Biomedical subjects

S Larner

Publications and source records attributed to S Larner.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1994

Auditory problems in elderly patients with stroke.

Twenty-five CAT-scan-confirmed stroke patients and 25 matched controls were studied. All the stroke patients were stable 2-3 months after unilateral hemispheric stroke. Those with ear disease, other central neurological disorder, severe dysphasia and acute or chronic confusion were excluded. There were no significant differences between the groups for average pure tone hearing threshold (APTT) or ability to discriminate pre-recorded speech presented to one ear at 35 decibels (dB) above APTT. The stroke subjects had significantly impaired performance on dichotic competing sentence testing (DCST). Seventeen stroke patients but only one control subject failed DCST. Failure rate was similar for left and right stroke and for temporal and non-temporal lobe involvement. Two-thirds of patients failing DCST did so in the ear opposite the side of the cortical lesion. We conclude that (i) DCST is useful in detecting central auditory dysfunction in stroke patients; and (ii) stroke can affect central auditory perception in older patients.

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PubMed1988

Counselling carers of the elderly at home: a preliminary study.

A comparative study of two different methods of counselling for informal carers of elderly people with dementia was carried out in their own homes over an 18-week period. Carers were randomly allocated to short-term emotional support, information-provision or no-treatment control groups. Carers were assessed for mood, stress (Beck Depression Inventory and General Health Questionnaire), degree of burden and knowledge of problems of dementia. Carers receiving emotional support experienced the greatest reduction in stress, whereas those receiving information only showed an increase in knowledge, but no reduction in stress.

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PubMed1987

Spatial memory and perception in stroke patients: the importance of order effects.

The performance of left and right CVA patients on two tasks, spatial matching and spatial recognition, was compared, using a design which also examined the effects of order of task presentation. All groups performed better on matching than on recognition trials, and the left CVA subjects obtained higher scores than right CVA subjects on both types of trial. A significant lesion X order interaction reflected the particularly poor performance of right CVA subjects who received the more difficult task (recognition) first. The clinical implications are discussed.

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PubMed1983

The effects of manipulation of social reinforcement on toilet requests on a geriatric ward.

The psychological treatment of incontinence in elderly patients is reviewed. It is concluded that the use of psychological methods in functional cases with non-dementing elderly patients leads to optimistic results. However, those studies which have used patients with dementia have been few and have so far led to poor results. Some of the factors associated with toiletting behaviour in the elderly and other approaches which stress the behaviour of the nurse rather than that of the patient are considered. A study is described which illustrates these principles in the case of geriatric patients with dementia who are highly dependent for their physical care.

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PubMed1977

Encoding in senile dementia and elderly depressives: a preliminary study..

Forty-seven subjects (19 elderly dements, 18 elderly depressives, 10 elderly physically ill) were given a continuous false recognition technique (FRT) in a test battery including a measure of short-term memory and the Kendrick Synonym Learning Test. Results were analysed according to signal detection theory and interpreted in terms of an encoding breakdown. Depressives were found to be characterized by conservative error-free performance whereas the demented made more errors, partly because of their more liberal criterion and partly because of their greater loss of encoding characteristics. From these results, an optimal cut-off score was chosen for differential diagnosis using the FRT. This was shown to hold more promise than the SLT in discriminating between dementia and depression.

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PubMedDate not supplied

The story of Joe.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

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