Age changes in processing speed as a leading indicator of cognitive aging.

Bivariate dual change score models were applied to longitudinal data from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging to compare the dynamic predictions of 2-component theories of intelligence and the processing speed theory of cognitive aging. Data from up to 5 measurement occasions covering a 16-year period were available from 806 participants ranging in age from 50 to 88 years at the first measurement wave. Factors were generated to tap 4 general cognitive domains: verbal ability, spatial ability, memory, and processing speed. Model fitting indicated no dynamic relationship between verbal and spatial factors, providing no support for the hypothesis that age changes in fluid abilities drive age changes in crystallized abilities. The results suggest that, as predicted by the processing speed theory of cognitive aging, processing speed is a leading indicator of age changes in memory and spatial ability, but not verbal ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Skin potential as an indicator of emotion.

Monitored the skin-potential responses of 6 college students while each was seen for 10 counseling sessions. Results indicate that the nature of a S's skin-potential wave was generally a reliable indicator of the way the S was managing or experiencing his feelings, as reported on the Mood Adjective Check List during the sessions. Negative skin-potential responses were accompanied by feelings described as pleasant and released; positive responses were associated with unpleasant and inhibited feelings, and neutral responses were often associated with unpleasant and inhibited feelings but also tended to coincide with thoughtful moods. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alumni ratings as an indicator of departmental quality.

University alumni and enrolled students from 22 departments responded to 11 satisfaction items concerning instructional, curricular, advising, and operational aspects of their major departments. Factor structures for the 2 groups were nearly identical and included 2 factors: General Satisfaction With Major and Satisfaction With Mentorship. Comparisons of department means showed differences between alumni and enrolled students on many items, particularly vocational guidance. Alumni ratings were relatively uninfluenced by job-related variables. It is concluded that they are an important source of information in assessing departmental quality. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial placement of human figure drawings as an indicator of cognitive and personality characteristics among normal young adolescents.

Data from 13.7-yr-old Ss administered Sarason's Test Anxiety Scale for Children show that (a) contrary to common clinical interpretations, no relationship was found between test anxiety scores and spatial placement of human figure drawings; (b) Ss who used the upper left-hand space had lower levels of conceptual maturity, cognition inhibition ability, and accuracy in time estimates; and (c) placement of figures on the right-half or center of the sheet was related to higher levels of conceptual maturity and ability to delay time estimates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movement as an indicator of sensory components in thought.

This study investigated a claim of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) eye movement model, which states that specific eye movements are indicative of specific sensory components in thought. Forty-eight graduates and undergraduates were asked to concentrate on a single thought while their eye movements were videotaped. They were subsequently asked to report if their thoughts contained visual, auditory, or kinesthetic components. Two NLP-trained observers independently viewed silent videotapes of participants concentrating and recorded the presence or absence of eye movements posited by NLP theorists to indicate visual, auditory, or kinesthetic components in thought. Coefficients of agreement (Cohen's K) between participants' self-reports and trained observers' records indicate support for the visual (K?=?.81, p?p?p?     

SMS text messages as a prosthetic aid in the cognitive rehabilitation of schizophrenia.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of short message service (SMS) text messages as a compensatory aid to improve independence in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and cognitive deficits. Design: An ABA withdrawal single-case experimental design was used. Eight men diagnosed with schizophrenia took part in the study; all demonstrated memory or planning problems in everyday life. Results: Five participants completed the entire trial. Four were more successful in carrying out daily activities when receiving prompts, whereas 1 did not profit from the intervention. Conclusion: SMS text messages can be effective in compensating for cognitive impairment in some but not all individuals with schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acceptance of uncertainty as an indicator of effective leadership.

Research and experience continue to reveal evolving modes of leadership behavior that challenge the practice of consulting psychology. Leadership development that has taken us beyond the notion of born leaders and stable environments has suggested that flexibility is vital. This may be partly because of the constant evolution of the organization and its leadership challenges, from command-and-control to paradigms that are participatory and recognize the importance of interpersonal skills, to an emerging paradigm concerned with organizational learning. Consulting psychologists have identified a wide variety of leadership modes or ideals to fit these newer paradigms. Common to many of these is the need to be comfortable navigating ambiguous situations. One of the metrics that is indicative of this skill is the capacity to effectively process the uncertainty that often accompanies ambiguity. We present preliminary data for a potential tool for assessing this skill. We suggest that measuring an individual's “aptitude for ambiguity” should be considered when identifying high performers for leadership roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Delusional thinking and cognitive organization in schizophrenia.

A delusion can be conceptualized as a form of cognitive reorganization; according to this interpretation a delusion serves to integrate into a meaningful and acceptable whole data which otherwise would be anxiety provoking. On the assumption that the utilization of delusions is representative of a generalized cognitive technique for dealing with ambiguous inputs it was hypothesized that delusional schizophrenics should manifest a stronger tendency to integrate ambiguous stimuli in a laboratory situation than nondelusional schizophrenics. To test the hypothesis 24 delusional and 25 nondelusional schizophrenics were compared on the McGill Closure Test. The results supported the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task difficulty and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia.

Investigators of schizophrenic cognition often produce 2 or more tasks of differing difficulty levels by manipulating a variable that affects the accuracy of both normal and schizophrenic individuals; the investigators find that the variable also affects the difference between the groups in accuracy and conclude that the variable taps a schizophrenic differential deficit. An alternative hypothesis is that task differences in true-score variance artifactually produce the finding. For free-response tasks, group differences tend to be larger when difficulty is near 50%. The authors illustrate a new method of controlling this artifact by selecting items for hard and easy tasks on opposite sides of 50% difficulty and equidistant from it. Using this design with an anagram task, they found that schizophrenic and normal individuals differ no more on hard anagrams than on easy ones, and they propose the design for testing hypotheses concerning schizophrenic deficit on tasks that differ in difficulty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of salivary thiocyanate as an indicator of smoking behavior.

Salivary samples from 3 placement sites under stimulated and unstimulated flow-rate conditions were collected from 18 smokers and 18 nonsmokers on each of 3 days. Salivary thiocyanate levels were significantly higher in smokers than in nonsmokers, in parotid site collections than either sublingual or mixed collections, and in unstimulated collections. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual integration on the Rorschach as an indicator of cognitive capacity: A developmental study of racial differences in a clinic population.

Rorschach protocols of 173 7-14 yr old Blacks and Whites who had been evaluated at a child guidance clinic were rescored with respect to developmental level of perceptual integration. Blacks had higher perceptual-integration scores in comparison to Whites. This finding, however, was accounted for by the higher performance of low-IQ (70-89) Blacks as compared to low-IQ Whites. No differences were obtained between average-IQ (90-109) Blacks or Whites. It is suggested that standard IQ tests may not adequately tap the cognitive capacity of some Black children and that use of the Rorschach from a developmental/structural perspective may provide a useful adjunctive measure of intelligence that would more realistically assess children's cognitive competence. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memorability functions as an indicator of qualitative age differences in text recall.

An analysis in which the probability of text unit recall for older adults [p(Re|O)] is plotted as a function of this probability for the young [p(Re|Y)] is considered as one way to assess whether there are qualitative differences in text recall for young and old. The application of this relative memorability analysis to previously reported data dealing with the immediate recall of spoken sentences (Stine, Wingfield, & Poon, 1986) revealed that although older adults show qualitative recall similar to younger adults when informational density is low, they show less discrimination among text elements when informational density is increased. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dual-task interference as an indicator of on-line programming in simple movement sequences.

The probe reaction time paradigm was used to investigate the processing demands of an elbow extension and 2 types of extension-flexion movements, one with a short pause time (50–100 ms) at reversal and another with a long pause time (250–300 ms). The probe task consisted of a bite response to an auditory signal. The locations of the probe were determined by on-line analysis of electromyographic activity and kinematic profiles. Depending on the temporal location of the probe relative to the initiation of the flexion phase, participants either initiated the masseter and biceps muscles successively or grouped them together as a single conjoint response. Results are discussed in terms of limitations during on-line preparation and execution of movements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heritability as an indicator of genetical variation in fecundity

Heritability is well known to be a poor indicator of genetical variation in fitness. We show here that it is also an inadequate measure of genetical variation in fecundity.     

Direct measurement of differential cognitive deficit in acute schizophrenia.

This is a longitudinal study in which 11 standardized tests 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)     

Failure to find an effect of subliminal psychodynamic activation upon cognitive measures of pathology in schizophrenia.

Replicated the work of L. H. Silverman and colleagues (see PA, Vols 43:14557 and 46:1566), using 30 21–59 yr old schizophrenics. Ss were exposed to an aggressive, a merging, and a meaningless lexical stimulus in a within-S design. Dependent variables were inkblot thought pathology and form quality, as measured on Rorschach and Holtzman Inkblot Technique cards, and performance on the interference task of the Stroop Color-Word Test. Analyses of variance conducted on simple poststimulation scores, rather than on unreliable change scores, revealed no effect of stimulus content. Predicted interactions between stimulus content, Ss' self–object differentiation, and temporal position of the assessment tasks did not emerge. Findings do not support Silverman's hypothesis that subliminal tachistoscopic presentations of stimuli with aggressive content temporarily increase thinking disorder in schizophrenics. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)