Depression is a highly prevalent, debilitating, and sometimes-fatal mental illness. Typically, its treatment approaches are conceptualised as a dichotomy between psychological and pharmaceutical. However, a new model, in line with cogent philosophical reasoning and recent empirical evidence, integrates these approaches. The cognitive neuropsychological model places affective processing biases as central to depression aetiology and treatment-in both biological psychiatry and cognitive psychology. One affective bias, emotion recognition, is central to the tenets of this model, which, unlike some cognitive theories, places improved affective biases as temporally prior to improved mood, and as the underlying mechanism of antidepressant action. To test this account of emotion recognition bias, 103 undergraduate students participants underwent negative, positive, and neutral mood induction in a betweengroups design to assess whether mood-congruent emotion recognition biases would emerge in a multimodal (facial, vocal, musical) emotion recognition battery, while controlling for depression symptoms and assessing maladaptive cognitive schemas. Few significant emotion recognition biases resulted, but significant negative correlations between negative schemas and overall facial and musical accuracy emerged, even when controlling for depression lending some support to the cognitive neuropsychological model's premise of a bilateral relationship between schemas and emotion recognition, both of which may play a substantial role in the etiology of depression.

While Rugby Union has worldwide popularity, with over 5 million registered and nonregistered players participating every year, the game lends itself to a high incidence of concussion among players. Rugby players, more so than that recorded for any other contact sport, including American Football, are also more frequently exposed to head collisions not resulting in concussion (i.e., subconcussive head injuries). Despite some evidence for a potential association between such injuries and acute neurological and neuropsychological difficulties, which may at times persist among some players, overt symptoms still guide the initial on-field response for further concussion management to be initiated. The aim of this study was threefold: 1) to investigate the relationship between rugby players' history of concussion and neuropsychological outcomes, 2) to explore the use of a head impact telemetry (HIT) device in describing high-impact head collisions (and potentially subconcussive injuries), and 3) to explore the relationship between that HIT data and neuropsychological outcomes. Study 1 investigated differences between non-contact sport participants (n = 23) and rugby players with (Rugby Concussed; n = 31), and without a history of concussion (Rugby Not Concussed; n = 26) in a baseline cognitive assessment. Results showed that at the beginning of the rugby season there were no differences in cognitive abilities at a group level; a more severe concussion history was largely not associated with a poorer performance on these cognitive outcomes. Study 2 was a pilot study utilising the xPatch to objectively capture a rugby player's exposure to head impacts in an amateur rugby team (UCT IRL team; n = 8). Although the majority of impacts captured were of a 'mild' severity, there were many acceleration forces, particularly rotational accelerations, recorded above an injury threshold potentially implicated with concussion. Following from this, Study 3 used a prospective and repeated-measures design with the same UCT IRL team, to evaluate a means for investigating a player's neuropsychological vulnerability to high-impact subconcussive head injuries. Using correlational analyses, the Reliable Change Index (RCI) and head collision data from Study 2, there was a lack of evidence to indicate that player's increased exposure to repeated high-impact head collisions results in a generally poorer neuropsychological performance. However, a number of test practice effects are noted. Combined, these findings suggest that (a) identifying possible enduring neuropsychological difficulties retrospectively is limited, and issues such as test-practice effects and test sensitivity should be considered in future, preferably prospective studies, (b) rugby players are vulnerable to sustaining multiple high-impact subconcussive head injuries and the data suggests utility in including HIT like the xPatch, and (c) that implementing a multi-faceted protocol for monitoring rugby players' that negates a reliance on concussion diagnosis is necessary to better understanding individual recovery trajectories.

Eyewitness testimonies serve as heavily weighted evidence in criminal investigations. Despite this, research has demonstrated the fallibility of eyewitness memory, especially for crimes involving more than one perpetrator. The task for multi-perpetrator eyewitnesses is unique as they not only have to identify perpetrators, but describe the roles played in the crime and then assign an action to each perpetrator. This study examined factors affecting perpetrator identification, role recollection, and perpetrator-role pairing. Participants (N = 216) watched a staged video of a crime and then completed online tasks based on what they saw. At encoding, participants viewed one, two, or five perpetrators. Participants were either required to identify perpetrators from line-ups or were given images of each offender. In addition, they were either required to describe each perpetrator's role or were given this information. For methodological reasons, no perpetrator-absent line-ups were included in the current research as participants who viewed this kind of line-up had no potential for scoring along the perpetrator-role pairing measure. The results suggest that, as the number of perpetrators increases, participants made fewer correct identifications, role recollections, and pairings. However, there was no significant difference in identification accuracy between the one-and two-perpetrator conditions. The findings also show that while receiving experimenter-defined roles yields more accurate pairings, receiving photographs of the perpetrators does not. Future research is needed into the pairing process, the findings of which could be used to improve police procedure for interviewing multiperpetrator eyewitnesses.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-46). / This study finds that our patients do indeed have the same QOL, and that we should therefore be able to apply the European findings here. Measuring QOL alone, however, gives us very general information which is not sufficient for our study. The second aim of this research is to compare different aspects of QOL in AD, as this has not been researched before. This knowledge should help clinicians to recognise QOL impairment better, which will enable modifiable risk factors to be adjusted with early intervention. (For example, psychological impairment can be reduced with counselling.) This study also finds that some AD patients who suffer a combination of other autoimmune diseases have a lower QOL. The main instrument used for this research was the Rotterdam QOL questionnaire.

Paediatric traumatic brain injury (pTBI) is a leading cause of mortality and disability. South Africa is predicted to have a high pTBI rate and an adverse socioeconomic environment for recovery. Despite this, few studies have investigated the neuropsychological and/or neuroimaging outcomes of pTBI in South Africa. The study was designed as a capacity-building exercise to demonstrate the successful collection of data from different sites involved in a developing international collaboration. The aims were therefore to 1) provide a detailed description of the premorbid factors and neuropsychological and neuroimaging outcomes of a sample of South African children with moderate to severe pTBI, and 2) investigate the barriers to the successful implementation of neuropsychological and neuroimaging research in this population. Five patients with severe pTBI were enrolled during the 6-month recruitment window. These participants presented with 6-month post-TBI outcomes that ranged from mild neuropsychological deficits and no visible abnormalities on neuroimaging to severe neuropsychological deficits and evidence of multifocal pathology on imaging. There was a relatively high occurrence of adverse developmental, socioeconomic, and neuropsychological histories, which will need to be considered when selecting an appropriate control group or combining with other populations in a potential future multicentre study. Additional strategies will also be required to improve recruitment and increase the rate of successful imaging. Changes may need to be made to the neuropsychology assessment so as not to disadvantage this population, for example avoiding tests that are reliant on sequencing the alphabet. In conclusion, the study's findings will help to improve the likelihood of the much-needed large-scale research in this at-risk and understudied South African population.

Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) rehabilitation programs have significant and specific cognitive demands, requiring patients to acquire knowledge and new skills while adjusting to their profoundly altered physiology. Existing research from high income countries (HIC) has shown that SCI is associated with cognitive dysfunction, which is in turn linked to poorer rehabilitation outcomes and ultimately increased costs of care. The aetiology of SCI in South Africa is distinct from HICs, which implies differences in associated risks and mediators for cognitive pathology (e.g., focal traumatic injuries, HIV-associated non-traumatic injuries), which render questionable the local generalizability of existing research evidence. There are no South African studies on cognitive dysfunction related to SCI, and research in this area from other developing world countries is sparse. Therefore, this study aimed to address the evidence gap by investigating the cognitive profile of a sample of SCI rehabilitation inpatients in relation to the cognitive demands of their SCI rehabilitation programme, at a specialized public neurorehabilitation hospital in Cape Town. This exploratory pilot study used quantitative methodology to describe the cognitive profile of a sample of new SCI rehabilitation inpatients shortly after their admission. Twentynine participants aged 18-65, who were predominantly male and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were included in the study. All participants completed a battery of neuropsychological tests, where the assessment tools chosen measured cognitive domains identified as essential for engagement with a specialized SCI rehabilitation program. Participants also completed selected questionnaires screening for common psychological, behavioural and somatic comorbidities, with established links to cognitive dysfunction. Interpretation of the cognitive test results was undertaken through comparison with internationally and locally normed results, in conjunction with an exploration of the presence of comorbidities with known risk to cognitive function. In comparison to international data, the sample's cognitive performance was indicative of dysfunction across all domains assessed, while performance was relatively better in certain cognitive domains, relative to available South African normative data. Considering all available normative data and local trends, learning and memory, attention and certain executive functions emerged as possible areas of cognitive deficit. The potential mismatch between SCI rehabilitation programme cognitive demands and the sample's cognitive profile was evident, while their profile of comorbidities placed them at risk for cognitive dysfunction in multiple domains. This pilot study provided evidence to suggest that, despite their distinct epidemiology and lower rates of comorbid TBI, local SCI rehabilitation inpatients are at risk of cognitive dysfunction, where cognitive domains potentially affected are integral to their specialized SCI rehabilitation programme. As a pilot study conducted in the context of a pandemic, multiple areas for further investigation with altered methodology were identified. Nonetheless it was clear that additional in-depth research in this area would benefit the SCI rehabilitation community at large. Future studies should include a well-matched control group, where COVID-19 clinical research disruptions precluded this design in the current study.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-243) and index.

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