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Verbal Stimuli (verbal + stimulus)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Psychology	60%
Medical Sciences	40%

Selected Abstracts

Sleep Apnea, Delirium, Depressed Mood, Cognition, and ADL Ability After Stroke

JOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 4 2001
Olov Sandberg MD
OBJECTIVES: The incidence of sleep apnea and stroke increases with age. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of sleep apnea after stroke and its relationship to delirium, depressed mood, cognitive functioning, ability to perform activities of daily living (ADLs), and psychiatric and behavior symptoms. DESIGN:Cross-sectional study. SETTING:Geriatric stroke rehabilitation unit. PARTICIPANTS:133 patients (78 women and 55 men, mean age 77.1 ± 7.7 years) consecutively admitted to a geriatric stroke rehabilitation unit. MEASUREMENTS: All patients underwent overnight respiratory sleep recordings at 23 ± 7 days (range 11 to 41 days) after suffering a stroke. The patients were assessed using the Organic Brain Syndrome Scale, Montgomery-Åsberg-Depression-Rating Scale, Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and Barthel-ADL Index. Sleep apnea was defined as an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) of 10 or more. RESULTS: The median of the AHI for the studied sample (N = 133) was 13 (range 0,79; interquartile range 6,28). Fifty-nine percent fulfilled the criteria for sleep apnea; 52% with first-ever stroke had sleep apnea. More patients with sleep apnea than without were delirious, depressed, or more ADL-dependent. Sleep apnea patients also had a higher frequency of ischemic heart disease and had more often suffered from an earlier cerebral infarction. Multivariate analysis showed that obesity, low ADL scores, ischemic heart disease, and depressed mood were independently associated with sleep apnea. Low ADL scores, apnea-related hypoxemia, body mass index ,27, and impaired vision were independently associated with delirium. The presence of sleep apnea was not associated with any specific type of stroke or location of the brain lesion. CONCLUSIONS:Sleep apnea is common in stroke patients and is associated with delirium, depressed mood, latency in reaction and in response to verbal stimuli, and impaired ADL ability. We suggest a trial investigating whether delirium, depressed mood, and ADL ability improve with nasal continuous positive airway pressure treatment of sleep apnea in stroke patients. [source]

Characterizing the ERP Old,New effect in a short-term memory task

PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY, Issue 5 2008
Jared F. Danker
Abstract The early and late components of the event-related potential (ERP) Old,New effect are well characterized with respect to long-term memory, and have been associated with processes of familiarity and recollection, respectively. Now, using a short-term memory paradigm with verbal and nonverbal stimuli, we explored the way that these two components respond to variation in recency and stimulus type. We found that the amplitude of the early component (or frontal N400, FN400) showed Old,New effects only for verbal stimuli and increased with recency. In contrast, the later component (or late positive component, LPC) showed Old,New effects across a range of stimulus types and did not scale with recency. These results are consistent with the way that these same ERP components have been characterized in long-term memory, supporting the idea that some of the same processes underlie long- and short-term item recognition. [source]

Do children with autism fail to process information in context?

THE JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY AND ALLIED DISCIPLINES, Issue 2 2003
Beatriz López
Background:, This research investigated the proposal that children with autism are impaired in processing information in its context. To date, this proposal rests almost exclusively on evidence from verbal tasks. Given evidence of visuo-spatial proficiency in autism in other areas of functioning, it is possible that the ability to use context is spared in the visual domain but impaired in the verbal domain. Method: Fifteen children with autism and 16 age and IQ-matched typically developing children were tested on their ability to take account of visual context information (Experiment 1) and verbal context information (Experiment 2) using an adaptation of Palmer's (1975) visual context task. They were also given an adaptation of Tager-Flusberg's (1991) visual and verbal semantic memory task (Experiment 3) and Frith and Snowling's (1983) homograph task (Experiment 4). Results: Experiment 1 showed that children with autism were facilitated by the provision of visual context information. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the same children were also able to use both verbal context information when identifying words and semantic category information in a verbal task when naming and recalling words. However, in Experiment 4 these children had difficulties with a sentence-processing task when using sentence context to disambiguate homographs. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that children with autism do not have a general difficulty in connecting context information and item information as predicted by weak central coherence theory. Instead the results suggest that there is specific difficulty with complex verbal stimuli and in particular with using sentence context to disambiguate meaning. [source]

Successful detection of verbal and visual concealed knowledge using an RT-based paradigm

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2008
Travis L. Seymour
An increasing number of researchers are exploring variations of the Concealed Knowledge Test (CKT) as alternatives to traditional ,lie-detector' tests. For example, the response times (RT)-based CKT has been previously shown to accurately detect participants who possess privileged knowledge. Although several studies have reported successful RT-based tests, they have focused on verbal stimuli despite the prevalence of photographic evidence in forensic investigations. Related studies comparing pictures and phrases have yielded inconsistent results. The present work compared an RT-CKT using verbal phrases as stimuli to one using pictures of faces. This led to equally accurate and efficient tests using either stimulus type. Results also suggest that previous inconsistent findings may be attributable to study procedures that led to better memory for verbal than visual items. When memory for verbal phrases and pictures were equated, we found nearly identical detection accuracies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Delirium in Older Emergency Department Patients: Recognition, Risk Factors, and Psychomotor Subtypes

ACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 3 2009
Jin H. Han MD
Abstract Objectives:, Missing delirium in the emergency department (ED) has been described as a medical error, yet this diagnosis is frequently unrecognized by emergency physicians (EPs). Identifying a subset of patients at high risk for delirium may improve delirium screening compliance by EPs. The authors sought to determine how often delirium is missed in the ED and how often these missed cases are detected by admitting hospital physicians at the time of admission, to identify delirium risk factors in older ED patients, and to characterize delirium by psychomotor subtypes in the ED setting. Methods:, This cross-sectional study was a convenience sample of patients conducted at a tertiary care, academic ED. English-speaking patients who were 65 years and older and present in the ED for less than 12 hours at the time of enrollment were included. Patients were excluded if they refused consent, were previously enrolled, had severe dementia, were unarousable to verbal stimuli for all delirium assessments, or had incomplete data. Delirium status was determined by using the Confusion Assessment Method for the Intensive Care Unit (CAM-ICU) administered by trained research assistants (RAs). Recognition of delirium by emergency and hospital physicians was determined from the medical record, blinded to CAM-ICU status. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify independent delirium risk factors. The Richmond Agitation and Sedation Scale was used to classify delirium by its psychomotor subtypes. Results:, Inclusion and exclusion criteria were met in 303 patients, and 25 (8.3%) presented to the ED with delirium. The vast majority (92.0%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 74.0% to 99.0%) of delirious patients had the hypoactive psychomotor subtype. Of the 25 patients with delirium, 19 (76.0%, 95% CI = 54.9% to 90.6%) were not recognized to be delirious by the EP. Of the 16 admitted delirious patients who were undiagnosed by the EPs, 15 (93.8%, 95% CI = 69.8% to 99.8%) remained unrecognized by the hospital physician at the time of admission. Dementia, a Katz Activities of Daily Living (ADL) , 4, and hearing impairment were independently associated with presenting with delirium in the ED. Based on the multivariable model, a delirium risk score was constructed. Dementia, Katz ADL , 4, and hearing impairment were weighed equally. Patients with higher risk scores were more likely to be CAM-ICU positive (area under the receiver operating characteristic [ROC] curve = 0.82). If older ED patients with one or more delirium risk factors were screened for delirium, 165 (54.5%, 95% CI = 48.7% to 60.2%) would have required a delirium assessment at the expense of missing 1 patient with delirium, while screening 141 patients without delirium. Conclusions:, Delirium was a common occurrence in the ED, and the vast majority of delirium in the ED was of the hypoactive subtype. EPs missed delirium in 76% of the cases. Delirium that was missed in the ED was nearly always missed by hospital physicians at the time of admission. Using a delirium risk score has the potential to improve delirium screening efficiency in the ED setting. [source]