Using dual-task methods to enhance cognitive performance in the acute phase of stroke: a proof of concept study.

To test the effectiveness of using a non-targeted, dual-task methodology to promote positive cognitive behavior change in acute stroke. Three stroke survivors, selected because they exhibited different recovery profiles, different lesion sites, and time since suffering a stroke, were administered an anagram task five or six times across a two-week period in the days following a stroke. Task difficulty increased across sessions by means of adding a category instance detection task, where participants had to identify instances from either one or two different semantic categories.

Using Mahalanobis Distance to Evaluate Recovery in Acute Stroke.

Objective: In the weeks immediately following a stroke, impairments across multiple cognitive domains are pervasive yet there is little literature that explores cognitive recovery during this period. This paper evaluates the use of Mahalanobis distance as a means of statistically evaluating cognitive change at the individual level.

Method: A small battery of standardized neuropsychological tests was administered on five or six occasions across a 2-week period to the participants recovering from a stroke and a non-stroke control group.

The cognitive foundations of early arithmetic skills: It is counting and number judgment, but not finger gnosis, that count.

Following on from ideas developed by Gerstmann, a body of work has suggested that impairments in finger gnosis may be causally related to children's difficulties in learning arithmetic. We report a study with a large sample of typically developing children (N=197) in which we assessed finger gnosis and arithmetic along with a range of other relevant cognitive predictors of arithmetic skills (vocabulary, counting, and symbolic and nonsymbolic magnitude judgments). Contrary to some earlier claims, we found no meaningful association between finger gnosis and arithmetic skills.