Biomedical subjects

Paula Sowerby

Publications and source records attributed to Paula Sowerby.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

The effect of familiarization time, retention interval, and context change on adults' performance in the visual paired-comparison task.

In a series of three experiments, we examined the effects of familiarization time, retention interval, and changes in environmental context on adults' performance in the visual paired-comparison (VPC) task. The magnitude of adults' novelty preference increased as familiarization time increased, decreased as retention interval increased, and was impaired by a change in context after a delay. These data are highly consistent with data obtained in prior studies using the VPC task with infants and suggest that the VPC task could be used to measure memory across the life span.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Self-harmful behaviors in a population-based sample of young adults.

A birth cohort of 472 women and 494 men aged 26 years was interviewed about a range of self-harmful behaviors first and then asked about suicidal intent. Lifetime prevalence of self-harm using traditional methods of suicide (ICD [International Classification of Diseases] self-harm) was 13%, with 9% of the sample describing at least one such episode as "attempted suicide." Other self-harmful behaviors were common; 14% of women and 33% of men reported self-battery. ICD self-harm over the past year was reported by 3%, mostly without suicidal intent. ICD self-harm and even lesser behaviors were associated with high odds of reporting suicidal ideation. The findings suggest that studies of self-harm should include behaviors not necessarily associated with suicidal intent.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Measuring infant memory: does the ruler matter?

Although the mobile conjugate reinforcement, deferred imitation, and visual attention paradigms are commonly used to test memory processing by infants, there is often debate about the comparability of memory measured by these three procedures. In a series of experiments, we systematically compared 6-month-old infants' performance across all three procedures. Contrary to current claims, measures of memory obtained using the mobile conjugate reinforcement and deferred imitation paradigms were more similar than those obtained using the deferred imitation and visual attention paradigms.

Attention↗