Michał Harciarek

Virtual reality offers a promising avenue for the assessment of executive functioning in complex workplace environments. However, its use in schizophrenia remains limited. For that reason, we investigated the validity and test-retest reliability of the Jansari assessment of Executive Functions (JEF^©) in individuals with schizophrenia and its associations with competitive employment. A total of 69 participants with schizophrenia and 67 healthy controls completed JEF^© and standard tests. A subsample of 58 patients was retested after an 8-week interval. Individuals with schizophrenia performed more poorly than controls on JEF^© (p < 0.001) and standard tests (p < 0.05). JEF^© scores correlated with standard measures (p < 0.05), except inhibition tests, and with clinician-report of everyday problems (p < 0.001). Total score showed a good test-retest reliability and the practice adjusted RCI indicated 87.9% of patients remained stable over 8 weeks. In logistic regression, higher JEF^© total score significantly predicted competitive employment after adjusting for age (p = 0.004) and remained significant when years of education were added (p = 0.014). This comprehensive evaluation indicates that JEF^© is a valid and reliable tool assessing executive functions required in office work and offers an ecologically relevant complement to standard measures in schizophrenia.

In the horizontal line bisection task, patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) treated with dialysis typically have an increase in the normal leftward attentional bias. It is not clear, however, whether this increased bias is related to an increase of attention toward left hemispace or impaired disengagement from left-sided stimuli. Non-demented patients with ESRD who were being treated with dialysis and demographically matched healthy controls attempted to bisect series of horizontal lines composed of two segments of unequal length and width, with the longer segment placed to the right or left. To test for the presence of a global spatial attentional bias, participants attempted to find the middle of the whole line. To test for focal attentional engagement and attentional disengagement, participants were asked to bisect only the longer segment of these compound lines. For the global condition, both patients and healthy controls were biased toward the longer segment and more so to the left. In the focal condition, when the longer segment was on the right side, both groups deviated their bisections toward the shorter segment. However, when in the focal condition the longer segment was on the left healthy controls deviated their bisection significantly more rightwards than did the patients, whereas with the longer segment on the right, the patients and healthy controls did not differ in their bias. These results suggest that the previously recognized dysfunction of the right fronto-subcortical attentional network in dialyzed patients might account for the results of the current study.

Research Findings: For early prevention of academic difficulties, it is crucial to identify developmental trajectories of preterm children with focus on the efficiency of basic cognitive processes. Thus, the aim of this study was to characterize school readiness of children born before 32 weeks of gestation and to investigate its potential relationship with the efficiency of attentional system. Thirty-four children born very prematurely, and 37 full-term children took part in the two-stage study. Both groups were recruited from the same urban area and children were of Polish nationality. They were tested twice: at 5th year of age (the efficiency of attentional system) and at 6th year of age (school readiness). The analyses revealed that at the age of 5 children born very prematurely exhibit less efficient attentional alerting and orienting. Further, the efficiency of attentional orienting of very preterm children was found to be a significant predictor of their auditory, language and visuo-spatial functions, and their socio-emotional development. Whereas the efficiency of the attentional orienting together with the executive aspect of attentional system predicted fine motor skills in this cohort. Practice or Policy: School readiness of very preterm children can be explained by these children’s efficiency of orienting and executive attentional mechanisms. Early interventions to improve attentional capabilities may strengthen school skills and positively impact academic achievements of very preterm children.

Very preterm birth increases the risk of ADHD as well as other neurodevelopmental disorders. Deficits within the attentional system were previously signaled in preterm children; however, studies lacked in consideration of an intragroup differentiation. Thus, this study aimed to verify whether deficits in the attentional mechanisms are inter-individually differentiated among very prematurely born children and if so, which biomedical and non-biomedical factors are associated with the profile of deficits within the attentional system. We tested the efficiency of attentional processes among 5-year-old children with the Attention Network Task – Child Version. The results have indicated that 26% of very preterm children presented with the suboptimal functioning of the attentional system (more than 1 SD below mean score of full-term children in attentional alerting and orienting), whereas 74% were characterized by the normal efficiency of attention. The profile of attentional deficits observed among very preterm preschoolers was associated with significantly lower birth weight and decreased family living standard. Very prematurely born children are thus a relatively heterogeneous group in terms of the efficiency of attentional system and deficits apply to only some of those children. Early developmental support aimed at enhancing attentional functioning should be addressed to children with lower birth weight in the first place.

Recent studies indicate that premature children are at risk for difficulties with cognitive development and have increased incidence of ADHD as well as other behavioral disorders. Although the exact mechanism accounting for these children's neuropsychological abnormalities is unknown, there is evidence to suggest that the cognitive and behavioral disturbances seen in this population may result from a slower development of the attentional system. However, it remains unclear whether prematurity affects the development of the entire attention system or if prematurely born children have a selective insufficiency of components of this system (i.e., orienting, alerting, executive). We compared the efficiency of the attentional system of very prematurely born children and full-term controls at 5 years of age, using the Attention Network Task-Child Version. In comparison to full-term peers, very preterm children exhibited inefficient orienting of attention, whereas there was no group difference in the efficiency of alerting and executive aspects of attention. The reason for the selectively suboptimal orienting of attention in very prematurely born preschoolers remains unclear; it is possible that the neural substrates of this attentional subsystem are particularly underdeveloped in the preschool period in this cohort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Objectives: Leftward deviation on a horizontal line bisection test (pseudoneglect) might be induced by right hemispheric dominance for mediating spatial or global attention, or a hemispheric asymmetry in the ability to spatially disengage attention. With aging, this leftward bias is reduced, likely due to the aging-related deterioration of right hemisphere mediated functions (right hemi-aging) or hemispheric asymmetry reduction in old adults (HAROLD). Methods: Forty-seven healthy adults divided into younger and older groups performed a modified Posner spatial-attentional task. Results: Overall, younger individuals responded faster to left than right-sided imperative stimuli. In contrast, older participants did not reveal a right-left asymmetry to imperative stimuli. The younger group also revealed a strong inverse relationship between the reaction time to right valid cues and the leftward attentional bias while performing the line bisection task (pseudoneglect). Conclusions: Our results provide support for both the right hemisphere spatial-attentional dominance hypothesis of pseudoneglect and the right hemi-aging hypotheses.

Background and Objective: Salience of emotional autobiographical memories may have temporal patterns associated with valence. Recall of negative emotional memories is often important in survival and well-being. Based on the possible survival value of negative memories, we posited that when given an open-ended request to recall either a sad or a happy memory, people are more likely to recall an older sad memory than a happy one. Methods: We asked 20 healthy participants, aged 18–63 years, to freely recall happy and sad emotional memories and estimate the length of time that had passed since the recalled event had occurred. We analyzed the age of each memory based on valence. Results: Sixteen of 20 participants volunteered a more remote sad than happy memory (PP<0.05), but the ratio of happy to sad memories was not affected by age. Conclusions: Self-selected free retrieval of autobiographical happy and sad emotional memories reveals a time bias. Although the reason for this temporal dichotomy is unknown, it may be that engaging systems involved in defense and survival alters the encoding and/or retrieval characteristics of the memory that modify salience.

Objectives: Healthy individuals often have a leftward and upward attentional spatial bias; however, there is a reduction of this leftward bias with aging. The right hemisphere mediates leftward spatial attention and age-related reduction of right hemispheric activity may account for this reduced leftward bias. The right hemisphere also appears to be responsible for upward bias, and this upward bias might reduce with aging. Alternatively, whereas the dorsal visual stream allocates attention downward, the ventral stream allocates attention upward. Since with aging there is a greater atrophy of the dorsal than ventral stream, older participants may reveal a greater upward bias. The main purpose of this study was to learn if aging influences the vertical allocation of spatial attention. Methods: Twenty-six young (17 males; mean age 44.62±2.57 years) and 25 healthy elderly (13 males; mean age 72.04±.98 years), right-handed adults performed line bisections using 24 vertical lines (24 cm long and 2 mm thick) aligned with their midsagittal plane. Results: Older adults had a significantly greater upward bias than did younger adults. Conclusions: Normal upward attentional bias increases with aging, possibly due to an age-related reduction of the dorsal attentional stream that is responsible for the allocation of downward attention. (JINS, 2018, 24, 1121–1124)