Biomedical subjects

Grazia Ceschi

Publications and source records attributed to Grazia Ceschi.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Which dimensions of impulsivity are related to cigarette craving?

Cigarette smoking is a very important health problem and represents the largest preventable risk factor for premature death in developed countries. A considerable body of research indicates that impulsivity is a central etiological concept in many theoretical models of tobacco addiction. The aim of this study is to analyse which dimensions of impulsivity are related to cigarette craving. To this end, 40 undergraduate psychology students were screened using the revised Questionnaire on Smoking Urges (QSU-12) and the French adaptation of the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale (UPPS). This scale identifies four distinct components associated with impulsive behaviour: urgency, lack of premeditation, lack of perseverance, and sensation seeking. The results showed that urgency is a significant predictor of tobacco cravings, while depression and anxiety are not.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Reality monitoring and motor memory in checking-prone individuals.

Studies concerning reality monitoring and motor memory abilities in checkers have provided mixed results. The aim of this study was to re-examine this question by asking 75 undergraduate students to perform, watch the experimenter perform, imagine themselves performing, imagine the experimenter performing, or verbally repeat different daily actions. Two groups were created (checking-prone and nonchecking-prone subjects) based on participants' checking subscores on the revised version of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory. First, results suggested that checking-prone subjects have a poorer motor memory than nonchecking-prone participants. Second, our data indicated that checking-prone participants confused actions they had performed with actions the experimenter had performed more often than nonchecking-prone participants. In other words, checking-prone participants remembered events from an observer's viewpoint. Finally, our findings suggest that dissociation could be a mediating variable between some of the reality monitoring abilities and checking.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Controlled and automatic uses of memory in depressed patients: effect of retention interval lengths.

The present study examines controlled and automatic uses of memory in clinically depressed patients by applying the Process Dissociation Procedure developed by Jacoby (1991) to a stem completion memory task with short and long retention intervals. The results show that the contribution of controlled processes is lower in depressed patients than in controls, especially for the longest retention interval, whereas the contribution of automatic processes is equivalent in both groups and unaffected by the length of the retention interval. These findings are discussed in a cognitive control framework.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Investigation of response inhibition in obsessive-compulsive disorder using the Hayling task.

This study investigates response inhibition deficits in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by using the Hayling task. Sixteen OCD washers, 16 OCD checkers, 16 social phobic patients and 16 nonanxious controls were asked to complete sentences with either the expected word (section A: "initiation") or an unrelated word (section B: "inhibition"). The groups did not differ in terms of section B minus section A latencies. However, OCD washers and checkers made significantly more errors (sentence-related responses) in section B than social phobic patients and controls. In the OCD patients, the frequency of these errors correlates with the total OCD severity score and the compulsion subscore, but not with the depression and anxiety scores. These findings suggest that OCD patients might present a specific deficit affecting the inhibition of a prepotent response.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Further exploration memory bias in compulsive washers.

The aim of the present study was to replicate Radomsky and Rachman's findings on memory bias in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), using the same procedure but an increased sample size, more specific control groups, and a full analysis of contamination attribution data. Sixteen OCD-washers, 16 OCD-checkers, 16 social phobic patients and 16 non-anxious controls were presented with 50 'clean' or 'dirty' objects. After this incidental encoding phase, participants were asked to freely recall the objects, to rate their anxiety when almost touching each object, and, finally, to attribute each object to one of the two contamination conditions ('clean' or 'dirty'). Verbal episodic memory was also assessed with the California Verbal Learning Test. The results indicate that, contrary to Radomsky and Rachman's findings, OCD-washers did not differ from the other participants in their memory for 'clean' and 'dirty' objects. However, the OCD-washers recalled more accurately the 'dirty' source of contamination than the 'clean' source. This result was specific to the OCD-washers, and suggests a memory bias for contextually threatening information. The differences between our findings and those published by Radomsky and Rachman's are discussed.

Adult↗