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Quantitative scores of normal and abnormal subjects on Initial-letter Word-association Test.

The quotient of the mean quantitative score on Initial-letter Word-association Test for 193 normal subjects was significantly higher than the quotient of the mean quantitative score of 44 abnormal (psychotic) subjects. This is interpreted as meaning that, in general, the normal subjects have predominantly a positive attitude towards their surrounding world in contradistinction to the abnormal subjects whose attitude was predominantly negative, ambivalent, and repressive. On the other hand, the mean of the quotients of the quantitative scores of the 44 abnormal subjects was higher than the mean of the quotients of the quantitative scores of the normal subjects which suggests increased oral tendencies of the abnormal subjects expressed much as the unwarranted optimism of small children.

Adult

[Different responses in word association tests in normotensive and hypertensive subjects].

Activation of latent associations by word stimuli of different emotional relevance as well as the accompanying electrophysiological tracings reveal statistically significantly characteristics in juvenile essential (arterial) hypertensives as compared to normotensives. This applies to the verbal reactions as well as to the electrophysical concomitants. Under additional cognitive demands both groups achieve better performance. This rise is significantly greater, however for hypertensives than for normotensives. Our special recording system permitted exact phonographic registration of the verbal stimulus and reaction as well as of the PGR.

Galvanic Skin Response

[Word association test in myocardial infarct].

The distinguishing feature of associative reactions of patients with myocardial infarction is the marked predominance of egocentric response and the lesser variance of the reactions to critical verbal stimuli. As compared to patients with myocardial infarction and normal psychic condition and to healthy individuals, patients with psychopathological changes due to myocardial infarction gave disordered associative answers to emotionally meaningful verbal stimuli significantly more frequently and with a more marked affective coloration. These signs may serve in different diagnosis in appraising the psychic status of patients with myocardial infarction.

Adult

Comparison of the amnesic effects of midazolam and diazepam.

Thirty patients undergoing gastroscopy received intravenous premedication with either midazolam or diazepam in a randomised double blind study. Mean dosages were similar for the midazolam (6.13 mg) and diazepam (6.4 mg) groups. Neuropsychological testing pre- and post-medication comprised the Wechsler Memory Scale, Complex Figure Test, Word Association Test, and a Tactile Memory Test. There was a significant impairment on post-medication tests requiring delayed recall of verbal, visual and tactile stimuli. Midazolam produced significantly greater anterograde amnesia than diazepam at similar mean dosages. With the exception of Digit Span and Associate Learning, cognitive tasks which do not require delayed recall were not affected. It is concluded that the amnesic deficit is discrete and not secondary to sedative effects.

Amnesia

Neurophysiological aspects and learning processes in schizophrenic patients.

Two groups of schizophrenic patients (acute and chronic subjects) were observed in order to study possible differences in neuropsychological performances and their relationship with symptomatology. 16 acute and 16 chronic patients, aged 18 to 35 years were tested with a battery of neuropsychological tests (Word Association Test, Serial Verbal Learning, Weigl's test, Simple Reaction Times, Choice Continuous Reaction Time). Clinical profiles were evaluated by means of MMPI and WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale). Findings concerning cognitive processes show no significant differences between the two groups. Results suggest a correlation between clinical profiles and performances in acute patients, whereas in chronic subjects this correlation seems markedly reduced. Finally, chronicity (i.e. the length of illness) does not seem so be an important factor in determining consistent defects in neuropsychological performances.

Acute Disease

Lexical but not semantic priming in Alzheimer's disease.

The hypothesis that patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have a disturbance in semantic processing was tested using a new lexical-priming task, threshold oral reading. Healthy elderly controls showed significant effects of priming for word pairs that are associatively related (words that reliably co-occur in word association tests) and for word pairs that are semantically related (high-frequency exemplars that belong to the same superordinate category but are not high-frequency associates). AD patients showed effects of priming for associatively related words but not for word pairs that are related only by shared semantic features. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that semantic processing is impaired in AD and suggest that independent networks of relationships among words and among concepts in semantic memory may be differentially disrupted with various forms of brain damage.

Aged

Effects of personality and loss of anonymity on aggression: a reevaluation of deindividuation.

Zimbardo's deindividuation hypothesis was reexamined by individuating some subjects. Twelve four-person groups administered shock to a confederate in a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design with two levels of social individuation (subjects' level of anonymity to group members), two levels of nonsocial individuation (subjects' opportunity to give identifying information to the experimenter on a word association test) and two levels of individual differences. It was found that subjects, who individuated themselves by giving information to the experimenter on the word association test showed more, not less, antisocial behavior. Furthermore, this increased antisocial behavior was exhibited only by externally oriented subjects: those with an external locus of control and a low mysticism score. Some of those more antisocial subjects were also more likely to report feeling like they stood out from the group. It was concluded that antisocial behavior in this paradigm may thus be a response to experimenter demand felt most strongly when subjects felt most identifiable.

Aggression

The unitary construct variously named overinclusion and cognitive style.

To assess the relationships among field dependence, overinclusion, and retardedness, 87 individuals were administered Epstein's Overinclusion Test, the Embedded Figures Test, and two tests of retardedness--the O'Connor Finger Dexterity Test and a word association test. Ss included both males and females: 21 noninstitutionalized controls solicited via newspaper advertisements, 23 recently admitted and 21 long-term non-paranoid schizophrenics, and 22 recently admitted individuals with affective disorders. Results supported the direct relationship between overinclusion and field dependence. Sex differences appeared on these same two tests. Contradictory to the third hypothesis, the two tests of retardedness were directly related to both overinclusion and field dependence. These two latter concepts may therefore be manifestations of a single more comprehensive construct.

Affective Symptoms

Methylphenidate hydrochloride effects on psychological tests in acute schizophrenic and nonpsychotic patients.

Actively psychotic schizophrenic and nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients received intravenous methylphenidate hydrochlroide (0.5 mg/kg). Each patient was rated for level of psychosis and talkativeness, and each received the Holtzman projective ink blot tests and the Kent-Rosanoff word-association tests before, during, and after methylphenidate infusion. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Goldberg Index scores were also obtained as a general measure of psychosis. For the entire patient group, methylphenidate infusion was followed by a significant increase in talkativeness and psychosis ratings and in pathological responses to the Holtzman ink blot test. There was a significant decrease in common word associations. Since neither of the psychological tests allow more than one response per item, it appears that methylphenidate truly effects pathological thought processes and decreases common word associations as such, rather than merely making these processes more evident by increasing verbalization.

Acute Disease

The Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale as a measure of anxiety.

Women divided into two levels of sex-guilt were administered the Word Association Test under three different conditions. In the first a confederate modeled sexual responses, in the second a confederate modeled nonsexual responses, and in the third condition no confederate was present. The results indicated that both low- and high-guilt women made significantly more sexual responses when exposed to the sexual model than in the nonsexual or no-model conditions. The results were interpreted as supporting an avoidant-anxiety conceptualization of guilt as opposed to Mosher's preservation of self-esteem view.

Adult

Generative associative naming in dementia of Alzheimer's type.

Forty-eight patients with mild to moderate dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT) were tested with a generative associative naming task, a task that combines the aspects of fluency and of word association tests. The variables taken into consideration were the number of adequate and inadequate responses, conventionality, word frequency and lexical-semantic relation to the target. DAT patients' performances were compared to those of a group of control subjects matched for sex, age and educational level. As a group, the patients gave fewer adequate responses, more idiosyncratic responses and perseverations, while there was no difference in the qualitative variables. However, the analyses of the performance profiles suggest that, irrespective of the severity of the disease, two major subgroups of DAT patients may be identified: (1) a first subgroup of subjects produced words with a lower conventionality rate and these were mostly in propositional relationship to the target; they also produced a higher rate of idiosyncratic responses and perseverations. (2) A second subgroup of subjects gave more conventional responses, mostly in the hierarchical-categorical relationship. The disorders of the former subgroup seem to correspond to a disrupted access to some relatively spared semantic abilities, whereas those of the latter to a semantic breakdown.

Aged

Normative data for a brief neuropsychological screening battery. Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study.

This study reports normative data for a group of 733 homosexual/bisexual men stratified by age (range 25 to 54 years) and by education on the following six neuropsychological tests: (1) Digit Span (WAIS-R), (2) Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, (3) Symbol Digit Modalities Test, (4) Controlled Oral Word Association Test, (5) Grooved Pegboard, and (6) The Trail Making Test. Analysis demonstrates that both age and education are important determinants of performance for several of these measures.

AIDS Dementia Complex

Epoetin and cognitive function.

The uremia of chronic renal failure (CRF) can alter brain electrophysiology and cognitive function, even in the well-dialyzed patient. The effect of uremia on brain function can be assessed by electrophysiologic techniques such as electroencephalogram (EEG), sensory-evoked potentials (EPs), and cognitive event-related potentials (ERPs), and through a series of neuropsychologic tests. Five tests have been used clinically to measure the speed and efficiency of cognitive functioning and include the following: Number Cancellation, Trailmaking Test, Symbol Digit Modalities Test, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, and Controlled Oral Word Association Test. Test performance by patients with CRF is often below that of healthy controls. Auditory ERPs, a sensitive indicator of subtle changes in central nervous system (CNS) function in uremia, result in the generation of a P300 component wave that varies in amplitude and latency with patient variables such as attention and effort. Although dialysis tends to normalize P300 latencies, the waves remain somewhat prolonged in most patients. The anemia often observed in patients receiving chronic dialysis appears to aggravate uremic encephalopathy. This effect can be reversed when anemia is corrected following administration of recombinant human erythropoietin (epoetin). Improvement in P300 amplitudes, and, in some cases, decreases in P300 latencies correlated well with epoetin-induced increases in hematocrit levels. With the correction of anemia, that component of brain dysfunction not attributable to retention of uremic toxins can largely be reversed.

Anemia

Psychophysiological studies of a geographically defined population.

In the Berlevag project attemps have been made at using psycho-physiological and cognitive measures as indexes of psychiatric morbidity.--With skin conductance response, psychotics and neurotics showed signs of autonomic inhibition compared with conduct disorders and normal controls. All groups except psychotics showed cognitive effects in conditioning. No differences between the groups could be established for stereotype indexes, but the Berlevag sample appeared to have unusual high stereotypy indexes. With word associations the patient groups were markedly different from controls, with most deviations in psychotics and least deviations in conduct disorders.--A comparison of word associations in samples of the Oslo and the Berlevag populations suggested that the associative network was very similar in the two populations. There are differences with regard to verbal fluency, response types and reaction times.--It is unresolved whether these differences measure psychiatric morbidity or reflect a culture-dependent character of the word association test.

Acoustic Stimulation