Less efficient elementary visuomotor processes in 7- to 10-year-old preterm-born children without cerebral palsy: an indication of impaired dorsal stream processes.

Follow-up studies of preterm children without serious neurological complications have consistently found deficits in visuomotor skills. To determine whether these deficits may be related to impaired elementary visuomotor processes, we investigated movement programming and execution of simple pointing movements in 7- to 10-year-old preterm (<34 weeks g.a.

Effects of preterm experience on the developing visual system: a longitudinal study of shifts of attention and gaze in early infancy.

Several studies on visual development support the notion that healthy, low-risk preterm infants benefit from their early exposure to the visual world. It has been suggested, however, that mainly early developing sensory and motor processes are enhanced as a result of visual experience and early exercise, whereas later maturing processes might not. This study investigates whether preterm infants' visual and attentional development is accelerated as a consequence of their early visual experience and whether early and later maturing processes are affected differently.

Movement adaptations in 7- to 10-year-old typically developing children: evidence for a transition in feedback-based motor control.

We used a modified double-step pointing task to study movement adaptations in 7- to 10-year-old typically developing children. We found that the majority (63%) were able to optimally adapt fast, goal-directed visually-guided movements to a late change in target location meeting the requirements of speed and accuracy. A minority (35%) failed to meet the requirement of accuracy resulting in a less optimal adaptation.

Blood-injection-injury fears: harm- vs. disgust-relevant selective outcome associations.

There is increasing evidence that blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia is qualitatively different from the other specific phobias in the sense that phobic distress takes the form of disgust rather than (threat-induced) fear. Following this, we tested the relative importance of harm and disgust-related associative biases in BII-fear. High (n=25) and low (n=27) fearful individuals saw a series of fear-relevant (blood-related) and fear-irrelevant (rabbit and flower) slides which were randomly paired with either a harm-related outcome, a disgust-related outcome, or nothing.

Contamination vs. harm-relevant outcome expectancies and covariation bias in spider phobia.

There is increasing evidence that spiders are not feared because of harmful outcome expectancies but because of disgust and contamination-relevant outcome expectancies. This study investigated the relative strength of contamination- and harm-relevant UCS expectancies and covariation bias in spider phobia. High (n=25) and low (n=24) spider fearful individuals saw a series of slides comprising spiders, pitbulls, maggots, and rabbits.

Memory transfer for emotionally valenced words between identities in dissociative identity disorder.

The present study aimed to determine interidentity retrieval of emotionally valenced words in dissociative identity disorder (DID). Twenty-two DID patients participated together with 25 normal controls and 25 controls instructed to simulate DID. Two wordlists A and B were constructed including neutral, positive and negative material.

Do blushing phobics overestimate the undesirable communicative effects of their blushing?

Previous research indicated that blushing has socially threatening revealing effects in ambiguous situations. To explain blushing phobics' fearful preoccupation with blushing, we tested the hypothesis that blushing fearful individuals overestimate its revealing effects. High (n = 20) and low (n = 20) blushing fearful individuals read vignettes describing prototypical mishaps and ambiguous social events.

Disorganization of semantic memory underlies alogia in schizophrenia: an analysis of verbal fluency performance in Japanese subjects.

Patients with schizophrenia exhibit impaired semantic memory as well as deficits in a wide range of language-related functions, such as verbal fluency, comprehension and production of complex sentences. Since language and memory disturbances may underlie some of the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, the present study investigated the specific association between alogia (i.e.

Orthography effect on brain activities in the working memory process for phonologically ambiguous syllables: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study using Japanese speakers.

English /l/ and /r/ sounds are not distinctive for Japanese speakers and they are loosely associated with corresponding graphemes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the brain activities in the memory process for the graphemes containing 'l' and 'r' in Japanese speakers. Two functional magnetic resonance imaging (at 1.

Semantic structure in schizophrenia as assessed by the category fluency test: effect of verbal intelligence and age of onset.

It has been reported that long-term memory function, including the semantic structure of category, is impaired in patients with schizophrenia. The present study was performed to determine: (1) whether the deficit in semantic structure in schizophrenia is independent of cultural backgrounds, and (2) the effect of age of onset and verbal intelligence on the degradation of semantic structure in these patients. Fifty-seven Japanese patients with schizophrenia and 33 normal control subjects entered the study.