Abstract thinking

Problems with abstract thinking not just difficulty balancing a checkbook, but forgetting what the numbers represent... 

Dementia An organic mental disorder characterized by a general loss of intellectual abilities involving impairment in memory, judgment, and abstract thinking, as well as changes in personality. 

There are, in fact, a number of solutions to the governing equations, but usually (see Chapter 12) only one with positive mole numbers and concentrations. Fortunately, the latter answer is of interest to all but the most abstract-thinking geochemist. The requirement that the iteration produce positive masses is known in chemical modeling as the non-negativity constraint. 

The spectrum of clinical manifestations of organic mental disorders consists of two main clusters. The first includes the decline in the various cognitive functions (e.g., attention, memory, abstract thinking, judgment). The second cluster is related to symptoms that are found in other psychiatric disorders and that also appear in patients with organic mental disorders. Table 32-1 shows organic mental disorders included in sections F00-F09 of ICD-10. 

Negative symptoms commonly are considered a reduction in normal functions in schizophrenia, such as blunted affect, emotional withdrawal, poor rapport, passivity, and apathetic social withdrawal. Difficulty in abstract thinking, stereotyped thinking, and lack of spontaneity are associated with long periods of hospitalization and poor social functioning. 

Apathetic social withdrawal Difficulty in abstract thinking Lack of spontaneity Stereotyped thinking... 

An organic brain syndrome associated with prolonged, heavy ingestion of alcohol characterized by impairment of short- and long-term memory, abstract thinking and judgement. 

The effects of cocaine on cognitive functions have been measured in controlled studies. The preliminary results of a study of 20 heavy cocaine abusers and a group of matched controls showed impaired function on neuropsychological tests in 50% of the abusers compared with 15% of the controls (169). There were problems with concentration, memory, problem-solving, and abstract thinking in the cocaine users. The heavy users had the greatest loss of memory. Recent cocaine use was associated with poorer oral fluency and arithmetic scores. 

In making your translations, ask this What is the fundamental nature of each side of the conflict This is an exercise in abstract thinking because you have to reframe each of your contradictory elements in terms of one of the 39 problem parameters. 

Maynard Smith You said that you thought that the reason for the post World War II gain was an increased interest in abstract thinking. Why do you think this ... 

Visualization skills, or the skills necessary to describe or explain microscopic phenomena, require the student or the teacher to engage in abstract thinking [3,5,6,13]. It is thought that the demands of formal operational thinking are often the cause of poor performance in chemistry [3,6]. Poor visualization skills will also result if students or teachers are unable to operate on this cognitive level. 

Measures abstract thinking, learning from experience, problem solving, adjustment to new situations. Score less than 70 denotes mental retardation Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test... 

Dementia Deterioration of mental processes such as memory, personality changes, abstract thinking, and impaired judgement. There are numerous causes of dementia, the two most common being Alzheimer s disease and vascular dementia (stroke). 

The diagnostic criteria for dementia (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) represent a more detailed description of this definition, confirming that the term dementia is adequate only when the above-mentioned disturbances of personality, memory, language, abstract thinking, judgement and social behavior that interfere with work and social activities occur in the absence of delirium, functional or organic impairment, such as major depression (Thompson, 1987). 

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