McNamara P, Durso R, Brown A, Lynch A
Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2003 Aug;74(8):1065-70. doi: 10.1136/jnnp.74.8.1065.
Counterfactuals are mental representations of alternatives to past events. Recent research has shown them to be important for other cognitive processes, such as planning, causal reasoning, problem solving, and decision making-all processes independently linked to the frontal lobes.
To test the hypothesis that counterfactual thinking is impaired in some patients with Parkinson's disease and is linked to frontal dysfunction in these patients. Methods. Measures of counterfactual processing and frontal lobe functioning were administered to 24 persons with Parkinson's disease and 15 age matched healthy controls. Results. Patients with Parkinson's disease spontaneously generated significantly fewer counterfactuals than controls despite showing no differences from controls on a semantic fluency test; they also performed at chance levels on a counterfactual inference test, while age matched controls performed above chance levels on this test. Performance on both the counterfactual generation and inference tests correlated significantly with performance on two tests traditionally linked to frontal lobe functioning (Stroop colour-word interference and Tower of London planning tasks) and one test of pragmatic social communication skills.
Counterfactual thinking is impaired in Parkinson's disease. This impairment may be related to frontal lobe dysfunction.
反事实思维是对过去事件的替代情况的心理表征。最近的研究表明，它们对其他认知过程很重要，如规划、因果推理、问题解决和决策——所有这些过程都与额叶独立相关。
检验帕金森病患者的反事实思维受损且与这些患者的额叶功能障碍有关这一假设。方法。对24名帕金森病患者和15名年龄匹配的健康对照者进行反事实加工和额叶功能测量。结果。帕金森病患者自发产生的反事实思维明显少于对照组，尽管在语义流畅性测试中与对照组无差异；他们在反事实推理测试中的表现也处于随机水平，而年龄匹配的对照组在该测试中的表现高于随机水平。反事实生成和推理测试的表现与传统上与额叶功能相关的两项测试（斯特鲁普颜色-单词干扰和伦敦塔规划任务）以及一项语用社交沟通技能测试的表现显著相关。
帕金森病患者的反事实思维受损。这种损害可能与额叶功能障碍有关。
