The purpose of the current study was to examine neuropsychological functioning in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) with psychotic features. Data from a large, epidemiological study of patients with first-episode psychosis was used to examine verbal learning and working memory 10 years after onset of psychosis in patients with BD relative to patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and patients with psychotic major depressive disorder (MDD). Cross-sectional comparisons of verbal learning and working memory at the 10-year follow-up mirrored findings of relative performance at the 2-year follow-up (Mojtabai, 2000), as patients with SZ performed significantly worse than patients with psychotic affective disorders. When FEP patients' cognitive performance was examined longitudinally, all groups showed non-significant decline over time, with no significant diagnostic group differences after accounting for current symptoms. More frequent hospitalizations and longer treatment with antipsychotics were associated with poorer performance on cognitive testing 10 years after illness onset, but these associations disappeared when controlling baseline cognitive performance. Within the BD sample, current positive and negative psychotic symptoms were associated with poorer performance on cognitive testing. After controlling for baseline cognitive performance, markers of clinical course were unrelated to cognitive performance, consistent with existing literature on longitudinal cognitive functioning in patients with BD. The current findings support a neurodevelopmental model of verbal learning and working memory deficits in patients with bipolar disorder.

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No description available.

Evidence suggests that individuals cope with stressful life events more effectively if they believe that they are in control of their environment. Rotter's Locus of Control is a measure of this belief about personal control. An individual with an internal locus of control would be more likely to believe that events are contingent on his or her behavior, and could thus be expected to feel more in control of his or her environment than an external locus of control individual. In addition to locus of control, it has been shown experimentally that allowing subjects to make a choice about outcomes also leads to enhanced perception of control in individuals. To test the hypothesis that perceived control will lead to better performance on a stressful memory task, and that individuals who believe they are in control will employ more problem-focused and fewer emotion-focused coping strategies, 60 undergraduate students from introductory psychology were given three lists of words to memorize and recall. Subjects were assigned to one of four groups: Internal/choice, Internal/No choice, External/Choice, External/No Choice. Blood pressure and heart rate were taken for a behavioral reference. While subjects in the internal locus of control condition and the choice condition performed better than those in the external and no-choice condition, as predicted, results did not reach statistical significance. However, it was shown that internal locus of control subjects used significantly fewer avoidance coping responses than external locus of control subjects, and that there were significant differences in the number of coping responses recalled from memory and from immediately after the task. / Master of Science

Second-graders were tested for negative transfer and retroactive interference using an A-B, A-D paradigm. Four-pair, word-number lists were aurally presented to the children. Subjects were classified as being whole-only encoders or multiple encoders by the use of a recall test presented after list one. Significant negative transfer and retroactive interference were found. The multiple encoders experiences less difficulty in learning the second list that did the whole-only encoders, but these two groups did no differ with regard to transfer or retroactive interference effects. The results were considered in the context of Martin's encoding variability hypothesis.

Hostility is a multidimensional construct that has been extensively studied. It has been shown that hostility affects cognitive (Shimojima et al., 2003), behavioral (Prkachin & Silverman, 2002), visual (Herridge, Mollet, Harrison, & Shenal, in press), somatosensory (Herridge, Harrison, & Demaree, 1997a), auditory (Demaree & Harrison, 1997a), motor (Demaree et al., 2002) and pre-motor functioning (Williamson & Harrison, 2003). In order to extend and integrate the present literature on hostility and the effects of negative emotional state on cognition, the present investigation used a cold pressor to induce a negative emotional/pain state in high and low hostile participants and measured. The subsequent effects on the acquisition of the Auditory Affective Verbal Learning Test (AAVLT; Snyder & Harrison, 1997) were measured. Blood pressure (BP) readings were taken before and after the cold pressor to examine cardiovascular regulation in high and low hostiles. Further, before the first trial participants were asked to predict the number of words that they would be able to recall on the first trial. After completion of the experiment participants were asked to estimate their performance relative to other participants. The measures were used to assess self-awareness in high and low hostile participants, which may be impaired in high hostile individuals (Demaree & Harrison, 1997b). As expected, high hostiles learned negative emotional words significantly better than they learned positive words. Additionally, high hostiles were impaired in their acquisition of verbal material relative to low hostile participants. Low hostile participants learned more words faster and reached asymptote sooner. A significant primacy effect for negative emotional words and an overall better recall of negative information was found. Analysis on each of the four groups of the experiment indicated that participants in the cold pressor group performed similar to the high hostile participants. The cold pressor facilitated negative learning and also slowed verbal learning relative to the no cold pressor group. It was predicted that high and low hostiles would differ on baseline measures of systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) and that they would demonstrate increased cardiovascular reactivity in response to the cold pressor. These hypotheses were not supported. Self-awareness measures also failed to produce significance. These results support the proposal that high hostiles differ from low hostiles in a number of modalities. They demonstrate the persistence of negative emotional material. Future work should address what kinds of implications these factors have on high hostiles in daily interactions / Master of Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 273-281). / Microfiche. / xv, 281 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-106).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Comparative Literature, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.