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R F Asarnow

Publications and source records attributed to R F Asarnow.

69 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1986

Information processing and communication deviance in schizophrenic patients and their mothers.

Tests of attention/information processing, the continuous performance test (CPT) and the span of apprehension task (SAT), were given to 25 schizophrenic patients and their mothers. Measures of communication deviance also were obtained from the mothers. Comparison of these assessments in the mothers revealed different transactional profiles for good attenders and poor attenders on the CPT and on the SAT. The relationships between generations (patient and mother) differ from the within-individual relationships. CPT performance by the patient is not significantly correlated with scores from the mother. However, SAT performance by the patient could be related to SAT performance by the mother and specific communication deviance factor scores.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Event-related potential concomitants of information processing dysfunction in schizophrenic children.

ERPs were recorded from 10 schizophrenic and 13 normal children during the performance of the Span of Apprehension task (Span). This task involves the discrimination of a randomly placed target letter among distractors, and it has been shown to discriminate between normal and schizophrenic individuals. The EEG was recorded at 7 scalp loci, and ERPs were averaged over a 1500 msec interval initiated by a warning tone which preceded the visual Span stimuli by 500 msec. Stimulus arrays were grouped into 4 levels of difficulty. The data from both subject groups were combined in a single principal components analysis (separate PCAs exhibited few differences between groups) generating 8 rotated factors which were readily interpreted in terms of conventional ERP components. Factor scores for the two groups were examined using Analysis of Variance. The schizophrenic children produced a small CNV which was slow to develop and resolve as well as diminished amplitudes for the N1, P3 and slow wave components. This suggests that these children are impaired in their ability to regulate processes involved in the mobilization and direction of attention and the discrimination of target stimuli. Significantly, the schizophrenic children did not show progressive increases in N1 and SW amplitudes in response to increases in information processing demand (array difficulty) as was the case in the normal children. ERP components of the schizophrenic children were most aberrant at frontal leads, but midline and lateralized deficits were also seen at vertex and posterior recording sites.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Information processing and neuroleptic response in acute and stabilized schizophrenic patients.

Information processing was measured in 13 acute and 18 stabilized schizophrenic patients using the span of apprehension task. Acutely disturbed patients demonstrated improved performance on this task after 14 days of treatment with haloperidol. Stabilized patients maintained on fluphenazine decanoate did not show a significant change in performance during 3 months of treatment. Among the acutely disturbed patients, those with good baseline performance or the greatest initial improvement on the span of apprehension task showed the greatest reduction in various aspects of schizophrenic thought disturbance in response to drug treatment. These preliminary results suggest that information-processing measures may be useful in defining clinically meaningful subtypes in schizophrenia.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Studies of visual information processing in schizophrenic children.

11 children meeting DSM III criteria for schizophrenia (mean age approximately 12 years), a group of normal children matched in mean mental age to the schizophrenic children, and a group of younger normal children (mean age 6.6 years) were administered a series of visual information-processing tasks in order to isolate core information-processing impairments in childhood onset schizophrenia. In Experiment 1, the schizophrenic children showed impairment relative to the MA-matched normals and performed at the level of the younger normal children on a forced-choice partial-report version of the span-of-apprehension task. Previous research has shown that this task is sensitive to dysfunction in both actively and partially recovered schizophrenic adults as well as a subset of foster children at risk for schizophrenia. Experiment 2 delimited the source of the information-processing impairment in schizophrenic children by ruling out a number of possible causes of impairment and suggesting that schizophrenic children use the same information-acquisition strategies as MA-matched children but less efficiently. Experiment 3 revealed that, consistent with the previous research, the schizophrenic children were comparable with the MA-matched controls on a full-report span-of-apprehension task that placed heavy demands on iconic and short-term memory. Both the schizophrenic and MA-matched normals performed significantly better than the younger normal children. Taken collectively, the results of the three experiments suggest that all groups of children engaged in a serial information-processing strategy while performing on the partial-report version of the span-of-apprehension task. The differential impairment of the schizophrenic children on the partial-report versions but not the full-report version of the span-of-apprehension task seems to reflect inefficiencies in controlled attentional processes that normally develop during middle childhood.

Attention↗
PubMed1983

Span of apprehension performance, neuropsychological functioning, and indices of psychosis-proneness.

Fifty subjects without a history of psychiatric disorder were selected from temporary employment agencies. Subjects were then assigned to two groups based solely on their performance on a forced-choice version of the span of apprehension task which previous research suggests may be associated with vulnerability to schizophrenia. The group of subjects characterized by poor performance on the span of apprehension scored significantly higher on the Schizophrenia scale of the MMPI, two indices of schizotypy--the Schizoidia and Schizophrenism scales--and an index of subclinical schizophrenic thinking, the Magical Ideation scale, than the balance of the subjects. The poor span group did not show generalized elevations on the MMPI, suggesting that there is some degree of specificity for the relationship between the span of apprehension performance and scores on indices of schizotypy and psychotic-like experiences. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that impairment in early aspects of information processing is associated with vulnerability to schizophrenic disorders. Subjects with poor performance on the span of apprehension task also scored more poorly than the balance of the group on three neuropsychological tasks: the Trail Making Test, the Digit Symbol Substitution Test, and Rey's Tangled Line task.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Attention/information processing, neuropsychological functioning, and thought disorder during the acute and partial recovery phases of schizophrenia: a longitudinal study.

Schizophrenic subjects were administered the span of apprehension task, which is a measure of visual information processing; two neuropsychological tests; and measures of specific aspects of thought disorder and general clinical state. The measures were administered both when patients were acutely disturbed and when they were partially recovered. Normal control subjects were tested over a comparable 12-week interval. Improvements in both overall clinical condition and specific aspects of thought disorder occurred in the schizophrenic patients during this time. The patients, however, continued to show impaired information processing, indicating that the span of apprehension task is sensitive to schizophrenic dysfunction across wide variations in clinical state and, therefore, may be a marker of vulnerability to schizophrenia. The span of apprehension task was found to be significantly correlated with a measure of thought disorder that assesses resistance to associative distractors and two neuropsychological tests--the Trail-Making Test from the Halstead-Reitan battery and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test--during the testing session conducted while the subjects were partially recovered.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1981

Span of apprehension deficits during the postpsychotic stages of schizophrenia. A replication and extension.

Thirty-five schizophrenic and 20 manic-depressive outpatients and 20 normal controls were administered a measure of visual information processing, the span of apprehension. The schizophrenic outpatients made significantly fewer correct detections of the target stimuli than did the manic-depressives and normal controls, particularly for conditions in which the target stimuli were embedded in four and nine irrelevant stimuli. A subgroup of schizophrenics produced the overall group differences. In a comparison of a subgroup of schizophrenics who showed impaired performance on the ten-letter array with the remaining schizophrenics, the ten-letter array appeared to be tapping processes that are independent of overall adjustment, the presence of particular symptoms, premorbid social adjustment, general demographic characteristics, and the presence of generalized performance deficits. The span of apprehension may be a marker for some subgroups of schizophrenia.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Children at risk for schizophrenia. Clinical and attentional characteristics.

Adolescent high-risk subjects, offspring of schizophrenic mothers, who were placed in foster homes at an early age, are compared with foster children whose biological parents have no record of psychiatric hospitalization and with non-foster children. The high-risk group showed increased social isolation, difficulties in the student role, elevated total symptom scores on the Psychiatric Status Schedule, and elevated schizophrenic scale scores on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Half of the high-risk subjects showed significant impairment on a battery of eight attention-demanding tasks.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Size estimation in paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics.

Fifteen paranoid and 15 nonparanoid schizophrenics and 15 normal controls were administered a size estimation task which featured two administrations of nonthematic standard stimuli. The standard stimuli were presented under three conditions of background stimuli: a) surrounded by four smaller stimuli of the same kind; b) surrounded by four larger stimuli of the same kind; c) presented without background stimuli. Standard stimuli were presented at exposure times of 33 and 4000 milliseconds. On the first administration, nonparanoid schizophrenics were found to overestimate size relative to paranoidschizophrenics with normal controls intermediate in performance between the paranoid schizophrenics and nonparanoid schizophrenics, particularly on longer stimulus exposure times. The groups did not differ on the second administration. This replication of the results of earlier investigations suggest that the repeated administration of size estimation procedures in which the effects of sequence and thematic content stimuli were inextricably confounded may have contributed to recent conflicting findings in the size estimation literature. Contrary to predictions generated by Cromwell's stimulus redundancy formation, the paranoid schizophrenics were not more affected by the size of the background stimuli than the nonparanoid schizophrenics.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Cognitive and evoked response measures of information processing in schizophrenics with and without a family history of schizophrenia.

Twenty-four male schizophrenics, 12 (SFH) with schizophrenia in the immediate family and 12 (SNFH) with no evidence of schizophrenia in the family background, and 24 male control subjects, 12 highly educated (HEC), and 12 minimally educated (MEC), were assessed for premorbid social adjustment and were administered the Digit Symbol Substitution Test, a size estimation task, and the EEG average evoked response (AER) at different levels of stimulus intensity. As predicted from the stimulus redundancy formulation, the SFH patients were poorer in premorbid adjustment, were less often paranoid, functioned at a lower level of cognitive efficiency (poor digit symbol and greater absolute error on size estimation), were more chronic, and, in some respects, had size estimation indices of minimal scanning. Contrary to prediction, the SFH group had the strongest and most sustained augmenting response on AER, while the SNFH group shifted from an augmenting to a reducing pattern of response. The relationship between an absence of AER reducing and the presence of cognitive impairment in the SFH group was a major focus of discussion.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A clinical and demographic profile of a sample of adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, residual state.

It is becoming increasingly recognized that one third to one half of children diagnosed as having attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) continue to exhibit symptoms of the disorder into adulthood. The nature of the clinical picture is not well understood by a substantial number of clinicians. The purpose of this study is to report on the demographic and clinical profile of 56 adults, age 19 to 65 years (48 men, eight women) who present with adult ADHD and meet DSM-III-R criteria for the disorder. Patients underwent a diagnostic work-up consisting of medical and psychiatric evaluation, a structured interview Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Lifetime Version [SADS-L]), the Symptoms Checklist Revised (SCL-9OR), Conners Attention Deficit Disorder With Hyperactivity (ADDH) scale, structured interview of ADDH, the Global Assessment of Functioning Scale (GAF), and, when available, information from parents was obtained. Ninety-one percent of our sample met the Utah Criteria for adult ADHD. The majority of the sample had additional DSM-III-R diagnoses and only seven had ADHD diagnosis alone. Fifty-three percent of the sample met the criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, 34% alcohol abuse or dependence, 30% drug abuse, 25% dysthymic disorder, and 25% cyclothymic disorder. These findings were similar to those reported in the literature.

Adult↗