Twenty normal controls without previous knowledge of French were asked to learn 12 French words that could not be written by Italian correspondence rules. After acquisition of the phonological representations, participants were presented the pictures and asked to write the corresponding words (baseline). They were then presented 3 times with the pictures and the corresponding written words. After a filled delay of 10 min, they were re-presented the pictures and asked to write the corresponding words (testing). A week later, participants were again requested to write the words (follow-up). Number of words correctly written at testing and at follow-up significantly differs from baseline, as well as number of words correctly written at testing and at follow-up. These results are discussed and it is suggested that acquisition of irregular output orthographic representations can be supported by knowledge of orthographic representations for reading and that rehabilitation of patients with damage to output orthographic representations can utilize input orthographic representations. (JINS, 1999, 5, 405–412.)

This study examined the treatment outcome of high-dose (1500 mg/day) zidovudine (AZT) on neuropsychological (NP) functioning (Trailmaking Test A & B, WAIS-R Digit Symbol, and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test) across a 12-month period in mildly symptomatic HIV-1 seropositive men (n = 46 at entry) enrolled in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (VA Cooperative Studies Program #298). Neither short-term (0–6 months) nor long-term (0–12 months) AZT administration revealed enhancement in NP performance. The results suggest that, although AZT may afford patients prophylactic benefits, protracted high-dose AZT treatment does not improve NP functioning in mildly symptomatic HIV-positive individuals. (JINS, 2001, 7, 27–32)

A previous study of the performance of men with chronic unilateral focal brain lesions (due to wartime missile injury) on a standard test of line orientation suggested a left hemisphere (LH) as well as a right hemisphere (RH) contribution to visuospatial processing. The present study was designed to fractionate the variables that could underlie this unexpected finding and thereby to tease out the mechanisms involved in LH as compared with RH processing. A simpler (“purer”) version of the standard line orientation task was used, as were two other versions in which matching in an array and matching with distractors were measured. The findings confirmed the hypothesis of RH involvement in the purer task of metric measurement and suggested that the LH has an important role in keeping track of decisions and updating decisions in more complex aspects of line orientation judgment. (JINS, 1996, 2, 335–339.)

This study tested the hypothesis that carbon monoxide poisoning would produce a deficit of attentional control, the supervisory attention system, as indexed by attention switching and attentional scheduling, and that routine attentional orienting would be unaffected. Seventy-three cases of carbon monoxide poisoning were assessed at 3 days and 1 month post poisoning on tasks of attentional orienting, and tasks of the supervisory attention system. The results were compared to a group of 53 healthy community participants. A deficit of the supervisory attentional system was documented on a task of attention switching in survivors of both deliberate and accidental CO poisoning, leaving attentional scheduling intact. There was no deficit of attentional orienting in the current study. Alteration of consciousness was found to predict subsequent supervisory attention system impairment in correlation analyses, and the deficit was persistent for a 1 month follow-up period. (JINS, 2004, 10, 843–850.)

The past decade has witnessed an exponential growth in research on autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting social, language, communication, and behavioral development. This growth is fuelled by many factors, including rising prevalence rates; increased media attention and public awareness; the creation of new parent-based research foundations; and targeted federal funding opportunities. Researchers have taken advantage of new theoretical frameworks and exciting scientific technologies that are now being employed to address key questions about the underlying causes and pathophysiology of autism. Advances in developmental neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience, including the application of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods, have had a particularly significant impact in providing insights into the neurobiology of autism. Several of these key advances, which are closely tied to changes in the way the developmental phenotype of autism has been conceptualized, are highlighted in the papers comprising this Symposium issue.

While the neuropsychological literature includes few cases of child-onset amnesia, 2 previous case studies suggest that these patients may be able to learn new information of a semantic or academic nature. The previous studies were, in large part, based on neuropsychological testing performed during adulthood and a retrospective review of academic achievement test scores during childhood. We present patient A.C., who acquired severe anterograde amnesia at age 10 years but demonstrated average levels of performance on tests of reading, spelling and arithmetic upon examination at age 19 years. Episodic and semantic memory test scores were severely impaired, but near normal performances were found on tests of implicit and procedural memory. In a prospective study, A.C. learned to read new irregular and pseudowords and retained this learning over a 1-month period, similar to the performance of age-matched controls. This demonstration of postmorbid, acquired oral reading vocabulary supports a previous conclusion that oral reading can progress in childhood following the onset of severe anterograde amnesia. The data also suggest that this new learning probably reflects nondeclarative memory processes rather than preservation of semantic memory, as was proposed in an earlier case study. (JINS, 1998, 4, 179–189.)

Objectives: To investigate a possible confabulation resilience of the developing brain. Methods: We performed a literature search on confabulation in PubMed and identified all empirical studies of children and adolescents under the age of 18. Results: The analysis identified only three case studies of confabulation in children under the age of 18 of 286 empirical studies of confabulation. This reveals a striking discrepancy in the number of reported cases caused by brain injury between children and adults. We hypothesize that there may be a resilience toward confabulation in the developing brain and present three tentative explanations regarding the possible underlying mechanisms. Conclusions: Additional awareness on the scarcity of reported cases of confabulation in children could lead to important insights on the nature of confabulation and greater understanding of the resilience and plasticity of the developing brain. (JINS, 2019, 25, 426–431)

In recent work, we showed that the judgment of affective stimuli is influenced by the degree of congruence between apparently innate hemispheric dispositions (left hemisphere positive and approach, right hemisphere negative and avoidance), and the type of movement produced by the contralateral arm (flexion-approach; extension-avoidance). Incongruent movements (e.g., right arm extension) were associated with attenuation of affective valuations. In the present study, we replicated these results. We also assessed confidence in judgments as a function of stimulus valence and congruence and determined that confidence is maximal with congruent movements and highly positive or negative stimuli, suggesting that congruence effects on affective valuation could be mediated by confidence effects. However, in a second experiment, involving judgments regarding segmented lines, congruence effects were observed only for bisected lines, for which confidence was lowest. Thus, confidence does not provide a unifying explanation for congruence effects in the performance of these two tasks. (JINS, 2011, 17, 289–294)

The present study examines whether illusory movement (IM) of a horizontal line, induced by a moving background (MB), influences line-bisection performance in normal subjects. The first experiment attempted to identify the speeds of MB that induce IM. We found that when speed is increased from 1.53° to 13.3°/sec, IM increases, but that with further speed increases, IM decreases. Leftward MB induces rightward IM, and vice versa. In the second experiment, we had subjects bisect lines at MB speeds that had been shown to induce IM in the first experiment. We found that leftward MB induced a rightward bias, and vice versa. We also found that there was a relationship between the magnitude of IM and the degree of bias. In the third experiment, by making the target line larger than the MB, we made the conditions where IM was presumably absent. Unlike the results of bisection performed with IM, subjects showed a bias in the direction of the MB. Overall, these experiments demonstrated that the perception of motion induces subjects to attend in the direction of movement. (JINS, 2005, 11, 881–888.)

Objectives: Prior research has identified numerous genetic (including sex), education, health, and lifestyle factors that predict cognitive decline. Traditional model selection approaches (e.g., backward or stepwise selection) attempt to find one model that best fits the observed data, risking interpretations that only the selected predictors are important. In reality, several predictor combinations may fit similarly well but result in different conclusions (e.g., about size and significance of parameter estimates). In this study, we describe an alternative method, Information-Theoretic (IT) model averaging, and apply it to characterize a set of complex interactions in a longitudinal study on cognitive decline. Methods: Here, we used longitudinal cognitive data from 1256 late–middle aged adults from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention study to examine the effects of sex, apolipoprotein E (APOE) ɛ4 allele (non-modifiable factors), and literacy achievement (modifiable) on cognitive decline. For each outcome, we applied IT model averaging to a set of models with different combinations of interactions among sex, APOE, literacy, and age. Results: For a list-learning test, model-averaged results showed better performance for women versus men, with faster decline among men; increased literacy was associated with better performance, particularly among men. APOE had less of an association with cognitive performance in this age range (∼40–70 years). Conclusions: These results illustrate the utility of the IT approach and point to literacy as a potential modifier of cognitive decline. Whether the protective effect of literacy is due to educational attainment or intrinsic verbal intellectual ability is the topic of ongoing work. (JINS, 2019, 25, 119–133)

Objectives: To examine hierarchical visuospatial processing in children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a single gene disorder associated with visuospatial impairments, attention deficits, and executive dysfunction. Methods: We used a modified Navon paradigm consisting of a large “global” shape composed of smaller “local” shapes that were either congruent (same) or incongruent (different) to the global shape. Participants were instructed to name either the global or local shape within a block. Reaction times, interference ratios, and error rates of children with NF1 (n=30) and typically developing controls (n=24) were compared. Results: Typically developing participants demonstrated the expected global processing bias evidenced by a vulnerability to global interference when naming local stimuli without a cost of congruence when naming global stimuli. NF1 participants, however, experienced significant interference from the unattended level when naming both local and global levels of the stimuli. Conclusions: Findings suggest that children with NF1 do not demonstrate the typical human bias of processing visual information from a global perspective. (JINS, 2017, 23, 446–450)

Objectives: Verbal episodic memory is a key domain of impairment in people with schizophrenia with close ties to a variety of aspects of functioning and therapeutic treatment response. A randomized, blinded trial of two mnemonic strategies for verbal episodic memory deficits for people with schizophrenia was conducted. Methods: Sixty-one people with schizophrenia were assigned to one of three experimental conditions: training in a mnemonic strategy that included both visualization and narrative structure (Story Method), a condition in which participants were trained to visualize words interacting with one another (Imagery), or a non-trained control condition in which participants received equivalent exposure to training word lists and other verbal memory assessments administered in the other two conditions, but without provision of any compensatory mnemonic strategy. Participants were assessed on improvements in recall of the word list used as part of training, as well as two, standardized verbal memory assessments which included stimuli not used as part of strategy training. Results: The Story Method produced improvements on a trained word list that generalized to a non-trained, prose memory task at a 1-week follow-up. In contrast, provision of a mnemonic strategy of simple visualization of words produced little improvement on word recall of trained words or on measures of generalization relative to the performance of participants in the control condition. Conclusions: These findings support the inclusion of enriched mnemonic strategies consisting of both visualization and narrative structure in sustained and comprehensive programs of CR for enhancement of verbal episodic memory in schizophrenia. (JINS, 2017, 23, 352–357)