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Results for “Processing speed”

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PubMed1988

Sustained attention and information processing speed in chronic survivors of severe closed head injury.

Sustained attention and information processing speed in 15 long-term survivors of severe closed head injury and 14 demographically matched controls have been examined. The average time between head injury and testing was 3.6 years. The performance of patients on all tasks was impaired relative to controls, thus documenting persistent deficits in attention. Of particular interest was the finding that controls were capable of redirecting and improving their sustained attention during a test session versus the steady decline in patient performance. The findings are discussed within the framework of controlled attentional processes.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Naming-speed processes, timing, and reading: a conceptual review.

This article integrates the findings in the special issue with a comprehensive review of the evidence for seven central questions about the role of naming-speed deficits in developmental reading disabilities. Cross-sectional, longitudinal, and cross-linguistic research on naming-speed processes, timing processes, and reading is presented. An evolving model of visual naming illustrates areas of difference and areas of overlap between naming speed and phonology in their underlying requirements. Work in the cognitive neurosciences is used to explore two nonexclusive hypotheses about the putative links between naming speed and reading processes and about the sources of disruption that may cause subtypes of reading disabilities predicted by the double-deficit hypothesis. Finally, the implications of the work in this special issue for diagnosis and intervention are elaborated.

Child↗

PubMed1987

Visual information processing speed in hypnotized and nonhypnotized subjects.

Using a backward-masking paradigm with a bias-free and ceiling-free psychophysical task, we tested hypnotized and control subjects for speed of visual information processing. Approximately half of each group received visual imagery suggestions in an attempt to influence attention. Imagery produced no significant differential effect. Although an absence of a hypnotizability-performance relationship was in keeping with findings of a previous study, those subjects in the present study who performed under hypnosis were, as a group, significantly superior to the other subjects in speed of information processing.

Humans↗

PubMed1987

Evaluation of information-processing speed and neuropsychological functioning in patients with myotonic dystrophy.

Patients with myotonic dystrophy (MD) were compared to a control group, matched to the patients in important demographic variables including IQ, on the Sternberg Memory Scanning procedure, to investigate the hypothesis of a selective change in speed of information processing in MD patients. The neuropsychological functioning of these MD patients was also compared to normative data to provide a descriptive picture of their abilities; these results were correlated to the factors of age of onset and duration of the disease. Finally, the MD patients were also compared to the defined control group on the neuropsychological measures. There was little evidence of selective slowness of information processing or particular deficit independent of overall IQ. Neuropsychologically, the MD patients as a group performed at the low average level. There was, however, a wide range of abilities, suggesting that MD patients are not a unitary group in terms of neuropsychological functioning. Age of onset of the disease was important, at least for certain results. Further research of the neuropsychological functioning of MD patients must account for the wide range of results, with more precise measures of actual onset of the disease and muscular weakness, in a longitudinal evaluation.

Attention↗

PubMed2001

[Possible confounding variables on the flicker-fusion frequency: temperament, well-being, cognitive information processing speed].

The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of the response criterion, the current well-being, and the speed of cognitive processing on fusion and flicker frequency measured by method of limits, in 65 healthy subjects, aged between 20 and 30 years. The findings demonstrated that the fusion and flicker frequency could not be measured exactly. Evaluation of the reliability of the obtained results was not possible, mainly because the necessary basic psychological variables could not be recorded using the method.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Pain, malingering, and performance on the WAIS-III Processing Speed Index.

Pain patients often report cognitive symptoms and many will include them in their claims of disability. The Processing Speed Index (PSI) of the WAIS-III was investigated as one aspect of cognitive functioning in six groups. Slight impairment was found for PSI and Digit Symbol subtest performance, but not for Symbol Search, in a Laboratory-induced Pain group and a Clinical Pain group. The lowest scores were found in a Simulator group instructed to fake cognitive impairment and a Clinical Pain group diagnosed as Malingering. Results suggest that PSI scores are only slightly reduced by laboratory-induced pain or chronic pain, and that unexpectedly low scores in the absence of significant/documented brain dysfunction suggest poor effort or deliberate misrepresentation.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

Paced Visual Serial Addition Test: an alternative measure of information processing speed.

The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT; Gronwall, 1977; Gronwall & Sampson, 1974) is a measure of attention and information processing speed sensitive to mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), but it is aversive and inappropriate for many other neurologically impaired patients. This study examines a simpler, less aversive visual analog of the PASAT (the Paced Visual Serial Addition Test; PVSAT) in a sample of 74 college students (26 with a history of TBI). Results indicated that the PVSAT is moderately correlated with and less difficult than the PASAT. Both tests had identical relations to other measures of attention. Neither the PVSAT, PASAT, nor the other attentional measures differentiated participants with MTBI from normal controls in a college population. This preliminary study thus demonstrates the comparability of the two tests and presents the PVSAT as a viable alternative to the PASAT. Directions for future research and applications of these findings are discussed.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2006

Processing speed deficits in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and reading disability.

The goal of the current study was to test whether deficits in processing speed (PS) may be a shared cognitive risk factor in reading disability (RD) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which are known to be comorbid. Literature on ADHD and RD suggests that deficits on tasks with a speeded component are seen in both of these disorders individually. The current study examined a wide range of speeded tasks in RD, ADHD, comorbid RD+ADHD, and a control group to test whether RD and ADHD have similar profiles of PS deficits, and whether these deficits are shared by the two disorders. The results suggest that a general PS deficit exists in both clinical groups compared to controls, although children with RD demonstrate greater PS deficits than children with ADHD. Two tests (underadditivity and partial correlations) were conducted to test whether these PS deficits are shared. Since we found that PS deficits were underadditive in the comorbid group and that partialling PS reduced the correlation between RD and ADHD, it appears that PS is a shared cognitive risk factor that may help explain the comorbidity of these two disorders.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Hemispheric, attentional, and processing speed factors in the treatment of developmental dyslexia.

Aim of the study is to analyze the contributions of hemispheric, attentional, and processing speed factors to the effects of neuropsychological treatment of developmental dyslexia. Four groups of dyslexic children (M-type dyslexia) were treated over a period of four months. A first group (n = 9) underwent Bakker's Hemisphere-Specific Stimulation, with presentation of words in the right and left visual field. A second group (n = 7) received the same stimuli randomly in either visual hemifield. A third group (n = 8) received the same words presented centrally at fixation point. A fourth group (n = 6) received central stimuli with fixed presentation time (1500 ms). The children were tested before and after treatment on reading and spelling measures. All groups improved significantly after treatment on all variables. However, the group that was treated with centrally presented stimuli improved more than the other groups in spelling measures. A possible explanation is that rapid, simultaneous presentation to both hemispheres enhances interhemispheric exchange, which could produce an advantage in tasks requiring a high degree of integration between left and right hemispheric functions, such as spelling. The absence of significant differences in reading improvement may point to the role of memory functions or strategic factors characterizing all the treatment programs, possibly overweighing the effect of the other factors.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2001

Improved detection of differential information-processing speed deficits between two disease-course types of multiple sclerosis.

Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) frequently demonstrate impairments of information-processing speed (IPS) on measures such as the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT; D. M. A. Gronwall, 1977). The authors have previously shown that their new PASAT scoring method (mean dyad score) is better correlated in comparison with more traditional PASAT scoring method(s), with magnetic resonance imaging measurement of the total area (mm2) of white-matter sclerotic lesions (P. J. Snyder & J. C. Cappelleri, 2001). The present study reports that the mean dyad score discriminated 20 relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) patients from 15 secondary-progressive MS (SPMS) patients noticeably better than did the standard scoring method(s). Mean dyad scores < 4.13 classified patients as having SPMS with 73% accuracy (sensitivity), whereas scores > or = 4.13 classified patients as having RRMS with 80% accuracy (specificity).

Adult↗

PubMed1997

A comparison of the factor structure of processing speed for younger and older adults: testing the assumption of measurement equivalence across age groups.

The purpose of this study was to investigate measurement equivalence of processing speed measures for different age groups. A structural equation modeling approach was used to investigate a measurement model and the factorial invariance between younger and older adults on speed measures. The analyses concurrently examined whether speed-related abilities dedifferentiate with increasing age. One hundred and forty-four younger and 105 older adults completed 9 measures designed to assess motor speed, alphanumeric speed, and geometric speed. Results indicated that although the number of factors and the factor loadings were invariant across age groups, the interfactor correlations, the variance-covariance matrices, and the unique variances differed across groups. Furthermore, a second-order speed factor seemed to explain much of the variance in the 3 first-order factors, although this higher order factor accounted for slightly more variance among the older group than among the younger group. The results suggest that there is sufficient evidence of measurement equivalence on the current speed measures across the 2 adult age groups and, in addition, provide evidence of dedifferentiation.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

The sensory-cognition association in adulthood: Different magnitudes for processing speed, inhibition, episodic memory, and false memory?

One hundred and forty-six participants (age range = 20-80) completed a battery of tests designed to measure visual acuity, processing speed, inhibition, episodic memory and false memory. The relations between visual acuity and general cognitive ability, as well as between visual acuity and the indicators of this construct, were evaluated with structural equation modeling. The measurement model confirmed that the indicators of the individual cognitive abilities could be grouped into a general cognitive functioning factor. However, the relation between episodic and false memory was not completely explained by the shared association with this general factor. Furthermore, visual acuity predicted approximately half of the age-related variance in the general cognition factor. Also, the proportion of age-related variance shared with vision was highest in inhibition and lowest in false memory. The results are discussed in the light of common cause accounts of cognitive aging.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Information processing speed deficits may be better correlated with the extent of white matter sclerotic lesions in multiple sclerosis than previously suspected.

Despite frequent use of the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT; Gronwall, 1977) for examining information processing speed (IPS) deficits in multiple sclerosis (MS), prior literature on the relationship between PASAT performance and severity of brain disease has been contradictory. In the present study, we found that PASAT performance is moderately well correlated with the total area of sclerotic brain lesions in MS patients only if a modified scoring method (mean "dyad" score; Snyder et al., 1993), but not the standard scoring method, is applied. We conclude that the PASAT remains a useful measure of IPS in MS, if a flaw in the typical scoring technique for this test is corrected. In our sample of 41 MS patients, for every one point decrease in mean dyad score, total lesion area increased by 364.08 mm2 on average, after controlling for age, sex, and education. IPS deficits are more severe for patients with greater brain disease, due to increased disruption of the white matter pathways that likely support the parallel distributed processing of complex information by geographically distant brain regions.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition.

A theory is proposed to account for some of the age-related differences reported in measures of Type A or fluid cognition. The central hypothesis in the theory is that increased age in adulthood is associated with a decrease in the speed with which many processing operations can be executed and that this reduction in speed leads to impairments in cognitive functioning because of what are termed the limited time mechanism and the simultaneity mechanism. That is, cognitive performance is degraded when processing is slow because relevant operations cannot be successfully executed (limited time) and because the products of early processing may no longer be available when later processing is complete (simultaneity). Several types of evidence, such as the discovery of considerable shared age-related variance across various measures of speed and large attenuation of the age-related influences on cognitive measures after statistical control of measures of speed, are consistent with this theory.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Smoking, processing speed and attention in a choice reaction time task.

Nineteen subjects performed a choice reaction time task in which two levels of choice (two and four stimuli), and two levels of spatial attention (narrow and wide) were manipulated under each of two smoking conditions: sham smoking (denicotinised cigarette) or regular smoking (0.8 mg nicotine cigarette). All three factors significantly affected reaction time, with the smallest reaction times being recorded to the two-choice narrow grouped stimuli recorded under the high nicotine condition. Nicotine appears to speed decision time for both complex and hard-to-attend tasks, which is compatible with a role for nicotinic receptors in systems jointly mediating attention, memory and processing speed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Trail making and olfaction in schizophrenia: implications for processing speed.

BACKGROUND: Previous research has established a relationship between smell identification deficits (SID) and particular aspects of cognitive function among patients with schizophrenia. OBJECTIVE: To expand the extant literature, we examined the relationship between SID and the Trail Making Test to determine if processing speed is related to SID. METHODS: Our sample included 60 inpatients from the New York State Psychiatric Institute's Schizophrenia Research Unit. We considered age, deficit syndrome, verbal intelligence quotient, and education in our analyses due to their documented relationship to smell identification ability. RESULTS: Trails A errors and Trails A seconds accounted for a significant amount of the variance in University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test scores in a regression analysis (R2=.10, P=.008 and R2=.05, P=.04). CONCLUSION: Linking neurocognition to smell identification deficits may prove to be an essential marker for schizophrenia research.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

The effects of cannabis on information-processing speed.

Despite extensive research on the effects of cannabis on cognitive and motor performance, studies administering computerised cognitive batteries and pencil-and-paper tests have not provided consistent results. Contributing factors are the broad range of tests used, together with a lack of sensitivity for assessing specific cognitive processes. This study for the first time assesses a very early cognitive process, information processing, that is sufficiently fundamental as to be immune from higher cognitive, motivational, and social processes. Information processes are thought to represent the basic building blocks of higher order cognitive processes. The inspection time (IT) task was used to investigate the effects of acute and subacute cannabis use on information processing in 22 heavy users, compared to 22 noncannabis-using controls. Findings indicate that users in the subacute state display significantly slowed information-processing speeds (longer ITs) compared to controls. Paradoxically, this deficit appears to be normalised whilst users are in the acute state. These results may be explained as a withdrawal effect, but may also be due to tolerance development as a result of long-term cannabis use. Furthermore, these results may assist in providing an explanation for the development of dependence with chronic cannabis users.

Acute Disease↗

PubMed1985

Information processing speed in Friedreich's ataxia.

Three patients with Friedreich's ataxia and six controls matched by age and vocabulary and information scores on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised were administered a measure of short-term memory scanning. Patients with Friedreich's ataxia demonstrated a deficit in information processing speed in the relative absence of impairment in attention, memory, language, judgment, reasoning, and other cognitive functions. The short-term memory scanning procedure may be useful in documenting cognitive slowing and in distinguishing this impairment from the motor abnormality often associated with a subcortical brain disorder.

Adult↗