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PubMed1983

Interpretation of white space responses in children's Rorschach protocols.

While most texts continue to assert that the Rorschach white space response (S) indicates hostility and oppositionality, several studies suggest that such responses are more accurately reflective of cognitive differentiation and autonomous strivings. In addition, there are no studies which have systematically explored the significance of S responses in children's protocols. To shed light on these issues, 47 children (7 to 13 yr.) were administered the Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test, and the WISC-R, while their parents completed a behavioral checklist. Subjects with high S-response, independent of age, IQ, or perceptual accuracy, used the whole blot more often than those who made less frequent use of white space. They also had higher frequencies of shading determinants and blends and used more content categories. These results were interpreted as suggesting a tendency for subjects showing high S-response to construe the world in more complex terms. No differences were found between subjects high and low on S-response on either behavioral ratings or projective indices of hostility or negativism.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1993

Taste and odor: reactivity in depressive disorders, a multidisciplinary approach.

Depressive patients often complain about dullness of taste of previously liked food items as well as of persistent bad taste. Taste and smell experience can be reflected by cognitive (psychophysical) indicators and also by reflectory (facial expressive) responses. In the present study 21 depressed, hospitalized patients and 16 control subjects were exposed to food-related gustatory and olfactory stimuli. Psychophysical and videotaped facial reactions were recorded from both groups. Analysis indicated that cognitive estimates of taste hedonics were similar for depressed and control groups; the former responded to sweet taste with a shorter-lasting facial reaction, involving markedly fewer facial features expressing enjoyment, than did controls. Aversive tastes, in contrast, triggered comparable facial expressive features of disgust in both groups. Facial reactions of depressed patients to acceptable and aversive olfactory stimuli were all significantly shorter and more muted than those of controls. Facial reflexes triggered by chemical cues are known to be controlled primarily by brainstem structures. Present findings suggest a possible influence of the profound anhedonia of severe depression on subcortical processes.

Adult↗

PubMed1992

Identifying Hispanic gifted children using the Screening Assessment for Gifted Elementary Students.

We examined the utility of the Screening Assessment for Gifted Elementary Students (SAGES) for identifying Hispanic gifted students among 162 third through fifth graders, of whom 75% were Anglo-American and 25% Hispanic. Direct discriminant analysis of subscale scores of the SAGES classified 93.2% of the sample as Anglo-American, including 35 of the 41 Hispanic children. This indicated that the subscale scores did not predict group membership. A validation procedure yielded similar results on an independent sample of 25 Anglo-American and 14 Hispanic children. Also, a multivariate profile analysis indicated small score differences between the two groups and reflected similar cognitive processes being assessed. The screening device appears to function fairly within both ethnic groups.

Aptitude Tests↗

PubMed2003

Explanatory style and academic performance among college students beginning a major course of study.

Explanatory style, a cognitive variable, reflects how people typically explain the causes of bad events involving themselves. Explanatory style emerged from the attributional reformulation of the learned helplessness and depression model as a way of explaining individual differences in response to uncontrollability. A central prediction of the reformulation is that people with habitual explanatory tendencies differ, and individuals with a pessimistic explanatory style will be more likely to exhibit depressive symptoms following bad events than individuals with an optimistic explanatory style. 116 upper-level undergraduates beginning a degree program at this university completed the Attributional Style Questionnaire. Scores were correlated with students' cumulative grade point averages and their total points earned in Consumer Behavior, the first course required in the Marketing major. Students with pessimistic explanatory style scores outperformed colleagues with optimistic explanatory style scores. Implications of these findings and possible explanations for why explanatory style did not correlate in the theoretically predicted way with academic achievement are considered.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The psychophysiology of voluntary immunomodulation.

In twenty-two studies of intentional effects of humans to change immune measures, only four monitored psychophysiologic parameters. One study reported physiologic alterations associated with immune changes. In this current study we examined changes in pulse rate and peripheral temperature associated with intentional changes in neutrophil adherence. Subjects had blood, pulse and temperature recordings collected before and after either a rest condition (Group A), or a self-regulation exercise (Groups B and C) for two sessions. Group C had four prior training sessions before participating in the experimental sessions. This study found no association between psychophysiologic alterations and neutrophil changes. The control group (A) demonstrated no significant neutrophil changes but showed physiologic alterations, whereas, the experimental group (C) that showed increases in neutrophil adherence demonstrated no significant physiologic changes. It was speculated that intentional changes on neutrophil adherence and the pattern of the psychophysiologic measures were associated with and reflective of cognitive activity.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

The conflict adaptation effect: it's not just priming.

Analyses of trial sequences in flanker tasks have revealed cognitive adaptation, reflected in a reduced interference effect following incompatible trials (Gratton, Coles, & Donchin, 1992). These effects have been explained on the basis of the response conflict monitoring model of Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, and Cohen (2001), who proposed that preceding response conflict triggers stronger topdown control, leading to performance improvements on subsequent trials of similar context. A recent study (Mayr, Awh, & Laurey, 2003) has challenged this account, suggesting that the behavioral adaptations are confined to trial sequences of exact trial repetitions and can therefore be explained by repetition priming. Here, we present two experiments in which the sequential dependency effect was present even on trial sequences that did not involve stimulus repeats. We discuss the data with respect to the conflict-monitoring and repetition-priming accounts.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2001

EEG frequency dynamics during movements imagery.

The study is an attempt to reveal the EEG frequency dynamic changes over sites covering areas reflecting the cognitive processes during movement imagery. Subjects were instructed to imagine a self-paced movement after listening to randomized sentences differing in lack of object or instrument of action. EEG was recorded over frontal, sensorimotor and temporo-parietal areas in both hemispheres. Frequency dynamics was estimated using power spectra (PS), band-pass filtering and bispectra. Two types of frequency dynamics were established: (A) a linear one, up to 24 Hz, with most pronounced oscillations in 12-14 Hz and in 16-22 Hz, synchronized first in frontal and precentral areas; (B) a nonlinear one between 24 and 63 Hz, with fractal structure and self-similarity, characterized by fractal dimension of 1.7-1.9. The narrow band of 23-26 Hz in the boundary between linear and nonlinear regimes expressed obvious synchronization and time re-distribution of oscillations among sites and sentence-types.

Eidetic Imagery↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Psychiatric aspects in workers subject to mobbing].

BACKGROUND: Mobbing in the language of ethologists means a particular behaviour of a group of animals consisting of several members forming an alliance against a single animal, in order to eliminate this animal away from the group. This term has been adopted in current usage to mean a kind of relationship at the workplace that, by aggressive and underhand means, aims at influencing or expelling the person. The term "bossing" is used to indicate a negative action, under the meaning described above, made by one or more senior persons, or possibly by the employer. In the Italian Parliament, under the current legislature, several bills are pending regarding this problem. Besides the aspects of topical interest in the problem, there are first and foremost the different kinds of reaction-adaptation to mobbing, according to the type of individual internal working models in action, that can be anxious/avoiding, anxious/resistant or disorganised. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of our study was a clinical evaluation of the different ways of adaptation-reaction to a mobbing-type relationship at the workplace, and of the type of internal working models found among the examined patients. METHODS: A clinical interview was carried out with 40 patients who, over a period of 12 months of observation, came to request a clinical assessment, for medical-legal reasons, of their psycho-pathological state and ways to react to adverse situations at the workplace, such as a mobbing or bossing. RESULTS: Besides the psychological and relational effects of mobbing, the reactions of the examined subjects to mobbing are also described, considering also the different cognitive self-organization possibilities, according to the individual internal working model, regarding patterns of attachment in adult age. The most frequent internal working model seems to be the one related to resistant attachment, followed by the avoidance and lastly--rarely--the disorganized model. Furthermore we observed among these subjects a certain deficit in meta-cognitive capacity of self reflection and decentralization. CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive therapy is proposed as the most effective of therapeutic approaches, associated with symptomatic psycho-pharmacological therapy as needed. Initial clinical results on cognitive therapy of these patients are reported. The individual type of internal working model seems to be the critical element in mobbing reaction and, besides specific intervention plans regarding relationship in the workplace, individual psychotherapy appears to be the best instrument of treatment and prevention of the psychopathologic effects caused by mobbing.

Adult↗

PubMed1977

Search in short-term memory during inhalation of a general anesthetic in man.

Effects of controlled subanesthetic concentrations of enflurane on short-term memory functions were studied in male volunteers. Short-term memory processes were assessed through a search task: A series of digits, words, or familiar pictures, was visually presented, followed by a test digit which in half the trials was part of the series, and in half of the trials it was not. The subject responded by a press on one of two switches signalling 'yes' or 'no' accordingly. Memory set size varied between 1 to 11 for digits and 1 to 8 for words and pictures. Enflurane in air was delivered through a non-rebreathing system. Low concentrations of enflurane did not change the slope of the search function, but increased the intercept by few hundred milliseconds. This was interpreted to indicate anesthetic effect on the cognitive processes reflected in the intercept, that is, stimulus reception and evaluation and response variables. No effect was observed on retrieval time from the short-term store.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Information processing in primary fibromyalgia, major depression and healthy controls.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the information processing capabilities in 25 patients with primary fibromyalgia (FM) by comparing them with 22 patients with major depression and 18 healthy controls. METHODS: A broad range of tasks related to various subcomponents of information processing were included. RESULTS: Our results indicated that patients with primary FM in general share with depressives a nonspecific deficit in information processing capacity. However, our data showed that cognitive dysfunction reflecting a presumed compromise of the right hemisphere is present in major depression, but not in primary FM. CONCLUSION: This finding would suggest that primary FM and depression are probably different conditions.

Adult↗

PubMed1984

Positive and negative symptoms and the thematic organisation of schizophrenic speech.

This study questions the prevailing view that schizophrenic delusions, hallucinations and incoherence of speech (positive symptoms) reflect loss of cognitive control and that flattening of affect and poverty of speech (negative symptoms) reflect restriction of cognitive processing. The prevailing view was examined by analysing the thematic organisation of speech produced by 18 patients describing pictures. Results showed that (a) positive and negative symptom schizophrenics did not differ in the control and restriction of thematic speech organisation; (b) speech disordered schizophrenics, positive as well as negative, showed cognitive restriction, by producing fewer inferential ideas than non-speech disordered schizophrenics. The wider implications of these results are discussed, particularly the implications of (b) for the notion of concreteness in schizophrenia.

Adult↗

PubMed1989

The relationship between reaction time and latency of the P300 event-related potential in normal subjects and Alzheimer's disease.

The latency of the P300 event-related potential is though to reflect the time it takes to conclude that a task-relevant stimulus has been presented, i.e. it is an index of cognitive processing time. Reaction time (RT) also reflects cognitive processing time, but additionally reflects the time taken physically to respond to the stimulus. If serial models of information processing are correct, then the P300 latency must be less than RT, and a positive correlation between the 2 measures is to be expected. We examined these hypotheses in 100 normal subjects aged from 18 to 92 years. The P300 component elicited via a 2-tone discrimination task, and RT to the task-relevant tones was measured simultaneously. The resulting correlation between these measures was weak (r = 0.26, p greater than 0.05), and there were instances in which RT preceded the P300 latency. These results are consistent with parallel rather than serial models of information processing. Fifteen patients with Alzheimer's disease were also examined. Three had an abnormally delayed P300 latency, and 7 had abnormally delayed RTs compared with age-matched controls. Simultaneous measurement of the P300 latency and RT may thus help resolve whether dysfunction is evident in neuronal networks concerned with stimulus evaluation or in those concerned with response execution.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Effects of an undergraduate research course on cognitive development.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a research methods course on undergraduate nursing students' cognitive development, or reflective judgment, level. The sample was comprised of 50 volunteer, female senior nursing students at a public Western university; half were enrolled in a research course and half served as controls. A cognitive development measure, Reflective Judgment Interview (RJI), was administered to both groups prior to and after the course. Data were analyzed for baseline levels of reflective judgment and by two-way repeated measures ANOVA to determine whether there were significant differences in pre-post reflective judgment scores between experimental and control groups. Baseline cognitive development levels were in the middle ranges of the seven-stage Reflective Judgment Model (RJM). No significant differences in reflective judgment level were found. Statistically significant differences between groups were found on one component of the reflective judgment measure, suggesting a positive growth trend that may have resulted from the experimental intervention.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1994

Cognitive therapy with children and adolescents: from theory to practice.

Cognitive therapies are now well established as a component for the treatment of a wide range of child behaviour problems. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that deficits and distortions in cognitive processes play a role in disorders of affect and behaviour in children and adults alike. This has led to the development of many different cognitive therapy approaches which aim to influence cognitive products, structures and operations. Cognitive assessment methods continue to lag behind the developments in therapy, and there is a marked need for the development of reliable and valid measures. Empirical studies support the value of cognitive interventions, although it is recognised that most cognitive therapies include aspects of behavioural techniques, making it difficult to draw valid conclusions. Certainly, the results of recent meta-analytic studies have produced optimistic conclusions and justify the continued use of cognitive therapy methods in clinical practice, with a wide range of behavioural problems. Cognitive therapy techniques have something to offer with internalising and externalising disorders alike. Future research should now focus on the identification of methods to enhance the effects of cognitive therapies and to determine the characteristics of children who are most likely to benefit from these methods. There is some evidence to suggest that younger children may benefit less from cognitive therapies than do adolescents. This perhaps reflects differences in cognitive and language development. Further consideration needs to be given to adapting cognitive therapy methods to the developmental level of younger children. Cognitive therapy approaches are now well entrenched within many multi-component programmes for most emotional and behavioural disorders in children. The degree to which cognitive therapies add to the effectiveness of behavioural methods, however, remains to be demonstrated for many types of behaviour problem. It is also unclear whether the changes in affect and overt behaviour produced in these intervention programmes is actually related to improvements in the cognitive activities that were targeted in therapy. From a theoretical perspective, however, cognitive therapies have a high degree of face validity. If deficits or excesses in specific cognitive events or processes are found during assessment, which can be hypothesised to underlie disturbances of affect of behaviour, then there is a strong case for attempting to change these aspects of cognition.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2004

Interspecific allometry of the brain and brain regions in parrots (psittaciformes): comparisons with other birds and primates.

Despite significant progress in understanding the evolution of the mammalian brain, relatively little is known of the patterns of evolutionary change in the avian brain. In particular, statements regarding which avian taxa have relatively larger brains and brain regions are based on small sample sizes and statistical analyses are generally lacking. We tested whether psittaciforms (parrots, cockatoos and lorikeets) have larger brains and forebrains than other birds using both conventional and phylogenetically based methods. In addition, we compared the psittaciforms to primates to determine if cognitive similarities between the two groups were reflected by similarities in brain and telencephalic volumes. Overall, psittaciforms have relatively larger brains and telencephala than most other non-passerine orders. No significant difference in relative brain or telencephalic volume was detected between psittaciforms and passerines. Comparisons of other brain region sizes between psittaciforms and other birds, however, exhibited conflicting results depending upon whether body mass or a brain volume remainder (total brain volume - brain region volume) was used as a scaling variable. When compared to primates, psittaciforms possessed similar relative brain and telencephalic volumes. The only exception to this was that in some analyses psittaciforms had significantly larger telencephala than primates of similar brain volume. The results therefore provide empirical evidence for previous claims that psittaciforms possess relatively large brains and telencephala. Despite the variability in the results, it is clear that psittaciforms tend to possess large brains and telencephala relative to non-passerines and are similar to primates in this regard. Although it could be suggested that this reflects the advanced cognitive abilities of psittaciforms, similar studies performed in corvids and other avian taxa will be required before this claim can be made with any certainty.

Animals↗

PubMed1997

Slow negative brain potentials as reflections of specific modular resources of cognition.

The paper summarizes a series of experiments in which the topography and the amplitude of slow event-related brain potentials (slow ERPs) was studied in cognitive tasks which imposed different amounts of load on functionally distinct processing modules. The results suggest that the topography of slow ERPs reflects the relative activation/inactivation of distinct cortical cell assemblies while the absolute amplitude of the negative maximum seems to reflect how much a particular cell assembly is activated at a particular time. Translated into the terminology of cognitive resource theories one could say that tasks which evoke distinct slow wave patterns draw on independent resources. Likewise, the amplitude of a slow wave pattern could be related to the construct of resource allocation, i.e. the larger the amplitude of a slow wave pattern the more resources of a particular type are allocated to a task. These findings are discussed with respect to possible generator mechanism of slow waves and in relation to possible causes of capacity limitations of the human information processing system.

Brain↗

PubMed2004

Electroencephalographic peak alpha frequency correlates of cognitive traits.

EEG peak alpha frequency (PAF) has been shown to differentiate groups of adults with higher memory performance from those of lower performance, groups of children with advanced reading ability from matched controls, and to predict state-dependent working memory. The present study attempted to explore PAF as a predicting variable for verbal and attentional cognitive trait abilities in young adults. Nineteen undergraduate students had their EEG recorded during initial rest, reading, and post-reading rest, and at a different day were evaluated on reading, vocabulary, and attentional performance. Results showed significant correlations of reading vocabulary and response control with PAF during reading and post-reading recordings, but not during initial rest. PAF may reflect some general cognitive ability that is not necessarily memory or reading, possibly response control or the ability to acquire vocabulary. It is suggested that cognitive ability traits may reflect the ability to induce cognitive states.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Ecological frames of mind: the role of cognition in behavioral ecology.

Cognitive psychology is the study of how information, from the senses and from memory, is used in the production of behavior. Investigation of the specifics of behavioral adaptation has already led some behavioral ecologists into the domain of animal cognition. I make several arguments for the benefits and the necessity of a sophisticated assessment by ecologists of the cognitive aspects of behavioral adaptation. First, because cognition typically serves to produce adaptive behavior, cognitive structure and function should reflect ecological demands; studies of cognition in ecological contexts are opportunities to understand adaptation. Furthermore, constraints on cognitive properties may help determine how behavior meets the environment. Studies of spatial memory in food-caching corvids exemplify how cognitive aspects of behavior may both reflect and determine specifics of adaptation. Second, many models in behavioral ecology assume certain cognitive abilities, such as timing or counting. Cognitive theory and methodology should be used to determine whether animals possess these abilities. I have provided examples. Third, consideration of cognitive function can lead to original ideas about the details of behavioral adaptation. Without a thorough integration of cognitive psychology with behavioral ecology, our understanding of the relation between behavior and selective pressures will be compromised.

Adaptation, Psychological↗