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Biomedical subjects

P Palladino

Publications and source records attributed to P Palladino.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Discourses of smoking, health, and the just society: yesterday, today, and the return of the same?

This paper locates the political impact of Bernie Ecclestone's controversial donation to the Labour Party, just before its election to government in 1997, in a recurrent concern among British socialists about the relationship between smoking, health, and the just society. It does so by turning to an earlier episode in the history of British socialism, specifically to Horace Joules' political agitation from 1951 onward, within the Socialist Medical Association, advisory committees to the Ministry of Health, and the British popular and medical press, for government action against smoking. The argument is that the association of concerns over smoking, health and the making of a just society is rooted in aspirations to Christian community that were and continue to be fundamentally important in the development of British socialism. Smoking has been viewed and continues to be viewed as incompatible with this understanding of community because it is the ultimate consumer good, refractory to any discourse of utility and responsibility.

Government↗
PubMed2001

Working memory and updating processes in reading comprehension.

In this study, we examine the relation between reading comprehension ability and success in working memory updating tasks. Groups of poor and good comprehenders, matched for logical reasoning ability, but different in reading comprehension ability, were administered various updating tasks in a series of experiments. In the first experiment, the participants were presented with lists of words, the length of which (4-10 words) was unknown beforehand, and were required to remember the last 4 words in each series. In this task, we found a decrease in performance that was related to longer series and poor reading ability. In the second experiment, we presented lists of nouns referring to items of different sizes, in a task that simulated the selection and updating of relevant information that occurs in the on-line comprehension process. The participants were required to remember a limited, predefined number of the smallest items presented. We found that poor comprehenders not only had a poorer memory, but also made a greater number of intrusion errors. In the third and fourth experiments, memory load (number of items to be selected) and suppression request (number of potentially relevant items) were manipulated within subjects. Increases in both memory load and suppression requests impaired performance. Furthermore, we found that poor comprehenders produced a greater number of intrusion errors, particularly when the suppression request was increased. Finally, in a fifth experiment, a request to specify the size of presented items was introduced. Poor comprehenders were able to select the appropriate items, although their recall was poorer. Altogether, the data show that working memory abilities, based on selecting and updating relevant information and avoiding intrusion errors, are related to reading comprehension.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Working memory in aging: maintenance and suppression.

The present research is focused on a fine-grained analysis of memory decline with aging, and the role of suppression mechanisms in age-related memory decline. Three groups of participants (continuous age ranges; young-old: 55-65 years, old: 66-75 years, and old-old: more than 75 years) were administered Forward and Backward span test, and a Working Memory task with Categorization (WMC). This new task requires lists of five words to be processed in order to individuate animal nouns, and that the last word of each list be contemporarily maintained. The words incorrectly recalled as target items, but presented during the task (intrusion errors), were computed in order to analyze the efficiency of suppression mechanisms. The findings indicated a continuous decline in working memory measures, and an early decline in short-term memory (passive storage) measures (between 60's and 70's). An age-related increase in intrusion errors was observed; the intrusion index was inversely related to working memory performance but, according to the hypotheses, was not related to short-term memory measures. These results suggest that the stronger working memory effect observed through age might be due to the combined influence of a decline in the capacity of short-term memory, and a loss of efficiency in suppression mechanisms.

Aged↗
PubMed1998

Increases in intrusion errors and working memory deficit of poor comprehenders.

This study tests the hypothesis that the ability to inhibit already processed and actually irrelevant information could influence performance in the listening span test (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980) and have a crucial role in reading comprehension. In two experiments, the listening span test and a new working memory test were given to two groups of young adults, poor and good comprehenders, matched for logical reasoning ability. In Experiment 1, the poor comprehenders had a significantly lower performance in the listening span test associated to a higher number of intrusions--that is, recalled words that, in spite of being in sentence form, were not placed in the last position. In Experiment 2, a new working memory test was devised in order to analyse more effectively the occurrence of intrusions. Subjects were required to listen to a growing series of strings of animal and non-animal words. While listening, they had to detect when an animal word occurred, and at the end of each series they had to recall the last word of each string. The poor comprehenders obtained a significantly lower performance in the memory task and made a higher number of intrusions, particularly of animal words.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Impulsive-reflective cognitive style, metacognition, and emotion in adolescence.

The study investigated the relationship between reflective or impulsive cognitive style, metacognitive functioning, and depression in young adolescents. Metacognitive functioning (metacognitive knowledge about reading and memory, monitoring of text comprehension) and self-reported depressive feelings were analyzed in a group of subjects who showed a Reflective or Impulsive cognitive style. The sample consisted of 56 junior high-school students (Grades 6, 7, and 8) selected from a larger original group of 61 subjects. We excluded from the original group those with an IQ below 75 on both the Verbal and Performance subscales on the short form of the WISC-R, those reported by teachers to have a severe learning disability, and those that did not complete the test battery due to long absences from school. The reflective-impulsive cognitive style was identified with the Matching Familiar Figures Test-20. Using the median of the distribution for both Latency (17 sec. per item) and Errors (9 errors) on this task, the sample was divided in four partially overlapping subgroups: 16 with Impulsive cognitive style (Latency below the median, Errors above the median), 13 with Reflective cognitive style (Latency above the median, Error below the median), 4 fast and accurate (both scores below the median), and 11 slow and inaccurate (both scores above the median). Twelve subjects with one or both scores coinciding with the critical value (median) were excluded. Analysis showed that subjects with Impulsive cognitive style had significantly lower scores than those with Reflective cognitive style in monitoring of comprehension of text. No differences were found on monitoring by eighth graders, irrespective of cognitive style. No differences between the two groups were found in metacognitive knowledge. Subjects with Impulsive cognitive style had significantly higher scores than subjects with Reflective cognitive style on a self-rating scale for childhood depression, the Children's Depression Inventory. The implications of these data are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Ethiopian National Hepatitis B Study.

A nationwide seroepidemiological study of hepatitis B markers prevalence was conducted in Ethiopia on 5,270 young males from all regions of the country. Overall prevalence rates were 10.8% for HBsAg and 73.3% for "at least one marker positive"; a remarkable geographical and ethnic variability of marker prevalence was observed, reflecting the wide differences existing in Ethiopia in sociocultural environment and activities such as tribal practices and traditional surgery. Sexual practices and medical exposure also play some role as determinants of hepatitis B marker prevalence in Ethiopia. General preventive measures, with particular reference to health education, by affecting incriminating habits and practices could have some impact on infection rates in Ethiopia, in the absence of a vaccination strategy presently unrealistic in this region of the world.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Hepatitis B infections in the Arsi region of Ethiopia.

In a sample of inhabitants of the Arsi region of Ethiopia prevalence of hepatitis B is around 80% in the age group 20-24. In addition to age, sex and size of family, exposure to tribal practices is a determinant of seropositivity in this group accounting for as much as 20% of the total burden of the infection. Waiting for a mass vaccination campaign, presently unrealistic in this area of the world, health education, as part of a comprehensive primary health care program, has to be considered as a potentially effective preventive tool.

Adult↗