Impairment in semantic processing occurs early in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and differential impact on subtypes of semantic relations have been reported, yet there is little data on the neuroanatomic basis of these deficits. Patients with mild AD and healthy controls underwent 3 functional MRI auditory stimulation tasks requiring semantic or phonological decisions (match–mismatch) about word pairs (category–exemplar, category–function, pseudoword). Patients showed a significant performance deficit only on the exemplar task. On voxel-based fMRI activation analyses, controls showed a clear activation focus in the left superior temporal gyrus for the phonological task; patients showed additional foci in the left dorsolateral prefrontal and bilateral cingulate areas. On the semantic tasks, predominant activation foci were seen in the inferior and middle frontal gyrus (left greater than right) in both groups but patients showed additional activation suggesting compensatory recruitment of locally expanded foci and remote regions, for example, right frontal activation during the exemplar task. Covariance analyses indicated that exemplar task performance was strongly related to signal increase in bilateral medial prefrontal cortex. The authors conclude that fMRI can reveal similarities and differences in functional neuroanatomical processing of semantic and phonological information in mild AD compared to healthy elderly, and can help to bridge cognitive and neural investigations of the integrity of semantic networks in AD. (JINS, 1999, 5, 377–392.)

We investigated sentence comprehension in 46 patients with probable minimal (very mild), mild, or moderate dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), comparing their performance on the Test for the Reception of Grammar (TROG), with that of 20 age- and education-matched controls. Performance on the TROG was generally related to dementia severity, independent of lexicosemantic and working memory (digit span) impairments, but related to at least 1 measure of attention. Some patients in the minimal group showed sentence comprehension deficits while others in the moderate group did not, indicating that DAT may impair sentence comprehension at the very earliest stages of disease, but that its effects are heterogeneous. Patients were most impaired on sentences with 2 propositions and noncanonical word order, suggesting difficulties with both interpretative and postinterpretative stages of sentence processing. Further investigation is needed into the relationship between attentional processes, interpretative and postinterpretative stages of syntactic processing in DAT. (JINS, 1999, 5, 393–404.)

Twenty normal controls without previous knowledge of French were asked to learn 12 French words that could not be written by Italian correspondence rules. After acquisition of the phonological representations, participants were presented the pictures and asked to write the corresponding words (baseline). They were then presented 3 times with the pictures and the corresponding written words. After a filled delay of 10 min, they were re-presented the pictures and asked to write the corresponding words (testing). A week later, participants were again requested to write the words (follow-up). Number of words correctly written at testing and at follow-up significantly differs from baseline, as well as number of words correctly written at testing and at follow-up. These results are discussed and it is suggested that acquisition of irregular output orthographic representations can be supported by knowledge of orthographic representations for reading and that rehabilitation of patients with damage to output orthographic representations can utilize input orthographic representations. (JINS, 1999, 5, 405–412.)

The purpose of this research was to develop, standardize, and test the reliability of a short neuropsychological test battery in the Spanish language. This neuropsychological battery was named “NEUROPSI,” and was developed to assess briefly a wide spectrum of cognitive functions, including orientation, attention, memory, language, visuoperceptual abilities, and executive functions. The NEUROPSI includes items that are relevant for Spanish-speaking communities. It can be applied to illiterates and low educational groups. Administration time is 25 to 30 min. Normative data were collected from 800 monolingual Spanish-speaking individuals, ages 16 to 85 years. Four age groups were used: (1) 16 to 30 years, (2) 31 to 50 years, (3) 51 to 65 years, and (4) 66 to 85 years. Data also are analyzed and presented within 4 different educational levels that were represented in this sample: (1) illiterates (zero years of school); (2) 1 to 4 years of school; (2) 5 to 9 years of school; and (3) 10 or more years of formal education. The effects of age and education, as well as the factor structure of the NEUROPSI are analyzed. The NEUROPSI may fulfill the need for brief, reliable, and objective evaluation of a broad range of cognitive functions in Spanish-speaking populations. (JINS, 1999, 5, 413–433.)

There is evidence that the facilitating effects of stimulus repetition (repetition or identity priming) are mediated by visuoperceptual functions local to extrastriate cortex. Semantic or verbal–associative priming, on the other hand, is believed to be a function of more anterior brain systems. The present study finds evidence for disrupted semantic priming with intact repetition priming in a cognitively impaired HIV+ sample. These results are consistent with recent brain-imaging evidence for a subcortical and white-matter locus for HIV associated neuropathology resulting in effects on subcortical–frontal systems. (JINS, 1999, 5, 434–441.)

The hypothesis of atypical functional hemispheric asymmetry in schizophrenia is tested using the directed global–local paradigm, a lateralizing measure of visual perception. Results indicate low error rates (< 2%) for schizophrenia and normal control groups, but longer response times for the schizophrenia group. In the normal group, detection speed of global and local forms did not differ. In contrast, the schizophrenia group responded significantly faster to local relative to global forms, which supports the asymmetry hypotheses of left hemisphere overactivity–right hemisphere underactivity in schizophrenia. The normal group exhibited a global interference effect (slowed response latency to the local target in the presence of a dissimilar global distractor). When the schizophrenia group was examined according to symptom type and severity, high positive symptom severity was associated with local interference (slowed response latency to the global target in the presence of dissimilar local distractors). Negative symptoms were not associated with interference from the competing local or global forms. Patients with a combination of high positive and low negative symptoms showed significantly greater local interference than patients with high negative and low positive symptoms. Interconnected temporal and frontal systems are postulated to contribute to this pattern of perceptual processing efficiency and distractibility in schizophrenia. (JINS, 1999, 5, 442–451.)

Several investigations have reported high frequencies of reading and writing disabilities in criminal populations. The aims of the present study were to assess the frequency of dyslexia among Swedish prison inmates and to relate dyslexia to other indices of neuropsychological functions. Sixty-three prison inmates with Swedish as their native language, age 19 to 57 years, were examined by interviews, tests of academic achievement, and neuropsychological assessment. Twenty-six (41%) were diagnosed as dyslexic. As expected, the dyslexic group performed more poorly on verbal tests as compared to the normal readers among the prison inmates, but they also performed more poorly on tests measuring nonverbal abilities. The dyslexic group had higher frequencies of paranoid and avoidant personality disorders compared to the nondyslexics. They also reported higher levels of anxiety and suspicion and a lower degree of socialization. Previous studies report low IQ to be associated with criminal propensity, supporting the interpretation that a double handicap (dyslexia and low IQ) increases the risk of entering a criminal career and remaining in it. (JINS, 1999, 5, 452–461.)

Prenatal alcohol exposure is associated with widespread and devastating neurodevelopmental deficits. Numerous reports have suggested memory deficits in both humans and animals exposed prenatally to alcohol. However, the nature of these memory deficits remains to be characterized. Recently children with fetal alcohol syndrome were shown to have learning and memory deficits on a verbal learning and memory measure that involved free recall and recognition memory. The current study seeks to further characterize memory functioning in children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure by evaluating priming performance. The choice of task is also relevant given previous studies of memory performance in patient groups with and without involvement of the basal ganglia, a group of structures known to be affected in fetal alcohol syndrome. Three groups were evaluated for lexical priming, free recall, recognition memory, and verbal fluency: (1) children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure; (2) children with Down syndrome; and (3) nonexposed controls. The children with Down syndrome showed significantly less priming than alcohol-exposed children, who did not differ from controls. In addition, the alcohol-exposed children were impaired on the free recall task but not on the recognition memory task, whereas the children with Down syndrome performed significantly worse than the alcohol-exposed group on both tasks. Finally, on the verbal fluency task, children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure were impaired on both category and letter fluency, but the degree of impairment was greater for letter fluency. These results further characterize the memory deficits in children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure suggesting that in spite of learning and memory deficits, they are able to benefit from priming of verbal information. (JINS, 1999, 5, 462–471.)

This concise volume contains a wealth of information on scoring and interpreting the WISC–III. There are chapters on gifted children, mental retardation, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, language impairment, hearing impairment, minority and culturally diverse children, and also emotionally disturbed children. The text also addresses the use of the WISC–III with achievement tests, accurately recording and interpreting behavioral observations over the course of administering a WISC–III, and also the neuropsychological basis of intelligence and the WISC–III.

On the surface, reviewing a dictionary seems like a relatively straightforward task. The book is an extensive compilation of terms used in psychology and psychiatry. The dictionary provides a comprehensive listing of the English–Spanish translation equivalents that can be useful to psychologists and psychiatrists working in increasingly bilingual environments. This book could facilitate professional communications across the English–Spanish divide.

There are few handbooks devoted to clinical neuropsychology or behavioral neurology written in French. Most recently, there have been two: one by Habib and the other edited by Seron and Jeannerod. This revised and improved edition of the book edited by M.I. Botez completes this short list. The Botez book is impressive in terms of both its form and its content. The first edition, published in 1987, had 413 pages, 36 collaborators, and 37 chapters. The new edition has 682 pages, 55 collaborators, and 37 chapters. Fourteen of the chapters are quasi-exact reproductions of those in the first edition, while the others have been modified or added.