BACKGROUND Developing measures to detect preclinical Alzheimer's Disease is vital, as prodromal stage interventions may prove more efficacious in altering the disease's trajectory. Gait changes may serve as a useful clinical heuristic that precedes cognitive decline. This study provides the first systematic investigation of gait characteristics relationship with relevant demographic, physical, ...

This paper presents our experiences of a 14 months participatory action research project in the Audit Commission, a major governmental body, responsible for auditing, inspecting and researching public service quality and efficiency throughout the territories of England and Wales. Its workforce, geographically widely dispersed, must operate in strict observance of legal regulations and policy gu...

This paper formulates in the first part some requirements for a certain sort of computational argumentation systems, namely those which are designed for a very specific purpose: to motivate reflection on one’s own thinking, and to induce cognitive change. This function of argumentation systems is important for argument-based conflict negotiations, deliberation processes, intercultural communica...

BACKGROUND The association of age-related cognitive change with hospitalization is not well understood. METHODS At 3-year intervals for a mean of 8.7 years, 2,273 older residents of a geographically defined urban community underwent cognitive testing from which a global measure was derived. Hospitalization data were obtained from Part A Medicare beneficiary records. The association of level o...

Recently, Walters ("Dementia: Continuum or distinct entity?", Psychology and Aging, 2010, 25, 534-544) published a taxometric study suggesting a dimensional latent structure for the construct of dementia. However, because that study did not conceptualize dementia according to accepted conventions (i.e., there were no measures of cognitive change or independent functioning), its results may repr...

Originally described in patients with chronic epilepsy, nonconvulsive seizures (NCSs) are being recognized with increasing frequency, both in ambulatory patients with cognitive change, and even more so in the critically ill. In fact, the majority of seizures that occur in the critically ill are nonconvulsive and can only be diagnosed with EEG monitoring. The semiology of NCSs and the associated...

BACKGROUND The Cognitive Changes and Retirement among Senior Surgeons (CCRASS) study suggested that although subjective cognitive awareness may play a role in surgeons' retirement decisions, self-perceived cognitive decline did not predict objective cognitive performance. This article summarizes results from all participants who completed the survey portion of the CCRASS study. STUDY DESIGN A...

Background and aims The "Internet addiction" paradigm has been criticized for several shortcomings, including inattention to specific online behaviors, not distinguishing the Internet from other media, insufficient focus on comorbidities, and definitions that do not take into account the constant access now possible. The paradigm's biggest casualty, however, may be that it has diverted attentio...

Although longitudinal designs are the only way in which age changes can be directly observed, a recurrent criticism involves to what extent retest effects may downwardly bias estimates of true age-related cognitive change. Considerable attention has been given to the problem of retest effects within mixed effects models that include separate parameters for longitudinal change over time (usually...

A satisfactory account of human cognitive evolution will explain not only the psychological mechanisms that make our species unique, but also how, when, and why these traits evolved. To date, researchers have made substantial progress toward defining uniquely human aspects of cognition, but considerably less effort has been devoted to questions about the evolutionary processes through which the...