Modification of cognitive processes: A case study of schizophrenia.

Describes the modification of cognitive processes of a 25-yr-old schizophrenic male who was given a multifaceted treatment program consisting of 9 50-min sessions emphasizing the process of attending to appropriate internal and external stimuli. S reported at termination of treatment and at a 6-mo follow-up (a) no evidence of thought disorders, (b) increased social effectiveness, and (c) no indication of depressive symptomatology. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

CCK in anxiety and cognitive processes

Extensive studies were carried out on the involvement of the CCKergic system in anxiety-, panic- and stress-related behaviour. The stimulation of CCK-A or CCK-B receptors is implicated in the physical and psychological responses of CCK to stress. Furthermore, several selective CCK-B agonists produce anxiogenic-like effects, while CCK-B antagonists induce anxiolytic-like responses in several models of anxiety. However, BC264 a highly selective CCK-B agonist, does not produce anxiogenic-like effects but increases attention and/or memory. These effects are dependent on the dopaminergic systems. Together with biochemical data, this led to the hypothesis of the existence of two CCK-B binding sites, CCK-B1 and CCK-B2, which could correspond to different activation states of a single molecular entity. Investigations into CCK-B1 and CCK-B2 systems might be of critical interest, since only one site, CCK-B1, appears to be responsible for the effects of anxiety. Furthermore, the improvement of attention and/or memory processes by CCK, through CCK-B2 receptors, could offer a new perspective in the treatment of attention and/or memory disorders.     

Self-actualization and cognitive processes.

Investigated the hypotheses that (a) the creation of new experience in cognitive functioning involves increased differentiation and integration of meaning and (b) self-actualization involves the tendency to engage in a mode of cognitive processing that creates new experience. Using protocols of 61 undergraduates describing their experiencing of emotions, it was found that differentiation and integration of meaning were related to the degree that vocal style indicated the creation of new experience. Also as predicted, both meaning and stylistic perspectives for assessing the creation of new experience were related to a separate measure of self-actualization (the Personal Orientation Inventory). Discussion includes possible implications for conceiving of client participation in psychotherapy in terms of the differentiation and integration of meaning and for understanding self-actualization in terms of differences in cognitive functioning. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Initiation and supervisory processes in schizophrenia and depression

Clinical studies show that schizophrenic and depressive subjects have problems with daily life activities, and neuropsychological studies tend to explain these problems in terms of a dysexecutive syndrome. Verbal fluency and sentence arrangement are tasks considered to focus on two aspects of the dysexecutive syndrome known as initiation and supervision processes, respectively. In this study, we assessed performance in these two tasks in schizophrenia and depression. Twenty-six schizophrenic subjects (chronic schizophrenia, DSM IV definition) were compared with 26 control subjects balanced for sex, age and educational level, and 16 depressive subjects (major depression episode, DSM IV) were compared with 11 similarly balanced control subjects. Switching and clustering scores were evaluated during a semantic fluency task as two components underlying the initiation and organization processes. Capture errors specific to failure of the supervisory system and differences between the number of correct responses in two conditions (valid/invalid) were evaluated as indexes of the supervision process in a sentence arrangement task. In the semantic fluency task, switching scores were significantly lower in the schizophrenic and depressive subjects than in their respective controls. In the sentence arrangement task, only the schizophrenic subjects made significantly more capture errors than their controls and had significantly fewer correct sequences in invalid conditions than in valid conditions. This study shows a dissociation between supervision and initiation processes in two different psychiatric populations. Initiation is impaired, but supervision is preserved in depression, whereas both initiation and supervision are impaired in schizophrenia.     

Relationship between cognitive and social dysfunction in schizophrenia

Cytogenetic monitoring was carried out on a group of 38 nurses who reconstitute antineoplastic drugs in order to determine the extent of chromosomal damage. Genotoxic activities of antineoplastic drugs are studied by chromosome aberration assay, micronucleus assay, sister chromatid exchange (SCE) frequency high frequency cells (HFC) analysis, and mitotic activity of peripheral lymphocytes. Results confirmed that occupational exposure to a mixture of antineoplastic drugs may cause genome damages. The results of this study show that biomonitoring after exposure to a mixture of antineoplastic drugs which express clastogenic and aneugenic activity should involve a battery of cytogenetic methods.     

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)     

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)     

Researching cognitive processes.

Comments on the work of T. O. Nelson (see record 83-26608) on consciousness and metacognition. A. D. Kornfeld contends that Nelson failed to take into account the scope exhibited by the work of Wilhelm Wundt and that he substantially overstated the extent to which Dunlap rejected mental processes. Kornfeld argues that the metacognition model's synthesis of verbal reports of consciousness and objective measures of behavior is most accurately seen as an evolutionary development rather than as a radical break with older research traditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in cognitive processes.

Studied the effects of verbal ability and sex on performance in a simultaneous matching task. The 537 undergraduates who participated were administered the verbal battery of the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Test. Ss with high-verbal ability (high verbals) were much faster than Ss with low-verbal ability (low verbals) in making taxonomic category identity matches and homophone identity matches. Results suggest that verbal ability is related to the speed of retrieval from long-term memory. In addition, high verbals were faster in making physical identity word matches, suggesting that either lexicographically coded information stored in long-term memory is used in such a task or that verbal ability is also related to the speed of retrieval from short-term memory. As expected, males did not differ from females in the time they required to perform any of the matching tasks, although males made slightly more errors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organization of language behavior and cognitive performance in chronic schizophrenia.

Reports data from 10 31-51 yr old chronic schizophrenic patients which relate formal categories of language behavior to performance on the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test--a task of verbal encoding under distracting and nondistracting conditions. The data show that the most simple type of language behavior is related to difficulty in verbal articulation and verbal encoding on the Stroop task. More complex language behavior, utilizing a conditional framework to express ideas, is related to increased interference from the distracting verbal text. Data are discussed in terms of attention regulation in chronic schizophrenia, and a speculation is offered regarding the role of attention in language development. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements in reading: Perceptual and cognitive processes.

This article discusses the variability of eye movement behavior. The variability exists between readers, so that the average fixation duration for sonic readers my be around 200 ms and for other readers it may be closer to 300 ms; the average saccade length for some readers may be 6 letter spaces, while for others it may be closer lo 10 letter spaces; and some readers rarely regress while others regress quite frequently. These eye movement characteristics can also be influenced by text difficulty; more difficult text leads to longer fixation durations, shorter saccades, and more regressions. More important than the between reader variability is the within reader variability that exists with each of these measures. The article also discusses research on eye movement during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic habits and cognitive style processes in the deaf.

Several measures of associative patterns, cognitive styles, and attitudes toward self and others were obtained on 173 deaf adolescents and 178 normal controls. Results show reduced tendencies of the deaf to use evaluational concepts in association, but greater tendencies to devalue self and others. Deaf girls are much like deaf boys in associative and evaluational responses. Several possibilities for the study of implicit language processes in deaf and normal Ss are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical trials and tribulations: implementation processes in schizophrenia research outcome

This article focuses on an area in clinical drug trials for new antipsychotic medications for the treatment of schizophrenia which has not received sufficient attention in the literature: the day-to-day implementation tasks performed by research staff which have potential effects on study results. Implementation tasks are viewed as dynamic processes involving interactions among research and nonresearch staff, patients, families, and pharmaceutical company staff. Research-related demands and possible sources of stress for all participants in the process, such as recruiting and maintaining patients in studies, are discussed. Suggestions are offered for increasing the ease of participation. Further investigation is called for in several areas including variability in the effectiveness of research teams and in the rarely discussed interactions between site staff and pharmaceutical company personnel, as they may affect research outcomes. It is posited that increased knowledge about implementation processes in schizophrenia drug development is needed to more fully understand study results and to enhance patients' and their families' willingness to participate.     

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)     

A comparison of clustering solutions for cognitive heterogeneity in schizophrenia

This study investigated semantic priming for literal (stinging-mosquito) and metaphoric (stinging-insult) associates presented to either the left or right visual fields (RVF/LVF) across stimulus-onset-asynchronies (SOA) of 200 and 800 ms. For the short SOA condition, facilitation was found for metaphorically related targets in both visual fields (VFs) while literally related targets were facilitated only in the RVF. For the long SOA condition, metaphorically related targets were facilitated in the LVF whereas literally related targets were facilitated in the RVF. These results support previous findings indicating an enhanced role of the RH in metaphoric comprehension. In addition, the present results are in accordance with current models of hemispheric semantic processing.     

Relation of neuroleptic and anticholinergic medication to cognitive functions in schizophrenia.

In this article, we review research designed to examine the influence of neuroleptic and anticholinergic drugs on cognitive processes in schizophrenia. The review is motivated by the recognition that pharmacotherapy is an important factor in psychological research in schizophrenia, given that the great majority of patients studied in investigations of cognition receive both of these drugs. We find that neuroleptic treatment is associated with limited normalization on many psychological measures, whereas anticholinergics appear to disrupt some aspects of memory. Subject selection criteria, research designs, and drug measurement methods important in the evaluation of possible drug effects in psychological studies are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Everyday action in schizophrenia: Performance patterns and underlying cognitive mechanisms.

Everyday action is impaired among individuals with schizophrenia, yet few studies have characterized the nature of this deficit using performance-based measures. This study examined the performance of 20 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder on the Naturalistic Action Test (M. F. Schwartz, L. J. Buxbaum, M. Ferraro, T. Veramonti, & M. Segal, 2003). Performance was coded to examine overall impairment, task accomplishment, and error patterns and was compared with that of healthy controls (n = 28) and individuals with mild dementia (n = 23). Additionally, 2 competing accounts of everyday action deficits, the resource theory and an executive account, were evaluated. When compared with controls, the participants with schizophrenia demonstrated impaired performance. Relative to dementia patients, participants with schizophrenia obtained higher accomplishment scores but committed comparable rates of errors. Moreover, distributions of error types for the 2 groups differed, with the participants with schizophrenia demonstrating greater proportions of errors associated with executive dysfunction. This is the 1st study to show different Naturalistic Action Test performance patterns between 2 neurologically impaired populations. The distinct performance pattern demonstrated by individuals with schizophrenia reflects specific deficits in executive function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal communication impairments and cognitive control components in people with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia involves multiple communication impairments, including (a) disorganized speech, or formal thought disorder (FTD); and (b) decreased speech output, or poverty of speech. Both FTD and poverty of speech have been hypothesized to be associated with deficits in executive functioning or cognitive control. The current study examined whether FTD and poverty of speech were differentially associated with two distinct aspects of cognitive control, working memory and controlled retrieval. Compared with control participants (n = 30), people with schizophrenia (n = 47) exhibited poorer performance on both working memory and controlled retrieval tasks. However, only FTD (and not poverty of speech) was associated with poor working memory. In contrast, only poverty of speech (and not FTD) had a significant zero-order association with poor controlled retrieval. At the same time, working memory and controlled retrieval interacted to predict FTD, with the highest amount of FTD associated with both poor working memory and poor controlled retrieval. In contrast, psychometric control tasks were not associated with FTD or poverty of speech. This research suggests that FTD and poverty of speech are differentially associated with deficits in distinct aspects of cognitive control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)