Biomedical subjects

Jane Simpson

Publications and source records attributed to Jane Simpson.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Social support and psychological outcome in people with Parkinson's disease: Evidence for a specific pattern of associations.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between social support and psychological functioning in people with Parkinson's disease. METHOD: 34 participants with idiopathic Parkinson's disease completed a comprehensive range of social support assessments and measures of depression, anxiety, stress, general psychological distress and positive affect. RESULTS: A clear pattern of relationships emerged, with the less satisfaction with social support, the higher the depression, anxiety and stress scores. Conversely, positive affect was related to more quantitative assessments of social support, such as the number of close relationships. CONCLUSION: The relationship between social support and psychological outcome in people with PD is complex. Furthermore, the complexity of this relationship should be addressed in any therapeutic attempts to relieve psychological distress and promote happiness.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Depressive realism and outcome density bias in contingency judgments: the effect of the context and intertrial interval.

The perception of the effectiveness of instrumental actions is influenced by depressed mood. Depressive realism (DR) is the claim that depressed people are particularly accurate in evaluating instrumentality. In two experiments, the authors tested the DR hypothesis using an action-outcome contingency judgment task. DR effects were a function of intertrial interval length and outcome density, suggesting that depressed mood is accompanied by reduced contextual processing rather than increased judgment accuracy. The DR effect was observed only when participants were exposed to extended periods in which no actions or outcomes occurred. This implies that DR may result from an impairment in contextual processing rather than accurate but negative expectations. Therefore, DR is consistent with a cognitive distortion view of depression.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Analogical reasoning in schizophrenic delusions.

PURPOSE: Reasoning ability has often been argued to be impaired in people with schizophrenic delusions, although evidence for this is far from convincing. This experiment examined the analogical reasoning abilities of several groups of patients, including non-deluded and deluded schizophrenics, to test the hypothesis that performance by the deluded schizophrenic group would be impaired. SUBJECTS/MATERIALS: Eleven deluded schizophrenics, 10 depressed subjects, seven non-deluded schizophrenics and 16 matched non-psychiatric controls, who were matched on a number of key variables, were asked to solve an analogical reasoning task. RESULTS: Performance by the deluded schizophrenic group was certainly impaired when compared with the depressed and non-psychiatric control groups though less convincingly so when compared with the non-deluded schizophrenic group. The impairment shown by the deluded schizophrenic group seemed to occur at the initial stage of the reasoning task. DISCUSSION: The particular type of impairment shown by the deluded subjects was assessed in relation to other cognitive problems already researched and the implications of these problems on reasoning tasks and theories of delusions was discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Elasticity and confabulation in schizophrenic delusions.

BACKGROUND: This experiment examines two aspects of delusional cognition that have been reported clinically but not investigated empirically. These are the incorporation of potentially conflicting information into the recall of delusion-related scripts and the type and amount of material produced additional to that presented for recall, referred to here as confabulation. METHODS: Three groups of patients--deluded schizophrenics, non-deluded schizophrenics and matched non-psychiatric controls--were asked to recall two 15-item scripts, which comprised 10 typical and five atypical components. It was hypothesized that deluded subjects whose delusion was relevant to one of the scripts would recall more of the atypical components of the script and would also be less likely to make script-atypical confabulations in the recall of this particular script. RESULTS: Recall was assessed for the amount and type of content remembered and the amount and type of confabulation. The results did not support the hypothesis that atypical items would be incorporated into the recall of delusion-relevant material. However, deluded subjects did retain their schema boundaries in the recall of script items relevant to their own delusion but were less able to adhere to a script framework in the recall of material unrelated to their delusion. CONCLUSIONS: These results are discussed within a schema specific account of delusions, which conceptualizes the delusion as an overused schema whose preferential use leads to a failure to develop other scripts but whose own contents remain well-defined.

Adult↗