Have There Been Lasting Effects Associated With the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks Among Inner-City Parents and Children?

Should mental health practitioners expect lasting posttraumatic stress symptoms in the general population after future terrorist attacks or other disasters? Serendipitous random assignment of families allowed assessment of the effects of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on parent and child trauma-related symptoms and parenting. Surprisingly, there were no differences between pre- and post-September 11 groups on measures of parent and child anxiety, depression, and feelings of safety. However, levels of parental monitoring and beliefs about family were higher in the group assessed after September 11, 2001. Implications for practitioners' responses to terrorism and disaster are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Role of Color in the Implicit Memory Performance of Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Alzheimer's Disease.

Although the Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients in this study were severely impaired in recognition performance, their naming performance demonstrated normal priming across transformations in object color. This is evidence for preserved implicit shape-based memory performance in AD patients. For colored-object decision, healthy older adult control participants but not AD patients showed priming for new associations between previously encountered object shapes and colors. The author argues, on the basis of this colored object decision performance, that the deficits present in AD do not allow shape and color to be integrated to form a novel unitized representation that can be used to benefit cognitive performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What good are positive emotions in crisis? A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001.

Extrapolating from B. L. Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, the authors hypothesized that positive emotions are active ingredients within trait resilience. U.S. college students (18 men and 28 women) were tested in early 2001 and again in the weeks following the September 11th terrorist attacks. Mediational analyses showed that positive emotions experienced in the wake of the attacks--gratitude, interest, love, and so forth--fully accounted for the relations between (a) precrisis resilience and later development of depressive symptoms and (b) precrisis resilience and postcrisis growth in psychological resources. Findings suggest that positive emotions in the aftermath of crises buffer resilient people against depression and fuel thriving, consistent with the broaden-and-build theory. Discussion touches on implications for coping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acute stress disorder in diplomats, military, and civilian Americans living abroad following the September 11 terrorist attacks on America.

Can expatriates witnessing the attack of their country from afar develop acute and posttraumatic stress reactions? In Brussels 50 expatriate Americans were surveyed in the 10 weeks following September 11. Of the sample, 10% (n=5) showed acute stress disorder in the 1st week, and 4% (n=2) persisted with traumatic stress indications in the following weeks. All participants showed symptoms of distress, including derealization, reexperiencing the event, avoidance, heightened arousal, trouble working, and assault on world assumptions. For most, symptoms diminished over time. Increased psychological readiness in terms of assessment, prevention, and treatment methods is called for in response to mass terrorism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for gist and detail information in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment.

Two experiments examined different forms of gist and detail memory in people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and those with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In Experiment 1, 14 AD, 14 MCI, and 22 control participants were assessed with the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Results indicated that false recognition of nonstudied critical lures (gist memory) was diminished in the AD compared with the MCI and control groups; the two latter cohorts performed similarly. In Experiment 2, 14 AD, 20 MCI, and 26 control participants were tested on a text memory task. Results revealed that recall of both macropropositions (gist information) and micropropositions (detail information) decreased significantly in AD and in MCI as compared with control participants. This experiment also revealed that the impairment was comparable between gist and detail memory. In summary, the results were consistent across experiments in the AD but not in the MCI participants. The discrepancy in MCI participants might be explained by differences in the degree of sensitivity of the experimental procedures and/or by the differences in the cognitive processes these procedures assessed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling Memory Decline in Older Adults: The Importance of Preclinical Dementia, Attrition, and Chronological Age.

This longitudinal study examined memory loss in a sample of 391 initially nondemented older adults. Analyses decomposed observed memory loss into decline associated with preclinical dementia, study attrition, terminal decline, and chronological age. Measuring memory as a function of only chronological age failed to provide an adequate representation of cognitive change. Disease progression accounted for virtually all of the memory loss in the 25% of the sample that developed diagnosable dementia. In the remainder of the sample, both chronological age and study attrition contributed to observed memory loss. These results suggest that much of memory loss in aging adults may be attributable to the progression of preclinical dementia and other nonnormative aging processes that are not captured by chronological age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term memory for the terrorist attack of September 11: Flashbulb memories, event memories, and the factors that influence their retention.

More than 3,000 individuals from 7 U.S. cities reported on their memories of learning of the terrorist attacks of September 11, as well as details about the attack, 1 week, 11 months, and/or 35 months after the assault. Some studies of flashbulb memories examining long-term retention show slowing in the rate of forgetting after a year, whereas others demonstrate accelerated forgetting. This article indicates that (a) the rate of forgetting for flashbulb memories and event memory (memory for details about the event itself) slows after a year, (b) the strong emotional reactions elicited by flashbulb events are remembered poorly, worse than nonemotional features such as where and from whom one learned of the attack, and (c) the content of flashbulb and event memories stabilizes after a year. The results are discussed in terms of community memory practices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of Apolipoprotein E Genotype on Spatial Attention, Working Memory, and Their Interaction in Healthy, Middle-Aged Adults: Results From the National Institute of Mental Health's BIOCARD Study.

The cognitive consequences of the apolipoprotein E-ε4 (APOE-ε4) allele were examined in middle age, before likely onset of symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. The authors identified 3 cognitive processes--visuospatial attention, spatial working memory, and the effect of visuospatial attention on working memory--and devised "behavioral assays" of the integrity of components of these processes. Redirecting visuospatial attention, retention of memory for location, and attentional modulation of memory of target location were affected by APOE genotype. Visuospatial attention showed additive effects of ε4 gene dose; each additional ε4 allele inherited further slowed disengagement from invalidly cued space. In contrast, working memory performance was affected only in ε4 homozygotes. Effect sizes for the APOE gene were moderate to large, ranging from 14% to 24%. Effects of APOE genotype on component processes of cognition in healthy, middle-aged adults is consistent with the emergence in adulthood of an APOE-ε4 cognitive phenotype. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)