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The Clinical Neuropsychologist Oct 2022The Test of Practical Judgment (TOP-J) has shown utility in inpatient and outpatient settings in older adults who present with mild cognitive impairment and various...
The Test of Practical Judgment (TOP-J) has shown utility in inpatient and outpatient settings in older adults who present with mild cognitive impairment and various dementia subtypes. The TOP-J has two versions (i.e. 9 items and 15 items), and was initially validated within a small rural non-Hispanic White sample. In the current study, we re-evaluated the psychometric evidence and refined scoring criteria and administration guidelines in older adults with more diverse demographic characteristics than the original validation sample. Participants ( = 348) were recruited from several boroughs of New York City and surrounding areas (mean/median age = 79; mean years education = 15, median = 15.5; 68% female; 30% Black/African-American, 8% Hispanic). Reliability and validity were comparable to original findings. Based on confirmatory factor analysis, one item was replaced on the 9-item version, now called TOP-J Form A. Normative data for cognitively intact participants ( = 261) were updated and stratified by two education groups. The TOP-J is increasingly used in clinical and research settings in the U.S. and abroad, and the current study provides improved normative data and administration and scoring guidelines for use with demographically diverse older individuals.
Topics: Aged; Cognitive Dysfunction; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Neuropsychological Tests; Psychometrics; Reproducibility of Results
PubMed: 33761835
DOI: 10.1080/13854046.2021.1889680 -
PloS One 2022Is visual perception "rich" or "sparse?" One finding supporting the "rich" hypothesis shows that a specific visual summary representation, color diversity, is...
Is visual perception "rich" or "sparse?" One finding supporting the "rich" hypothesis shows that a specific visual summary representation, color diversity, is represented "cost-free" outside focally-attended regions in dual-task paradigms [1]. Here, we investigated whether this "cost-free" phenomenon for color diversity perception extends to peripheral vision. After replicating previous findings and verifying that color diversity is represented "cost-free" in central vision, we performed two experiments: in our first experiment, we extended the paradigm to peripheral vision and found that in minimally-attended regions of space, color diversity perception was impaired. In a second and final experiment, we added confidence judgments to our task, and found that participants maintained high levels of metacognitive awareness of impaired performance in minimally-attended visual areas in the periphery. These findings provide evidence that color perception may be partially attention-dependent in peripheral vision, and challenge previous views on both sides of the rich vs. sparse debate.
Topics: Humans; Judgment; Visual Perception; Vision, Ocular; Color Perception; Attention; Color
PubMed: 36584092
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0279686 -
Memory & Cognition Jul 2023To succeed in a social world, we must be able to accurately estimate what others know. For example, teachers must anticipate student knowledge to plan lessons and...
To succeed in a social world, we must be able to accurately estimate what others know. For example, teachers must anticipate student knowledge to plan lessons and communicate effectively. Yet one's own knowledge consistently contaminates estimates about others' knowledge. We examine how one's knowledge influences the calibration and resolution of participants' estimates of novices' knowledge. Across four experiments, participants studied trivia questions and estimated the percentage of novice participants who would know the answer across multiple study/estimation rounds. When participants were required to answer the question before estimating what novices would know, studying the facts impaired both the calibration and resolution of the estimates. Studying the facts reduced the validity of one's experiences for predicting novices' knowledge, and estimators utilized their own experiences less when predicting novices' knowledge as they studied. Experimentally reducing reliance on one's own knowledge did not improve the accuracy of estimates. The results suggest that learning impairs the accuracy of judgments of others' knowledge, not because estimators rely too heavily on their own experiences, but because estimators lack diagnostic cues about others' knowledge.
Topics: Humans; Judgment; Learning; Cues; Knowledge; Students
PubMed: 36575349
DOI: 10.3758/s13421-022-01382-3 -
Schizophrenia Bulletin Jul 2011Perceptual organization (PO) refers to the processes by which visual information is structured into coherent patterns such as groups, contours, perceptual wholes, and... (Review)
Review
Perceptual organization (PO) refers to the processes by which visual information is structured into coherent patterns such as groups, contours, perceptual wholes, and object representations. Impairments in PO have been demonstrated in schizophrenia since the 1960s and have been linked to several illness-related factors including poor premorbid functioning, poor prognosis, and disorganized symptoms. This literature was last reviewed in 2005. Since then, electrophysiological (electroencephalographic, event-related potential, and magnetoencephalographic) and fMRI studies in both patient and nonpatient samples have clarified brain mechanisms involved in the impairment, and additional behavioral studies in patients and nonpatients have clarified the computational mechanisms. In addition, data now exist on the functional consequences of PO impairments, in terms of secondary difficulties in face processing, selective attention, working memory, and social cognition. Preliminary data on drug effects on PO and on changes in response to treatment suggest that anomalies in PO may furnish a biomarker for the integrity of its associated biological mechanisms. All of this recent evidence allows for a clearer picture of the nature of the impairment and how it relates to broader aspects of brain and behavioral functioning in schizophrenia.
Topics: Brain; Brain Mapping; Cognition Disorders; Discrimination Learning; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials; Form Perception; Humans; Judgment; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Magnetoencephalography; Models, Theoretical; Neuropsychological Tests; Optical Illusions; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Perceptual Disorders; Prognosis; Recruitment, Neurophysiological; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenic Psychology; Visual Perception
PubMed: 21700589
DOI: 10.1093/schbul/sbr052 -
Neuropsychologia Apr 2012The face conveys a rich source of non-verbal information used during social communication. While research has revealed how specific facial channels such as emotional... (Review)
Review
The face conveys a rich source of non-verbal information used during social communication. While research has revealed how specific facial channels such as emotional expression are processed, little is known about the prioritization and integration of multiple cues in the face during dyadic exchanges. Classic models of face perception have emphasized the segregation of dynamic vs. static facial features along independent information processing pathways. Here we review recent behavioral and neuroscientific evidence suggesting that within the dynamic stream, concurrent changes in eye gaze and emotional expression can yield early independent effects on face judgments and covert shifts of visuospatial attention. These effects are partially segregated within initial visual afferent processing volleys, but are subsequently integrated in limbic regions such as the amygdala or via reentrant visual processing volleys. This spatiotemporal pattern may help to resolve otherwise perplexing discrepancies across behavioral studies of emotional influences on gaze-directed attentional cueing. Theoretical explanations of gaze-expression interactions are discussed, with special consideration of speed-of-processing (discriminability) and contextual (ambiguity) accounts. Future research in this area promises to reveal the mental chronometry of face processing and interpersonal attention, with implications for understanding how social referencing develops in infancy and is impaired in autism and other disorders of social cognition.
Topics: Attention; Brain; Cognition; Face; Facial Expression; Fixation, Ocular; Humans; Judgment; Models, Psychological; Social Behavior; Visual Perception
PubMed: 22285906
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.01.019 -
Journal of Clinical and Experimental... Feb 2017Cognitive impairment often occurs in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), and dysfunction involving executive function, new learning, and working memory is especially...
INTRODUCTION
Cognitive impairment often occurs in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), and dysfunction involving executive function, new learning, and working memory is especially common. Compromised activities of daily living are linked to this cognitive impairment, and people with MS are apt to be unemployed and struggle to manage domestic responsibilities. Financial decision making is an important activity of daily living, and no study has examined whether it is compromised by neuropsychological dysfunction in people with MS.
METHOD
A battery of neuropsychological tests and a measure of financial decision making (Financial Capacity Instrument, FCI: Marson, D. C. 2001. Loss of financial capacity in dementia: Conceptual and empirical approaches. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 8, 164-181) were administered to 50 participants (34 patients with MS and 16 cognitively healthy adults). Based on the neuropsychological test results, 14 patients were classified as having cognitive impairment, and 20 had no significant impairment.
RESULTS
The impaired MS patients performed significantly worse than unimpaired patients and the healthy comparison group on most financial tasks. The impaired group retained abilities to count money and display adequate financial judgment. Regression analyses showed that measures of mental flexibility and working memory correlated most strongly with performance on the FCI domains across groups.
CONCLUSIONS
Cognitively impaired patients with MS have degraded financial skills, which are linked to executive function and working memory deficits.
Topics: Activities of Daily Living; Adult; Cognitive Dysfunction; Decision Making; Executive Function; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Middle Aged; Multiple Sclerosis; Neuropsychological Tests
PubMed: 27430343
DOI: 10.1080/13803395.2016.1201050 -
Trends in Hearing Feb 2015Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) have been measured for various features of sounds, but despite its importance to communication, there is no benchmark for what is a...
Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) have been measured for various features of sounds, but despite its importance to communication, there is no benchmark for what is a just-noticeable-and possibly meaningful-difference in speech-to-noise ratio (SNR). SNR plays a crucial role in speech communication for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Difficulty hearing speech in background noise-a poor SNR-often leads to dissatisfaction with hearing-assistance devices. While such devices attempt through various strategies to address this problem, it is not currently known how much improvement in SNR is needed to provide a noticeable benefit. To investigate what is a noticeable benefit, we measured the JND in SNR for both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Here, we report the SNR JNDs of 69 participants of varying hearing ability, estimated using either an adaptive or fixed-level procedure. The task was to judge which of the two intervals containing a sentence in speech-spectrum noise presented over headphones was clearer. The level of each interval was roved to reduce the influence of absolute level cues. The results of both procedures showed an average SNR JND of 3 dB that was independent of hearing ability. Further experiments using a subset of normal-hearing listeners showed that level roving does elevate threshold. These results suggest that noise reduction schemes may need to achieve a benefit greater than 3 dB to be reliably discriminable.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Adult; Aged; Audiometry, Pure-Tone; Audiometry, Speech; Auditory Threshold; Case-Control Studies; Discrimination, Psychological; Female; Humans; Judgment; Male; Middle Aged; Noise; Perceptual Masking; Persons With Hearing Impairments; Psychoacoustics; Speech Perception
PubMed: 25681327
DOI: 10.1177/2331216515572316 -
Behavioural Neurology 2015In a majority of languages, the time of an event is expressed by marking tense on the verb. There is substantial evidence that the production of verb tense in sentences... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis Review
In a majority of languages, the time of an event is expressed by marking tense on the verb. There is substantial evidence that the production of verb tense in sentences is more severely impaired than other functional categories in persons with agrammatic aphasia. The underlying source of this verb tense impairment is less clear, particularly in terms of the relative contribution of conceptual-semantic and processing demands. This study aimed to provide a more precise characterization of verb tense impairment by examining if there is dissociation within tenses (due to conceptual-semantic differences) and an effect of experimental task (mediated by processing limitations). Two sources of data were used: a meta-analysis of published research (which yielded 143 datasets) and new data from 16 persons with agrammatic aphasia. Tensed verbs were significantly more impaired than neutral (nonfinite) verbs, but there were no consistent differences between past, present, and future tenses. Overall, tense accuracy was mediated by task, such that picture description task was the most challenging, relative to sentence completion, sentence production priming, and grammaticality judgment. An interaction between task and tense revealed a past tense disadvantage for a sentence production priming task. These findings indicate that verb tense impairment is exacerbated by processing demands of the elicitation task and the conceptual-semantic differences between tenses are too subtle to show differential performance in agrammatism.
Topics: Aphasia, Broca; Humans; Language; Speech
PubMed: 26457004
DOI: 10.1155/2015/983870 -
Brain : a Journal of Neurology Mar 2011Cognitive dysfunction is a devastating consequence of traumatic brain injury that affects the majority of those who survive with moderate-to-severe injury, and many...
Cognitive dysfunction is a devastating consequence of traumatic brain injury that affects the majority of those who survive with moderate-to-severe injury, and many patients with mild head injury. Disruption of key monoaminergic neurotransmitter systems, such as the dopaminergic system, may play a key role in the widespread cognitive dysfunction seen after traumatic axonal injury. Manifestations of injury to this system may include impaired decision-making and impulsivity. We used the Cambridge Gambling Task to characterize decision-making and risk-taking behaviour, outside of a learning context, in a cohort of 44 patients at least six months post-traumatic brain injury. These patients were found to have broadly intact processing of risk adjustment and probability judgement, and to bet similar amounts to controls. However, a patient preference for consistently early bets indicated a higher level of impulsiveness. These behavioural measures were compared with imaging findings on diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging. Performance in specific domains of the Cambridge Gambling Task correlated inversely and specifically with the severity of diffusion tensor imaging abnormalities in regions that have been implicated in these cognitive processes. Thus, impulsivity was associated with increased apparent diffusion coefficient bilaterally in the orbitofrontal gyrus, insula and caudate; abnormal risk adjustment with increased apparent diffusion coefficient in the right thalamus and dorsal striatum and left caudate; and impaired performance on rational choice with increased apparent diffusion coefficient in the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, and the superior frontal gyri, right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the dorsal and ventral striatum, and left hippocampus. Importantly, performance in specific cognitive domains of the task did not correlate with diffusion tensor imaging abnormalities in areas not implicated in their performance. The ability to dissociate the location and extent of damage with performance on the various task components using diffusion tensor imaging allows important insights into the neuroanatomical basis of impulsivity following traumatic brain injury. The ability to detect such damage in vivo may have important implications for patient management, patient selection for trials, and to help understand complex neurocognitive pathways.
Topics: Adult; Brain; Brain Injuries; Brain Mapping; Cognition Disorders; Decision Making; Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Female; Gambling; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Judgment; Male; Middle Aged; Neuropsychological Tests; Statistics as Topic
PubMed: 21310727
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awq388