Effects of subependymal and mild intraventricular lesions on visual attention and memory in premature infants.

Evaluated 10-mo-old infants to determine if subependymal or mild intraventricular hemorrhage (S/IVH) affects visual attention, visual memory, or memory for location. 30 premature infants with normal ultrasound scans, 30 premature infants with S/IVH, and 30 full-term infants were evaluated on a habituation/novelty preference task, the AB? object permanence task, and the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Premature infants with S/IVH took longer to habituate than premature infants without S/IVH or full-term infants. Although the Bayley Mental Scales were significantly higher for both full-term and premature infants without S/IVH than those with S/IVH, number of trials to habituation better distinguished infants with S/IVH from those with no hemorrhage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender, ethnicity, and social cognitive factors predicting the academic achievement of students in engineering.

Examines the relationships of measures of occupational and academic self-efficacy; vocational interests; outcome expectations; academic ability; and perceived stress, support, and coping to the academic achievement of women and men enrolled in university-level engineering/science programs. 197 students from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds responded to scales measuring the variables of interest; high school and college academic data were obtained from university records. Self-efficacy for academic milestones, in combination with other academic and support variables, was found to be the strongest predictor of college academic achievement. Outcome expectations, vocational interests, and low levels of stress were in turn the strongest predictors of academic self-efficacy. Prediction equations for Euro-American and Mexican-American students revealed no significant contribution of ethnicity to the prediction of college academic achievement; however, ethnicity did enter into the equations predicting the 2 self-efficacy variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Locus of lesion in defective color association.

The relationship between locus of lesion and color association among aphasics was investigated in 2 separate and distinct studies. Data were obtained at different medical centers, with different examiners, different means of screening for color blindness, different procedures for assessment of color amnesia, and with different computerized tomography (CT) imaging equipment and interpreters. Nevertheless, each showed that color association defects were associated with posterior perisylvian lesions and basal ganglia lesions in the left hemisphere. At the same time, both studies also showed that extensive posterior perisylvian lesions and basal ganglia lesions did not inevitably cause defects in color association. Implications of the findings for impaired color association and hemispheric cerebral dominance are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of the atypical antipsychotics amperozide and clozapine on behavior maintained by food, cocaine, or alfentanil in rhesus monkeys.

Amperozide and clozapine are antipsychotic drugs that act primarily as antagonists at 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT?) sites. In different groups of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) receiving food, cocaine, or alfentanil as a consequence of responding on FR 30 schedules, the antipsychotic drugs produced dose-dependent decreases in behavior. Amperozide was more potent in suppressing food or cocaine-maintained responding than in suppressing alfentanil-maintained responding. Clozapine was nearly equally potent in suppressing behavior maintained by the different reinforcers. Neither drug showed a specificity of effect that suggests use in the treatment of cocaine or opioid abuse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieving information from memory: Spreading-activation theories versus compound-cue theories.

T. P. McNamara (1992) attacked compound-cue theories on a number of grounds. Using free association as a measure of distance between concepts in memory, he argued that compound-cue theories cannot explain mediated priming effects. The authors show that free-association production probabilities do not accurately predict priming effects, either directly or in the context of current spreading-activation models, and so remove the basis for McNamara's criticism. McNamara also claimed that compound-cue theories cannot account for the sequential effects of items that precede a target on responses to the target, but the authors show that sequential effects are consistent with compound-cue models if the target item is weighted more heavily than preceding items in the calculation of familiarity that determines response time and accuracy for the target. It is concluded that, although compound-cue and spreading-activation theories are both consistent with available data, the compound-cue theory, having less freedom, has passed more stringent tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cervical cancer survival in a high risk urban population

BACKGROUND: Cervical cancer remains an important public health problem, particularly for the urban minority population. To the authors' knowledge, determinants of cervical cancer survival have not been studied in this high risk population. METHODS: This study included all 158 women diagnosed and treated for invasive cervical cancer from January 1, 1986, through December 31, 1992, at the Grady Memorial Hospital and Clinics (Atlanta, GA). Medical records were abstracted to determine age at diagnosis, race, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) clinical stage, treatment, and survival. Pathologic material was reviewed to confirm the diagnosis. RESULTS: Most patients (80%) were African American, and the stage distribution was similar for African American and white patients. Sixty-six (42%) had FIGO Stage I disease; 50%, Stage II or III; and 8%, Stage IV. Four-year actuarial survival differed significantly according to clinical stage (Ia = 94%, Ib = 79%, II = 39%, III = 26%, IV = 0%). Overall survival was lower for patients with glandular carcinomas than for those with squamous cell carcinomas (26% vs. 55%, P = 0.09). This difference was almost entirely due to increased mortality in patients with Stage Ib adenocarcinomas (53% vs. 88% for squamous cell carcinoma, Stage Ib, P = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: The major prognostic markers for cervical cancer survival in this high risk patient population were clinical stage and histology, factors identical to those identified for other populations.     

A bias interpretation of facilitation in perceptual identification.

In a typical perceptual identification task, a word is presented for a few milliseconds and masked; then subjects are asked to report the word. It has been found that an earlier presentation of the test word will improve identification of the test word by as much as 30%. In addition, this facilitation has been shown to be preserved under amnesia. In this article we examined a fundamental question: Is the facilitation the result of bias toward the earlier presented item, an improvement in perceptual sensitivity, or both? The experiments presented here use a forced choice procedure to show that prior presentation of an item biases the subject to choose that item but does not improve discriminability. This result is obtained when the distractor items are visually similar to the target items. When distractors are dissimilar, earlier presentation affects neither bias nor discriminability. Two models of word identification are examined in light of the bias effects, and implications for understanding savings in amnesia are also examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientific rigor, scientific integrity: A comment on Sommer and Sommer.

Examines ethical issues raised in an article by R. Sommer and B. A. Sommer (see record 1984-10654-001) that questioned the validity of results reported by H. Barber and R. Heber (1973). Among these issues are criteria for establishing whether a particular study is sufficiently rigorous to be the basis of valid conclusions, the determination of whether or not reported data are truthful, and appropriate means of making such a determination. It is argued that optimum assessments of these questions involve the separation of questions of rigor from questions of integrity. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aerosol-Abscheidung

Deposition of aerosols . Modern measuring techniques have created the conditions necessary for testing and improvement of deposition processes developed in practice. Glass-fibre mechanical filters are highly effective for low aerosol concentrations. Collection of fine dusts and mists is accomplished by processes employing a combination of several deposition mechanisms. The deposition performance of fibre filters for exhaust air purification has been improved to such an extent that process air can now be recycled, avoiding emissions and saving energy. Thus aerosol deposition technology has already reached a high level of performance. The feasibility of combining high deposition efficiency, reliability, and economy has already been demonstrated in individual cases.     

The impact of haptic augmentation on middle school students’ conceptions of the animal cell

Of the five sensory channels—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch, it is only our sense of touch that enables us to modify and manipulate the world around us. This article reports the preliminary findings of a systematic study investigating the efficacy of adding haptic feedback to a desktop virtual reality program for use in middle school science instruction. Current technology allows for the simulation of tactile and kinesthetic sensations via sophisticated haptic devices and a computer interface. This research, conducted with 80 middle school students, examined the cognitive and affective impact of this technology on students’ understandings of the structure and function of an animal cell. The results of this work offer valuable insights into the theoretical and practical considerations involved in the development and implementation of haptically augmented virtual reality instructional programs.