processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Age-related changes in the effects of target orientation on word recognition.

Twenty-four undergraduates and 24 retired faculty participated in an experiment involving semantic priming of lexical decisions. Age-related differences in the use of semantic information during visual word recognition were examined at varying orientations of the target word. Four main results were found: (1) larger rotation effects for elderly adults; (2) larger priming effects for elderly adults; (3) larger priming effects with increasing Target Orientation; and (4) larger priming effects for the elderly adults as Target Orientation increased. Results are interpreted within an interactive-compensatory framework.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Paired associate learning in senile dementia of the Alzheimer type.

A study was conducted to examine the potential explicit learning ability in senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) as a function of (1) the difficulty of the to-be-remembered material and (2) the severity of the dementia. The Associate Learning task from the Wechsler Memory Scale was administered to healthy older adults and individuals with questionable, mild, and moderate SDAT. Individuals with SDAT showed poorer learning performance across trials than healthy older adults. Individuals with questionable and mild SDAT did show evidence for learning across trials for highly related paired associates. For unrelated-paired associates, however, only individuals with questionable SDAT showed some evidence for increased learning across trials.

Alzheimer Disease↗