Search results for " tests"
showing 10 items of 3284 documents
Implicit memory functioning in schizophrenia: Explaining inconsistent findings of word stem completion tasks
2014
The definitive implicit memory profile of schizophrenia is yet to be clarified. Methodological differences between studies could be the reason for the inconsistent findings reported. In this study, we have examined implicit memory functioning using a word stem completion task. In addition, we have addressed methodological issues related with lexical and perceptual stimuli characteristics, and with the strategy used to calculate priming scores. Our data show similar performance values in schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. Furthermore, we have not detected significant differences in priming between the two groups, even when this parameter was calculated using three different procedu…
Perceptual priming in schizophrenia evaluated by word fragment and word stem completion
2011
Implicit memory seems to be preserved in schizophrenia as a whole, but dissociations between conceptual and perceptual tasks and between accuracy and reaction time measures have appeared. The present research has revealed some methodological limitations in many studies to date that are focused on the study of perceptual implicit memory in schizophrenic patients using accuracy measures. The review of these studies revealed that limitations are related to an inadequate definition of performance and priming measures, a lack of control over the characteristics of the stimuli, and the absence of information on the experimental procedures used in data collection. Moreover, the task used in these …
Confabulation: damage to a specific inferior medial prefrontal system
2008
Confabulation, the pathological production of false memories, occurs following a variety of aetiologies involving the frontal lobes, and is frequently held to be underpinned by combined memory and executive deficits. However, the critical frontal regions and specific cognitive deficits involved are unclear. Studies in amnesic patients have associated confabulation with damage to the orbital and ventromedial prefrontal cortices. However, neuroimaging studies have associated memory-control processes which are assumed to underlie confabulation with the right lateral prefrontal cortex. We used a confabulation battery to investigate the occurrence and localisation of confabulation in an unselect…
Determinants of health-related quality of life in patients with persistent somatoform pain disorder
2003
Background. Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has been investigated widely in patients with chronic pain, but no study has focused particularly on the situation of patients with persistent somatoform pain disorder. Aims. To survey the impairments of patients with somatoform pain disorder (ICD-10: F45.4) and to predict pain-related impairments and HRQOL on the basis of coping styles. Method. A consecutively recruited sample of 100 patients (65% female) was examined in a cross-sectional study. Questionnaires were administered to assess pain intensity (visual analogue scale), pain-related disabilities (Pain Disability Index), quality of life (Short-Form Health Survey-36), and ways of copi…
Computed tomography coronary angiography in asymptomatic patients
2011
This study assessed the accuracy of computed tomography coronary angiography (CT-CA) for detecting significant coronary artery disease (CAD; a parts per thousand yen50% lumen reduction) in intermediate/high-risk asymptomatic patients. A total of 183 consecutive asymptomatic individuals (92 men; mean age 54 +/- 11 years) with more than one major risk factor (obesity, hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolaemia, family history, smoking) and an inconclusive or nonfeasible noninvasive stress test result (stress electrocardiography, stress echocardiography, nuclear stress scintigraphy) underwent CT-CA in an outpatient setting. All patients underwent conventional coronary angiography (CAG) with…
Taking both sides: do unilateral anterior temporal lobe lesions disrupt semantic memory?
2010
The most selective disorder of central conceptual knowledge arises in semantic dementia, a degenerative condition associated with bilateral atrophy of the inferior and polar regions of the temporal lobes. Likewise, semantic impairment in both herpes simplex virus encephalitis and Alzheimer's disease is typically associated with bilateral, anterior temporal pathology. These findings suggest that conceptual representations are supported via an interconnected, bilateral, anterior temporal network and that it may take damage to both sides to produce an unequivocal deficit of central semantic memory. We tested and supported this hypothesis by investigating a case series of 20 patients with unila…
fMRI-activation patterns in the detection of concealed information rely on memory-related effects
2012
Recent research on potential applications of fMRI in the detection of concealed knowledge primarily ascribed the reported differences in hemodynamic response patterns to deception. This interpretation is challenged by the results of the present study. Participants were required to memorize probe and target items (a banknote and a playing card, each). Subsequently, these items were repeatedly presented along with eight irrelevant items in a modified Guilty Knowledge Test design and participants were instructed to simply acknowledge item presentation by pressing one button after each stimulus. Despite the absence of response monitoring demands and thus overt response conflicts, the experiment…
Altered orientation of spatial attention in depersonalization disorder
2013
Difficulties with concentration are frequent complaints of patients with depersonalization disorder (DPD). Standard neuropsychological tests suggested alterations of the attentional and perceptual systems. To investigate this, the well-validated Spatial Cueing paradigm was used with two different tasks, consisting either in the detection or in the discrimination of visual stimuli. At the start of each trial a cue indicated either the correct (valid) or the incorrect (invalid) position of the upcoming stimulus or was uninformative (neutral). Only under the condition of increased task difficulty (discrimination task) differences between DPD patients and controls were observed. DPD patients sh…
Explicit and implicit memory biases in depression and panic disorder.
2000
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the presence of a bias for emotional information (panic-related, depression-related, positive and neutral) in explicit memory and implicit memory (by means of free recall and word-stem completion tasks, respectively) among depressed (N=20) and panic (N=20) patients. Three different encoding conditions (graphemic, semantic and self-reference) were used. The results of this study failed to show the existence of a mood-congruent memory bias for both implicit and explicit memory in these emotional disorders. According to the correlational analyses performed, differences among categories of emotional words meant less than the difference among v…
A German Validation Study of the Inventory to Diagnose Depression
1989
The Inventory to Diagnose Depression (IDD), a self-rating scale designed to identify major depressive episodes (MDE) according to DSM-III, was validated in a sample of 83 inpatients. Depending whether the time criterion of MDE was included or omitted, 63 or 77 patients obtained a syndrome diagnosis of MDE established by means of a structured clinical interview (Polydiagnostic Interview) which served as yardstick. Sensitivity (84.1% with time criterion, 89.6% without time criterion), specificity (60%, 50%), predictive value (67.8%, 64.2%) and kappa (0.43, 0.29) were calculated and found to necessitate improvement for a reasonable application of the IDD in epidemiological and clinical setting…