There has been much controversy concerning the comparability of the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability (WJTCA). Previous research has raised the issue of a mean score discrepancy between the tests when used with the learning disabled. This study analyzed and compared performances on these two tests by re-evaluated and newly referred LD students and newly referred non-LD students. In addition, subtypes of LD students were formed on the basis of achievement test scores. These students' test performances were also analyzed and compared. The results of this study were consistent with previous research. The Full Scale scores from the two tests were highly correlated in all three groups, but the WISC-R was significantly higher than the WJTCA for each group. Across the identified LD subtypes there was a significant difference between the Full Scale scores from the two tests. However, meaningful patterns of strengths and weaknesses across aspects of cognitive functioning were not uncovered. These results indicate that the WISC-R and WJTCA result in significantly different estimates of the cognitive ability of LD and referred students. This difference can be attributed to a combination of three possible explanations--the effects of the use of non-random samples, the use of different norm groups when the tests were standardized, and the tests contain different content.

Bakgrund: Mycket i litteraturen tyder på att ouppmärksammad och underbehandlad smärta hos äldre demenssjuka är vanligt förekommande. Detta strider mot principerna om människors lika värde, den enskildes värdighet och det humana i att lindra. Det finns många typer av demenssjukdom och attityden förekommer att demenssjuka inte känner smärta. Demenssjuka har ofta problem med att kommunicera eller lokalisera smärtan. Observations- och självsmärtskattningsinstrument används inte i större utsträckning. Syfte: Syftet med denna litteraturstudie var att belysa smärtproblematik och smärtlindring i omvårdnaden av äldre personer med demenssjukdom. Metod: Detta är en litteraturstudie där tio kvantitativa vetenskapliga artiklar har analyserats med hjälp av en manifest innehållanalys. Artiklarnas resultat presenteras i fyra kategorier med underkategorier som beskriver smärtproblematik och smärtlindring hos äldre patienter med demenssjukdom. Resultat: Äldre med demenssjukdom var ofta underbehandlade för smärta och risken ökade med stigande kognitiv nedsättning. Underskattning av smärta var vanligt förekommande även när smärtskattningsinstrument användes. Personer med förmodad vaskulär demens rapporterade ofta mer smärta och med Alzheimers sjukdom mindre smärta än icke-dementa äldre. Hos en del demenssjuka uteblev förväntningseffekten av analgetika. Slutsats: Underbehandling av smärta hos demenssjuka äldre var vanligt förekommande och mer forskning behövs om smärtbedömning hos kognitivt nedsatta personer. / Background: Literature reveals that undiagnosed and untreated pain among older persons with dementia are common occurrences. This is in contrast to the principles of equal value among human beings, the dignity of the individual, and the alleviation of human suffering. There are many types of dementia, and there exists a belief that persons with dementia feel no pain. A common consequence of dementia is inability to communicate or locate the origin of pain. Selfassessment and observational pain scales are frequently not used. Aim: The aim of this literature review was to shed light upon the challenges associated with pain and the practice of pain relief in the care of older adults with dementia. Method: This is literature review study, where ten quantitative scientific articles have been analyzed using manifest context analysis. The results of the articles were sorted into four categories, each with subcategories, that describe the challenges associated with pain and the practice of pain relief. Results: The following result was obtained. Older persons with dementia often received inadequate pain relief, and the risk for under treatment increased with increasing level of cognitive impairment. Under treatment of pain was common even when pain assessment scales were used. Persons with assumed vascular and Alzheimer's dementia often stated that they felt more pain and less pain, respectively, than older adults with no cognitive impairment did. A group of persons with dementia were shown to experience no anticipatory effect of analgesics. Conclusion: Under treatment of pain was a common occurrence among older persons with dementia and more research is needed regarding how to estimate pain in persons with cognitive impairment.

Dementia incidence is rising as our population is ageing. There is growing evidence for the protective effect of physical activity against cognitive decline. However, there are inconsistent results across studies despite the large number of high quality trials. The role of psychosocial factors on cognitive outcomes was investigated in the present thesis due to the evidence of their relationship with physical activity and for their effect on cognitive ability in other contexts. The psychosocial factors investigated were attitudes towards ageing, perceived control, mental health, and self-efficacy using cross-sectional studies and pilot randomised controlled exercise trials to test proof of concept. Study 1a found that more positive attitudes towards ageing were associated with better self-reported subjective and functional health. Perceived control mediated the effect of attitudes related to psychosocial loss with ageing and physical activity level mediated the effect of attitudes related to psychological growth with ageing on subjective health. Attitudes towards ageing mediated the effect of perceived control on functional health. Study 1b and 1c explored attitudes towards ageing in more detail and found that older adults attitudes towards ageing were similarly negative to those held by young adults in the UK. A substantial proportion of attitudes reported by older adults related to physical functioning and cognitive ability. Attitudes towards ageing in China were more positive than those in the UK which suggested a potential relationship with socio-cultural and environmental factors and possible scope for attitude change from an intervention. A higher proportion of attitudes towards ageing reported in the UK were related to physical functioning and cognitive ability compared to China. These findings highlighted the potential for attitudes towards ageing and perceived control to play a role in the context of physical activity, cognitive ability and subjective health. Study 2a found that physical, social, and mental activities were independently associated with cognitive ability which informed the study design of exercises to include a pseudo control group that controlled for social interaction and mental stimulation. Study 2b found that mental health partially mediated the association between walking and cognitive ability. In older adults with better mental health, walking was not associated with cognitive ability. In older adults with poorer mental health walking was associated with better cognitive ability. Study 3 utilised available data from a pilot resistance training randomised controlled trial with middle-aged adults to test proof of concept for the role of psychosocial factors in this context. Preliminary evidence was provided for a potential association between improvements on some psychosocial factors and cognitive performance improvements. The associations of cognitive gains with psychosocial factors were independent to those of physical fitness improvements, which may indicate a potentially additive effect. Study 4 assessed the feasibility of the pilot randomised controlled trial of resistance training with older adults. Recruitment was successful but high drop-out rates lead to between group differences in age and baseline cognitive ability. Adaption of exercise to suit individual capabilities increased participation and adherence of those who completed the programmes was high. The limited usefulness of analysis by group was highlighted due to the large variation in response to exercise within groups on psychosocial and cognitive measures. Older participants were more likely to report a negative effect of resistance training on psychosocial measures, which indicated a potential confound on outcomes of exercise interventions with older adult populations. Preliminary analysis indicated that improvements on some psychosocial factors were associated with domain specific cognitive gains. This association could be due to a variety of mechanisms, such as meta-cognitive motivational processes, for example sustained effort and attention and the use of memory strategies. However, these findings need to be interpreted with caution due to the parallel change of variables, small sample size and feasibility and pilot nature of the interventions. There is a potential implication for the design of exercise programmes if they facilitate improvements in psychosocial factors as well as physical fitness, then this could enhance the effect of exercise on cognitive outcomes. Future research should replicate these studies with larger sample sizes to further understand the role of psychosocial factors in cognitive gains during exercise interventions in older adults.

Background: It is now well established that there are core cognitive impairments associated with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. In parallel with our increased understanding of these core deficits, our awareness that mentally ill offenders (MIOs) are at additional risk of cognitive impairment due to an increased rate of traumatic brain injury and substance abuse has also grown. Absent from the literature is evidence of whether these cognitive impairments change over longer periods of time in MIO’s and whether these changes, or baseline abilities, impact an individual’s risk of violence. Furthermore, the negative impact head injury has on an individuals’ cognitive, behavioural and psychological functioning is well documented. These changes can lead to an increased likelihood of violence and crime, yet there is currently a scarcity of knowledge regarding the prevalence of head injury within mentally ill offenders in Scotland and its association with risk-related outcomes. Aims: The aims of the present thesis were to; (a) Examine the course of cognition in N=49 mentally ill offenders who underwent neuropsychological assessment while in the State Hospital, Scotland in 2004-5, and assess whether baseline or change in cognition predicts violent incidents or risk at follow-up, and; (b) Examine the cross-sectional association between head injury, substance abuse and risk-related outcomes of all individuals within the forensic network in Scotland for whom data could be extracted (N=428). Hypotheses: (a) We hypothesized that processing speed, verbal comprehension, working memory, delayed verbal memory, delayed non-verbal memory, impulsivity, inattention and problem-solving would decline over a 10-year period, and that deficits in impulsivity, emotion recognition, working memory and delayed memory would predict patients’ risk-related outcomes in a sample of mentally ill offenders. (b) It was also hypothesized that the presence of head injury and/or substance abuse within patients would predict worse risk-related outcomes, namely: quantity of violent offences, risk of harm to self, risk of harm to others and severity of violent offences. Analysis: We conducted a series of repeated measures MANOVAs, MANCOVAs and hierarchical linear regressions in SPSS Statistics to test our hypotheses. Individuals with a primary or secondary diagnosis of a learning disability were excluded. Results: (a) Our results propose that cognitive abilities significantly change over time (F(1.51, 30.1) = 5.98, p = .011), but direction of change is ability dependent. We found that impulsivity (Effect Size (ES) = .253), inattention (ES = .233), working memory (ES = .288) and auditory delayed memory (ES= .268) worsen over time. Measures of impulsivity and working memory significantly predicted some, but not all, risk-related outcomes, however these effects became diluted once additional variables with shared variance were added into the predictive models. We did not find that traumatic brain injury, substance misuse or alcohol misuse significantly mediated change in cognition over time. (b) In the national cohort study, results suggested that head injury had a significant effect on HCR total scores, F(1,259) = 6.679, p = .010 (partial eta square = .025), violence during admission (χ2 = 5.545, p = .022) and violent offences at a .1 p-value only, F(1,259) = 3.495, p = .063 (partial eta square = .013). Drug misuse only had a significant impact on total violent offences, F(1,259) = 8.933, p = .003 (partial eta square = .033) and nothing else. Furthermore, the interaction between alcohol misuse and schizophrenia also only had impact on total violent offences, F(1, 259) = 7.516, p = .007 (partial eta square = .028). Head injury was not significantly associated with either historical or current self-harm, however alcohol misuse, drug misuse and schizophrenia were. Conclusions: Our results highlight the unstable nature of cognition in mentally ill offenders and the impact that head injury has on violence-related outcomes, over and above substance misuse and a diagnosis of schizophrenia. This has potentially renovating implications for clinical practice regarding risk management, assessment, and treatment planning.

<p>Nondirective counseling is to listen, support, and advise, without directing a client’s course of action. It has been influenced by humanistic theories in the tradition of Carl Rogers, but techniques used in nondirective counseling are common in many forms of psychological counseling and treatment today. There are, however, few conclusions as to what the results of training nondirective counseling are. The purpose of the present thesis is to examine effects of nondirective counseling training, and to analyze how such effects are moderated by the characteristics of clients. Three quasi-experimental or experimental studies (Paper I­III) are presented. In Paper I, trained and untrained insurance company employees were compared on their Reflective listening (RL; a subskill of nondirective counseling) skills before and after a training program. Training increased RL, and the skills were transferred to authentic settings. Trained employees were, however, not evaluated differently than untrained. In Paper II, psychology students were compared before and after RL training of three time lengths. All training times increased skills equally, but clients disclosed more information to those with longer training, the students remembered the information better, and external judges perceived the therapeutic relationship as better, especially if the judge was socially competent. In Paper III, two nondirective counseling techniques, RL and open-ended questions, were evaluated by judges who differed in social skills and cognitive ability. RL received positive ratings, whereas open-ended questions did not, and the judges’ ratings were moderated by their social skills and cognitive ability. In the Discussion, it is proposed that even short training has effects, that trained skills generalize to authentic contexts, but that the usefulness of the examined subskills of nondirective counseling depends on client characteristics such as social skills and cognitive ability.</p>

Nondirective counseling is to listen, support, and advise, without directing a client’s course of action. It has been influenced by humanistic theories in the tradition of Carl Rogers, but techniques used in nondirective counseling are common in many forms of psychological counseling and treatment today. There are, however, few conclusions as to what the results of training nondirective counseling are. The purpose of the present thesis is to examine effects of nondirective counseling training, and to analyze how such effects are moderated by the characteristics of clients. Three quasi-experimental or experimental studies (Paper I­III) are presented. In Paper I, trained and untrained insurance company employees were compared on their Reflective listening (RL; a subskill of nondirective counseling) skills before and after a training program. Training increased RL, and the skills were transferred to authentic settings. Trained employees were, however, not evaluated differently than untrained. In Paper II, psychology students were compared before and after RL training of three time lengths. All training times increased skills equally, but clients disclosed more information to those with longer training, the students remembered the information better, and external judges perceived the therapeutic relationship as better, especially if the judge was socially competent. In Paper III, two nondirective counseling techniques, RL and open-ended questions, were evaluated by judges who differed in social skills and cognitive ability. RL received positive ratings, whereas open-ended questions did not, and the judges’ ratings were moderated by their social skills and cognitive ability. In the Discussion, it is proposed that even short training has effects, that trained skills generalize to authentic contexts, but that the usefulness of the examined subskills of nondirective counseling depends on client characteristics such as social skills and cognitive ability.

The past two decades have seen a substantial increase in the availability of numerical data that individuals are faced with on a daily basis. In addition, research uncovering the multiple facets of statistical reasoning has become increasingly prominent. Both gender differences and the effect of experience or training have emerged as two key factors that influence performance in statistics. Surprisingly, though, the combined effects of these two variables have not been studied. This gap in understanding the joint effect of gender and experience on statistical reasoning is addressed in the present dissertation with six studies. In Study 1 (N = 201), participants with various levels of experience in statistics were asked to complete the Statistical Reasoning Assessment (SRA; Garfield, 2003). Although the performance of both genders improved with experience, the gender gap persisted across all experience levels. Multiple measures of individual differences were used in a confirmatory structural equation model. This model supported the idea that differences in statistical reasoning are not uniquely a matter of cognitive ability. In fact, gender was found to influence statistical reasoning directly, as well as indirectly through its influence on thinking dispositions. In Studies 2 (N = 67), 3 (N = 157), and 4 (N = 206), the role of stereotype threat was examined as a potential cause of the persisting gender gap in statistics, and value affirmation was tested as an intervention to overcome stereotype threat. Despite the fact that many women believed negative stereotypes about the ability of women in statistics, value affirmation had no significant impact on performance. To help explain this lack of effect, and in keeping with the results of the structural equation model suggesting a multi-pronged approach, efforts were turned towards a different (and potentially richer) cognitive factor. Specifically, mental representations were explored to help shed light on the root causes of those conceptual understanding differences in statistics. In Studies 5 and 6, gender differences in mental representations of statistical features were examined using a categorization paradigm. In Study 5 (N = 219), extending some of the key findings in Studies 1, 3 and 4, it was established that two courses in statistics are necessary to create a significant difference in the quality of mental representations of statistical concepts. More importantly, Study 6 (N = 208) demonstrated how constraining the task format particularly benefits women in that the quality of their reasoning significantly improved, where that of men was equal across tasks. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Inductive reasoning (IR) requires efficient working memory (WM). Research shows that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved during WM tasks and that PFC functioning declines with age. The ability to comprehend and update text-based information requires an intact PFC and efficient WM and IR. The current study presented a series of messages about the investigation of a warehouse fire to 48 young and 48 older adults. One message contained a piece of misinformation which another message corrected later. It was hypothesized that a memory cue to the misinformation with the correction statement should benefit older adults the most during the updating process. A text-based level and situation model level measured updating. The text-based level is only information from the text but is not necessarily verbatim. The situation model level is the overall meaning of the text, including inferences and assumptions. Results show that unlike young adults, older adults are not capable of recalling the text at the text-based level. However, older adults are capable of performing like young adults at the situation model level. This suggests that older adults are capable of updating causal information in text material as long as a memory cue to the misinformation is provided within the correction statement.

The increasing use of auditory graphs and sonifications in technology is leading to a wider variety of system users, which, in turn, suggests a need for research in how differences between individual listeners affect sound interpretation. As a first step in this arena, the current study investigates the question of whether or not cognitive abilities and musical experience predict frequency and tempo discrimination in individuals. Participants in the study were 30 undergraduate students from Georgia Institute of Technology and 20 adults from the Atlanta, Georgia community. In the cognitive ability session, participants completed the Operation Span (Ospan) task as a measure of working memory capacity and the Ravens Progressive Matrices task as a measure of spatial reasoning. In the auditory discrimination session, participants performed a tempo and a frequency discrimination task. Demographics on age, gender, handedness, years of playing a musical instrument, and years of formal musical training were also collected. A correlational analysis of all variables was performed. Paired-samples t-tests on the Weber fractions of the six threshold means were also performed to determine if there were any significant differences between the frequency thresholds and the tempo thresholds. Lastly, multiple hierarchical regressions were performed on each of the six dependent variables to identify significant predictors of frequency and tempo discrimination. The paired samples t-tests show a significant difference between 250 Hz and 840 Hz and between 250 Hz and 1600 Hz, a violation of Webers Law. However, this violation of Webers Law may be explained by the small sample size used in the study. The t-tests also show a significant difference between the means of 150 ms and 250 ms and between the means of 250 ms and 350 ms. The results of the regression analyses show that good performance on Ravens seems to predict lower thresholds at 1600 Hz. The results also show that good scores on Ospan appear to predict lower thresholds at 350 ms ICI. In addition to these significant predictors from the regression analyses, there are many significant correlations that provide further support that cognitive abilities are related to frequency and tempo discrimination.

The use of unproctored internet-based testing for employee selection is widespread. Although this mode of testing has advantages over onsite testing, researchers and practitioners continue to be concerned about potential malfeasance (e.g., cheating and response distortion) under high-stakes conditions. Therefore, the primary objective of the present study was to investigate potential malfeasance effects on the scores of an unproctored internet-based cognitive ability, and a personality test. This was accomplished by implementing a within-subjects design in which test takers first completed the tests as job applicants (high-stakes) or incumbents (low-stakes) then as research participants (low-stakes). The pattern of cognitive ability test score differences was more consonant with a psychometric practice effect than a malfeasance explanation. Thus, the results suggest that, if present, there was no evidence to indicate that wide- scale or systematic malfeasance unduly affected the test scores. This may have been due to the speeded nature of the test, which was used to preempt the potential for widespread cheating. Additionally, the unproctored personality administration resulted in similar mean shifts and similar proportions of test takers being suspected of distorting their responses as that reported in the extant literature for proctored tests. In their totality, these results suggest that an unproctored internet-based administration does not uniquely threaten personality measures in terms of elevated levels of response distortion compared to proctored measures.