1,720,967 research outputs found

    Autobiographical memory in amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

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    Autobiographical memory (ABM) was evaluated in 19 patients with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) by means of the standardized enquiry developed by Borrini et al. (Psychol Med 19:215–224, 1989). Longitudinal assessments were carried out by re-testing participants at 9-month intervals up to three assessments over 18 months. Although aMCI patients performed significantly worse than age-, gender- and education-matched normal controls, all of them achieved above normal scores according to Italian norms. No evidence of disproportionate sparing of remote memories (i.e., classical temporal gradient, TG) was found. These findings contrast with the previously reported significant impairment of memory for public events (Bizzozero et al. in J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 31:48–56, 2009). Such a discrepancy might be attributed to the adopted ABM enquiry tapping “personal semantics”, presumed to rely largely on prefrontal functions, in contrast with the mainly episodic qualification of memory for past public events, which is mostly dependent on hippocampal structures. Our results also support the hypothesis that the contents of remote memory archives may be differentially affected in aMCI

    Temporal gradients for media-mediated memory : Italian norms

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    Temporal gradient (TG), i.e., differential recallof recent and old memories, is a well known feature ofamnesia. A recent study provided evidence of a classicalTG for media-mediated events in elderly healthy people,showing that they recall remote events significantly betterthan recent ones, while a reverse TG, i.e., better recall ofmore recent events, was demonstrated in younger normalsubjects. In the present study we present normative datawhich, using the same test, allow evaluation of TG in singlecases and their qualification as classical or reverse. Thenormative procedure was also applied to a small sample ofsubjects with probable Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitiveimpairment. Norms for TG may be helpful not only toassess healthy people's performance, but also to judge anyapparent TG in pathological subjects

    Mild Cognitive Impairment does entail retrograde amnesia for pubblic events

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    In this study memory for public events was evaluated in 15 amnesic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients, whose clinical diagnosis was refined through a stringent selection procedure. A total of 9 patients were longitudinally reassessed over an 18-month period. About half of the participants were impaired at baseline and nearly 80% at the end of the 18-month follow-up. Moreover, retrograde memory declined significantly over time. Evidence of a pathological Ribot-type temporal gradient was found in about half of the aMCI patients. This is the first report of a remote memory deficit in aMCI. It highlights amnesia for public events as a frequent accompaniment of this condition. The findings tie in with the hypothesized role of the hippocampal complex in long-term memory

    Whose face is this? Italian norms of naming celebrities

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    Naming celebrities from visual input (i.e., face presentation) was examined in 98 healthy participants. Normative data are provided both for a 12-and a 63-item test. The first one is a brief screening tool, while the latter is to be administered whenever a pathological performance turns out in the former. Age adversely affected both performances. In both tests the most frequent errors were no responses, followed by semantic errors. The study makes explicit reference to current serial models of familiar person processing and naming. Findings allow to complement previously reported testing procedures, with the specific aim of qualifying proper name anomia by identifying the cognitive locus of lesion

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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