Schizophrenia and the immediacy mechanism.

The author comments on the article "The primacy of cognition in schizophrenia," by R. W. Heinrichs (see record 2005-03019-003) and states that to the pursuit of schizophrenic/normal differences, there is no end. Heinrichs used meta-analyses to argue persuasively for the primacy of cognition for this role. His conclusion not only elicited agreement from both researchers and practitioners, but it is supported by his quantitative estimate of those differences through the use of meta-analysis and the associated effect sizes. An interesting question is why cognitive behavior should be so effective in differentiating schizophrenia patients from normal persons. The current author believes one answer is that cognitive behavior involves complex stimulus control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Book review: In search of madness: Schizophrenia and neuroscience.

Review of book: In search of madness: Schizophrenia and neuroscience by R. Walter Heinrichs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 368 pp. Hardcover. ISBN 0-1951-2219-4. Reviewed by Gillian O'Driscoll. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speeded Classification in a Probabilistic Category Structure: Contrasting Exemplar-Retrieval, Decision-Boundary, and Prototype Models.

Speeded perceptual classification experiments were conducted to distinguish among the predictions of exemplar-retrieval, decision-boundary, and prototype models. The key manipulation was that across conditions, individual stimuli received either probabilistic or deterministic category feedback. Regardless of the probabilistic feedback, however, an ideal observer would always classify the stimuli by using an identical linear decision boundary. Subjects classified the probabilistic stimuli with lower accuracy and longer response times than they classified the deterministic stimuli. These results are in accord with the predictions of the exemplar model and challenge the predictions of the prototype and decision-boundary models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Reminiscence and Stage of Illness in Schizophrenia": Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by J. Higgins and S. A. Mednick (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1963, 66[4], 314-317). On page 317, the third line of the right-hand column should read: phrenics were .46 and .50, respectively. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1963-08191-001.) When given a repetitive inverse alphabet printing task to perform for 5 min. of massed practice, Early Stage schizophrenics (N=16) displayed a greater degree of improvement in performance (reminiscence) after a 2-min. rest than did Advanced Stage schizophrenics (N = 16). Early Stage and Advanced Stage schizophrenia were defined in terms of a theory of schizophrenia which postulates differential levels of arousal as characteristic of the stages of the disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diagnosticity and Prototypicality in Category Learning: A Comparison of Inference Learning and Classification Learning.

Category knowledge allows for both the determination of category membership and an understanding of what the members of a category are like. Diagnostic information is used to determine category membership; prototypical information reflects the most likely features given category membership. Two experiments examined 2 means of category learning, classification and inference learning, in terms of sensitivity to diagnostic and prototypical information. Classification learners were highly sensitive to diagnostic features but not sensitive to nondiagnostic, but prototypical, features. Inference learners were less sensitive to the diagnostic features than were classification learners and were also sensitive to the nondiagnostic, prototypical, features. Discussion focuses on aspects of the 2 learning tasks that might lead to this differential sensitivity and the implications for learning real-world categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Somatosensory Processing and Schizophrenia Liability: Proprioception, Exteroceptive Sensitivity, and Graphesthesia Performance in the Biological Relatives of Schizophrenia Patients.

In the present study, the authors examined somatosensory processing in 30 biological relatives of persons with schizophrenia (hereafter called "schizophrenia relatives"), 30 biological relatives of persons with bipolar affective disorder (psychiatric family control subjects), and 30 healthy control subjects with no family history of psychopathology. All 3 groups completed a weight discrimination task, a 2-point discrimination task, and a complex cognitive somatosensory task (i.e., graphesthesia). The schizophrenia relatives performed significantly worse on all 3 somatosensory tasks compared with both the healthy control subjects and the bipolar relatives. The healthy control subjects and psychiatric family control subjects showed no significant differences on any of the somatosensory tasks. Within the weight discrimination and 2-point discrimination tasks, schizophrenia relatives showed group differences on the d' index, the measure of sensitivity, whereas all 3 groups did not differ on lnβ, the measure of response bias, suggesting a genuine difference in weight and touch sensitivity. The d' value of the weight discrimination task was significantly associated with both the cognitive-perceptual factor and negative symptom factor of the clinical questionnaire (e.g., Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire; SPQ), whereas the 2-point discrimination d' value and graphesthesia scores were significantly associated only with the cognitive-perceptual factor of the SPQ. Implications for the possible relation between somatosensory task performance and schizophrenia liability are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual Organization in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: Empirical Research and Theoretical Implications.

The research into perceptual organization in schizophrenia spectrum disorders has found evidence for and against a perceptual organization deficit and has interpreted the data from within several different theoretical frameworks. A synthesis of this evidence, however, reveals that this body of work has produced reliable evidence for deficits in schizophrenia, as well as for the clinical, stimulus, and task parameters associated with normal and abnormal performance. Recent models of cognition have also advanced understanding of the underlying pathophysiological processes of perceptual organization dysfunction in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. These suggest that deficits in perceptual organization may be one manifestation of a wider disturbance in the integration of contextually related information across space and time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working Memory Impairments in Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analysis.

Working memory (WM) deficit is a cardinal cognitive symptom of schizophrenia, but the differences among the tasks and measures used to assess WM make it difficult to compare across studies. The authors conducted a meta-analytic review to address 3 major questions: (a) Do patients with schizophrenia show WM deficits across diverse methodology; (b) Is WM deficit supramodal; and (c) Does the WM deficit worsen with longer delays? The results indicate that significant WM deficit was present in schizophrenia patients in all modalities examined. Increasing delay beyond 1 s did not influence the performance difference between schizophrenia patients and healthy control participants in WM. These results suggest that WM deficit in schizophrenia is modality independent and that encoding and/or early part of maintenance may be problematic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

高炉铁水硅含量预测评价与模型选择

 分析了文献中高炉铁水硅含量预测数据,结果表明：评价指标选择决定预测效果的评价结论和模型选择;命中率判据不是评价预测效果的最佳选择;相关系数及其检验是评价预测结果优劣的客观判据;相关系数及其检验、人工预测、随机游走模型可以作为以科学性、实用性和简便性为原则的预测评价判据基准。     

Building up linguistic context in schizophrenia: Evidence from self-paced reading.

An impairment in the build-up and use of context has been proposed as a core feature of schizophrenia. The current study tested the hypothesis that schizophrenia patients show impairments in building up context within sentences because of abnormalities in combining semantic with syntactic information. Schizophrenia patients and healthy controls read and made acceptability judgments about sentences containing verbs that were semantically associated with individual preceding words but that violated either the meaning (animacy/semantic constraints) or the syntactic structure (morphosyntactic constraints) of their preceding contexts. To override these semantic associations and determine that such sentences are unacceptable, participants must integrate semantic with syntactic information. These sentences were compared with congruous and pragmatically/semantically violated sentences that imposed fewer semantic-syntactic integration demands. At sentence-final words and decisions, patients showed smaller reaction time differences than controls to animacy/semantically violated or morphosyntactically violated sentences relative to pragmatically/semantically violated or nonviolated sentences. The relative insensitivity to these violations in patients with schizophrenia may arise from impairments in combining semantic and syntactic information to build up sentence context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Labeling Bias and Categorical Induction: Generative Aspects of Category Information.

When a person is characterized categorically with a label (e.g., Linda is a feminist), people tend to think that the attributes associated with that person are central and long lasting (S. Gelman & G. D. Heyman, 1999). This bias, which is related to category-based induction and stereotyping, has been thought to arise because a category label (e.g., feminist) activates the dominant properties associated with the representation of the category. This explanation implies that categorical information influences inferential processes mainly by conjuring up main attributes or instances represented in the category. However, the present experiments reveal that this attribute-based explanation of induction does not provide a complete picture of inferential processes. The results from 3 experiments suggest that category information can affect inferences of attributes that are not directly related to the category, suggesting that categories not only activate likely attributes but also help integrate unlikely or even unrelated attributes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theory of Mind and Motion Perception in Schizophrenia.

This study investigated the relationship between theory of mind (ToM) deficits and visual perception in patients with schizophrenia (N=52; 17 remitted and unmedicated) compared with healthy controls (N=30). ToM was assessed with the Eyes Test, which asked participants to choose which of 4 words best described the mental state of a person whose eyes were depicted in a photograph. Visual perception was evaluated with form and motion coherence threshold measurements. Results revealed that patients with schizophrenia (both remitted and nonremitted) showed deficits on the Eyes Test and the motion coherence task. ToM dysfunctions were associated with higher motion coherence thresholds and more severe negative symptoms. This suggests that ToM deficits are related to motion perception dysfunctions, which indicates a possible role of motion-sensitive areas in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Schizophrenia and the collapse of the dialogical self: Recovery, narrative and psychotherapy.

Asks the questions: How do personal narratives disintegrate in schizophrenia, and how should narrative issues in schizophrenia be addressed in individual psychotherapy? To examine these issues, this article presents a case analysis of 19 Ss suggesting that narratives in schizophrenia are compromised when internal dialogue either dissolves into cacophonous disarray or becomes too singularly and rigidly organized. It is suggested, therefore, that one way psychotherapy may be useful to persons with schizophrenia is to facilitate the reemergence of internal dialogue through external dialogue. In particular, psychotherapy can assist persons with schizophrenia to develop a narrative that allows for recovery by creating a context for increasing self-awareness and agency. The authors propose that, in the midst of the ongoing development of numerous psychosocial treatments for schizophrenia, the ability to facilitate narrative coherence may represent a unique psychotherapeutic contribution to recovery for persons with this condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lateralized Lexical Decision in Schizophrenia: Hemispheric Specialization and Interhemispheric Lexicality Priming.

Reports of left-hemisphere dysfunction and abnormal interhemispheric transfer in schizophrenia are mixed. The authors used a unified paradigm, the lateralized lexical decision task, to assess hemispheric specialization in word recognition, hemispheric error monitoring, and interhemispheric transfer in male, right-handed participants with schizophrenia (n=34) compared with controls (n=20). Overall, performance and error monitoring were worse in patients. However, patients like controls showed left-hemisphere superiority for lexical processing and right-hemisphere superiority for error monitoring. Only patients showed selective-interhemispheric lexicality priming for accuracy, in which performance improved when the lexical status of target and distractor stimuli presented to each hemifield was congruent. Results suggest that schizophrenia is associated with impaired monitoring and with increased interhemispheric automatic information transfer rather than with changed hemispheric specialization for language or error monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prototype and Exemplar Accounts of Category Learning and Attentional Allocation: A Reassessment.

In a recent article. J. P. Minda and J. D. Smith (2002; see record 2002-00620-002) argued that an exemplar model provided worse quantitative fits than an alternative prototype model to individual subject data from the classic D. L. Medin and M. M. Schaffer (1978) 5/4 categorization paradigm. In addition, they argued that the exemplar model achieved its fits by making untenable assumptions regarding how observers distribute their attention. In this article, we demonstrate that when the models are equated in terms of their response-rule flexibility, the exemplar model provides a substantially better account of the categorization data than does a prototype or mixed model. In addition, we point to shortcomings in the attention-allocation analyses conducted by J. P. Minda and J. D. Smith (2002). When these shortcomings are corrected, we find no evidence that challenges the attention-allocation assumptions of the exemplar model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic Organization and Verbal Memory Efficiency in Patients With Schizophrenia.

The role of semantic organization in verbal memory efficiency in schizophrenia was investigated. Patients and healthy controls were administered a free-recall task involving 1 nonsemantically organizable list, 1 list organizable in semantic categories with typical instances, and 1 list organizable in semantic categories with atypical instances. Reduced semantic organization was observed in patients. Regression analyses showed that the semantic clustering score in the atypical organizable list made a significant contribution to recall performance in patients. When semantic clustering was controlled, the effect of diagnosis on free recall was significant. These results suggest that depth of semantic organization is a crucial factor of verbal memory performance in schizophrenia. However, semantic organizational deficit does not account for the whole recall impairment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Direct Measurement of Differential Cognitive Deficit in Acute Schizophrenia": Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by J. N. Deluca (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1967[April], Vol 72[2], 143-146). The author's affiliation on page 143 should read as follows: "290 Madison Avenue, Morristown, New Jersey. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 2005-09867-003). This is a longitudinal study in which 11 standardized test of cognitive function were administered to 20,000 normal Ss and at a later point in time readministered to those Ss of the original group (N=15) who became schizophrenic and were hospitalized. The tests were also readministered to part of the original group (N=40) who, at the same point in time, were still normal. The results, which revealed significant differential deficit on 5 of the measures, suggest that lack of motivation to reach out and actively manipulate stimuli or experience new learning produced the differences observed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multimodal Integrative Cognitive Stimulating Group Therapy: Moving Beyond the Reduction of Psychopathology in Schizophrenia.

The authors present a group therapy for schizophrenia called multimodal integrative cognitive stimulating group therapy (MICST). MICST is founded upon a theoretical model that views schizophrenia as a condition characterized by information-processing and memory deficits, which interfere with communication. MICST is designed to stimulate clients' cognitive and memory functioning, improve information processing, and enhance clients' abilities to engage in reality-based conversations. The therapy combines elements of social skills relaxation exercise, cognitive rehabilitation, and traditional psychotherapy but also emphasizes accessing clients' "intact" cognitive functioning by using both visual and auditory modalities. MICST's long-term use, its eager acceptance by clients and staff, and results from various outcome measures support its potential value. However, formal studies are required to more firmly establish MICST's efficacy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A biometric evaluation of the somatotherapies in schizophrenia.

"The purpose of this study is to examine the available analyzable data on the outcome of the shock therapies and psychosurgery in order to get an estimate of the effectiveness of these therapies in the treatment of schizophrenia, as it has been reported in the literature." In spite of the several limitations of these studies the following facts were revealed: in terms of immediate outcome, there is a distinct advantage for the treated groups vs. the untreated ones; in terms of long-range recovery the treated have generally not shown greater improvement over the untreated; specific therapies work better with patients whose illness is of short duration; and with better prognostic indicators the results of specific therapies would excel the outcome of the nonspecific therapies. 85-item bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Category and perceptual interference in second-language phoneme learning: An examination of English /w/-/v/ learning by Sinhala, German, and Dutch speakers.

The present study investigated the perception and production of English /w/ and /v/ by native speakers of Sinhala, German, and Dutch, with the aim of examining how their native language phonetic processing affected the acquisition of these phonemes. Subjects performed a battery of tests that assessed their identification accuracy for natural recordings, their degree of spoken accent, their relative use of place and manner cues, the assimilation of these phonemes into native-language categories, and their perceptual maps (i.e., multidimensional scaling solutions) for these phonemes. Most Sinhala speakers had near-chance identification accuracy, Germans ranged from chance to 100% correct, and Dutch speakers had uniformly high accuracy. The results suggest that these learning differences were caused more by perceptual interference than by category assimilation; Sinhala and German speakers both have a single native-language phoneme that is similar to English /w/ and /v/, but the auditory sensitivities of Sinhala speakers make it harder for them to discern the acoustic cues that are critical to /w/-/v/ categorization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)