• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
• /
• v.25 no.3
• /
• pp.243-252
• /
• 2014

Objectives: This study was designed to investigate the dose-dependent effects of Gastrodia elata Blume for memory improvement. Methods: This study was a 12-weeks, double blind, and comparative clinical study. Those who were eligible worked with a group of healthy seniors, all 60 years of age or older. 22 subjects were randomized either to Gastrodia elata Blume powder form that was steeped in hot water or placebo. We measured the faculty of memory by using MMSE-K, Digit Span, Letter Fluency Test, Word List Memory Test, and Trail Making Test, and again after 12 weeks. Results: 1) Neither Gastrodia elata Blume groups nor control have a difference in MMSE-K, Digit Span, Letter Fluency Test, and Trail Making Test. 2) Gastrodia elata Blume group showed significant advances in immediate recall 1 and 2 of Word List Memory Test, and 3 g group show better results than the 4 g group. 3) 4 g Gastrodia elata Blume group showed significant advances in the recognition of Word List Memory Test. Conclusions: The results suggest that positive effects on memory improvement due to Gastrodia elata Blume depend on the amount.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.27-44
• /
• 2013

Objectives : This study was designed to investigate the effects of Gastrodia elata Blume on the improvement of memory. Methods : This study was a 12 week, double blind, comparative clinical study. There were eligible who worked with a group of healthy seniors, all 60 years of age or older. 50 subjects were randomized either to Gastrodia elata Blume in powder form and steep in hot water or placebo. We measured the faculty of memory by using K-DRS, MMSE-K, Digit Span, Letter Fluency Test, Word List Memory Test, and the Trail Making Test, and after 12 weeks we measured the faculty of memory again using the same methods. Results : Gastrodia elata Blume steeps in the hot water group significantly increased. Initiation, perseveration level, and Memory level of K-DRS and MMSE-K score. There were no considerable differences between three groups in Digit Span and Trail Making Test score. Gastrodia elata Blume group showed significant advances in Letter Fluency Test and recognition of Word List Memory Test. Conclusions : The results suggest that Gastrodia elata Blume may have positive effects on memory improvement and function of the frontal lobe activation.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.197-210
• /
• 1997

This study was conducted to test the effect of cognitive stimulation training on elderly persons with dementia. The design of the research was one group in pre-test-post-test design. The subjects were nine demented persons over sixty years, with mild to moderate cognitive impairment. Training was administered by research assistants on a one to one basis for thirty to forty minutes, three times a week for eight weeks. In order to evaluate the effect of cognitive stimulation training, we measured cognitive function before and after three training sessions each. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and a paired t-test analysis using a spss pc package, The results are as follows: 1) The recipients of the training program showed improvement in overall cognitive functioning. The MMSK - K score, recall levels of concepts, daily tasks, personal past history and performance of word fluency were significantly increased after training. 2) There was a significant improvement in cognitive functioning over the training period: recall levels of concepts, daily tasks, past personal history and performance of word fluency significantly increased over the training period progessively, The results suggest that cognitive stimulation training is effective in improving and maintaining overall cognitive function of elderly persons with dementia.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.67
• /
• pp.61-77
• /
• 2008

The purpose of this study is to blow the characteristics of disfluency in childhood. The subjects were 144 normal children at the age of between 3 to 8 years who lived in Seoul. All the subjects provided spontaneous conversational speech samples during free-play interactions with their friends. We investigated the patterns and the frequency of disfluency and its relevance with subject's age, speaking rate and MLU(mean length of utterance). The results of this study can be summarized as follows. (1) There was no difference in the frequency of disfluency with the speaker's age or speaking rate. (2) Interjection was the most frequently occurring pattern of disfluency. (3) Prolongation, revision, interjection increased with age while part-word repetition, single-syllable word repetition, multi-syllable word repetition decreased gradually. (4) A significant effect of MLU on the frequency of disfluencies were demonstrated. The regression analysis has shown that more disfluencies occurred in utterances of children whose MLU is longer.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
• /
• v.28 no.4
• /
• pp.838-849
• /
• 2007

Backgrounds & Objectives : The aim of study was to evaluate post stroke cognitive deficit. We applied CERAD-K for post-stroke cognitive deficit, and revalued after treatment for 4 weeks. Methods : We applied CERAD-K test to 25 patients with post stroke cognitive deficit and compared with previous literature. After acupuncture treatment, moxa treatment, herb medicines, physical and occupational therapy for 4 weeks, we revalued changes by CERAD-K to 13 people that received treatment. Results : The stroke group's points were lower than the normal group in general cognition. Verbal fluency, MMSE-KC, and constructional praxis scores was lower than the AD group. Boston Naming Test, word list immediate recall, word list delayed recall, wordlist recognition, and praxis delayed recall scores were higher than the AD group. Verbal fluency (p=0.017), MMSE-KC (p=0.026), and word list immediate recall (p=0.005) scores of 13 patients participating in this study showed a statistically significant increase after treatment. Conculsions : Acupuncture treatment, moxa treatment, herb medicines, physical and occupational therapy are effective for improvement of post-stroke cognitive deficit, but this study could not demonstrate whether some treatments influenced cognition and there was a limitation in lacking a control group.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.41-49
• /
• 2012

It is required that university students acquire information technology in order to adapt to the information society. Therefore, it is inevitable for universities to provide students with an effective curriculum to improve IT fluency. The purpose of this study is to analyze the content of the informatics learning programs in universities in Korea in terms of IT fluency which is defined by National Academy of Science NRC99. Based on the information that the Academy Information Center announced, the content analysis was carried out from September 2010 to June 2011. According to the result of the analysis, 84 of 201 universities provide the informatics education as a mandatory course. 29 of them mainly provide the programs about word processors, spreadsheet, and presentation that are regarded as contemporary skills. These programs cover the fundamental concept, but the contents which require intellectual capabilities are rarely addressed. Moreover, the informatics education has mainly focused on elementary and secondary education. In this sense, it is valid to analyze the contents and current states of the informatics learning programs required in higher education.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.109-133
• /
• 2014

Psychological distance refers to the perceived gap between a stimulus and a person's direct experience and its activation influences the decisions and actions that the person makes towards the stimulus. We investigated whether the level of familiarity affects the construction of psychological distance. Specifically, we hypothesized that a familiar stimulus, relative to an unfamiliar stimulus, is perceived to be psychologically closer to the observer and so its perception might be modulated by the perceived spatial distance. The familiarity of stimuli was manipulated in terms of preexposure frequency and preexposure perceptual fluency. In experiments, participants were first exposed with three nonsense words in a lexical decision task. The nonsense words were presented in nonword trials with different levels of frequency (frequent vs. rare, Experiment 1) or with different levels of visibility (less blurred vs. more blurred, Experiment 2). Participants then performed a distance Stroop task with the most familiar and the least familiar nonwords. Each of them appeared in either proximal or distant spatial locations in scenes with clear depth cues. The results showed a significant interaction between the word familiarity and the spatial distance: the familiar word was judged faster in proximal locations but slower in distant locations relative to the unfamiliar word. The current findings suggest that metacognitive evaluation of familiarity could be one of the critical factors that underlie the construction of psychological distance.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.1 no.3
• /
• pp.163-168
• /
• 2009

This study investigated the determination of speech rates, words per minute (WPM) and syllables per minute (SPM), of $5{\sim}7$ year-old normal children to understand if there are any differences in the rates according to the children's age and sex. All participants were required to conduct story retelling tasks (SRT) and picture description tasks (PDT). In SRT, there was a significant difference between the groups of 5 year-old and 7 year-old children on WPM. However, there was no significant difference between the groups of ages regarding SPM. In addition, there was no significant difference between the groups according to sex on WPM and SPM. In PDT, there was no significant difference between the groups according to their ages and sex on WPM and SPM. The current research found that the speech rates of the preschool children might be somewhat different in their utterance abilities according to their age, but there was no obvious difference according to their sex. The findings can advance development of a clinical tool to screen children with fluency disorders and to determine the steps in establishing speech rates of children in the language development period.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
• /
• v.39 no.1
• /
• pp.107-115
• /
• 2009

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of an exercise program on frontal lobe cognitive function in seniors. Methods: The participants were 42 seniors using a health center in Seoul (experimental group) and 28 seniors using a facility for elders in Seoul (control group). The exercise program was carried out for 16 weeks from April to August 2007. The frontal lobe cognitive function, which includes short term memory, attention, immediate memory, delayed memory, verbal fluency and motor function, was measured by the Digit Span Forward test, Trail Making test, Immediate recall words test, Delayed recall words, Controlled oral word association test and Finger tapping test. The collected data were analyzed by Fisher's exact test, Chi-square, t-test, and ANCOVA using the SAS program. Results: The major findings of this study were as follows: Attention (p=.009), immediate memory (p=.005), delayed memory (p=.009), and verbal fluency (p=.004) improved after the exercise program. Conclusion: In this study, the exercise program was effective in improving frontal lobe cognitive function in elders. So it provides basic information for further nursing education on exercise programs which will be effective for prevention of early cognitive function decline in normally aging elders.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
• /
• v.47 no.3
• /
• pp.191-198
• /
• 2010

Objective : This study is planned to determine the neurocognitive difficulties of hydrocephalic adults. Methods : The research group contained healthy adults (control group, n : 15), and hydrocephalic adults (n : 15). Hydrocephalic group consisted of patients with idiopathic aquaduct stenosis and post-meningitis hydrocephalus. All patients were followed with shunted hydrocephalus and not gone to shunt revision during last two years. They were chosen from either asymptomatic or had only minor symptoms without motor and sensorineural deficit. A neuropsychological test battery (Raven Standart Progressive Matrices, Bender-Gestalt Test, Cancellation Test, Clock Drawing Test, Facial Recognition Test, Line Orientation Test, Serial Digit Learning Test, Stroop Color Word Interference Test-TBAG Form, Verbal Fluency Test, Verbal Fluency Test, Visual-Aural Digit Span Test-B) was applied to all groups. Results : Neuropsychological assessment of hydrocephalic patients demonstrated that they had poor performance on visual, semantic and working memory, visuoconstructive and frontal functions, reading, attention, motor coordination and executive function of parietal lobe which related with complex and perseverative behaviour. Eventually, these patients had significant impairment on the neurocognitive functions of their frontal, parietal and temporal lobes. On the other hand, the statistical analyses performed on demographic data showed that the aetiology of the hydrocephalus, age, sex and localization of the shunt (frontal or posterior parietal) did not affect the test results. Conclusion : This prospective study showed that adult patients with hydrocephalus have serious neuropsychological problems which might be directly caused by the hydrocephalus; and these problems may cause serious adaptive difficulties in their social, cultural, behavioral and academic life.