Categorical Shifts Research Articles

Olanzapine Versus Aripiprazole for the Treatment of Agitation in Acutely Ill Patients With Schizophrenia

Rapid control of agitation is of critical importance in the treatment of acutely ill patients with schizophrenia. Both olanzapine and aripiprazole have been shown to be safe and effective in this setting, with each having somewhat different receptor binding affinity profiles. This 5-day, randomized, double-blind trial evaluated relative improvements in agitation in hospitalized patients who received orally dosed olanzapine (n = 306, 20 mg/d) or aripiprazole (n = 298, 15 mg/d, increasing to 30 mg/d as needed). Lorazepam was also given as needed (total dose, < or =4 mg/d) but not in place of a study drug dose increase. The primary efficacy measure was daily mean change from baseline in Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale-Excited Component (PANSS-EC) score. Secondary measures of positive symptoms and safety were also assessed. Significant improvements from baseline in PANSS-EC and secondary efficacy measures were seen for both olanzapine and aripiprazole (P < 0.001),with no between-group differences. A greater proportion of aripiprazole-treated patients received lorazepam at each visit compared with olanzapine-treated patients, but this difference was significant only at visit 5 (41.2% vs 31.0%, P = 0.033). Fasting glucose and triglycerides increased more significantly in olanzapine-treated patients (P = 0.030 and P < 0.001, respectively). Prolactin increased in the olanzapine group and decreased in the aripiprazole group with a significant between-group difference (P < 0.001). During the first 5 days of randomized treatment, olanzapine and aripiprazole displayed similar efficacy profiles for treating agitation associated with schizophrenia. Aripiprazole-treated patients had smaller increases in glucose and lipids, but no difference was observed between treatments in the proportion of patients experiencing categorical shifts in these measures.

Lexical effects on speech perception in individuals with “autistic” traits

It has been claimed that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by a limited ability to process perceptual stimuli in reference to the contextual information of the percept. Such a connection between a nonholistic processing style and behavioral traits associated with ASD is thought to exist also within the neurotypical population albeit in a more subtle way. We examined this hypothesis with respect to auditory speech perception, by testing whether the extent to which phonetic categorization shifts to make the percept a known word (i.e., the ‘Ganong effect’) is weakened as a function of autistic traits in neurotypicals. Fifty-five university students were given the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and a segment identification test using two word-to-nonword Voice Onset Time (VOT) continua (kiss-giss and gift-kift). A significant negative correlation was found between the total AQ score and the identification shift that occurred between the continua. The AQ score did not correlate with scores on separately administered VOT discrimination, auditory lexical decision, or verbal IQ, thus ruling out enhanced auditory sensitivity, slower lexical access or verbal intelligence as explanations of the AQ-related shift in phonetic categorization.

Olanzapine: interpreting the label change

Olanzapine: interpreting the label change

Abstract 3316: Revascularization for Chronic Critical Lower Limb Ischemia in Octogenarians

Objective: Advanced age is considered a relative contraindication for surgical revascularization in patients with peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAD). Aim was to analyze usefulness of endovascular and surgical revascularization for chronic critical limb ischemia (CLI) in patients older than 80 years. Materials: Prospective cohort study of a consecutive series (01/1999 to 06/2004) of patients presenting with CLI. Revascularization cohorts were either surgical or endovascular with conservatively treated patients used as reference. Prospective follow-up after 30 days, 2, 6, and 12 months. Methods: Primary endpoint was sustained clinical success defined as categorical upward shift in clinical symptoms according to Rutherford without major amputation or need for repeated target extremity revascularization (TER). Secondary clinical success was defined accordingly including repeated TER. Mortality, major amputation and TER were secondary endpoints. Results were stratified for age (non-octogenarians [&lt;80 years] vs octogenarians [≥80 years]). Cumulative outcome was determined by Kaplan-Meier method and differences assessed by log-rank tests. Multivariate analysis was performed by Cox proportional regression. Results: 376 patients (158 women, mean age 75.8 ± 10.7 years) with 416 critically ischemic limbs were analysed. Overall, 150 patients were octogenarians (39.9%). 85 limbs were treated surgically (31% octogenarians), and 207 limbs by endovascular means (46% octogenarians). Both sustained and secondary clinical success rates as well as limb salvage were higher in revascularization cohorts as compared to conservatively treated patients regardless of age category ( P =.013, P =.006, and P =.041, respectively). Mortality was significantly higher in octogenarians ( P =.006), and particularly high within 30-days after surgical revascularization (HR 5.35, 95%CI 1.15–24.9). Patient age category did not affect major amputation and TER rate in multivariate analysis. Conclusions: Individually tailored revascularization improves outcome of CLI in octogenarians comparably to non-octogenarians, even so endovascular revascularization should be preferred in octogenarians due to high 30-day mortality associated with surgery.

Effects of pitch range variation on f0 extrema in an imitation task

A central issue in speech intonation research concerns how fundamental frequency ( f 0) variation relates to phonological categories. The hypothesis was tested that pitch range variation which affects whether one syllable is higher or lower than another would elicit categorical shifts in f 0 extremum timing in an imitation task. Participants heard synthetic versions of the phrase Some lemonade with rising-falling or falling-rising intonation and flat f 0 contours across le- and mo-. The f 0 levels of le- and mo- were varied such that for half the stimuli, le- had a higher f 0 than mo-, while the reverse was true for the remainder. Participants produced f 0 peaks and valleys on syllables that had flat f 0 in stimuli; extremum types (peaks or valleys) and their temporal alignments varied categorically with the relative f 0 levels of le- and mo- in the stimuli. The results are discussed in terms of theories of intonational phonology. It is shown that an account of these results under autosegmental-metrical theory (e.g., Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA) requires positing additional constraints in phonetic models of f 0. A revised version of the Pierrehumbert and Beckman [(1988). Japanese tone structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] phonetic model is therefore proposed which assumes additional constraints on relative tone heights and strictly monotonic interpolation between tones.

Factors Related to Spatial Patterns of Rural Land Fragmentation in Texas

Fragmentation of family-owned farms and ranches has been identified as the greatest single threat to wildlife habitat, water supply, and the long-term viability of agriculture in Texas. However, an integrative framework for insights into the pathways of land use change has been lacking. The specific objectives of the study are to test the hypotheses that the nonagricultural value (NAV) of rural land is a reliable indicator of trends in land fragmentation and that NAV in Texas is spatially correlated with population density, and to explore the idea that recent changes in property size patterns are better represented by a categorical model than by one that reflects incremental changes. We propose that the State-and-Transition model, developed to describe the dynamics of semi-arid ecosystems, provides an appropriate conceptual framework for characterizing categorical shifts in rural property patterns. Results suggest that changes in population density are spatially correlated with NAV and farm size, and that rural property size is spatially correlated with changes in NAV. With increasing NAV, the proportion of large properties tends to decrease while the area represented by small properties tends to increase. Although a correlation exists between NAV and population density, it is the trend in NAV that appears to be a stronger predictor of land fragmentation. The empirical relationships established herein, viewed within the conceptual framework of the State-and-Transition model, can provide a useful tool for evaluating land use policies for maintaining critical ecosystem services delivered from privately owned land in private land states, such as Texas.

Hierarchical Organization of Colloidal Particles: From Colloidal Crystallization to Supraparticle Chemistry

AbstractRecent developments in the hierarchical organization of micro‐ and nanoparticles suggest a categorical shift in which the focus has changed from colloidal crystallization based on van der Waals forces to the assembly of clusters of a well‐controlled number of particles through various covalent and non‐covalent interactions, referred to here as supraparticle chemistry. This article highlights some of the advances that have been made during this transition and discusses some of the promising future directions that should be realized.magnified image

The mean matters: effects of statistically defined nonspeech spectral distributions on speech categorization.

Adjacent speech, and even nonspeech, contexts influence phonetic categorization. Four experiments investigated how preceding sequences of sine-wave tones influence phonetic categorization. This experimental paradigm provides a means of investigating the statistical regularities of acoustic events that influence online speech categorization and, reciprocally, reveals regularities of the sound environment tracked by auditory processing. The tones comprising the sequences were drawn from distributions sampling different acoustic frequencies. Results indicate that whereas the mean of the distributions predicts contrastive shifts in speech categorization, variability of the distributions has little effect. Moreover, speech categorization is influenced by the global mean of the tone sequence, without significant influence of local statistical regularities within the tone sequence. Further arguing that the effect is strongly related to the average spectrum of the sequence, notched noise spectral complements of the tone sequences produce a complementary effect on speech categorization. Lastly, these effects are modulated by the number of tones in the acoustic history and the overall duration of the sequence, but not by the density with which the distribution defining the sequence is sampled. Results are discussed in light of stimulus-specific adaptation to statistical regularity in the acoustic input and a speculative link to talker normalization is postulated.

Errors and strategy shifts in speech production indicate multiple levels of representation

An earlier pilot study [Gick, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 2416 (2002)] observed that speakers producing challenging sequences of articulatory movements exhibit categorical shifts in production strategies. For example, a speaker may initiate all two-flap sequences with an upward tongue movement, then shift to a downward movement, then shift again. The present study attempts to determine how these strategy shifts can inform phonologists as to levels of representation. Ten subjects produced sequences of flap allophones of English /t/ and /d/ in an experimental paradigm similar to the pilot study. Results show strategy shifts in the speech of 7/10 subjects, such that: (1) shifts are more likely to occur following speech errors; (2) errors are more likely to occur in sequences with more flaps and more conflicts; (3) errors in response to articulatory conflicts occur at multiple levels of representation (segmental, lexical, etc.); (4) strategy shifts occur at multiple levels of representation (subsegmental, segmental, whole word); (5) word frequency does not affect strategy shifts. These results suggest that speech processing is active in parallel at multiple levels associated with phonological representation. [Work supported by NSERC.]

Virulence Genotype and Phylogenetic Origin in Relation to Antibiotic Resistance Profile among Escherichia coli Urine Sample Isolates from Israeli Women with Acute Uncomplicated Cystitis

To clarify the virulence and phylogenetic implications of antimicrobial agent resistance in Escherichia coli, 100 E. coli isolates from urine samples of Israeli women with acute uncomplicated cystitis were analyzed by molecular phylotyping and virulence genotyping for comparison with resistance phenotypes. The differences between the isolates that were resistant and susceptible to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and ampicillin were minimal. In contrast, ciprofloxacin resistance was associated with greatly reduced inferred virulence and categorical shifts away from the highly virulent phylogenetic group B2, which explained much of the virulence effect. The results of amplification fingerprinting suggested that most ciprofloxacin-resistant isolates represented unique clonal groups and were not derived from clonal groups with more highly virulent susceptible isolates. These findings suggest that virulence and antimicrobial resistance are not mutually exclusive in E. coli clinical isolates. Instead, the relationship between virulence and antimicrobial resistance varies according to the particular resistance phenotype; for ciprofloxacin resistance, the relationship is strongly influenced by phylogenetic background. The basis for the concentration of ciprofloxacin resistance in non-B2 phylogenetic groups remains unknown.

Personality Psychology in Europe, Vol. 7, Selected Papers from the Eighth European Conference on Personality held in Ghent, Belgium, July 1996; Ivan Mervielde, Ian Deary, Filip de Fruyt, Fritz Ostendorf (Eds.). Tilburg University Press, Tilburg (1999). xvii+399 pp., Paperback. ISBN: 90-361-9929-8.

The default mode network (DMN) is a set of brain regions in which blood oxygen level dependent signal is suppressed during attentional focus on the external environment. Because automatic task processing requires less attention, development of automaticity in a rule–based categorization task may result in less deactivation and altered functional connectivity of the DMN when compared to the initial learning stage. We tested this hypothesis by re-analyzing functional magnetic resonance imaging data of participants trained in rule-based categorization for over 10,000 trials (Helie et al., 2010) [12,13]. The results show that some DMN regions are deactivated in initial training but not after automaticity has developed. There is also a significant decrease in DMN deactivation after extensive practice. Seed-based functional connectivity analyses with the precuneus, medial prefrontal cortex (two important DMN regions) and Brodmann area 6 (an important region in automatic categorization) were also performed. The results show increased functional connectivity with both DMN and non-DMN regions after the development of automaticity, and a decrease in functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and ventromedial orbitofrontal cortex. Together, these results further support the hypothesis of a strategy shift in automatic categorization and bridge the cognitive and neuroscientific conceptions of automaticity in showing that the reduced need for cognitive resources in automatic processing is accompanied by a disinhibition of the DMN and stronger functional connectivity between DMN and task-related brain regions.

A Global-to-Basic Trend in Early Categorization: Evidence From a Dual-Category Habituation Task.

A series of 3 experiments are reviewed in which infants between 4 and 10 months of age were familiarized with members of 2 basic-level object categories. The degree of distinctiveness between categories was varied. Preference tests were intended to determine whether infants formed a single category representation (at a more global level) or 2 basic-level representations. Across 3 experiments, 10-month-old infants appeared to have formed multiple basic-level categories, whereas younger infants tended to form broader, more inclusive representations. The tendency to form multiple categories was influenced to some extent by category distinctiveness. Whereas 10-month-olds formed separate categories for all contrasts, 7-month-olds did so only when the 2 familiarized categories were from separate global domains. A perceptual account of the global-to-basic shift in early categorization is offered. Task dependencies in early categorization are also discussed.

Group immersion and intergroup differentiation: Contextual shifts in categorization

Immersion in a social category is associated with greater adherence to group norms, one such norm being a tendency to engage in in‐group bias. It was predicted that psychology students would differentiate more between the category psychology students and engineering students under conditions of high immersion in the former category. Groups of psychology students (task group) performed a group task under conditions of high vs. Iow group immersion, the product of which they subsequently evaluated, together with products allegedly produced by another group of psychology students (in‐group), and a group of engineering students (out‐group). It was found that immersion influenced the pattern of ratings awarded to the three different solutions. In the high immersion condition, the other group of psychology students' product was awarded significantly lower ratings than the participants' task group's solution. Task group products were also rated more positively than out‐group products. In the low immersion condition, in contrast, there was no intra‐category differentiation between task and in‐group products, and both were positively distinguished from out‐group products. Thus when membership of the category psychology students was stressed, there was a strong tendency for participants to differentiate their own task group's solution from those produced by other psychology groups. When emphasis was placed on individual performance, there was unexpectedly strong inter‐category differentiation. These results are discussed in the context of Brewer's (1991) model of optimal distinctiveness, and self‐categorization theory.

Prototype effects and peak shift in categorization.

Prototype effects and peak shift in categorization.

「〓」の機能語化について

The syntactic category is an issue of degree in Mandarin Chinese as well as in other languages of the world. The relationship between verbs and coverbs (preposition) has been discussed for several decades, yet no clear explanation has been given due to historical connection and the semantic continuity. In this paper, I will take GEI as an example, and illustrate the correlation between GEI as a verb and GEI as a coverb from a grammaticalizational perspective which considers language as a process. This paper attempts to give a comparatively detailed description of its grammatical functions such as dative and benefactive. It will be shown that the motivation for the categorical shift of GEI and its acquisition of various functions should be sought in the speaker's viewpoint and the interpersonal situation.

Frontal lobe dysfunction and memory impairment in patients with chronic progressive multiple sclerosis

Deficits in semantic encoding have been described in patients with frontal lobe disease who also show memory impairments. As a group, patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) exhibit memory impairment, fail to make effective use of semantic encoding to aid memory, and perform poorly on verbal fluency and concept formation tests which are sensitive to frontal lobe damage. In the present study the semantic encoding capacity of MS patients was measured using a modification of Wicken's release from proactive interference (PI) paradigm. Individual patients varied considerably in the severity of their impairments on verbal fluency, verbal recognition memory and on Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, but even patients who evidenced both memory impairment and signs of frontal lobe dysfunction showed normal release from PI after a categorical shift. Memory disturbances in MS are unlikely to result from an incapacity for semantic encoding, which seems preserved in MS, but may arise instead from deficits in processing information rapidly.

The Aesthetics of British Mercantilism

*W A -yHATEVER ELSE art involves, it characteristically begins with material transmuted from one category of use to another, with a metamorphosis its result. Inert matter is transformed, by the artist's synchrony of eye and hand, into the beloved of Pygmalion. The same categorical shift may be applied in an effort to understand how agents other than artists effect changes in the artistic style of a period. When, for instance, Heinrich Wolfflin observed a metamorphosis occurring in Italian architecture-a transition, that is, from a classical style of the Renaissance to an organismic movement of mass disassembling and reconstructing conventions while arching into unexpected dimensions of space-he expressed the metamorphosis anthropomorphically so that the Baroque style seemed to be a personified movement which itself orchestrated the eyes and hands of artists. Much later in his career Wolfflin partially corrected his mistake, of substituting the organismic result for the cause, by isolating the Counter-Reformation as a nonaesthetic agent for the shift.' But the distorted intentionality of spiritualizing the Counter-Reformation remained.

Perceived stress as a function of the fundamental frequency contour

The perceptual effects of variations in the fundamental frequency contour were studies in some detail in identification of a disyllabic word as a noun or a verb. The F0 contour of the first syllable had one of three slope values but had the same average frequency. Within the second syllable, both the slope (four values) and the average frequency (at least eight values) were varied. The verb “subject” was taken from a naturally spoken sentence which was analyzed and resynthesized with modified pitch contours by use of the LPC technique. Results show that the shift in categorization is relatively gradual with respect to small gradual changes (step size of 2 Hz) in average F0. The boundary is dependent on the slope of both the first and the second syllable. These identification characteristics will be discussed in relation with the previously reported results of discrimination characteristics [H. W. Campbell, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 58, S57(A), S92(A) (1975)].

Shifts in categorization and identifiability of visual stimuli by rhesus monkeys

Four monkeys, trained to match to sample, were asked to judge seven stimuli which differed in lightness, in terms of five response categories. The sample stimulus was presented on a black or white background, and all responses were made on a gray background. The mean judgment category for a stimulus was a function of the adaptation reflectance, and, in general, the ease of categorization depended upon the distance of the stimulus from the adaptation level.