Psychology Commons^™

Relationships Between Age And White Matter Integrity In Children With Phenylketonuria, Erika M. Wesonga

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a hereditary metabolic disorder associated with cognitive compromise. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has allowed detection of poorer microstructural white matter integrity in children with PKU, with decreased mean diffusivity (MD) in comparison with healthy children. However, very little research has been conducted to examine the trajectory of white matter development in this population. The present study investigated potential differences in the developmental trajectory of MD between children with early- and continuously-treated PKU and healthy children across a range of brain regions.

Methods: Children with PKU (n = 31, mean age = 12.2 years) were …

Relationship Between Serum Biomarkers And Three-Month Outcomes Following Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury (Tbi), Alicia Leanne Janos

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With more than 475,000 cases annually, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children. Promising new tools for the prediction of functional outcomes following pediatric TBI are biomarkers of brain injury that can be detected in blood serum. The most commonly studied biomarkers, S100β, neuron-specific enolase (NSE), and myelin basic protein (MBP), have myriad limitations which preclude their use in clinical care. In the present study, serum concentrations of two novel biomarkers of brain injury (i.e., ubiquitin carboxy-terminal hydrolase-L1, UCH-L1; glial fibrillary acidic protein, GFAP) were collected 24 hours following severe TBI in 30 …

The Neuropsychological Profile Of Older Adult Musicians And Non-Musicians : Implications For Cognitive Reserve In Late Life., Jessica Vemich Strong,

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Published literature studying children and adults musicians suggests significant differences in neuroanatomy, in brain regions that include the auditory and motor cortices, language centers, and frontal regions and tracts. Studies examining cognitive correlates to these neuroanatomical differences have consistently found that children and adult musicians have better cognitive abilities in the domains of language, verbal or non-verbal memory and executive function. Only one study has examined the differences in cognitive performance between older adult musicians and non-musicians to see how normal age-related cognitive changes may affect these differences. The current study compared cognitive test performance among older adult non-musicians, low-activity …

Neuropsychological Approaches To Perceptual Organization, Marlene Behrmann

Marlene Behrmann

This chapter takes a neuropsychological perspective on questions concerning analytic and holistic processing. It examines the behavior of seven brain-damaged patients who have problems with perceptual organization. These “integrative agnostic” patients seem to be disproportionately impaired on tasks tapping holistic configural processes compared to part-based processes. The first section of this chapter outlines three main empirical issues falling under the domain of perceptual organization: figure-ground organization, visual interpolation, and grouping. The second section contains a description of the patients. The third section examines the nature of the impairment in perceptual organization, in relation to figure-ground organization, visual interpolation, and grouping.

Patient Schn: Has Goldstein And Gelb’S Case Withstood The Test Of Time?, Jonathan Marotta, Marlene Behrmann

Marlene Behrmann

The current manuscript takes a critical look at the case of Goldstein and Gelb’s patient, Schn, reported to be the first well-defined example of apperceptive visual agnosia. While doubts have been cast on the validity of the original investigations, we propose that perhaps the case of Schn should be reclassified as an example of integrative agnosia. Be that as it may, what is not in doubt is that the case of Schn has had a lasting impact on the development of neuropsychological theorem.

Acquisition Of Long-Term Visual Representations: Psychological And Neural Mechanisms, Marlene Behrmann, Joy Geng, Chris Baker

Marlene Behrmann

How do we so rapidly achieve an organized, coherent visual percept of our superficially chaotic world? One way of reducing the complexity of the input is to take advantage of the statistical regularities and regular co-occurrences between aspects of objects and between objects and their spatial locations. In this chapter, converging data obtained from normal and brain-damaged individuals, as well as from single unit recording studies in monkeys, are presented, all of which address the psychological and neural mechanisms associated with statistical learning. The first section deals with learning regularities associated with particular spatial locations, presumably a function of the …

Visuoperceptual Deficits In Letter-By-Letter Reading?, Rachel Mycroft, Marlene Behrmann, Janice Kay

Marlene Behrmann

A longstanding and controversial issue concerns the underlying mechanisms that give rise to letter-by-letter (LBL) reading: while some researchers propose a prelexical, perceptual basis for the disorder, others postulate a postlexical, linguistic source for the problem. To examine the nature of the deficit underlying LBL reading, in three experiments, we compare the performance of seven LBL readers, matched control participants and one brain-damaged patient, OL, with no reading impairment. Experiment 1 revealed that the LBL patients were impaired, relative to the controls and to OL, on a same/different matching task using checkerboards of black and white squares. Given that the …

Invariant Two Component Structure Of The Rbans, Elisabeth M. Vogt

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS: Randolph, 1998, 2012) is a brief neurocognitive instrument used to evaluate cognitive functioning in clinical settings. While this test is used regularly, investigation of the factor structure has resulted in inconsistent findings across samples. It was hypothesized that inconsistent RBANS dimensional structures are the result of methodological differences and not solely due to unique sample characteristics. The present study utilized empirically supported extraction criteria (Parallel Analysis; Minimum Average Partial Procedure) and uniformly investigated five samples. RBANS data from four samples were previously published (Carlozzi, Horner, Yang, & Tilley, 2008; Duff, …

Attention In Hiv, Kathleen Marie Van Dyk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In contrast to the striking benefit of advances in antiretroviral therapy on longevity and health in the HIV+ population, mild cognitive disorders persist (Heaton, Clifford et al., 2010). Additional factors that may be related to cognitive decline and warrant consideration in this population are aging and physical health status. Among cognitive domains affected, attention and processing speed have emerged as particularly vulnerable to the effects of HIV. There are also age effects observed in these domains, and we proposed that reduced physical health can also impact cognition in these areas, comparably to pain. Sensitive measures of attention that vary attentional …

Increased Attention And Memory For Beloved-Related Information During Infatuation: Behavioral And Electrophysiological Data, Sandra J. E. Langeslag, Jamie R. Oliver, Martine E. Köhlen, Ilse M. Nijs

Psychology Faculty Works

Emotionally salient information is well attended and remembered. It has been shown that infatuated individuals have increased attention for their beloved. It is unknown whether this attention bias generalizes to information related to the beloved. Moreover, infatuated individuals report to remember trivial things about their beloved, but this has not yet been tested empirically. In two studies, we tested whether infatuated individuals have increased attention and memory for beloved-related information. In a passive viewing task (Study 1), the late positive potential, an event-related potential (ERP) component reflecting motivated attention, was enhanced for beloved-related vs friend-related words/phrases. In a recognition task …

Age Related Decline In Memory: Examining The Mediation Effect Of Processing, Executive Functioning And Intelligence In Normal Adults, Jada J. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Multiple mediation analyses that collectively examine the prominent theories of cognitive aging (i.e., Common Cause, Processing, and Executive Decline Hypotheses) along with other cognitive domains that are sensitive to aging are rare. Moreover, having identified that cognition begins to decline as early as 30 years old, few studies have examined the mechanisms that underlie memory change among younger aging individuals. As a result, it is unclear whether relevant mediating variables have been excluded from early research on age-related memory decline, or to what extent rehabilitative strategies are applicable as early interventions for maintaining cognitive functioning into late life.

The present …

Twin Gestation And Neuropsychological Outcome Of Preschool Age Children Born Prematurely, Jamie Christine Piercy

Wayne State University Theses

Multiples are thought to be at increased risk for developmental outcome deficits in the preschool years, following preterm birth. However, little research has been conducted to determine whether this group remains at higher risk in the age of artificial reproductive techniques and the modern NICU. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether multiplicity is a risk factor for neuropsychological outcome deficits in a sample of 118 preschoolers (49 multiples, 75 singletons) born prematurely (<34 weeks gestation). As predicted, there were significant relationships between multiplicity and outcome measures, however, the direction of the effects were opposite to our prediction, with multiplies demonstrating superior performance. Additionally, significant multiplicity by sex interactions revealed a female twin advantage over male twin and singleton performance. In this preschool age sample, preterm multiples were not at a disadvantage when compared to singleton counterparts, demonstrating either equivalent or superior neuropsychological performance.

The Frequency And Competency Of Executive Functions Assessment And Intervention Among Practicing School Psychologists, Meghan A. Garrett

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This study surveyed school psychologists (N = 167) primarily from six different states about their perceptions, knowledge, frequency, and application of executive functions assessment and interventions. The purpose of this study was to explore school psychologists’ practices in executive functions assessment and interventions. Results of the study indicated that school psychologists vary in their knowledge of executive functions, but the majority of them do not include the assessment of and intervention in executive functions deficits in their regular practice. However, school psychologists tended to report executive functions assessment and intervention more frequently when presented with specific disability classifications (e.g. autism, …