Prospective Memory in Service Members with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Introduction: Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember the intention to perform an action in the future. Following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), the brain structures supporting such PM may be compromised. PM is essential for remembering activities specific to TBI survivors that promote recovery, such as following doctors' orders, taking necessary medications, completing physical rehabilitation exercises, and maintaining supportive social relationships.

Initial planning benefits complex prospective memory at a cost.

The effect of initial planning on complex prospective memory was investigated using a virtual environment and a sample of healthy young adults (N = 34). Participants were assigned to either an initial planning or a control condition and were asked to complete a series of time- and event-based prospective memory tasks. The planning group completed the tasks more quickly and accurately than the control group.

Ambidexterity in laparoscopic surgical skills training.

Understanding the way in which specialized medical skills are acquired is critical for developing effective training curricula, as well as effective metrics and methodologies for assessing skill acquisition, proficiency, and retention. Currently, a need exists for novel, objective metrics to support training and assessment of specialized surgical skills, such as those involved in laparoscopy, and to support a deeper understanding of the way in which these skills are acquired and decay during periods of nonuse. Ambidexterity has been identified by expert surgeons as a critical factor in the achievement of laparoscopic psychomotor surgical skill proficiency; however, the current standardized training and assessment protocols do not measure or account for differential performance between the dominant and non-dominant hands.

Simulating social interaction to address deficits of autistic spectrum disorder in children.

Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is diagnosed on the basis of impairment in reciprocal social interaction and language, and rigidity of behavior. This brief paper describes the development of an experimental intervention for preschool children newly diagnosed with ASD. The rationale for this intervention is the hypothesis that failure to attend to social cues in very early life, of itself, may bear a large share of responsibility for core social and communicative deficits.

Atypical face gaze in autism.

An eye-tracking study of face and object recognition was conducted to clarify the character of face gaze in autistic spectrum disorders. Experimental participants were a group of individuals diagnosed with Asperger's disorder or high-functioning autistic disorder according to their medical records and confirmed by the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R). Controls were selected on the basis of age, gender, and educational level to be comparable to the experimental group.