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Susac syndrome is a rare immune-mediated endotheliopathy affecting the microvasculature. It presents three main symptoms: encephalopathy, branch retinal artery occlusions, and hearing loss. Here we present a new case report focusing on the evolution of the cognitive profile. The patient underwent two neuropsychological examinations. The first, one month after the onset of the symptomatology, highlighted a prevalent involvement of verbal executive functions. The second, conducted six months later, revealed a global improvement in most previously deficient areas, although with the persistence of a difficulty in cognitive estimation.. This case illustrates the importance of a comprehensive analysis of patients with Susac syndrome to appreciate the whole range of cognitive deficits and reliably evaluate symptom evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have emphasized the critical role of the prefrontal cortex in cognitive estimation and theory of mind, however, none of them has questioned the possible role of cognitive estimation processes in understanding the mental states of others. In this study, we compared 30 patients with focal prefrontal cortex damage and 30 control subjects matched by gender, age, and education level on their performances on a cognitive estimation task and two tasks assessing theory of mind: the "Faux-Pas" task and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task. The results showed that patients were significantly impaired compared with control subjects on both abilities of cognitive estimation and theory of mind. Moreover, regression analyses showed that performance on theory of mind was predicted by the scores on cognitive estimation. Finally, using voxel-based lesion analysis, we identified a partially common bilaterally distributed prefrontal network involved in both these domains centred within the ventral and dorsomedial areas with extension to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cognitive Estimation Test (CET) is commonly used in neuropsychological assessment. It is typically assumed to load on executive functions, although research has shown that CET performance also depends on access to semantic knowledge. It is unknown whether these contributions vary with age. It is important to examine this question as these abilities have divergent life course trajectories: executive functions tend to decline as people age but semantic knowledge continues to accrue. In addition, previous research has not examined potential contributions to CET performance from semantic control abilities, that is cognitive control processes involved specifically in the retrieval and use of semantic information. To address these questions, we investigated cognitive predictors of CET performance in healthy young and older adults. We found that better executive function was associated with more accurate estimation in both age groups. However, the effect of semantic knowledge on CET performance was significantly larger in older people, having no predictive power in the younger group. The ability to detect weak semantic associations, which is thought to index controlled search and retrieval of semantic information, also had divergent effects on CET performance in the two age groups. Our results provide empirical support for the idea that older people are more reliant on semantic knowledge when estimating quantities, which may explain why age‐related decline in CET scores is not typically found. We conclude that deficits on the CET may be indicative either of semantic or executive impairments, particularly in older age groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the role of age and gender in cognitive estimation abilities. Participants completed two online tasks, where diȞferent categories of estimation were assessed (speed estimation by time and distance, and auditory estimation). Data from a total of 18886 participants (9911 females) with ages between 18 and 65 years old were gathered. Results showed variations in the estimation capacity as a function of age, with a slow but progressive decline. Estimates of duration and sound seemed to be more aȞfected by age than estimates of speed and movement. Overall, male participants showed a better performance on both auditory and visual estimation tasks compared to females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous studies revealed a right-hemispheric dominance for cognitive estimation processes. Objectives: This study explored estimation impairments in patients with focal temporal and frontal lobe epilepsies. Methods: 109 patients (right frontal, left frontal, right temporal-mesial, right temporal-neocortical, left temporal-mesial, left temporal-neocortical) and a control group with 67 subjects were included. All subjects underwent an extensive neuropsychological assessment including the Test zum kognitiven Schätzen (TKS; Brand et al., 2002). Hypothesis: It was expected that right-hemispheric lesions would be associated with impairments in cognitive estimation. Results: Patients with right-frontal and right-temporal mesial focus showed significant estimation deficits compared to the other groups. Conclusion: This study shows that the right hemisphere dominantly participates in cognitive estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous studies revealed a right-hemispheric dominance for cognitive estimation processes. Objectives: This study explored estimation impairments in patients with focal temporal and frontal lobe epilepsies. Methods: 109 patients (right frontal, left frontal, right temporal-mesial, right temporal-neocortical, left temporal-mesial, left temporal-neocortical) and a control group with 67 subjects were included. All subjects underwent an extensive neuropsychological assessment including the Test zum kognitiven Schätzen (TKS; Brand et al., 2002). Hypothesis: It was expected that right-hemispheric lesions would be associated with impairments in cognitive estimation. Results: Patients with right-frontal and right-temporal mesial focus showed significant estimation deficits compared to the other groups. Conclusion: This study shows that the right hemisphere dominantly participates in cognitive estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objective: Cognitive estimation is an important task in which people engage themselves in estimating the environment in different aspects of their life, such as; distance, quantity, size, weight etc The study was taken up to evaluate the cognitive estimation skills in Healthy Aged Population in comparison to Young Adults. Methodology: A total of 40 healthy young and old adults participated in the study. The participants were divided into two groups. Cognitive Estimation Test (CET) was administered for both the groups. The CET, was modified to suit Indian population consisted of 18 questions under the domains of distance, quantity, size, weight, temperature and time. Responses were scored for Under-estimation (UE), Over-estimation (OE), Approximate answer (AA), and No answer (NA). Number of UE, OE, AA, and NA were calculated. Independent t-test was employed to find out the significant differences between the means of both the groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The Cognitive Estimation Test (CET) is widely used in clinical and research settings to assess the ability to produce reasonable estimates to items that individuals would not know that the exact answer (e.g., "How fast do race horses run?"). We examined the performance of non-demented Parkinson's disease (PD) patients on the CET, because previous studies reported heterogeneous results about possible cognitive estimation impairments in PD. We also examined whether PD patients improve their performance if given the chance to reconsider their initial CET responses. Methods: Thirty non-demented idiopathic PD patients and 30 healthy controls matched in age, gender and years of education performed the two parallel forms of Italian CET. The estimation scores for initial and final responses as well as the number of times individuals changed their answers were examined. Additional neuropsychological tests, evaluating intellectual, frontal executive, speed of processing, naming and arithmetical abilities, were also administered. Results: The PD group were not significantly poorer than healthy controls at estimating the answers to items on either CET versions. Moreover, PD patients did not significantly differ in their initial and final responses or number of response changes. Performance on the CET was significantly related to performance on a global measure of executive function, processing speed and arithmetic. However, PD patients were impaired compared to controls on the component involving mainly, but not exclusively, length-related estimations. Conclusions: Non-demented PD patients have mild impairments in cognitive estimation ability, which may depend on the estimations they are required to provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cognitive Estimation Test (CET) is widely used by clinicians to assess frontal executive dysfunction. In the present work, the Italian standardization of a new version of the CET is provided. This version consists of two 9-item parallel forms (A and B) that were administered to two hundred and twenty-seven healthy Italian male and female participants aged between 19 and 91 years with 5-24 years of full-time education. Performance on the CET was not related to age or level of education; both forms showed a male CET advantage. The new CET is a useful tool for clinicians and researchers to administer the CET more than once without practice effects, which is considered important when assessing frontal executive abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cognitive estimation test (CET) measures cognitive estimation abilities: it assesses the ability to apply reasoning strategies to answer questions that usually cannot lead to a clear and exact reply. Since it requires the activation of an intricate ensemble of cognitive functions, there is an ongoing debate in the literature regarding whether the CET represents a measurement of global cognitive abilities or a pure measure of executive functions. In the present study, CET together with a neuropsychological assessment focused on executive functions was administered in thirty patients with Parkinson's disease without signs of dementia. The CET correlated with measures of verbal working memory and semantic knowledge, but not with other dimensions of executive domains, such as verbal phonemic fluency, ability to manage real-world interferences, or visuospatial reasoning. According to our results, cognitive estimation abilities appeared to trigger a defined cognitive path that includes executive functions, namely, working memory and semantic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose.We evaluated the internal consistency and construct and criterion validity of a 10-item revision of the Cognitive Estimation Task (CET–R) developed by Shallice and Evans to assess problem-solving hypothesis generation.Method.The CET–R was administered to 216 healthy adults from the Aging, Brain Imaging, and Cognition study and 57 adult outpatients with schizophrenia.Results. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA and CFA) of the healthy sample revealed that seven of the 10 CET–R items constitute a more internally consistent scale (CET–R–7). Though EFA indicated that two CET–R–7 dimensions might be present (length and speed/time estimation, respectively), CFA confirmed that a single factor best represents the seven items. The CET–R–7 was modeled best by crystallized intelligence, adequately by fluid intelligence, and inadequately by visuospatial problem solving. Performance on the CET–R–7 correlated significantly with the neuropsychological domains of speed and fluency, but not memory or executive function. Finally, CET–R performance differed by diagnosis, sex, and education, but not age.Conclusions. This study identified an internally consistent set of items that measures the construct of cognitive estimation. This construct relates to several important dimensions of psychological functioning, including crystallized and fluid intelligence, generativity, and self-monitoring. It also is sensitive to cognitive dysfunction in adults with schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Cognitive estimation, an ability to attribute measurements to concrete things, is relevant to adaptive behavior. This study evaluated cognitive estimation in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) with the goal of verifying its relationship to temporal lobe damage and age of seizure onset. One hundred and eight patients with drug-resistant TLE and 51 healthy controls were evaluated using the Cognitive Estimation Task (CET), which requires simple and complex estimations providing the Total and Bizarreness scores. Different tests assessed reasoning, attention, executive, visuospatial, and lexical–semantic abilities. Patients with right TLE had earlier age of seizure onset than patients with left TLE and lower education than controls. Compared with controls, both patient groups obtained worse CET Total and Bizarreness scores, but only patients with right TLE were significantly impaired. Patients with seizure onset before age 12 showed worse scores than patients with later seizure onset irrespective of the side of TLE. The CET Total and Bizarreness scores were predicted by age of seizure onset and semantic fluency; the Bizarreness score also related to education, chronological age, and visual attention. Results highlight the complexity of the cognitive pattern associated with TLE. Cognitive estimation deficit primarily reflects early age of seizure onset and semantic difficulties. An involvement of visual mental operations mediated by the right hemisphere may accentuate the deficit, while cognitive reserve may play a protective role. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The study aimed to investigate the pattern of proverb comprehension impairment and its relationship to proverb familiarity and executive dysfunction in schizophrenia. To assess the specificity of the impairment pattern to schizophrenia, alcohol-dependent patients were included as a psychiatric comparison group, as deficits of executive function and theory of mind as well as dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex, which have been related to proverb comprehension difficulties, are common in both disorders. Twenty-four schizophrenia patients, 20 alcohol-dependent patients and 34 healthy controls were administered a multiple-choice proverb interpretation task incorporating ratings of subjective familiarity and measures of executive function. Schizophrenia patients chose the correct abstract and meaningful interpretations less frequently and instead chose the incorrect concrete (both meaningless and meaningful) proverb interpretations more often than alcohol-dependent patients and healthy controls. Relative to healthy controls, schizophrenia patients also chose more abstract-meaningless response alternatives and were impaired in all executive domains. Impaired divided attention was most consistently associated with proverb interpretation deficits in both patient groups. Taken together, schizophrenia patients showed a specific pattern of proverb comprehension impairments related to executive dysfunction and symptoms. The comparison with the alcohol-dependent subgroup suggests that a more comprehensive and severe impairment of complex higher-order cognitive functions including executive behavioural control and non-literal language comprehension might be associated with frontal dysfunction in schizophrenia as compared to alcohol use disorder. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The decision to resume driving after stroke can be complicated by the sequelae of stroke as well as the established finding that even healthy adults overestimate their driving ability. This study evaluated whether stroke survivors (n = 67) disproportionately overestimated their driving ability as compared to healthy significant others (n = 67). Comparison to a known target reduced self-bias among both groups, but shift toward enhanced accuracy was significantly greater among survivors than significant others. Additionally, self-bias may reflect a pervasive trait of cognitive ability, as overestimation of driving ability was paralleled on a cognitive estimation task. Use of a specific criterion can facilitate accurate self-ratings of driving ability among survivors; however, actual decisions regarding driving status may be unrelated to self-view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In everyday life, we often estimate rather than know. We investigated in an experimental approach modality-specific cognitive estimation in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Estimation of weight, size, number, and time prior and subsequent to observation of a moving object was assessed in healthy controls (HC; n = 49; 62.5 ± 7.8 years (mean ± standard deviation); MMSE 29.2 ± 1.1) and patients with AD (NINCDS-ADRDA, DSM IV; n = 42; 75.0 ± 9.5 years; p < 0.001 to HC; MMSE 22.8 ± 2.9; p < 0.001 to HC). In HC none of the estimation tasks correlated with age or general intellectual ability. AD patients were impaired for estimation of time and weight while estimation of number, size, and distance was not impaired. Estimation of time that a marble will need to roll down a marble track was associated with lower scores for verbal fluency and higher scores for clock drawing in the AD group and estimation of time subsequent to observation was associated with higher scores in clock drawing. Time estimation for moving objects as well as the ability to correct oneself on observation is impaired in patients with very mild AD. This argues for caution in tasks such as car driving already in this stage. Errors in estimation of time observed indicate temporo-parietal impairment while errors on estimation prior to observation of the moving object indicate additional frontal lobe impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normative data from 113 participants, and cross-validation data from 49 additional participants, are presented for the Biber Cognitive Estimation Test (BCET), a 20-item test with five estimation questions in each of four categories: time/duration, quantity, weight, and distance. In Study 1, the range of normal answers is provided for each item, and a cut-off for impaired performance is suggested. Although very low IQ or education levels would be expected to invalidate this test as a measure of estimation skills, participants in the current sample made few errors. In Study 2, a cross-validation suggested a slightly more conservative cut-off score for abnormality. Study 3 examined cognitive estimation in demented (dementia of the Alzheimer’s type and dementia syndrome of Parkinson’s disease) versus intact elderly participants. Results indicated that the BCET was able to distinguish between demented and intact elderly participants. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The current study investigated the role of semantic knowledge on the Cognitive Estimation Task (CET). In an initial experiment, the CET performance of 21 patients with frontal lobe lesions was compared with 21 healthy controls. The CET was found to be sensitive to the effects of frontal lobe lesions. In Experiment 2, 175 participants aged between 18 and 87 years performed the CET to examine the effects of healthy adult aging on the task. No significant age effects were evident. In Experiment 3, 27 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) were compared with 27 healthy controls on the CET. AD patients produced significantly more extreme cognitive estimates than the controls. A significant correlation was found between CET performance and performance on the General Knowledge of the World Task, a task intended to assess semantic knowledge. The hypothesis is put forward that healthy older adults are able to use their intact semantic knowledge to compensate for problem-solving deficits when generating cognitive estimates. In contrast, owing to degradation in semantic abilities, AD patients are unable to benefit from semantic knowledge and instead tend to produce bizarre cognitive estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examined whether discrete numerical estimation is based on the same cognitive process as estimation of continuous magnitudes such as weight and time. While the verbal estimation of numerical quantities has a contingent unit of measurement (e.g., how many cookies fit in a cookie jar? _X_ cookies), estimation of time and weight does not (e.g., how much time does it take to fill a bath with water? _X_ minutes/hours/seconds). Therefore, estimation of the latter categories has another level of difficulty, requiring extensive involvement of cognitive control. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, 18 students performed estimations with three estimation categories: number, time, and weight. Estimations elicited activity in multiple brain regions, mainly: (1) visual regions including bilateral lingual gyrus), (2) parietal regions including the left angular gyrus and right supramarginal gyrus, and (3) the frontal regions (cingulate gyrus and the inferior frontal cortex). Continuous magnitude estimations (mostly time) produced different frontal activity than discrete numerical estimations did, demonstrating different profiles of brain activations between discrete numerical estimations and estimations of continuous magnitudes. The activity level in the right middle and inferior frontal gyrus correlated with the tendency to give extreme responses, signifying the importance of the right prefrontal lobe in estimations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]