Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 103 p.; also includes graphics (some col.). Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-103). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (M.A.)--University of British Columbia, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-170).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, March, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-251) and index.

Background: The tendency for accepting and/or behaving under the influence of other’s suggestion in an interview context can be described as ‘interrogative suggestibility’ (IS). The Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales (GSS) are used within many clinical and forensic settings as a tool to gauge the reliability of information obtained during interviews. Concerns exist regarding the suitability of these scales for use amongst the population of people with an intellectual disability (ID). Previous research concludes that the GSS may disadvantage people with an ID, indicating a greater degree of IS than is actually the case. Method: The following systematic review of several electronic databases explores research to date (and what conclusions have been drawn) in relation to the degree to which cognitive variables relate to scores obtained on the GSS by people with an ID. The subsequent empirical study makes adaptations (e.g. supplementing verbal information with visuals) to the GSS in an attempt to improve its suitability for use with people with an ID. In addition, a number of cognitive variables are measured (e.g. verbal and visual memory) and their relationship with scores on the scales explored. Results: The adaptations to the GSS did not result in a significant change to scores on the GSS. It was found that visual memory ability may contribute to whether visual information effects scores on the GSS following adaptations. Whilst tentative conclusions are drawn regarding the role of memory ability, the systematic review of research was limited in it’s clarification of the role of cognitive variables in IS. This is likely due to limited scope and quality of existing research. Conclusion: Both the empirical study and the systematic review highlight the complexity of the field of interrogative suggestibility, particularly amongst people with an ID.

The aim of this thesis was to expand the existing knowledge base concerning the profile of emotional processing that is associated with major depression, particularly in terms of socially important non-verbal stimuli (e.g. emotional facial expressions). Experiment one utilised a face-word variant of the emotional Stroop task and demonstrated that depressed patients (DP) did not exhibit a selective attention bias for sad faces. Conversely, the healthy controls (HC) were shown to selectively attend to happy faces. At recognition memory testing, DP did not exhibit a memory bias for depression-relevant words, but did demonstrate a tendency to falsely recognise depression-relevant words that had not been presented at encoding. Experiment two examined the pattern of autobiographical memory (ABM) retrieval exhibited by DP and HC in response to verbal (words) and non-verbal (images & faces) affective cues. DP were slower than HC to retrieve positive ABMs, but did not differ from HC in their retrieval times for negative ABMs. Overall, DP retrieved fewer specific ABMs than did the HC. Participants retrieved more specific ABMs to image cues than to words or faces, but this pattern was only demonstrated by the HC. Reduced retrieval of specific ABMs by DP was a consequence of increased retrieval of categorical ABMs; this tendency was particularly marked when the participants were cued with faces. During experiment three, DP and HC were presented with a series of faces and were asked to identify the gender of the person featured in each photograph. Overall, gender identification times were not affected by the emotion portrayed by the faces. Furthermore at subsequent recognition memory testing, DP did not exhibit MCM bias for sad faces. During experiment four, DP and HC were presented with videotaped depictions of 'realistic' social interactions and were asked to identify the emotion portrayed by the characters and to make inferences about the thoughts, intentions and beliefs of these individuals. Overall, DP were impaired in their recognition of happiness and in understanding social interactions involving sarcasm and deception. Correct social inference was significantly related to both executive function and depression severity. Experiment five involved assessing a group of eight patients that had undergone neurosurgery for chronic, treatment-refractory depression on the identical emotion recognition and social perception tasks that were utilised in experiment four. Relative to HC, surgery patients (SP) exhibited general deficits on all emotion recognition and social processing tasks. Notably, depression status did not appear to interact with surgery status to worsen these observed deficits. These findings suggest that the anterior cingulate region of the prefrontal cortex may play a role in correct social inference. Summary: Taken together the findings of the five experimental studies of the thesis demonstrate that, in general, biases that have been observed in DP processing of affective verbal material generalise to non-verbal emotional material (e.g. emotional faces). However, there are a number of marked differences that have been highlighted throughout the thesis. There is also evidence that biased emotional processing in DP requires explicit processing of the emotional content of the stimuli. Furthermore, a central theme of the thesis is that deficits in executive function in DP appear to be implicated in the impairments of emotional processing that are exhibited by these patients.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-06T23:06:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2005 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Objetivo: Este trabalho tem como objetivos avaliar a correlação entre dois instrumentos de avaliação cognitiva. o Mini-exame do estado Mental-grave (MEEM-g) e a Bateria para Comprometimento Grave (SIB), e comparar a Escala Funcional de Atividades Diárias Bristol e sua correlação com o Mini-exame do Estado Mental (MEEM). Nossa hipótese é que o MEEM-g e o SIB apresentam uma melhor correlação com desempenho funcional que o MEEM, em pacientes com demência moderadamente grave a grave. Para isto foi feita uma estratificação entre os desempenhos alcançados através do instrumento MEEM-g, a bateria SIB, o MEEM e a Escala Funcional de Atividades Diárias Bristol. Métodos: Foram avaliados 50 pacientes provenientes do Setor de Neurologia do Comportamento - UNIFESP-EPM - com idade entre 57 e 95 anos (média de 76,84 anos, desvio-padrão de 7.94 anos e mediana de 77,00 anos). Dezesseis (32,0 por cento) eram do sexo masculino e 34 (68,0 por cento) do sexo feminino. O tempo de doença destes pacientes variou de 2 a 10 anos (média de 3,98 anos, desvio-padrão de 1,53 anos e mediana de 4,00 anos) e o tempo de escolaridade de 4 a 15 anos (média de 5,08 anos, desvio-padrão de 2,31 anos e mediana de 4,00 anos). Nestes pacientes foram aplicados os testes MEEM, o MEEM-g, a bateria SIB e para o cuidador, a escala Bristol. Resultados: Embora os achados sejam preliminares e coletados de uma pequena parcela da população em destaque, foi possível observar aspectos de sensibilidade entre o MEEM tradicional e os outros dois instrumentos de avaliação para fases avançadas, sendo que o MEEM-g parece ser ligeiramente mais adequado quando estratificados seus valores e correlacionados com a escala funcional. Conclusões: Os dados deste projeto, precursor em nosso meio, corroboram registros de diversos centros de referência de que é possível seguir acompanhando o paciente demenciado, mesmo em fases avançadas da doença, em relação às avaliações cognitiva e funcional. / Objectives: this research was undertook to study the correlation between two tools for cognitive evaluation, Mini-mental State Examination-severe (MMSE-s) and severe Impairment Battery (SIB) and the Bristol Daily Activities Functional Scale and the correlation between Bristol Scale and the conventional MMSE. Our hypothesis is that the MMSE-s and SIB have a better correlation with functional performance than MMSE in patients with moderately severe to severe dementia. To this end we did a stratification of scores for all the above scales. Methods: 50 patients from the Behavioral Neurology Section – EPM-UNIFESP – were evaluated. Mean age was 76,8 + 7,9 (range 57 to 95) and 32% were males; mean education was 5,0 + 2,3 years (range 4 to 15); mean disease duration was 3,9 + 1,5 years (range 2 to 10). All patients completed all four scales. Results: preliminary results in a small sample drawn from the study group do indicate a difference between the three cognitive scales. SIB and MMSE-s had a better correlation with functional score than MMSE, and MMSE-s had a correlation slightly better than SIB. Conclusions: these data indicate that it is possible a follow up of dementia patients up to severe stage as long as adequate instruments are used. On the other hand, conventional tools like MMSE might not have a correlation with functional status, and thus might not reflect patient’s daily life. / BV UNIFESP: Teses e dissertações

Objective: This dissertation was undertaken to explore the clinical utility of physiological and behavioural metrics of neurocognitive adaptability in the screening of older adults for possible early signs of pathological cognitive aging. Methods: This was an intensive, multi-method study of 44 healthy (non-demented) Victoria-area older adults (ages 65 to 80 years). Study 1 examined timescale-specific differences in resting electroencephalographic (EEG) adaptability as a function of subtle cognitive decline. Study 2 described differences in retest practice effect -- within and across a burst of 4 to 6 occasions of computerized cognitive testing -- with respect to individual variation in estimated premorbid function and self-reported conscientiousness. Study 3 considered whether practice effects from Study 2 were related to individual differences in the resting EEG marker derived in Study 1, above and beyond the differences due to premorbid function and conscientiousness. Results: Study 1 revealed that older adults with neuropsychological performance indicators of subtle cognitive decline also showed subtle, timescale-specific differences in resting EEG adaptability. Study 2 illustrated the differentiable effects of individual differences in estimated premorbid function and conscientiousness on within- and across-occasion improvement on a computerized attention-shifting (switch) task. Study 3 demonstrated the unique promotional effects exerted by conscientiousness and resting EEG adaptability on the rate of across-occasion improvement in cognitive performance. Conclusions: Useful yet under-used tools for detecting early signs of neurocognitive decline include rigorous, standardized neuropsychological diagnostic criteria, the magnitude of practice-related improvement in cognitive performance, and characteristics of the brain's resting electrical activity. Future multi-method, ecologically-situated studies are needed to establish standardized protocol that can be used to screen growing worldwide numbers of older adults for losses in neurocognitive adaptability that may herald the earliest stages of pathological neurocognitive aging. / Graduate

Residual vision, or blindsight, following damage to the primary visual cortex was first identified almost a century ago. However, the mechanism and pathways underlying this ability, as well as the extent of visual function, remain unclear and are a continuing source of speculation. The work presented here goes some way to try to address these questions, investigating 18 patients with V1 damage and homonymous visual field loss acquired in adulthood. Six experimental chapters explore the extent and potential for visual function after V1 damage, and apply novel neuroimaging paradigms and techniques to try to uncover the mechanisms and pathways that might be involved. A combination of psychophysics, functional and structural MRI was used to investigate responses to blind field stimulation in the dorsal and ventral streams. In addition, diffusion MRI tractography was performed and related to psychophysical performance, so that the three main pathways implicated in blindsight could be evaluated. Lastly, a small rehabilitation study was carried out to assess the effect of training in the blind hemifield, and to investigate whether there is any transfer of learning between the dorsal and ventral visual streams. The results from this work reinforce the suggestion that blindsight may be more common than was first thought, and may extend across a number of characteristics involving both visual streams. It is also suggested that visual function need not be completely unconscious, but that certain salient stimuli can elicit both non-visual and crude visual experience. The use of parametric functional imaging paradigms has enabled a number of properties of non-striate inputs to the extrastriate cortex to be revealed. Together with tractography, this points to an important role for the ipsilateral lateral geniculate nucleus in blindsight function. It is hoped that future work will build upon this, and that it may be possible to target these residual pathways in the rehabilitation of patients with V1 damage.

The aim of the study was to investigate the neurobiological and psychosocial factors that influence neuropsychological test performance in children with epilepsy from a non-Western rural background. The sample comprised 100 children with tonic-clonic seizures and 100 children with simple partial seizures between the ages of eight to twelve years. A third group of 100 children with chronic renal problems was used as a comparison to control for the effects of having a chronic illness. The findings of the present study indicate that in the epilepsy groups, seizure variables such as the age of onset, frequency of seizures and duration of seizures have an impact on self-esteem, adjustment and NEPSY scores. However, psychosocial and emotional factors appear to have a greater impact than neurobiological variables on the measured neuropsychological domains (attention/executive, language, sensorymotor and learning/memory functions). These findings are consistent with the theoretical perspectives used, combining the view of Piaget (1955) that cognitive development proceeds as a result of the child’s own activities, with Luria’s (1973) model of brain functioning and the stance of Vygotsky (1978) that development is a socially mediated process. The findings regarding the influence of neurobiological and psychosocial factors on neuropsychological test performance in children with epilepsy from non-Western backgrounds are similar to those of Western studies. Epilepsy presents with unique problems relative to other chronic illnesses. The three groups are separated according to differences in psychosocial (maternal attitudes), emotional (adjustment and self-esteem) as well as neuropsychological functioning (attention/executive, language and visual-spatial skills). The renal group is characterised by the highest levels of psychosocial, emotional and neuropsychological functioning, while the simple partial seizure group have lower levels of psychosocial and emotional functioning, and the tonic-clonic seizure group have the lowest levels of neuropsychological functioning and adjustment. / Psychology / D.Litt et Phil. (Psychology)