Problematic alcohol use among individuals with HIV: relations with everyday memory functioning and HIV symptom severity.

Problematic alcohol use has been shown to negatively impact cognitive functions germane to achieving optimal HIV health outcomes. The present study, a secondary data analysis, examined the impact of problematic alcohol use on aspects of everyday memory functioning in a sample of 172 HIV-infected individuals (22 % female; Mage = 48.37 years, SD = 8.

Effects of power frequency electromagnetic fields on melatonin and sleep in the rat.

Background: Studies investigating the effect of power frequency (50-60 Hz) electromagnetic fields (EMF) on melatonin synthesis in rats have been inconsistent with several showing suppression of melatonin synthesis, others showing no effect and a few actually demonstrating small increases. Scant research has focused on the ensuing sleep patterns of EMF exposed rats. The present study was designed to examine the effects of extremely low power frequency electromagnetic fields (EMF) on the production of melatonin and the subsequent sleep structure in rats.

Searching for interference effects in learning new face-name associations.

In three experiments we attempted to increase interference using experimental manipulations in a face-name learning paradigm. All experiments included young and older adult participants because ageing is associated with increases in both susceptibility to interference and difficulty in learning face-name associations. None of the experiments produced interference for either age group: The inclusion of confusable (i.

Speech errors of amnesic H.M.: unlike everyday slips-of-the-tongue.

Three language production studies indicate that amnesic H.M. produces speech errors unlike everyday slips-of-the-tongue.

How name descriptiveness impacts proper name learning in young and older adults.

To elucidate the impact of name descriptiveness and aging on learning new names, 26 young and 26 healthy older participants learned visibly-descriptive (e.g., Lengthy for a giraffe), psychologically-descriptive (e.

Recognition memory measures yield disproportionate effects of aging on learning face-name associations.

No previous research has tested whether the specific age-related deficit in learning face-name associations that has been identified using recall tasks also occurs for recognition memory measures. Young and older participants saw pictures of unfamiliar people with a name and an occupation for each person, and were tested on a matching (in Experiment 1) or multiple-choice (in Experiment 2) recognition memory test. For both recognition measures, the pattern of effects was the same as that obtained using a recall measure: More face-occupation associations were remembered than face-name associations, young adults remembered more associated information than older adults overall, and older adults had disproportionately poorer memory for face-name associations.

Charlie brown versus snow white: the effects of descriptiveness on young and older adults' retrieval of proper names.

The nondescriptive nature of proper names has been suggested as one reason that people experience particular difficulty learning and recalling names. This experiment tested whether the exacerbated difficulty experienced by older adults in retrieving proper names is partly due to names' nondescriptive quality. Young and older participants named pictures of well-known cartoon characters that have either descriptive names (e.

Meeting Mr Davis vs Mr Davin: effects of name frequency on learning proper names in young and older adults.

Two theoretical frameworks relevant to proper name learning in ageing make competing predictions about the effects of name frequency. Under an inhibition model, common (high-frequency; HF) proper names will be harder to learn and remember than rare (low-frequency; LF) names, whereas under a transmission deficit model, HF names will have the advantage. Young adults (ages 18-31) and two groups of healthy older adults (ages 60-74 and 75-89) learned HF (e.