No abstract

The Verbal Fluency Task (FAS), sensitive indicator of brain injury, was examined in a population of healthy elderly (N = 199, aged 40 to 89 years). The present study was conducted to examine the relative contributions of age, sex, education, verbal intelligence, and specific cognitive abilities to FAS performance. Significant effects were found for vocabulary and sex, although no aging effect was found. Separate norms for sex and level of verbal intelligence are presented. Results indicated that ability to quickly organize information and formulate effective recall strategies played a critical role in good FAS performance.

20742). He is the chair of the Maryland Training Consortium on Serious Mental Illness.Recently, researchers have proposed that spiritual support, like social support, can have a stress-buffering effect. Spiritual support is defined as "the perceived, personally supportive components of an individual's rela tionship with God" (Maton, 1989, p. 310). Maton suggests spirituality pro vides support via two pathways: cognitive mediation and emotional support. Cognitive mediation refers to the interpretation and meaning that spiritual beliefs give to events; emotional support refers to the feeling of being cared for and valued. Maton (1989) found that spiritual support was positively related to personal and emotional adjustment in a high life-stress college freshman group.Research also suggests that spiritual beliefs can help individuals adjust to such stressful events as physical illness. Research with terminally ill indi viduals suggests that they are better able to cope with their illness if they hold spiritual beliefs (Epperly, 1983;Gibbs & Achterberg-Lawlis, 1978).

We examined measures of lead dose that reflect intensity of exposure and cumulative exposure for differential association with neuropsychological functional domains and with neuropsychological performance by age. Eighty active lead smelter workers assessed for verbal memory and visuomotoric skills had a mean (range) age of 44 (24-64) years, duration of employment of 20 (4-26) years, education of 8 (0-13) grades, current blood lead (B-Pb) of 26 microgPb dl(-1) (13-43), working lifetime weighted average blood lead (TWA) of 42 microgPb dl(-1) (17-57), working lifetime integrated blood lead (IBL) of 903 microgPb-yr dl(-1) (81-1,436) and bone lead (bone-Pb) of 41 microgPb (g bone mineral)(-1) (-12-90). Multiple linear regression after adjusting for age and education showed a significant amount of variance in verbal memory (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and Verbal Paired Associates) explained only by measures of lead dose intensity, B-Pb, and TWA. Visuomotoric ability (Grooved Pegboard [GP] and Digit Symbol) had significant variance accounted for by measures of both lead dose intensity, TWA, and of cumulative lead dose, IBL, and bone-Pb. The relationship between bone-Pb and GP was curvilinear in older workers, with increasingly slower performance above a bone-Pb threshold of 20 microgPb (g bone mineral)(-1). Examination of age-related change in GP with exposure using IBL, a surrogate for cumulative lead dose in the brain, showed enhanced age-related change in older workers with high IBL. These findings suggest that the older nervous system provides a substrate more susceptible to the effects of chronic lead exposure.