Basic Cognitive Functions Research Articles

Cognitive Functioning in the Last Year of Life as a Function of Age, Gender, and Race

Research has shown that many factors affect cognitive functioning. In this study cognitive functioning was analyzed using proxy reports concerning 17,135 decedents included in the 1993 National Followback Mortality Study conducted for the National Center for Health Statistics. These responses form a representative sample of all U.S. residents over age 15 who died in 1993 (except for those in South Dakota, which did not participate). Decedents had more difficulty understanding where they were than remembering what year it was or in recognizing family members. Logistic regression models found that age, gender, and race were the most important predictors of these basic cognitive functions. Although increasing age was associated with more cognitive difficulties, men had fewer deficits than women and Black Americans tended to have fewer deficits than White Americans. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed as well as some general implications for health service provision.

Depression at 3 Months Poststroke in the Elderly: Predictors and Indicators of Prevalence

The prevalence and determinants of depression in 79 elderly patients were assessed at 3 months poststroke. Predictor variables included gender, age, history of previous stroke, and hemispheric location of stroke. Indicator variables included two measures of physical functioning and seven aspects of cognitive functioning. Results indicated that 56% of patients had impairment in activities of daily living, and 39% reported clinically significant levels of depression. Prevalence of cognitive impairment ranged from 31% on a measure of basic cognitive functioning, through to 89% on a measure of complex attention. The results from a hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the combination of predictor and indicator variables explained 53% of the variance in depression scores. The three individual variables of history of previous stroke, physical functioning, and simple attention all made significant unique contributions to the variance in depression scores. The contribution of these findings to the ongoing debate concerning lesion location and poststroke depression is discussed.

The Raven's Progressive Matrices: Change and Stability over Culture and Time

Data relating to the stability and variation in the norms for the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test (a well-validated measure of basic cognitive functioning) for different cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups on a worldwide and within-country basis are first summarized. Subsequent sections deal with variation over time. A possible explanation for the variation in norms over time and between ethnic groups within countries is offered.

Cognitive Rehabilitation in Clinical Neuropsychology

Within the broad discipline of psychology, clinical psychology has estab-lished a tradition of providing services in the assessment and treatment ofbehavioral disorders. More recently, clinical neuropsychology emerged inresponse to a need to describe neurocognitive impairment associated withbrain damage and relate deficits to specific forms of brain dysfunction. Asthe field developed, interest in rehabilitation increased and programs aimedat directly improving basic cognitive function began to appear.The most frequent complaints of patients with brain damage are memory

Teaching scientific thinking skills: Students and computers coaching each other

Our attempts to improve physics instruction have led us to analyze thought processes needed to apply scientific principles to problems—and to recognize that reliable performance requires the basic cognitive functions of deciding, implementing, and assessing. Using a reciprocal-teaching strategy to teach such thought processes explicitly, we have developed computer programs called PALs (P_ersonal A_ssistants for L_earning) in which computers and students alternately coach each other. These computer-implemented tutorials make it practically feasible to provide students with individual guidance and feedback ordinarily unavailable in most courses. We constructed PALs specifically designed to teach the application of Newton’s laws. In a comparative experimental study these computer tutorials were found to be nearly as effective as individual tutoring by expert teachers—and considerably more effective than the instruction provided in a well-taught physics class. Furthermore, almost all of the students using the PALs perceived them as very helpful to their learning. These results suggest that the proposed instructional approach could fruitfully be extended to improve instruction in various practically realistic contexts.

Stimulus equivalence in nonhuman animals

The purpose of this paper is to review the researches on stimulus equivalence in nonhuman animals, based on the formulation by Sidman. Among the behavioral properties that he proposed as essential elements of stimulus equivalence, “reflexivity” has been confirmed in various species, and the evidence of “transitivity” has also been obtained in pigeons. However, “symmetry” seems much more difficult to be formed, and specifically, “equivalence” was shown only in a sea lion. On the other hand, stimulus equivalence also has been examined using procedures other than traditional conditional discrimination, or by many-to-one (MTO) matching-to-sample and Pavlovian conditioning. Recently, positive evidence was obtained in budgerigars, based on the interpretation that behavior, in addition to stimulus, should be included as a member of an equivalence class. These new approaches in research have suggested that equivalence may not be a behavioral ability that enables us to use language, but a basic cognitive function common to other animals. This proposition, indicating that equivalence is apt for comparative study, implies that the conventional research methods should be reexamined.

Mental performance in extreme environments: results from a performance monitoring study during a 438-day spaceflight

During their stay in a space habitat, astronauts are exposed to many different stressors that may entail detrimental effects on mood and performance. In order to monitor the effects of the space environment on different human information processing functions during an extraordinary long-term space mission, the cognitive, visuo-motor and time-sharing performance of one Russian cosmonaut was repeatedly assessed (29 times) during his 438-day stay in space. The performance tasks used were chosen from the AGARD-STRES battery and included grammatical reasoning, Sternberg memory-search, unstable tracking, and a dual-task consisting of unstable tracking with concurrent memory-search. In addition to performance assessment, several subjective ratings concerning mood and workload were collected. Comparisons of pre-flight, in-flight, postflight and two follow-up assessments 6 months after the mission revealed, (1) no impairments of basic cognitive functions during the flight, (2) clear impairments of mood, feelings of raised workload, and disturbances of tracking performance and time-sharing during the first 3 weeks in space and the first 2 weeks after return to Earth, (3) an impressive stability of mood and performance during the second to fourteenth month in space, where mood and performance had returned to preflight baseline level, and (4) no long-lasting performance deficits at follow-up assessments. From these results it is concluded that the first 3 weeks of long-term spaceflights and the first 2 weeks back on Earth represent critical periods where adverse effects on attentional processes are to be expected, induced by the demands to adjust to the extreme environmental changes. The stability of mood and performance observed after successful adaptation to the space environment indicates that mental efficiency and emotional state can be maintained on a level as high as on Earth even during extraordinary long-term space missions.

Factors associated with cognitive impairment among older Italian inpatients. Gruppo Italiano di Farmacovigilanza nell'Anziano (G.I.F.A.).

To examine the association of cognitive impairment with educational, demographic, and nutritional variables in older hospitalized people. Survey of older patients admitted consecutively to a hospital during two 2-month periods in 1993. Patients admitted for general medical care at 35 hospitals participating in the GIFA study throughout Italy. A total of 3628 patients aged 65 or older were studied. The Hodkinson Abbreviated Mental Test (HAMT) was used as a screening method to assess the patients' basic cognitive function. Multiple logistic regression was used to examine the association between cognitive impairment and demographic, educational or nutritional variables. Twenty-nine percent of older inpatients were classified as having cognitive impairment, with similar distribution of HAMT score found in both genders. Educational attainment has a highly significant inverse relationship with cognitive impairment (highest education: OR 0.32; 95% CI 0.20-0.52). Moreover, cognitive impairment decreased with increasing body mass index (3rd tertile: OR 0.69; 95% CI: 0.51-0.93), cholesterol serum level (highest values: OR 0.59; 95% CI 0.37-0.93), circulating lymphocytes (highest values: OR 0.55; 95% CI 0.45-0.69), and serum albumin (highest values: OR 0.60; 95% CI 0.47-0.76), with a gradient of influence for each variable. Educational attainment affects cognitive function in older inpatients. The strong association between cognitive impairment and nutritional variables suggests that every effort to improve nutritional status is needed in approaching cognitive impairment in older patients.

Remembering to remember in adulthood: A population-based study on aging and prospective memory

Age-related differences in prospective memory were investigated in a population-based sample of healthy adults aged 35 to 80 years (N = 1,000). Participants were screened on a variety of demographic, psychological, and biological variables, including (a) subjective and objective assessment of health status; (b) information about socioeconomic background; and (c) extensive examination of basic cognitive functions. the prospective memory task was incidental and relatively realistic in the sense that the participants were asked to remind the experimenter to sign a paper after a 2-hour test session. Results indicated an overall deterioration of prospective memory performance across age. Furthermore, age-related differences in prospective memory were observed even when differences in the selected background variables were taken into consideration.

Cognitive dysfunction in chronic schizophrenia followed prospectively over 10 years and its longitudinal relationship to the emergence of tardive dyskinesia.

Basic cognitive function was assessed at initial and at 5- and 10-year follow-up assessments among 41 primarily middle-aged in-patients manifesting the severest form of schizophrenia; additionally, the presence and severity of tardive dyskinesia was evaluated on each occasion. Overall, there was a modest but significant deterioration in cognitive function over the decade, particularly among older men. Longitudinally, patients with persistent tardive (orofacial) dyskinesia continued to show poorer cognitive function than those consistently without such movement disorder, though within neither group did cognitive function change over the decade. Those patients demonstrating prospectively the emergence of orofacial dyskinesia showed a marked deterioration in their cognitive function over the same time-frame within which their movement disorder emerged, but this decline did not progress further thereafter. There appears to exist some modes, progressive deterioration in cognitive function even late in the chronic phase of severe schizophrenic illness which appears to derive primarily from patients showing de novo emergence of tardive orofacial dyskinesia.

Does generalized epileptiform discharges obligate transitory impair basic cognitive functions in patients with absence seizures?

Does generalized epileptiform discharges obligate transitory impair basic cognitive functions in patients with absence seizures?

Explaining basic categories: Feature predictability and information.

The category utility hypothesis holds that categories are useful because they can be used to predict the features of instances and that the categories that tend to survive and become preferred in a culture (basic-level categories) are those that best improve the category users' ability to perform this function. Starting from this hypothesis, a quantitative measure of the utility of a category is derived. Application to the special case of substitutive attributes is described. The measure is used successfully to predict the basic level in applications to data from hierarchies of natural categories and from hierarchies of artificial categories used in category-learning experiments. The relationship of the measure to previously proposed indicators of the basic level is discussed, as is its relation to certain concepts from information theory. Categorization is one of the most basic cognitive functions. Why is the ability to categorize events or objects important to an organism? An obvious answer to this question is that categories are important because they often have functional significance for the organism. Another familiar answer is that grouping objects into categories allows for efficient storage of information about these groups of objects. One purpose of this article is to explore connections between these two answers regarding the utility of categories.

A Study of Humor and the Right Hemisphere

65 male and 65 female subjects rated 32 jokes for funniness and solved 14 visually displayed mental-rotation problems. Subjects with faster mental-rotation times tended to rate the jokes as funnier, which is consistent with previous evidence implicating the right hemisphere in the processing of humor. The hypothesis that right-hemisphere processing speed or problem-solving ability are the common factors in mental rotation and humor processing is discussed. Furthermore, sex differences suggest that gender-differentiating preferences for type of humor and mental-rotation abilities may involve basic cognitive functions.

A STUDY OF HUMOR AND THE RIGHT HEMISPHERE

65 male and 65 female subjects rated 32 jokes for funniness and solved 14 visually displayed mental-rotation problems. Subjects with faster mental-rotation times tended to rate the jokes as funnier, which is consistent with previous evidence implicating the right hemisphere in the processing of humor. The hypothesis that right-hemisphere processing speed or problem-solving ability are the common factors in mental rotation and humor processing is discussed. Furthermore, sex differences suggest that gender-differentiating preferences for type of humor and mental-rotation abilities may involve basic cognitive functions.

Computation, Incentives, and Discovery: The Cognitive Function of Markets in Market Socialism

Decisive for the question of the feasibility of various versions of market socialism is the issue of the basic cognitive function markets are expected to provide. Three increasingly comprehensive interpretations of the cognitive function of markets, labeled computation, incentives, and discovery, are described and contrasted. Depending on how the basic cognitive role of markets is interpreted, very different judgments are possible on the feasibility of market socialism. Two types of market socialism are examined in terms of these approaches, and their shortcomings are attributed to their incomplete appreciation of the way knowledge is created, discovered, and conveyed in market processes.

Assessing the Commonality of the WISC-R and the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery with Learning-Disordered Children

The present investigation examined the neuropsychological constructs that underlie the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). Data from administrations of the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery (HRNB) and WISC-R were gathered for 1,079 learning-disabled children. A multiple regression analysis was employed to examine the contribution of each HRNB measure in the prediction of individual WISC-R subtests. Overall, verbal auditory discrimination presented as the most salient underlying construct of the WISC-R Verbal subtests, followed by concept formation and nonverbal auditory discrimination. Neuropsychological measures of the HRNB that involved perceptual organization were found to play a key role in defining the underlying constructs of the WISC-R Performance subtests. Similar to the above procedure, a second analysis was performed to assess the neuropsychological underpinnings of Kaufman's three factors (Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Organization, and Freedom from Distractibility). Of the three factors, the HRNB measures explained similar amounts in the Freedom from Distractability (21%) and the Perceptual Organization (20.9%) factors in contrast to the Verbal Comprehension (7.3 %0) factor. Overall, these results indicate an interrelationship among several basic neuropsychological processes and higher-level cognitive functioning as represented on the WISC-R.

Multidimensionality of psychological recovery from anaesthesia. Analysing six recovery tests.

Six recovery tests, choice reaction time (CRT), CRT doubletask, finger tapping test (FTT), critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF), Maddox wing, and p-deletion test, which cover basic cognitive, motor and perceptive functions as well as concentration, were analysed and compared with each other. Correlation between these tests after recovery from standardised general anaesthesia was calculated in 22 patients. Moderate to high correlation was found between CRT and CRT doubletask (r = 0.62 to r = 0.73), when parameters of six different tests were compared. Finger tapping correlated moderately with the movement time of both the CRT and the CRT doubletask (r = 0.46 and r = 0.47 respectively). We concluded that the CRT test, which measures initiation and movement time, might replace the CRT doubletask and the FTT. The CFF correlated moderately with the initiation time of the CRT doubletask, but because a slightly different function seems to be involved, further research is needed. Maddox wing and the p-deletion test correlated with no other test. Results indicated that recovery is differentiated in at least four distinct psychomotor functions, which should be tested by CRT (to measure initiation and movement time), Maddox wing and p-deletion.

Toward an Understanding of Skill Decay: Retention of Automatic Component Processes

This investigation addresses fundamental aspects of the reliability and stability of both basic cognitive functions and automatic processing components of skills. In the present experiment we investigated the pattern of component skill retention (or decay) exhibited after training on automatic and controlled processing task components. Participants were trained on a hybrid memory/visual, semantic-category search task and received low (720 trials), moderate (2,160 trials) and high (4,320 trials) amounts of consistently mapped (CM) training plus variably mapped (VM) training (720 trials). Retention was tested at five time intervals: one day, 30 days, 90 days, 180 days and 365 days following training. Critical data for this investigation involve the pattern of performance decay across conditions and retention intervals. After an initial decline in the first 30 days following training, performance in CM conditions remained stable from Day 30 to Day 365. VM performance was erratic. The present research has practical and theoretical significance for elucidation of the mechanisms underlying long-term retention of automatic processes. Specification of these mechanisms is essential in the attempt to predict performance after a period of inactivity, to determine what constitutes appropriate refresher training, and to designate which skill components to emphasize during training.

Appetitive learning in rat pups of two strains

Firstly, the noetic value of the ontogenetic approach to the problems of learning and memory is emphasized; then the heterochrony and uneven time course of the development of neural systems are accentuated, which fully holds for the basic cognitive functions. Contrary to a broadly accepted opinion, that inhibitory learning develops later in the ontogeny, using a special method of passive avoidance (with gentle air flow inciting the new-born animal to move), the ability of new-born rats to learn an inhibitory reaction even several hours after delivery and remember it for 24 hr has been proven; special control experiments have excluded any possibility that it is a non-specific reaction. To get it, the specific features of the neonatal organism are to be considered and its functional capabilities not to be overlooked. This conditioned reaction as well as its 24 hr memory develops with a temporary reversal during several postnatal days, needing decreasing numbers of trials to meet the criteria. In the analysis of their mechanisms, it has been shown that adequate functioning of peripheral receptor zones providing afferent inputs from somatosensory areas of the conditioned stimulus is considerably involved in their establishment. Increased dendritic branching has been found in hippocampus and Meynert nucleus the following day after learning in the neonatal period. Special attention is devoted to the involvement of transmitters and/or modulators; the action of acetylcholine, noradrenaline, dopamine and nitric oxide has been discovered during the first postnatal hours; their application after meeting criteria displays a time and age dependent effect with a general characteristic of memory improvement. Neonatal learning under nitric oxide influence changes nitric oxide-synthase content in the brain. Increasing dopamine and nitric oxide availability in the brain improves both learning and memory, and their joint application positively alleviates these phenomena further. Dopamine and its D1 receptor agonists counterbalance decreased nitric oxide after nitric oxide synthase blockade; increased nitric oxide in brain and dopamine receptor antagonists similarly counterbalance each other.

INDIVIDUAL DECISION MAKING BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY

Decision making is a basic cognitive function which is found across cultures. In the present preliminary study, the decision making behavior and personality characteristics of a sample of 156 undergraduate students from a Japanese national university were examined by using measures based on the conflict theory of decision making proposed by Janis and Mann (1977). Results supported prediction based on the conflict theory that high selfesteem as a decision maker is positively correlated with a vigilances style of decision making, and negatively correlated with the maladaptive style of‘complacency’, ‘defensive avoidance’and‘hypervigilance’. Comparisons made with a similar sample of Australian students revealed differences in decision making behavior. These results are discussed in term of their consequences for the crosscultural application of the conflict theory of decision making.