Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess whether a multicomponent cognitive behavioral group intervention is preferable to usual care in terms of (healthcare) costs and effects on fear of falling and activity avoidance.

Methods: This economic evaluation was embedded in a randomized controlled trial among 540 community-living adults in the Netherlands, aged 70 years and older who reported fear of falling and fear-induced activity avoidance. The participants allocated to the intervention group received a multicomponent cognitive behavioral group intervention consisting of eight weekly sessions and a booster session. The sessions were aimed at instilling realistic views of falls, reducing fall risk, and increasing activity and safe behavior. Participants in the control group received usual care. Cost outcome measures were healthcare costs, and patient and family costs. Clinical outcomes were fear of falling and activity avoidance. All outcomes were assessed at baseline and at 2, 8, and 14 months by means of registration forms, self-administered questionnaires, and interviews by telephone.

Results: Participants were randomly allocated to intervention (n = 280) and control groups (n = 260). Costs for the intervention program were on average €276 per person. Total costs per person were comparable (€4,925 in intervention group and €4,828 in control group). Furthermore, favorable effects of the program were observed for fear of falling and activity avoidance.

Conclusions: This study showed that the intervention program is preferable to usual care in terms of costs and effects. The program had comparable costs and significantly reduced fear of falling and associated activity avoidance among older community-living persons.

The value of accuracy and quantity as memory measures is assessed. It is argued that (1) accuracy does not measure correspondence (monitoring) because it ignores omissions and correct rejections, (2) quantity is confounded with monitoring in recall, and (3) in recognition, if targets and foils are unequal, both measures, even together, still ignore correct rejections.

A modified way of administering the process dissociation procedure to the false fame paradigm is described. Multidimensional signal detection theory (SDT) is used to correct for recollection as well as familiarity false alarms, and two experiments are reported that compare this method of false alarm correction with the hybrid procedure preferred by Jacoby et al. (1993). In experiment 1, it is shown that recollection and familiarity are lost at the same rate in normal subjects over a delay of 1 d when an SDT analysis is used. Analysis with the hybrid procedure fails to find any forgetting over the 1-d delay. In experiment 2, amnesics are shown to have preserved familiarity in the face of impaired recollection for names when the results are analyzed by either method. An additional analysis showed that the amnesics' familiarity was normal even for relatively novel surnames. The SDT analysis also revealed that the amnesics, relative to controls, showed a conservative recollection and a liberal familiarity response bias. The results indicate that it is important to correct for recollection as well as familiarity false alarms. (JINS, 1995, I, 469–482.)

Objectives: Multidisciplinary and multifactorial interventions seem to be effective in preventing falls. We aimed to assess the cost-effectiveness of a multidisciplinary fall prevention program compared with usual Dutch healthcare in community-dwelling people 65 years of age or older who experienced a fall.

Methods: Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analysis were performed from a societal perspective. Falls and healthcare utilization were continuously measured for 12 months. Daily functioning and quality of life were measured at baseline, after 4 and 12 months. Bootstrap analyses were performed to estimate uncertainty of the findings and sensitivity analysis to assess the generalizability of assumptions made.

Results: One hundred sixty-six participants were randomly allocated to the experimental group and 167 to the control group. The overall response rate was 74 percent. Healthcare and patient and family costs of both groups were comparable. Our analyses showed no effect of the intervention program on falls, daily functioning, or quality of life measures.

Conclusions: The multidisciplinary intervention program to prevent falls was not cost-effective compared with usual care in the Netherlands. Notwithstanding our findings, however, falls still have an important impact on society and individuals in terms of costs and effects. Economic evaluations studying promising interventions to prevent falls, therefore, remain necessary.

A hippocampal patient is described who shows preserved item recognition and simple recognition-based recollection but impaired recall and associative recognition. These data and other evidence suggest that contrary to Aggleton & Brown's target article, Papez circuit damage impairs only complex item-item-context recollection. A patient with perirhinal cortex damage and a delayed global memory deficit, apparently inconsistent with A&B's framework, is also described.

The heritable components of many traits in which livestock producers strive for improvement comprise a number of genetic loci. Many workers have now reported the identification of such quantitative trait loci (QTL) using model crosses between divergent breeds or lines in combination with whole genome scans using mapped DNA markers. Such methods rely on two or three generation pedigrees in order to be able to trace the inheritance of markers and the QTL. However, it is not yet clear if such QTL have application in commercial pig populations. The AFLP™ technology is a very efficient method for identifying markers segregating in any population. We have previously reported the successful use of the AFLP™technology and bulk segregant analysis (BSA) for the detection of markers associated with pig coat colour, a monogenic trait (Plastow et al 1998). We set out to determine whether these methods could be used for the detection of loci associated with quantitative traits directly in commercial populations.