Human Action Switching in HIV

<p>We evaluated switching in human action/verb fluency to examine how it associates with other measures of executive functioning and with difficulties in the performance of IADLs in a HIV+ sample. Our sample was comprised of 29 HIV+ participants. All the participants completed measures of phonetic fluency (FAS) and semantic fluency [Animals, Human Actions (HA)] in addition to the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT), Stroop Color-Word Test (Stroop), Trail-making Test Part B (TMT B), Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, and the Boston Naming Task (BNT). The first regression model with phonetic and semantic switching produced R2 = .260, b = 5.957, 95% CI [1.889, 10.025], p< .01. The second model with phonetic, semantic, and human action switching produced R2 = .263, F(2, 26) = 4.568, p> .05. FAS switching had a significant positive regression weight indicating that greater FAS switching is associated with performance on executive functioning tasks in the first regression model. Verbal fluency switching did not significantly predict difficulties in the performance of instrumental activities of daily living, each model accounted for 2.5% and 11% of the variance, respectively. Verbal fluency switching, specifically phonetic switching demonstrated merit in assessing executive ability. Verbal fluency switching was not indicated in the prediction of difficulties in the performance of IADL's. Human action switching was not a significant predictor of executive ability or IADL performance above and beyond the other forms of switching.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year

2013

Author dc:creator

• Nzerem, Chinonyere

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ropacki, Susan A.
• Wright, Matthew J.
• Vermeersch, David A.

• Clinical Psychology
• Psychology
• HIV Infections; Neurobehavioral Manifestations; Task Performance and Analysis; Stroop Test; Trail Making Test; Regression Analysis
• Human Action Switching; Executive Ability; Verbal Fluency Switching; IADL

Statement dc:rights

• This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has granted Loma Linda University a limited, non-exclusive right to make this publication available to the public. The author retains all other copyrights.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/197

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarsrepository.llu.edu:etd-1203