Extending the reach of an evidence-based theatrical intervention.

Unlabelled: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: In Experiment 1, the authors investigated whether they could train retirement home activity directors with no previous experience in theatre to successfully execute an evidence-based 4-week theatre-arts intervention. In Experiment 2, they investigated whether an outside professional acting teacher who received only minimal training via e-mail and telephone could successfully execute the same intervention heretofore only carried out by the actor/director/professor who devised it.

Methods: A total of 115 participants (ages 68-94) in four different retirement homes were taught theatre arts either by their in-house activity director who had no formal training in theatre or a professional acting teacher recruited through a local community college.

Conscious States: where are they in the brain and what are their necessary ingredients?

One of the final obstacles to understanding consciousness in physical terms concerns the question of whether conscious states can exist in posterior regions of the brain without active connections to the brain's prefrontal lobes. If they can, difficult issues concerning our knowledge of our conscious states can be resolved. This paper contains a list of types of conscious states that may meet this criterion, including states of coma, states in which subjects are absorbed in a perceptual task, states in brains with damaged prefrontal lobes, states of meditation and conscious states of some infants and animals.

Adolescent Sleep Quality Measured During Leisure Activities.

A one-week sleep monitoring by logs and actigraphs in preteens during summer camp was conducted. Campers aged 11-16 attended a two-week day camp that focused on the learning about science. Nine campers agreed to monitor their sleep and have their patterns explained (anonymously) to other campers during the expert lecture by the author.

Memories of art.

Although the art-historical context of a work of art is important to our appreciation of it, it is our knowledge of that history that plays causal roles in producing the experience itself. This knowledge is in the form of memories, both semantic memories about the historical circumstances, but also episodic memories concerning our personal connections with an artwork. We also create representations of minds in order to understand the emotions that artworks express.

The effect of attention on repetition suppression and multivoxel pattern similarity.

Fundamental to our understanding of learning is the role of attention. We investigated how attention affects two fMRI measures of stimulus-specific memory: repetition suppression (RS) and pattern similarity (PS). RS refers to the decreased fMRI signal when a stimulus is repeated, and it is sensitive to manipulations of attention and task demands.

Typological Asymmetries in Round Vowel Harmony: Support from Artificial Grammar Learning.

Providing evidence for the universal tendencies of patterns in the world's languages can be difficult, as it is impossible to sample all possible languages, and linguistic samples are subject to interpretation. However, experimental techniques such as artificial grammar learning paradigms make it possible to uncover the psychological reality of claimed universal tendencies. This paper addresses learning of phonological patterns (systematic tendencies in the sounds in language).

The contribution of prefrontal executive processes to creating a sense of self.

According to several current theories, executive processes help achieve various mental actions such as remembering, planning and decision-making, by executing cognitive operations on representations held in consciousness. I plan to argue that these executive processes are partly responsible for our sense of self, because of the way they produce the impression of an active, controlling presence in consciousness. If we examine what philosophers have said about the "ego" (Descartes), "the Self" (Locke and Hume), the "self of all selves" (William James), we will find that it fits what is now known about executive processes.

Daily activities and sleep quality in young adults.

Daily activity levels were investigated as related to sleep quality in young adult college students aged 18 to 30 years. 85 participants (20 men, 65 women) completed the Young Adult Daily Activity Scale (YADAS). This 37-item checklist has 34 items based on focus group discussion points of college students' typical daily activities and three blank items for students to include their daily activities if not in the listing.

Enhancing quality of life for survivors of stroke through phenomenology.

Kaufman argued for the need to implement a phenomenological approach to explore the boundaries of authority and responsibility associated with modern Western medicine. Twenty-two years later, survivors of stroke and their families continue to experience a poor quality of life (QOL) due to unmet health care expectations. Therefore, the need to establish a phenomenological approach to examine the issues impacting the QOL of survivors of stroke is as important as ever.

The legal self: executive processes and legal theory.

When laws or legal principles mention mental states such as intentions to form a contract, knowledge of risk, or purposely causing a death, what parts of the brain are they speaking about? We argue here that these principles are tacitly directed at our prefrontal executive processes. Our current best theories of consciousness portray it as a workspace in which executive processes operate, but what is important to the law is what is done with the workspace content rather than the content itself. This makes executive processes more important to the law than consciousness, since they are responsible for channelling conscious decision-making into intentions and actions, or inhibiting action.

Use of focus groups to elicit student perception of NCLEX-RN preparation.

Focus groups are an appropriate data collection method when one wants to listen to and gather information from a homogenous group of participants. Faculty members from a baccalaureate program used this technique to learn more about their students' perceptions of NCLEX-RN preparation practices. Themes were identified that could lead to more controlled study and ways to effectively remediate those at risk for failure.

The misidentification syndromes as mindreading disorders.

The patient with Capgras' syndrome claims that people very familiar to him have been replaced by impostors. I argue that this disorder is due to the destruction of a representation that the patient has of the mind of the familiar person. This creates the appearance of a familiar body and face, but without the familiar personality, beliefs, and thoughts.

Event-related brain potentials and visual attention in six-month-old infants.

This study tested theoretical accounts of the Nc component of the event-related brain potentials in six-month-old infants by replicating and extending a previous study [Ackles, P. K., & Cook, K.

The science of salsa: antimicrobial properties of salsa components to learn scientific methodology.

Most ethnic foods and cooking practices have incorporated the use of spices and other food additives. Many common spices have crossed cultural boundaries and appear in multiple ethnic cuisines. Recent studies have demonstrated that many of these ingredients possess antimicrobial properties against common food spoilage microorganisms.

An arts intervention for older adults living in subsidized retirement homes.

A theatrically based intervention was given to 122 older adults who took lessons twice a week for 4 weeks. The training consisted of multi-modal activities (cognitive-affective-physiological) typically employed in college acting classes. Comparison groups consisted of no-treatment controls and participants instructed in a different performing art, singing.

Stimulus novelty and cognitive-related ERP components of the infant brain.

This study recorded visual fixation performance and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to examine processing of novel visual information in 6- to 7-mo.-old infants as well as to test attention- or memory-related hypotheses of the functional significance of the Nc-ERP component. Separate groups of infants were presented two versions of a novelty-probe task with three types of visual stimuli: (a) a frequent face on 70% of the trials, (b) an oddball face on 15% of the trials, and (c) novel probe stimuli on the remaining 15% of the trials.

Mindmelding: connected brains and the problem of consciousness.

Contrary to the widely-held view that our conscious states are necessarily private (in that only one person can ever experience them directly), in this paper I argue that it is possible for a person to directly experience the conscious states of another. This possibility removes an obstacle to thinking of conscious states as physical, since their apparent privacy makes them different from all other physical states. A separation can be made in the brain between our conscious mental representations and the other executive processes that manipulate them and are guided by them in planning and executing behaviour.

Chaplains and quality improvement: can we make our case by improving our care?

To date, the field of health care chaplaincy has little information about what constitutes "quality spiritual care. "A qualitative study of four focus groups in New York, Illinois, Arizona, and California was conducted to gather preliminary information about how health care chaplains' experience and understand "quality" and "quality improvement" in spiritual care. The study revealed that many chaplains feel a tension inherent in the task of measuring spiritual care services; how does one evaluate interactions that may seem ineffable? The study also enumerated chaplains' creative efforts, often shaped by institutional contexts and cultures, to address these difficulties in measuring spiritual services.

Utility of personality measurement of clinic patients with insomnia.

An assessment study examining the relationship between sleep quality and personality style in individuals presenting to a sleep clinic with symptoms of insomnia was conducted. The protocol entailed standard clinical interviews conducted by a board certified sleep physician and licensed clinical psychologist. Participants were then assessed using a standard interview and the Millon Clinical Multi-axial Inventory III (MCMI-III) A follow-up appointment was conducted to provide interpretation and treatment recommendations from the interview and testing data.

Attention or memory? Effects of familiarity and novelty on the Nc component of event-related brain potentials in six-month-old infants.

This study tested predictions from attentional, expectancy, and memory accounts of the Nc and early NSW components of ERPs in six-month-old infants. Visual stimuli were presented at the extremes of the probability continuum (a repeating stimulus versus novel stimuli) and at intermediate levels of probability (.80/.

Echinacea purpurea and mucosal immunity.

This investigation examined the effects of Echinacea purpurea on mucosal immunity and the incidence and duration of upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). 32 subjects completed an exercise protocol known to affect mucosal immunity. Saliva was collected prior to and five minutes after completion of exercise testing.

Using mathematical modeling as a resource in clinical trials.

In light of recent clinical developments, the importance of mathematical modeling in cancer prevention and treatment is discussed. An exist- ing model of cancer chemotherapy is reintroduced and placed within current investigative frameworks regarding approaches to treatment optimization. Areas of commonality between the model predictions and the clinical findings are investigated as a way of further validating the model predictions and also establishing mathematical foundations for the clinical studies.

A short-term intervention to enhance cognitive and affective functioning in older adults.

Objective: This study was designed to investigate the benefits of a short-term intervention for older adults that targeted cognitive functioning and quality of life issues important for independent living.

Method: One hundred twenty-four community-dwelling participants (aged 60 to 86) took part in one of three study conditions: theater arts (primary intervention), visual arts (non-content-specific comparison group), and no-treatment controls.

Results: After 4 weeks of instruction, those given theater training made significantly greater gains than did no-treatment controls on both cognitive and psychological well-being measures.

Serial malingering on verbal and nonverbal fluency and memory measures: an analog investigation.

Analysis of response consistency on neuropsychological test performance, both within and across testing sessions, can be an important method of detecting malingering. Little systematic research, however, has examined how suspected malingerers perform across repeat evaluations, a common forensic occurrence. To address this issue, we examined performance across a 3-week interval in an analogue malingering design on the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), the Rey Complex Figure, the Controlled Oral Word Association Test, and the Ruff Figural Fluency Test.