Acceptability and feasibility of collecting psychosocial data from fathers of very low birth weight infants.

The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility and acceptability of collecting outcome data from parents of very low birth weight (VLBW) infants and to explore the psychological and social adaptation of fathers. Questionnaires were distributed to 38 parents of VLBW infants and 36 parents of term infants within a hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Field notes were also taken. Parents indicated collecting outcome data in this population was feasible and acceptable, but barriers and difficulties in data collection were identified, particularly for fathers. Furthermore, parents highlighted a lack of emotional support for fathers. In conclusion, research with parents of VLBW infants should happen with consultation, flexibility and measures designed specifically for this population.

A model for pediatric neurocognitive interventions: considering the role of development and maturation in rehabilitation planning.

The need for post-acute neurorehabilitation after childhood acquired brain injury is increasingly recognized but recent reviews highlight the limited evidence-base and lack of a neuropsychological treatment model. Evidence from different fields was reviewed to inform the development of a pediatric neurocognitive interventions (PNI) model. The review included literature from child neuropsychology, adult neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, learning disabilities, education, and mental health. The resulting PNI model provides a systematic approach to delivering and evaluating appropriate care while minimizing the obstacles to successful outcomes. The model emphasizes the role of development and cognitive maturation in the planning of rehabilitation. Areas that represent significant gaps in our knowledge are discussed and future research directions are suggested based on predictions generated by the proposed model.

"I remember it as if it were yesterday": memory for recent events in patients with semantic dementia.

Patients with semantic dementia (SD), who have an incontrovertible deficit in semantic memory, are reported to show good day-to-day memory for recent events; but experimental evidence on their anterograde episodic memory/new learning is somewhat sparse and does not always tell a consistent story. We describe the performance of five SD patients, relative to controls, on (a) a range of semantic memory measures that predictably revealed substantial impairment, and (b) a newly designed naturalistic and incidental episodic task, which included information regarding the items and context of the semantic tasks. As a group, the patients' episodic memory for these natural events was good, even after a 24-h delay, although case-by-case analysis revealed some heterogeneity in performance. These findings are discussed with regard to the neural substrate of episodic memory and psychological models of long-term memory.

Semantic dementia and fluent primary progressive aphasia: two sides of the same coin?

Considerable controversy exists regarding the relationship between semantic dementia (SD) and progressive aphasia. SD patients present with anomia and impaired word comprehension. The widely used consensus criteria also include the need for patients to exhibit associative agnosia and/or prosopagnosia: many authors have used the label SD for patients with non-verbal, as well as verbal, semantic deficits on formal testing even if they recognize the objects and people encountered in everyday life; others interpret the criterion of agnosia to require pervasive recognition impairments affecting daily life. According to this latter view, SD patients have pathology that disrupts both a bilateral ventrotemporal-fusiform network (resulting in agnosia) and the left hemisphere language network (resulting in profound aphasia). These authors suggest that this profile is different to that seen in the fluent form of primary progressive aphasia (fPPA), a neurodegenerative disease primarily affecting language function. We present data on seven patients who met the diagnostic criteria for fPPA. All seven showed deficits relative to matched controls on both verbal and non-verbal measures of semantic memory, and these deficits were modulated by degree of anomia, concept familiarity and item typicality. Voxel-based morphometry revealed reduced grey matter density in the temporal lobes bilaterally (more widespread on the left), with the severity of atrophy in the left inferior temporal lobe being significantly related to performance on both the verbal and non-verbal measures. Together these findings suggest that patients who meet the diagnostic criteria for fPPA, can also meet the diagnostic criteria for early-stage SD provided that the impact of concept familiarity and typicality is taken into account. In addition, these findings support a claim that the patients' deficits on both verbal and non-verbal tasks reflect progressive deterioration of an amodal integrative semantic memory system critically involving the rostral temporal lobes, rather than a combination of atrophy in the left language network and a separate bilateral ventrotemporal-fusiform network.

Working memory and the control of action: evidence from task switching.

A series of 7 experiments used dual-task methodology to investigate the role of working memory in the operation of a simple action-control plan or program involving regular switching between addition and subtraction. Lists requiring switching were slower than blocked lists and showed 2 concurrent task effects. Demanding executive tasks impaired performance on both blocked and switched lists, whereas articulatory suppression impaired principally the switched condition. Implications for models of task switching and working memory and for the Vygotskian concept of verbal control of action are discussed.

Good test--retest reliability for standard and advanced false-belief tasks across a wide range of abilities.

Although tests of young children's understanding of mind have had a remarkable impact upon developmental and clinical psychological research over the past 20 years, very little is known about their reliability. Indeed, the only existing study of test-retest reliability suggests unacceptably poor results for first-order false-belief tasks (Mayes, Klin, Tercyak, Cicchetti, & Cohen, 1996), although this may in part reflect the nonstandard (video-based) procedures adopted by these authors. The present study had four major aims. The first was to re-examine the reliability of false-belief tasks, using more standard (puppet and storybook) procedures. The second was to assess whether the test-retest reliability of false-belief task performance is equivalent for children of contrasting ability levels. The third aim was to explore whether adopting an aggregate approach improves the reliability with which children's early mental-state awareness can be measured. The fourth aim was to examine for the first time the test-retest reliability of children's performances on more advanced theory-of-mind tasks. Our results suggest that most standard and advanced false-belief tasks do in fact show good test-retest reliability and internal consistency, with very strong test-retest correlations between aggregate scores for children of all levels of ability.