Biomedical subjects

M L Glisky

Publications and source records attributed to M L Glisky.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

New procedures to assess executive functions in preschool children.

Executive functions are difficult to assess in preschool children, yet the preschool period is particularly important, both in the development of behavioral control and of the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex. Several tasks were adapted from developmental and neuroscience literature and then administered to 98 preschool children (30-, 36-, 42-, 48- and 60-month age groups). Executive function task performance was related largely to age group, but not to sex or intelligence. These tasks, then, were sensitive in this age range and may be useful to delineate distinct cognitive profiles among preschool children with various neurological and developmental disorders.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1999

Executive functioning in preschool children: performance on A-not-B and other delayed response format tasks.

The A-not-B (AB) task has been hypothesized to measure executive/frontal lobe function; however, the developmental and measurement characteristics of this task have not been investigated. Performances on AB and comparison tasks adapted from developmental and neuroscience literature was examined in 117 preschool children (ages 23-66 months). Age significantly predicted performance on AB, Delayed Alternation, Spatial Reversal, Color Reversal, and Self-Control tasks. A four-factor analytic model best fit task performance data. AB task indices loaded on two factors with measures from the Self-Control and Delayed Alternation tasks, respectively. AB indices did not load with those from the reversal tasks despite similarities in task administration and presumed cognitive demand (working memory). These results indicate that AB is sensitive to individual differences in age-related performance in preschool children and suggest that AB performance is related to both working memory and inhibition processes in this age range.

Child↗

PubMed1998

Dissociation between verbal and autonomic measures of memory following frontal lobe damage.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to contrast overt verbal versus covert autonomic responses to facial stimuli in a patient with false recognition following frontal lobe damage. BACKGROUND: False recognition has been linked to frontal lobe dysfunction. However, previous studies have relied exclusively on overt measures of memory and have not examined whether or not patients with false recognition continue to demonstrate preserved covert discrimination of familiar and unfamiliar items. METHODS: We recorded skin conductance responses (SCRs) in a patient with frontal lobe damage and in normal control subjects while they performed a familiarity decision task using famous and unfamiliar faces as stimuli. RESULTS: Patient J.S. produced significantly more overt false recognition errors and misidentifications in response to unfamiliar faces than control subjects. However, similar to the control subjects, he showed accurate covert autonomic discrimination of truly familiar faces from unfamiliar ones. Furthermore, SCRs to falsely recognized unfamiliar faces were not significantly different from SCRs generated to unfamiliar faces that J.S. correctly rejected. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide further neuropsychological evidence that overt and covert forms of face recognition memory are dissociable. In addition, the failure to detect an autonomic correlate for the false recognition errors and misidentifications in J.S. suggests that these memory distortions were not related to the spurious activation of stored memory representations for specific familiar faces. Instead, these incorrect responses may have been driven by the sense of familiarity evoked by novel faces that had a general resemblance to faces encountered previously. We propose that false recognition in J.S. resulted from the breakdown of strategic frontal memory retrieval, monitoring, and decision functions critical for attributing the experience of familiarity to its appropriate source.

Aneurysm, Ruptured↗

PubMed1996

False recognition of unfamiliar faces following right hemisphere damage: neuropsychological and anatomical observations.

False recognition of unfamiliar faces was investigated in patients with focal right hemisphere damage (RHD) in order to define the neuropsychological and anatomical correlates of the recognition impairment and examine its relationship to prosopagnosia. Findings are discussed within the framework of the Bruce and Young (1986) model of face processing. Although false recognition and prosopagnosia were both present in some RHD patients, the two types of face recognition impairments were dissociable in others. Processing deficits in subjects with both false recognition and prosopagnosia were associated with posterior right hemisphere lesion sites and included severe face perception impairment and partial damage to face recognition units (FRUs). Prosopagnosia without false recognition was seen following near complete destruction of FRUs, but this type of dissociation could also occur when FRUs become disconnected. The opposite dissociation, false recognition without prosopagnosia, was observed following right prefrontal damage. We propose that false recognition in frontal patients results from the breakdown of strategic decision making and monitoring functions critical for determining whether a face is indeed that of a familiar person or whether there is merely a resemblance to a known individual. False recognition following prefrontal damage may also be related to confabulation, in which case familiarity or even specific identity are erroneously attributed to facial stimuli without the activation of an underlying memory representation.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Hypnotizability and mental imagery.

Two studies investigated the relationship between mental imagery and hypnotizability, with the imagery measures administered in a hypnotic context. The correlation of hypnotizability with vividness of imagery was significant in one study, but not in the other; both correlations were significantly lower than that obtained between hypnotizability and absorption, assessed in the same samples. The correlations with control of visual imagery, and with various measures of the vividness of motor imagery, were even lower and rarely significant. Except for an aggregate index of motor imagery, a search for significant nonlinear relationships with hypnotizability yielded nothing that was consistent across studies. Future studies of imagery and hypnotizability should make use of better measures of vividness of mental imagery and consider the relevance of aspects of imagery other than vividness.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Dissociative tendencies and dissociative disorders.

Although dissociative disorders are relatively rare, dissociative experiences are rather common in everyday life. Dissociative tendencies appear to be modestly related to other dimensions of personality, such as hypnotizability, absorption, fantasy proneness, and some facets of openness to experience. These dispositional variables may constitute diathesis, or risk factors, for dissociative psychopathology, but more complex models relating personality to psychopathology may be more appropriate. The dissociative disorders raise fundamental questions about the nature of self and identity and the role of consciousness and autobiographical memory in the continuity of personality.

Dissociative Disorders↗

PubMed1993

Hypnotizability and facets of openness.

Absorption, a correlate of hypnotizability, is related to a broader dimension of openness to experience, one construal of the "Big Five" structure of personality. But openness itself is very heterogeneous, and some of its facets may be unrelated to hypnotizability. A total of 651 subjects completed a questionnaire measuring three different aspects of openness--absorption, intellectance, and liberalism--before receiving the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A. The three dimensions were only modestly related to each other, and only absorption was significantly related to hypnotizability. Adding intellectance and liberalism to absorption did not enhance the prediction of hypnotizability. The results indicate that the various facets of openness are rather different from each other and that the "Big Five" structure may need to be expanded. Absorption and hypnosis share a kind of imaginative involvement that is not necessarily part of other kinds of openness, such as intellectance and liberalism.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1992

Mental images can be ambiguous: reconstruals and reference-frame reversals.

Philosophers and psychologists have debated whether or not mental images of ambiguous figures are reversible as pictures of such figures are. Previously, empirical evidence both pro (Finke, Pinker, & Farah, 1989) and con (Chambers & Reisberg, 1985) has been obtained. In a series of four experiments, we identify the conditions under which images of classic ambiguous figures like the duck/rabbit and the snail/elephant are reversible. We distinguish between two types of reversal: those that entail a change in reference-frame specification as well as a reconstrual of image components (reference-frame realignments) and those that entail reconstruals only (reconstruals). We show that reference-frame realignments can occur in imagery, particularly if observers are given an explicit or an implicit suggestion; and that reconstruals of images occur commonly, regardless of experimental conditions. In addition, we show that images constructed from good parts are more likely to reverse than images constructed from poor parts. On the basis of these results, we propose a functional organization of shape memory that is consistent with shape recognition findings as well as with our reversal findings.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Absorption, openness to experience, and hypnotizability.

Absorption, a correlate of hypnotizability, is conceptually related to openness to experience. Study 1 found no evidence that gender moderated the correlation between absorption and hypnotizability, or of nonlinear trends. Study 2 showed that openness was factorially complex, and that absorption was related to imaginative involvement, but not to social-political liberalism. Study 3 found small quadratic trends in the relations between these variables and hypnotizability; hypnotizability was related to imaginative involvement, but not liberalism. Study 4 confirmed differential correlations between absorption subscales and hypnotizability but failed to confirm the nonlinear trends. Implications for future studies of the correlates of hypnotizability, and for the nature of the "fifth factor" in personality structure, are discussed.

Adult↗