Psychometric evaluation of the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-3 with Northern Plains American Indians.

The efficacy of the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-3 (SASSI-3) was assessed among northern plains American Indians (AIs). The current study examined the efficacy of the SASSI-3 for identification of substance abuse in AIs. Northern plains AIs from 7 reservations participated in the study. The participants were either a clinical sample receiving substance abuse (SA) or mental health diagnoses from behavioral health clinicians and receiving outpatient treatment services or a community sample that had no substance abuse or mental health diagnoses and were not currently in treatment (no diagnosis). The internal consistency for Face Valid Alcohol (FVA), Face Valid Other Drugs, and Symptoms (SYM) subscales were excellent, and the consistency for the other subscales was moderate, ranging from .21 to 73. The results of the study suggest that the SASSI-3 has good positive predictive power (PPP) and negative predictive power (NPP), particularly when the criterion group substance abuse is larger in the sample. Additionally, the PPP and NPP varied depending on the decision rules. For the analysis that included individuals with just SA, the clinical group scored significantly higher than the no diagnosis group on all measures of the SASSI-3, except for Defensiveness. When the SA group included all individuals with the diagnosis (regardless of the comorbid diagnosis), the clinical group scored significantly higher than the no diagnosis group for all the SASSI-3 subscales. A discriminant examination of the standardized function coefficients indicated that the FVA and SYM subtests contributed the most to the function. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Neurobehavioral effects of aspartame consumption.

Despite its widespread use, the artificial sweetener aspartame remains one of the most controversial food additives, due to mixed evidence on its neurobehavioral effects. Healthy adults who consumed a study-prepared high-aspartame diet (25 mg/kg body weight/day) for 8 days and a low-aspartame diet (10 mg/kg body weight/day) for 8 days, with a 2-week washout between the diets, were examined for within-subject differences in cognition, depression, mood, and headache. Measures included weight of foods consumed containing aspartame, mood and depression scales, and cognitive tests for working memory and spatial orientation. When consuming high-aspartame diets, participants had more irritable mood, exhibited more depression, and performed worse on spatial orientation tests. Aspartame consumption did not influence working memory. Given that the higher intake level tested here was well below the maximum acceptable daily intake level of 40-50 mg/kg body weight/day, careful consideration is warranted when consuming food products that may affect neurobehavioral health.

Effects of hydration on cognitive function of pilots.

The objective of this study was to examine the effect of fluid intake and possible dehydration on cognitive flight performance of pilots. A repeated-measures, counterbalanced, mixed study design was used to examine differences in working memory, spatial orientation, and cognitive flight performance of 40 randomly selected healthy pilots after having high and low fluid intakes. Serial weights were also analyzed to determine differences in cognitive flight performance of the dehydrated (1-3% weight loss) and hydrated study participants. Results showed flight performance and spatial cognition test scores were significantly (p < 0.05) poorer for pilots who had low fluid intakes and experienced dehydration in comparison to the hydrated pilots. These findings indicate fluid intake differences resulting in dehydration may have safety implications because peak cognitive performance among pilots is critical for flight safety.

Lower but not higher doses of transdermal nicotine facilitate cognitive performance in smokers on gender non-preferred tasks.

One of the most widely used treatments for smoking cessation is nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). There is some evidence that smokers experience abstinence-induced deficits in cognitive function, which are attenuated by NRTs. Additionally it's been suggested that the degree of reversal of cognitive deficits may depend on the NRT dose and the smoker's gender. In the present placebo-controlled study we investigated effects of three doses of transdermal nicotine (7 mg, 14 mg and 21 mg) on cognitive performance of 48 male and 48 female smokers after overnight abstinence and 6h of patch application. Cognitive tasks used in the study included the Conners' CPT, emotional Stroop, mental arithmetic, and verbal recall of affective prose passages. The results showed greater probability of attentional problems in the male sample compared to females as identified by the Conners' CPT. Within gender women showed improved performance in the 7 mg and 14 mg conditions on several measures of the Conners' CPT, and faster hit reaction time on the emotional Stroop test compared to women in the placebo and 21 mg of nicotine groups. Conversely, males showed a moderate overall advantage on the mental arithmetic task and were differentially sensitive to nicotine treatment on the prose recall task, on which the greatest improvement in recall of affective material was observed for the 14 mg group compared to the 21 mg group. The results are explained on the basis of an inverted U-shaped relationship between nicotinic stimulation and cognitive performance as well as greater sensitivity to nicotine dose manipulation on gender non-preferred cognitive tasks.

Accommodative response and cortical activity during sustained attention.

Greater accommodative lag and vergence deficits have been linked to attentional deficits similar to those observed in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The purpose of the present study was to assess the effect of accommodative-vergence stress on a measure of sustained attention (Conners CPT) used in the diagnosis of ADHD. Twenty-seven normal non-ADHD adults completed the Conners CPT twice: wearing -2.00 D lenses and normally (without the -2.00 D lenses) in a counterbalanced order with at least 24 h between the sessions. Simultaneous recording of participants' dynamic accommodative responses was performed from the right eye using the Grand Seiko WAM-5500 auto-refractor and electroencephalographic activity (EEG) in the left prefrontal region using the Neurosky Mindset headset. The results demonstrated a significantly greater accommodative lag in the -2.00 D stress condition and a significantly poorer performance on the Conners CPT as indexed by slower reaction time, greater standard error of hit reaction time, grater response variability, poorer stimulus detectability and a greater number of perseverations. No differences were observed on measures of EEG in the theta (4-7 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz), and beta (12-20 Hz) bands. Moreover, when directly juxtaposed with each EEG band in multiple linear regression analyses, greater accommodative lag in the stress condition was significantly associated with a greater probability of clinical classification on the Conners CPT, and was also marginally predictive of the number of omissions recorded in the stress condition. The results demonstrated that sustained attention can be influenced by such factors as accommodative-vergence stress and suggest that bottom-up processes can contribute to and potentially exacerbate attentional problems in individuals with ADHD. The study also showed that cortical dysfunction (while sufficient) may not be a necessary condition for attentional deficits.

Effects of acute alcohol intoxication on verbal memory in young men as a function of time of day.

This experiment examined whether the time of day of alcohol administration influences alcohol metabolism and the impact of alcohol on verbal memory. It was hypothesized that circadian fluctuations in endogenous levels of testosterone in young men would differentially affect blood alcohol levels, which would consequently impair their memory performance to a different degree. Participants were administered alcohol or placebo drinks either at 8am or 6pm and recall of 4 prose passages was examined. The results indicated that recall declined for subjects administered alcohol but time of day did not moderate these effects. Nevertheless, generally alcohol breath levels changed in the predicted direction as a function of the time of the day with higher levels recorded in the morning and lower levels in the afternoon. The results suggested that observed differences in breath alcohol levels may be influenced by differences in endogenous levels of testosterone, but the effect of this presumed interaction on verbal memory appears inconclusive.

Dietary Effects on Cognition and Pilots' Flight Performance.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of diet on cognition and flight performance of 45 pilots. Based on a theory of self-care, this clinical study used a repeated-measure, counterbalanced crossover design. Pilots were randomly rotated through 4-day high-carbohydrate, high-protein, high-fat, and control diets. Cognitive flight performance was evaluated using a GAT-2 full-motion flight simulator. The Sternberg short-term memory test and Vandenberg's mental rotation test were used to validate cognitive flight test results. Pilots consuming a high-protein diet had significantly poorer (p < .05) overall flight performance scores than pilots consuming high-fat and high-carbohydrate diets.

Individual differences in the influence of time of day on executive functions.

Previous research has documented the impact of time of day on vigilance and memory and the moderating influence of circadian typology (morningness-eveningness) on the relationship between time of testing and cognitive processes. This study examined the impact of circadian typology and time of testing on executive functions. Morning-type and evening-type people were randomly assigned to a morning or afternoon testing time, and their performance on neuropsychological tests, including the Conners Continuous Performance Test (CPT), the Digit Span test, the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT), and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) was compared. No interactions between circadian typology and time of day were observed on the CPT or Digit Span test. A time of day effect was found on the letter generation portion of the COWAT. More words were generated in the afternoon than in the morning. In contrast, performance on the WCST was best when morning-type participants were tested at their optimal time of day. These findings suggest that circadian typology should be considered when scheduling neuropsychological assessments, rehabilitation training, and critical job tasks.

Psychological symptomatology in siblings of children with ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: Studies utilizing parent-report measures have identified above average levels of internalizing and externalizing problems in siblings of children diagnosed with ADHD. Scant research has examined siblings' self-report on standardized measures of emotional functioning. The current study examined parent-reported and child self-reported symptoms of siblings of children with ADHD compared with a control group. METHOD: Measures completed included the Children's Depression Inventory, the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children, the Child Behavior Checklist and the Disruptive Behavior Rating Scale. RESULTS: Parent-report measures indicated that siblings of children with ADHD had higher levels of internalizing, hyperactivity, and inattention problems compared with control siblings. Significant differences between groups were not revealed on child self-report measures. CONCLUSIONS: Although parent-report measures continue to demonstrate higher levels of symptoms for siblings of children diagnosed with ADHD compared with control siblings, there are no indications that self-reported internalizing symptoms are different.

Alcohol-induced impairment and enhancement of memory: a test of the interference theory.

Many studies have found cognitive deficits related to alcohol consumption. However, few studies have studied cognitive performance when alcohol was administered after the to-be-remembered information was presented with memory testing occurring when participants are once again sober. The present study examined effects of alcohol on cognitive performance using a prose recall task during acute intoxication and a post-trial recall task for prose passages that had been presented before intoxication. Fifty-one men were given either 2.0 g/kg of 100 proof (50% absolute ethanol) vodka or a placebo. In the present study, evidence was found of acute alcohol impairment in prose memory, along with alcohol facilitation of memory on a post-trial task.