Age-related changes in verbal and nonverbal memory during early childhood.

In the present experiment, age-related changes in verbal and nonverbal memory performance by 2- to 4-year-old children were assessed. All children participated in the same unique event, and their memory of that event was assessed after a 24-hr delay. Overall, children's performance on each memory measure increased as a function of age. Furthermore, children's performance on both the verbal and nonverbal memory tests was related to their language ability; children with more advanced language skills reported more during the verbal interview and exhibited superior nonverbal memory relative to children with less advanced language skills. Finally, children's verbal recall of the event lagged behind both their nonverbal recall and their general verbal skill. It is hypothesized that despite large strides in language acquisition, preschool-age children continue to rely primarily on nonverbal representations of past events. The findings have important implications for the phenomenon of childhood amnesia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A factor analysis of the Wesley Rigidity Inventory: Its relationship to age and nonverbal intelligence.

The present research involved an item analysis of the Wesley Rigidity Inventory (1953) to determine its unidimensionality and the effect of age and intelligence. Factor analysis revealed orthogonally-related factors: rigidity in intellectual thinking, liking for established routine which was highly loaded with the factor of age, and a factor of appreciation of methodical behavior and details. From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2HF91C. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Illusion of control and behavioral control attempts in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The present research used the illusion-of-control paradigm to examine the relationships among obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, behavioral control attempts, and illusory sense of control. Participants were presented with a preprogrammed sequence of aversive and neutral visual stimuli and were encouraged to attempt to control the sequence with keyboard presses. Participants rated their perceived level of control 3 times during the task. In addition, the authors used the repetitiveness of keyboard presses as a measure of rigid, compulsive-like behavior. In Study 1, this procedure was administered to a sample of 55 students who also completed measures of OCD and depression. In Study 2, the task was administered to 22 participants with OCD and 22 matched participants without OCD. In line with predictions, OCD symptoms were correlated with higher illusory sense of control and with more repetitive behavioral control attempts. The authors discuss the central role of control in OCD and specifically the relationships between need for control and compulsive rituals, which may be conceptualized as means for achieving an illusory sense of control over stressful life events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False beliefs maintenance for fear-related information in obsessive-compulsive disorder: An investigation with the hindsight paradigm.

The present study tested whether participants with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) overestimate the incidence frequency of OCD-relevant phenomena and display a decreased hindsight bias for concern-related information, which may represent a maintenance factor for OCD. Thirty participants with OCD and 39 control participants were requested to estimate the incidence frequency of 8 events in each of 4 domains: washing-relevant, checking-relevant, negative, or neutral. Subsequently, participants received the correct statistics for all items and were requested to affectively appraise these. Two hours later participants had to reproduce their initial estimates. No differences emerged between participants with OCD and control participants regarding initial estimates. In case the frequency of an OCD-relevant item was initially largely overestimated, control participants expressed more relief when confronted with the correct solution than participants with OCD, especially for washing-relevant items. The recalled estimates showed a typical hindsight bias (i.e., the reproduced estimates were biased toward the correct response), but with no difference between groups. In sum, participants were normal in their subjective estimates of OCD-relevant events, and there was no evidence for a heightened maintenance of false beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Successive responses to simultaneous stimulation in elderly patients with memory disorder.

"This study was designed to test the notion that memory disorder, clinically ascertained in elderly persons, may be related to a breakdown in the kind of storage system which has been adduced to explain successive responses to simultaneous stimulation in normal young adults… . The results… support the hypothesis." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4FI09I. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal knowledge, working memory, and processing speed as predictors of verbal learning in older adults.

The present study aimed at modeling individual differences in a verbal learning task by means of a latent structured growth curve approach based on an exponential function that yielded 3 parameters: initial recall, learning rate, and asymptotic performance. Three cognitive variables—speed of information processing, verbal knowledge, working memory—and the participant's age were included in the model in order to explain individual differences in the learning parameters. The data come from the second wave of the Zurich Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Aging (D. Zimprich, Martin, et al., 2008) comprising 334 participants ranging in age from 66 to 81 years (M = 74.43, SD = 4.41). Among the logistic, the Gompertz, and the hyperbolic function, the exponential function described the data best. Reliable individual differences were found in all 3 learning parameters. The cognitive predictor variables affected the verbal learning parameters differentially: All 3 predictors affected positively initial recall, the asymptotic performance increased with better working memory and faster processing speed, and the learning rate was positively associated with verbal knowledge only. Age did not affect the learning parameters but correlated negatively with working memory and processing speed. The finding of large and reliable individual differences in learning is seen as evidence that the potential for positive change, or plasticity in adulthood is maintained and that it is worthwhile to enhance the determinants of learning or learning itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dynamics of protection and exposure in the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This article considers the development of obsessional thinking in relation to the protective function provided by the early interpersonal environment. In particular, it explores the idea that the seed of obsessional thinking lies in the child's adaptation to and survival in an environment that either provides an overly strong shield against the world or one where the child is left highly exposed to the world. At the two extremes of shielding, where there is a less than or more than needed mediation of the external world, the child is at greater risk of developing a sense of an endangered relationship to the world. The main point here is that the malign omnipotence of obsessional thoughts grows within an environment whose capacity to balance exposing the child to the world and protecting him from that same world is skewed or where the child is unable to avail of the defensive shield as a means of safeguarding him from feelings of personal omnipotent destructiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive-behavioral therapy with and without medication in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and pharmacotherapy with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) are established monotherapies for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), yet research on their combined efficacy is lacking. Practicing psychologists who treat OCD are thus unable to say definitively whether exposure and ritual prevention would be more successful with concomitant SRI pharmacotherapy. The authors explored this issue in a clinical sample of 56 outpatients who received fee-for-service CBT; 31 (55%) received CBT alone, and 25 (45%) received CBT plus SRI. Both groups made clinically significant and comparable posttreatment gains, suggesting that CBT is effective with or without concomitant pharmacotherapy. Clinical implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expressed emotion and familial interaction: A study with agoraphobic and obsessive-compulsive patients and their relatives.

Patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia (n = 40) or obsessive- compulsive disorder (n = 61) participated in a 10-min problem-solving interaction with their primary relative. Relatives were categorized as hostile or nonhostile toward the patient on the basis of a measure of expressed emotion (EE). Observed interactions between patients and their hostile relatives, relative to those of dyads with a nonhostile relative, were marked by higher rates of relatives' criticism and of patients' negativity but not by higher rates of negative reciprocity. Analyses of sequences indicated that the dyads with a hostile relative had a higher rate of sequences in which the relative was first critical and the patient then negative than was the case for dyads with nonhostile relatives. Moreover, hostile relatives were more frequently critical than nonhostile relatives whether patients' preceding behavior was positive, negative, or neutral. The findings are consistent with the stress-vulnerability model of the effect of EE on mental health, in that patients living with a high EE relative appear to be exposed to higher levels of interpersonal stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Introduction to the special section: Working memory and neuropsychology—Interdependence of clinical and experimental research.

Memory processes and memory disorders are perhaps the most heavily studied areas in neuropsychology. One consequence of this is that a great deal of attention has focused on the theoretical and clinical aspects of memory, and many different conceptual viewpoints have arisen. In 1974, A. Baddeley and G. Hitch described a model system, working memory, that was developed to account for a variety of data concerning human short-term memory. The emphasis in the model was the notion that short-term memory could be active—could do work—and thus contribute to the processing of information to be remembered. The model has evolved during the intervening 20 years, and it has increasing importance for understanding normal memory, memory loss, and other cognitive operations. The purpose of this Special Section of Neuropsychology is to present a series of articles describing the contributions of the working memory model to neuropsychology and to elucidate how neuropsychological studies have led to direct tests of the model's tenets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Material-specific memory in temporal lobe epilepsy: Effects of seizure laterality and language dominance.

This study investigated the effects of seizure laterality and language dominance on material-specific memory in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Left TLE (LTLE) patients with left-hemisphere language dominance (LHLD) showed significantly higher nonverbal than verbal memory capacity, whereas right TLE patients with LHLD showed significantly better verbal than nonverbal memory capacity. LTLE patients with non-left-hemisphere language dominance (NLHLD) showed significantly better verbal memory capacity compared with LTLE patients with LHLD. Thus, selective verbal or nonverbal memory deficits that are dependent on side of seizure onset were apparent in patients with LHLD but not in patients with NLHLD. Relative sparing of verbal memory capacity in LTLE patients with NLHLD may reflect interhemispheric reorganization of verbal memory function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contribution of Organizational Strategy to Verbal Learning and Memory in Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Statistical mediation modeling was used to test the hypothesis that poor use of a semantic organizational strategy contributes to verbal learning and memory deficits in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Comparison of 28 adults with ADHD and 34 healthy controls revealed lower performance by the ADHD group on tests of verbal learning and memory, sustained attention, and use of semantic organization during encoding. Mediation modeling indicated that state anxiety, but not semantic organization, significantly contributed to the prediction of both learning and delayed recall in the ADHD group. The pattern of findings suggests that decreased verbal learning and memory in adult ADHD is due in part to situational anxiety and not to poor use of organizational strategies during encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A randomized clinical trial of acceptance and commitment therapy versus progressive relaxation training for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Objective: Effective treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) exist, but additional treatment options are needed. The effectiveness of 8 sessions of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for adult OCD was compared with progressive relaxation training (PRT). Method: Seventy-nine adults (61% female) diagnosed with OCD (mean age = 37 years; 89% Caucasian) participated in a randomized clinical trial of 8 sessions of ACT or PRT with no in-session exposure. The following assessments were completed at pretreatment, posttreatment, and 3-month follow-up by an assessor who was unaware of treatment conditions: Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), Beck Depression Inventory–II, Quality of Life Scale, Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, Thought Action Fusion Scale, and Thought Control Questionnaire. Treatment Evaluation Inventory was completed at posttreatment. Results: ACT produced greater changes at posttreatment and follow-up over PRT on OCD severity (Y-BOCS: ACT pretreatment = 24.22, posttreatment = 12.76, follow-up = 11.79; PRT pretreatment = 25.4, posttreatment = 18.67, follow-up = 16.23) and produced greater change on depression among those reporting at least mild depression before treatment. Clinically significant change in OCD severity occurred more in the ACT condition than PRT (clinical response rates: ACT posttreatment = 46%–56%, follow-up = 46%–66%; PRT posttreatment = 13%–18%, follow-up = 16%–18%). Quality of life improved in both conditions but was marginally in favor of ACT at posttreatment. Treatment refusal (2.4% ACT, 7.8% PRT) and dropout (9.8% ACT, 13.2% PRT) were low in both conditions. Conclusions: ACT is worth exploring as a treatment for OCD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory functioning in children and adolescents with autism.

Objective: Memory functioning in children and adolescents ages 5–19 with autism (n = 50) and typically developing controls (n = 36) was assessed using a clinical assessment battery, the Test of Memory and Learning (TOMAL). Method: Participant groups were statistically comparable in age, nonverbal IQ, handedness, and head circumference, and were administered the TOMAL. Results: Test performance on the TOMAL demonstrated broad differences in memory functioning in the autism group, across multiple task formats, including verbal and nonverbal, immediate and delayed, attention and concentration, sequential recall, free recall, associative recall, and multiple-trial learning memory. All index and nearly all subtest differences remained significant even after comparing a subset of the autism group (n = 36) and controls that were matched for verbal IQ (p > .05). However, retention of previously remembered information after a delay was similar in autism and controls. Conclusions: These findings indicate that performance on measures of episodic memory is broadly reduced in autism, and support the conclusion that information encoding and organization, possibly due to inefficient cognitive processing strategies, rather than storage and retrieval, are the primary factors that limit memory performance in autism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exposure and ritual prevention for obsessive-compulsive disorder: Effects of intensive versus twice-weekly sessions.

Exposure and ritual prevention (ERP) is the most effective treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), yet the intensive treatment schedule often described is not transportable to many settings. In the present study, the authors examined whether a twice-weekly (TW) ERP program reduced the effectiveness of intensive (IT) ERP. Forty OCD patients received 15 sessions of ERP: 20 received daily treatment over 3 weeks and 20 received twice weekly therapy over 8 weeks. Results indicated that both programs were effective. The effect of therapy schedule was moderate, with a trend toward more improvement in the intensive group at posttreatment. No differences were found at follow-up; some evidence of relapse was found with IT but not TW. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning, retention, and conceptual usage in elderly patients with memory disorder.

Elderly patients clinically judged to be suffering from memory disorder show difficulty in learning paired-associates and the kind of tasks found in the Wechsler Performance Scale. The learning difficulty extends to other kinds of learning problems and retention processes are also affected. The relevance of some of Hebb's notions concerning the likely relations between learning and cognitive functioning in human adults was also examined. The results confirmed expectations and suggested that the sort of neuropsychological model elaborated by Hebb may be a useful source of working hypotheses in this area. 18 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The heterogeneous structure of schizotypal personality disorder: Item-level factors of the schizotypal personality questionnaire and their associations with obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, dissociative tendencies, and normal personality.

A. Raine et al.'s (1994) 3-factor scheme is currently the most widely accepted model of schizotypal personality disorder (SPD). Factor analytic studies of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ; A. Raine, 1991) subscales, which represent the 9 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria for SPD, have provided the model's primary support. The use of only 9 modeled variables, however, limits the number of factors that can be extracted. To explicate this structure more fully, the authors conducted item-level factor analyses of the SPQ in a large student sample that completed the instrument twice within a 2-week interval. The authors' analyses failed to support either the 3-factor model of SPD or the 9 existing DSM-based subscales of the SPQ. Instead, 5 replicable dimensions emerged that capture recurrent symptom pairings found in the broader SPD literature: Social Anhedonia, Unusual Beliefs and Experiences, Social Anxiety, Mistrust, and Eccentricity/Oddity. These factors are only weakly correlated with each other and show differential correlational patterns with the Big Five personality traits, dissociative tendencies, and symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Moreover, they are congruent with dimensional models of personality psychopathology. Implications for SPD in DSM-V are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for emotionally neutral information in posttraumatic stress disorder: A meta-analytic investigation.

Studies have come to conflicting conclusions about whether posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with poorer memory for emotionally neutral information. The authors report a meta-analysis of 27 studies that investigated verbal and/or visual memory in samples with PTSD and healthy controls. The results indicated that the association between PTSD and memory impairment appears to be robust, small to moderate in size, and stronger for verbal than for visual memory. Effect sizes did not vary according to whether recall was immediate or delayed. The association is found in both civilian and military samples and cannot be readily explained as being due to the use of nontraumatized healthy control groups or concurrent head injury. The findings are placed in the context of recent neurobiological and experimental cognitive research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group and individual treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder using cognitive therapy and exposure plus response prevention: A 2-year follow-up of two randomized trials.

Relatively little is known about the long-term durability of group treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and contemporary cognitive treatments. The current study investigated the 2-year follow-up results for participants who completed randomized trials of group or individual treatment and received either cognitive therapy (CT) or exposure plus response prevention (ERP). Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) scores for individual ERP and CT were not significantly different over 2 years. However, YBOCS scores were consistently lower over time for group ERP participants than for group CT participants. With a single exception in the group treatment study, secondary cognitive and depression scores were stable, indicating that gains achieved during acute treatment were maintained over 2 years. Less than 10% of treatment completers relapsed in each of the treatment trials. Approximately 50% of the completer sample was rated as recovered at 2 years. Additionally, a tentative cross-study comparison suggests that CT was better tolerated and resulted in less dropout than did ERP. Despite the overall positive results, efficacy of OCD treatments has reached a plateau and may require a fresh perspective to move forward. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Executive function, memory, and learning in Tourette's syndrome.

Young people with Tourette's syndrome (TS) alone, TS plus attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (+ADHD), or TS plus obsessive-compulsive disorder (+OCD) were compared with a healthy control group on a set of measures of executive functioning, memory, and learning. The TS-alone group was impaired on one executive measure involving inhibition and strategy generation but did not differ significantly from the healthy control group on other measures. The TS +ADHD group showed impairment on several executive measures. There was no evidence of impairment in implicit aspects of memory and learning for any of the TS groups. The findings are discussed in terms of the frontostriatal hypothesis of TS and the contribution of comorbid symptomatology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)