Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Information Alone (information + alone)
Selected AbstractsCasenote assessment of psychopathy in a high security hospitalCRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR AND MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 1 2001Dr David Reiss Introduction There is now a large amount of data demonstrating the internal reliability and construct validity of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL/PCL-R) when used in the assessment of psychopathy in male forensic populations. It has well-established psychometric properties when scored following a review of collateral information and a subsequent interview. However, its internal reliability and factor structure, when casenote information alone has been used, have not been examined outside North America. Method A sample of 89 patients from a British high security hospital, with the legal classification of psychopathic disorder, was scored retrospectively on the PCL-R from their medical files only. The psychometric properties of the PCL-R were analysed. Results The PCL-R ratings showed a high level of internal reliability. The factor structure was very similar to that found in Hare's North American sample of forensic psychiatric patients. Discussion The findings support the application of the PCL-R, when scored using existing file data alone, to a British high security hospital population. Copyright © 2001 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source] Independent on-line control of the two hands during bimanual reachingEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, Issue 6 2004Jörn Diedrichsen Abstract Many studies on bimanual coordination have shown that people exhibit a preference for mirror-symmetric movements. We demonstrate that this constraint is absent when bimanual reaching movements are made to visual targets. We investigated the ability of humans to make on-line adjustments during such movements when one or both targets were displaced during the initial phase of the movements. Adjustments were as efficient during bimanual as unimanual movements, even when two adjustments had to be made simultaneously. When one target was displaced in the bimanual condition, the hand reaching to that target adjusted efficiently to the displacement. However, a small transient perturbation in the trajectory of the other hand was also observed. This perturbation was in the same direction as the displacement, rather than in mirror-symmetric direction. A control experiment demonstrated that these perturbations could be elicited by visual information alone, but that they were also influenced by whether an adjustment was required in the trajectory of the other hand. Our results demonstrate near independent control of the two arms during visually guided reaching. The subtle interference observed between the arms reflects interactions between target-related representations in visual coordinates rather than between movement-related representations in joint- or muscle-coordinates. [source] TIME TO THE MOST RECENT COMMON ANCESTOR AND DIVERGENCE TIMES OF POPULATIONS OF COMMON CHAFFINCHES (FRINGILLA COELEBS) IN EUROPE AND NORTH AFRICA: INSIGHTS INTO PLEISTOCENE REFUGIA AND CURRENT LEVELS OF MIGRATIONEVOLUTION, Issue 1 2002Cortland K. Griswold Abstract We analyzed sequences from a 275-bp hypervariable region in the 5, end of the mitochondrial DNA control region in 190 common chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs) from 19 populations in Europe and North Africa, including new samples from Greece and Morocco. Coalescent techniques were applied to estimate the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) and divergence times of these populations. The first objective of this study was to infer the locations of refugia where chaffinches survived the last glacial episode, and this was achieved by estimating the TMRCA of populations in regions surrounding the Mediterranean that were unglaciated in the late Pleistocene. Although extant populations in Iberia, Corsica, Greece, and North Africa harbor haplotypes that are basal in a phylogenetic tree, this information alone cannot be used to infer that these localities served as refugia, because it is impossible to infer the ages of populations and their divergence times without also considering the population genetic processes of mutation, migration, and drift. Provided we assume the TMRCAs of populations are a reasonable estimate of a population's age, coalescent-based methods place resident populations in Iberia, Corsica, Greece, and North Africa during the time of the last glacial maximum, suggesting these regions served as refugia for the common chaffinch. The second objective was to determine when populations began diverging from each other and to use this as a baseline to estimate current levels of gene flow. Divergence time estimates suggest that European populations began diverging about 60,000 years before present. The relatively recent divergence of populations in North Africa, Italy, and Iberia may explain why classic migration estimates based on equilibrium assumptions are high for these populations. We compare these estimates with nonequilibrium-based estimates and show that the nonequilibrium estimates are consistently lower than the equilibrium estimates. [source] A New Method for Estimating Race/Ethnicity and Associated Disparities Where Administrative Records Lack Self-Reported Race/EthnicityHEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, Issue 5p1 2008Marc N. Elliott Objective. To efficiently estimate race/ethnicity using administrative records to facilitate health care organizations' efforts to address disparities when self-reported race/ethnicity data are unavailable. Data Source. Surname, geocoded residential address, and self-reported race/ethnicity from 1,973,362 enrollees of a national health plan. Study Design. We compare the accuracy of a Bayesian approach to combining surname and geocoded information to estimate race/ethnicity to two other indirect methods: a non-Bayesian method that combines surname and geocoded information and geocoded information alone. We assess accuracy with respect to estimating (1) individual race/ethnicity and (2) overall racial/ethnic prevalence in a population. Principal Findings. The Bayesian approach was 74 percent more efficient than geocoding alone in estimating individual race/ethnicity and 56 percent more efficient in estimating the prevalence of racial/ethnic groups, outperforming the non-Bayesian hybrid on both measures. The non-Bayesian hybrid was more efficient than geocoding alone in estimating individual race/ethnicity but less efficient with respect to prevalence (p<.05 for all differences). Conclusions. The Bayesian Surname and Geocoding (BSG) method presented here efficiently integrates administrative data, substantially improving upon what is possible with a single source or from other hybrid methods; it offers a powerful tool that can help health care organizations address disparities until self-reported race/ethnicity data are available. [source] Classic and false memory designs: An electrophysiological comparisonPSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY, Issue 5 2004Doreen Nessler Abstract In false memory tasks new items either overlap with the semantic concepts of studied items (LURE) or do not (NEW). ERP differences between OLD and NEW items in false memory tasks have been interpreted as similar to episodic memory effects observed in classic recognition studies. However, NEW items in a false memory task can be rejected on the basis of semantic information alone, a strategy useless in classic tasks. Here a medial frontal (400 to 500 ms) episodic memory effect was revealed in both classic and false memory tasks, whereas a parietal (500 to 700 ms) episodic memory effect was found only in the classic task. In the false memory task a large, parietally focused positivity was evident for NEW items, assumed to reflect a targetlike response to new semantic information. The brain activity underlying false memory effects, therefore, cannot be interpreted as a straightforward example of that arising during a standard recognition task. [source] The impact of prognosis without treatment on doctors' and patients' resource allocation decisions and its relevance to new drug recommendation processesBRITISH JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY, Issue 2 2008D. Ross Camidge What is already known about this subject ,,The dominant health economic units upon which new treatment funding decisions are made are the incremental cost per life year gained (LYG) or the cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained. ,,Neither of these units modifies the amount of health gained, by the amount of health patients would have had if they had not been given the treatment under consideration, which may unfairly undervalue the treatments for poor prognosis conditions. ,,How certain patients make decisions about their own treatment has previously been explored, but not how they, or doctors, would allocate hypothetical resource within a healthcare system given information on disease-treatment scenarios' prognoses with and without treatment. What this study adds ,,Information on prognosis without treatment is used within the resource allocation strategies of many doctors and most patients. ,,Individuals use this information in a variety of different ways and a single dominant strategy for quantitative modification of health units is not apparent. ,,Information on prognosis without treatment, or prognosis with standard treatment, is available from the control arm of randomized controlled clinical trials and should be used qualitatively to facilitate decision-making around the second inflexion point on cost per QALY/LYG acceptability curves. Aims Health economic assessments increasingly contribute to funding decisions on new treatments. Treatments for many poor prognosis conditions perform badly in such assessments because of high costs and modest effects on survival. We aimed to determine whether underlying shortness of prognosis should also be considered as a modifier in such assessments. Methods Two hundred and eighty-three doctors and 201 oncology patients were asked to allocate treatment resource between hypothetical patients with unspecified life-shortening diseases. The prognoses with and without treatment were varied such that consistent use of one of four potential allocation strategies could be deduced: life years gained (LYGs) , which did not incorporate prognosis without treatment information; percentage increase in life years (PILY); life expectancy with treatment (LEWT) or immediate risk of death (IRD). Results Random choices were rare; 47% and 64% of doctors and patients, respectively, used prognosis without treatment in their strategies; while 50% and 32%, respectively, used pure LYG-based strategies. Ranking orders were LYG > PILY > IRD > LEWT (doctors) and LEWT > LYG > IRD > PILY (patients). When LYG information alone could not be used, 76% of doctors prioritized shorter prognoses, compared with 45% of patients. Conclusions Information on prognosis without treatment is used within the resource allocation strategies of many doctors and most patients, and should be considered as a qualitative modifier during the health economic assessments of new treatments for life-shortening diseases. A single dominant strategy incorporating this information for any quantitative modification of health units is not apparent. [source] | ||||||||||||||||