Enduring effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on attention and reaction to errors.

Rats exposed to cocaine prenatally were administered a series of 3-choice visual attention tasks, with the most pronounced deficits seen in a task in which the onset time, location, and duration of a visual cue varied unpredictably between trials. The cocaine-exposed rats were less accurate than controls but did not differ in the rate of premature responses or omission errors. The pattern of errors, coupled with response latency data, implicated deficits in the ability to rapidly engage attention and maintain a high level of alertness to the task. The cocaine-exposed rats also exhibited a blunted reaction to an error on the previous trial, possibly reflecting an alteration in emotional regulation and/or error monitoring. Implications for underlying neuropathology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Schizotypy and sustained attention.

We examined sustained attention in 32 schizotypic and 43 normal control Ss from a large, randomly ascertained nonclinical university population. Schizotypy status was determined with the Perceptual Aberration Scale. Sustained attention was measured with the Continuous Performance Test-Identical Pairs. Schizotypic Ss displayed significantly poorer sustained-attention performance than did control Ss, as measured by d and overall hit rate. Although schizotypic Ss evidenced greater levels of anxiety and depression, sustained-attention performance was not significantly associated with these mental state factors. Our results provide evidence for a subtle sustained-attention deficit among schizotypes and are interpreted in light of previous attention research with actual schizophrenic patients as well as children at risk for schizophrenia. Utility of the psychometric high-risk strategy in psychopathology research is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Focused and shifting attention in children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure.

Attention deficits are a hallmark of the teratogenic effects of alcohol. However, characterization of these deficits remains inconclusive. Children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure and nonexposed controls were evaluated using a paradigm consisting of three conditions: visual focus, auditory focus, and auditory-visual shift of attention. For the focus conditions, participants responded manually to visual or auditory targets. For the shift condition, participants alternated responses between visual targets and auditory targets. For the visual focus condition, alcohol-exposed children had lower accuracy and slower reaction time for all intertarget intervals (ITIs), while on the auditory focus condition, alcohol-exposed children were less accurate but displayed slower reaction time only on the longest ITI. Finally, for the shift condition, the alcohol-exposed group was accurate but had slowed reaction times. These results indicate that children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure have pervasive deficits in visual focused attention and deficits in maintaining auditory attention over time. However, no deficits were noted in the ability to disengage and reengage attention when required to shift attention between visual and auditory stimuli, although reaction times to shift were slower. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of cue exposure and deprivation on cognitive resources in smokers.

Examines the effects of manipulations designed to induce an urge to smoke on cognitive resources. Two cue-exposure experiments were conducted in which current smokers' reported urge to smoke and cognitive resources, as measured by a secondary reaction time (RT) probe, were assessed. In each study, Ss came to the laboratory twice, once while deprived of smoking for 12 hrs and once when they were nondeprived. During each session, Ss were exposed to both smoking and control cues. Results indicated that experimental manipulations designed to elicit a strong urge to smoke led to an increase in self-reported urge to smoke and a decrease of available cognitive resources, as measured by RT. In addition, these 2 measures were significantly correlated. These data, in conjunction with previous findings (M. A. Sayette et al, 1994) using alcohol-dependent Ss, lend support to the validity of RT as an objective measure of the effects of cue exposure on cognitive resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Covariation information and cognitive processing: Effects of causal implications on memory.

Investigated the impact of attributional implications of covariation information on memory for the implied causal agent. 118 undergraduates read summary paragraphs of consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency (CDC) information and were then timed as they verified from memory whether certain probe words, including the name of the implied causal agent, had appeared in the paragraph. In Exps I and II, Ss were not instructed to attend to attributional implications but merely to study the information for the subsequent memory test. In Exp III, Ss made attributions to each paragraph just prior to the probe task. Results indicate that (a) the names of implied causal agents were verified more slowly than names of noncausal entities if the order of CDC components facilitated attributional processing and (b) this effect was obtained regardless of Ss' immediate need to make an attributional judgment. Data are consistent with the interpretation that the implied causal agent was automatically integrated more thoroughly into the memory representation of the information, which had to be "decomposed" to allow verification of the agent's identity. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of methylphenidate on complex cognitive processing in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Three experiments were conducted to explore the effects of methylphenidate (MPH), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis, and age on performance on a complex visual-memory search task. Results showed that the effects of MPH varied with information load. On low-processing loads, all doses of MPH helped children with ADHD to improve accuracy with no cost to reaction time (RT), whereas on high loads, higher MPH doses improved error rates while slowing RT. Without medication, children with ADHD showed high error rates and slow RTs across both low and high loads, as did younger, normal control children. Because MPH slowed performance on only the most difficult high-load conditions, it is argued that the drug improves self-regulatory ability, enabling children with ADHD to adapt differentially to high and low loads. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age trends for failures of sustained attention.

Recent research has revealed an age-related reduction in errors in a sustained attention task, suggesting that sustained attention abilities improve with age. Such results seem paradoxical in light of the well-documented age-related declines in cognitive performance. In the present study, performance on the sustained attention to response task (SART) was assessed in a supplemented archival sample of 638 individuals between 14 and 77 years old. SART errors and response speed appeared to decline in a linear fashion as a function of age throughout the age span studied. In contrast, other measures of sustained attention (reaction time coefficient of variation), anticipation, and omissions) showed a decrease early in life and then remained unchanged for the rest of the life span. Thus, sustained attention shows improvements with maturation in early adulthood but then does not change with aging in older adults. On the other hand, aging across the entire life span leads to a more strategic (i.e., slower) response style that reduces the overt and critical consequences (i.e., SART errors) of momentary task disengagement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of prenatal exposure to cocaine on conditional discrimination learning in adult rats.

Adult male rats that were gestationally exposed to cocaine and control offspring were trained on an instrumental conditioning task for assessment of the acquisition and reversal of an appetitive conditional discrimination based on olfactory cues. Offspring were derived from Sprague-Dawley dams that had received subcutaneous/ly (sc) injections of 40 mg/kg/3 cc cocaine hydrochloride (C40) daily on Gestational Days 8–20, pair-fed (PF) dams that were injected with saline, nutritional control dams (NC) that received saline injections, and nontreated control dams (LC). There were no differences among the prenatal treatment groups in acquisition of the barpress response or response rate throughout all phases of training. All prenatal treatment groups required approximately the same number of sessions to criterion on the initial odor discrimination. In contrast, adult C40 offspring required more sessions to acquire the reversal of the conditional discrimination than did animals from the other treatment groups (PF, NC, and LC). In addition, even at criterion performance for acquisition of the reversal discrimination, C40 animals exhibited lower accuracy on the 1st 10 responses and made significantly more errors before the 1st reward. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on embryonic expression of sonic hedgehog

PURPOSE: To estimate the impact of visual impairment in older Australians on the use of community support services. METHODS: In the Blue Mountains Eye Study, 3654 people aged 49 or older were examined- 82.4% of eligible residents in an area west of Sydney, Australia. Presenting and best-corrected visual acuities were measured using a LogMAR chart. Subjects were categorized as having visual impairment if their better eye read 40 or fewer letters (20/40 or worse). Interview data included marital and other socioeconomic status measures, living status (alone or with spouse or other person), use of community support services, reliance on regular help from nonspouse family members or friends, and perceived ability to go out alone. RESULTS: After adjusting for age, gender, education, living status, walking disability, and health-related factors, for each one-line (five-letter) decrease in best-corrected visual acuity, there was a corresponding increase in reliance on community support services (odds ratio [OR], 1.17; 95% confidence interval, [CI] 1.07-1.28) or combined community and family support (OR 1.22; 95% CI, 1.12-1.32). Visually impaired persons were three times as likely to use regular support services provided by the municipality (OR 3.1; 95% CI, 1.8-5.1). A similar increased reliance on regular help from community, nonspouse family members, or friends was found. Visually impaired persons were also much more likely to state that they thought they were unable to go out alone (OR 6.2; 95% CI, 2.6-14.3). The findings were similar when presenting visual acuity was used to define visual impairment or after subjects with walking disabilities were excluded. Visual impairment seemed to have a greater effect on use of community support services in women than in men. CONCLUSIONS: After adjustment was made for confounding factors, visual impairment was found to affect significantly and negatively the independence of elderly people, particularly older women. Presenting visual acuity closely approximated best-corrected visual acuity in its impact on the use of community support services.     

Effects of prenatal exposure to N-methylpyrrolidone on postnatal development and behavior in rats

Pregnant rats (Mol:WIST) were exposed to 150 ppm N-methylpyrrolidone for 6 hours per day on gestation days 7-20. The dose level was selected so as not to induce maternal toxicity or decrease viability of offspring. In the preweaning period, the exposed offspring had a lower body weight and their physical development was delayed. Neurobehavioral evaluation of the male pups revealed no effects on basal functions of the central nervous system. The animals appeared normal and motor function (rotarod), activity level (open field), and performance in learning tasks with a low grade of complexity were similar in the two groups. However, in more difficult tasks such as the reversal procedure in Morris water maze and operant delayed spatial alternation (Skinner boxes), performance was impaired in exposed offspring.     

Effects of interference and cognitive arousal upon the processing of organized thought.

Reports part of a series dealing with cognitive arousal and reverberation. Prior investigations highlighted the influence of brief posthypnotic manipulations of mental arousal, introduced during the reverberation phase following stimulus presentation of strings of consonants, upon the later salience of those stimuli. 2 male undergraduates' tasks consisted 1st of reading aloud 6 words in scrambled order from 2 familiar 3-word phrases and then reporting whatever words popped into mind during a 12-sec period. Posthypnotic experimental interventions consisted of (1) the auditory hallucination of numbers while reporting words, and (2) the alterations of cognitive arousal in 5 degrees ranging from very high to very low. Both variables produced significant effects upon the meaningful organization of words in 2 Ss' reports. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective attention and the suppression of cognitive noise.

The distractor-suppression effect is the relative slowing of Stroop (1935) color naming when the current appropriate response is identical to the inappropriate response activated by the distractor word appearing in the immediately preceding trial. Two experiments investigated aspects of the time course of distractor suppression. Experiment 1 found the suppression effect when subjects were instructed to maintain strict accuracy but not when subjects were encouraged to sacrifice some accuracy for greater speed. Experiment 2 traced the recovery from suppression by varying the interval between successive trials (20, 520, 1020, or 2020 ms). The suppression effect was found to persist for at least a second; by 2 s the effect was completely dissipated. The results support the view of selective inhibition as an active, time-dependent control process that develops over time following the activation of distracting information and that it is released after response to the task-appropriate information has been made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Galantamine improves sustained attention in chronic cocaine users.

Chronic cocaine users are known to have cognitive deficits that are predictive of poor treatment response. Whether these deficits improve with medications targeting specific cognitive functions has not been examined in previous studies. The goal of this study was to evaluate galantamine's efficacy on selected cognitive outcomes, including measures of sustained attention, response inhibition, and attentional bias in recently abstinent cocaine users. Galantamine, a reversible and competitive inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase, is used clinically in the treatment of Alzheimer's dementia. In a randomized, double-blind, parallel-group study, 34 participants were randomized to galantamine (8 mg/day) or placebo treatment for 10 days. Cognitive and self-report mood measures were obtained at baseline and on Days 5 and 10 after the initiation of treatment. Galantamine treatment, compared to placebo, improved the reaction time, F(2, 50) = 8.6, p .05). These results demonstrate that medications can enhance cognitive function (e.g., sustained attention) in abstinent cocaine users. The potential efficacy of galantamine as a treatment for cocaine abuse needs to be further evaluated in clinical trials. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective attention: Effects of cuing on the processing of different types of compound stimuli.

Four White Carneaux pigeons in a matching-to-sample experiment received (a) element samples (1 of 2 colors or vertical or horizontal white lines), (b) separated compound samples (a color and a line element presented together), and (c) unified compound samples (vertical or horizontal colored lines). In Phase I, test stimuli were the 2 elements from one dimension; the dimension tested varied randomly when the sample was a compound. Element samples were matched better than unified samples, which were matched better than separated samples. In Phase II, two samples preceded the tests. On EC trials, the first sample (S1) was an element, and the second sample (S2) was a compound; on CE trials this order was reversed. Accuracy varied as a function of sample sequence when the compound was separated (EC?>?CE on nonprobe trials and CE?>?EC on probe trials). The pattern was not observed when the compound was unified. The data suggest that the element in EC trials served as a cue that increased processing of the cued dimension and decreased processing of the noncued dimension of separated compounds. However, both dimensions of unified compounds seem to have been processed regardless of cuing. It is suggested that the dimensions of unified compounds are processed or coded as a unit, whereas those of separated compounds are processed independently. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of epistemological beliefs and topic-specific beliefs on undergraduates' cognitive and strategic processing of dual-positional text.

The effects of epistemological beliefs and topic-specific beliefs on undergraduates' cognitive and strategic processing of a dual-positional text were investigated. Forty undergraduates thought aloud while reading a text that presented information both consistent and inconsistent with their prior beliefs about the HIV–AIDS relationship. Epistemological beliefs about the speed of learning affected the overall number of cognitive processes exhibited, whereas topic-specific beliefs interacted with the nature of the information read to influence the specific type of cognitive processing used. Strategies for accepting or resolving apparent ambiguities in text were related positively to delayed recall; cognitive processes for developing awareness were related negatively to the number of distortions produced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of ovariectomy, 192 IgG-saporin-induced cortical cholinergic deafferentation, and administration of estradiol on sustained attention performance in rats.

Female ovariectomized (OVX) and sham-OVX rats were trained in a task designed to assess sustained attention. After achieving asymptotic performance, OVX rats did not exhibit the impairment in performance over blocks of trials (i.e., the vigilance decrement) observed in sham-OVX rats. Furthermore, OVX rats' performance over blocks of trials was unaffected by the normally detrimental effects of a visual distractor. 192 IgG-saporin-induced lesions of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons resulted in similar impairments in the performance of OVX and sham-OVX rats. The acute, but not chronic, administration of 17β-estradiol attenuated the lesion-induced decrease in the relative number of hits to longest signals exclusively in rats with intact ovaries. These findings indicate that the variables contributing to the potential therapeutic effects of estradiol remain poorly understood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Playroom observations of activity level and sustained attention: Two-year stability.

48 6–12 yr old males, originally evaluated as outpatients in a child psychiatry clinic, were seen again 2 yrs later at follow-up. Measures of gross and fine motor activity, sustained attention, and self-vocalization showed significant stability over the 2 yrs for both free play and restricted academic settings. Several activity and attention measures showed significant improvement between referral and follow-up. Results suggest that the present playroom procedure measures aspects of hyperactive behavior that show some stability among clinic-referred boys. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of acute prenatal ethanol exposure on Bergmann glia cells early postnatal development

The effects of acute ethanol exposure during the prenatal phase of Bergmann glia cell (Bgc) generation were evaluated in three postnatal days. Ethanol exposed rats showed Bgc with reduced soma size, decreased number and width of their fibers, and increased fiber length, when compared with control animals. These differences, however, were significant at postnatal day 12. Our results demonstrate that acute, prenatal exposure to ethanol during critical stages of brain development disrupts Bgc early postnatal development.