Advances in Cognitive Sciences
Year:2002 | Volume:4 | Issue:1|Papers Count:18

Human as well as laboratory animals can become dependent on a variety of drugs of abuse. Such as alcohol and opiates. Nevertheless, the ability of drugs to create dependence is poorly underst6od. Some of drugs or stimulation of some parts of brain may cause reward which is a response to a stimulus which causes pleasure. It seems that serotonin in hypothalamus enkephalins and GABA in ventral tegmentum area and nucleus accumbens and noradrenaline (release of noradrenaline in hyppocampus from neuronal fibers that originate in locus ceruleus) involve in biology of rewards but dopaminergic system is the final common pathway. Drugs acting on reward mechanism induce pleasure which is named reinforcement. The reinforcing effect of drugs, reinforcing in the sense that they caused the drugs to be used repeatedly areamatter of interest. The reinforcement causes tolerance and dependence to drug abuse. Alcohol, cocaine, morphine and amphetamine have reinforcement properties. Animal models that, can be used to study drug dependence are based on conditioning such as: Self Administration, Self-Stimulation and Conditioned Place Preference (CPP). Jumping behavior is also a model of opioid dependency.

This paper has studied the relationship between dimensions of self concept (i.e. academic social, physical, and evaluative) and general health as well as its components (including physical health, anxiety, social functioning, and depression). Subjects were 182 Shiraz University students that were assessed using the following instruments: Pyryt Mendaglio self-perception Survey (PMSPPS) to evaluate the dimensions of self-concept, and the 28 item version of General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) to assess the levels of general health and its components. The results showed that only evaluative self-concept was correlated (negatively) with depression. Students with higher evaluative self-concept had scored better in general health. There was no effect of sex on the findings.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate short term and long term memory of children with dyslexia. A sample of 60 elementary students referred to two learning disability center in Tehran and diagnosed with dyslexia was recruited in the study (A group of 30 with deep and another of with surface dyslexia). A control group consisting of 30 normal comparison subjects was included as well.There were no difference, in short term memory between those with surface dyslexia and those with deep dyslexia; however both, these groups performed significantly worse than the control group. In long term memory there were significant differences between the there groups. The findings of this study could help developing specific methods to improve reading disability among these children.

Based on the model by Kormi-Nouri et al (1994) this study examined the effect of focused and divided attention on the verbal and action memory of dyslexic versus normal students. Fifty dyslexic and normal students were included. Subjects were assessed using verbal and action memory tasks, free recall test, cued recall rest, and an Anagram test. The results indicated that action encoding is more efficient than verbal encoding. In addiction, focused attention improves memory performance and has greater effect on action encoding than verbal encoding. In dyslexic children, presentation of cues improved recall through its effect on facilitation of retrieval.

The aims of the present study were to investigate the effect of self instruction training on mathematical problem solving performance as well as attention among impulsive female students in Jiroft (Kerman province, Iran). Subjects included 24 female students who had impulsive cognitive style. Data were collected using Matching Familiar Figure Test (MFFT), the encoding subscale of WISC, and a, Mathematical Problem Solving test. There were one experimental and two control groups (8 subjects in each group). The experimental group received self-instruction training in mathematical problem solving strategies. The two control groups received traditional education or receive no intervention at all. Results showed the effectiveness of self-instruction training on mathematical problem solving performance.

In this paper we will first have an overview of extracting ontological knowledge from text and then will focus on template driven methods to discover conceptual relations between concepts. Some linguistic and semantic templates will then be introduced to extract ontological knowledge from Persian texts. The introduced templates are general and domain / application independent and work at sentence level. They are used to extract taxonomic and non-taxonomic relations and axioms from Persian phrases and sentences. The extracted relations may be hyponymy, metonymy, attribute / value, equivalency, etc. In each case, some examples of the experimental results will make the templates clear.

The present study applied a qualitative method to evaluate the position of school counseling staff and identify the obstacles of psychological counseling system in Tehran high schools. Working with focus groups, running group discussions and the use of brain storming technique allowed researchers to examine and categorize the counselors' ideas and beliefs. The findings were classified into different categories: the ongoing position of school counselors; the attitudes of the management towards the counselors; the students' attitudes towards the counselors; the counselors' own attitudes towards themselves and their profession; the counseling role contrasted by other expected roles; the attitude and expectations; and the ways needed to improve the counselors' position in schools. The results emphasize the assumption that "the malfunctioning of psychological counseling system is largely affected by immature mental constructs."  

Although not mentioned in recent classifications such as DSM, hysteria has been a controversial and ever changing concept throughout the history of medicine. It still seems to be alive, however in this article, historical background, early and recent classifications, psychodynamic concept, the contributing role of abnormal illness behavior and neurobiological findings in hysteria discussed.