Reliable change in neuropsychological test scores is associated with brain atrophy in older adults

The reliable change index (RCI) is a commonly used method for interpreting change in neuropsychological test scores over time. However, the RCI is a psychometric method that, to date, has not been validated against neuroanatomical changes. Longitudinal neuroimaging and neuropsychological data from baseline and one-year follow-up visits were retrieved from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database. The RCI was used to identify participants showing reliable decline on memory (ADNI-Mem; N = 450) and executive functioning (ADNI-EF; N = 456) factor scores. For each factor score, two groups (reliable change vs. no reliable change) were matched on potential baseline confounding variables. Longitudinal neuroanatomical data were analysed using tensor-based morphometry. Analysis revealed that reliable change on ADNI-Mem was associated with atrophy in the medial temporal cortex, limbic cortex, temporal lobe and some regions of the parietal lobe. Similar atrophy patterns were found for reliable change on ADNI-EF, except that atrophy extended to the frontal lobe and the atrophy was more extensive and of higher magnitude. The current study not only validates clinical usage of the RCI with neuroanatomical evidence of associated underlying brain change but also suggests patterns of likely brain atrophy when reliable cognitive decline is detected.     

The unreliable change of reliable change indices

The classic method for assessment of reliable change, in 1991 re-introduced as Jacobson's RC, can be characterized as a confidence interval method. In recent years, several RC indices have been proposed using Kelley's (1947) (Kelley, T. L. (1947). Fundamentals of statistics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press) formula for estimating true change. In these proposals, interval estimation and confidence intervals are mixed up, which leads to unjustified probability statements. When Kelley's estimate is correctly expanded into a normal distributed statistic, the classic approach reveals itself as a large sample approximation of a properly constructed RCI based on Kelley's formula. Researchers should continue using the classic approach for the determination of reliable change.     

Concepts and conceptual change

This paper argues that questions concerning the nature of concepts that are central in cognitive psychology are also important to epistemology and that there is more to conceptual change than mere belief revision. Understanding of epistemic change requires appreciation of the complex ways in which concepts are structured and organized and of how this organization can affect belief revision. Following a brief summary of the psychological functions of concepts and a discussion of some recent accounts of what concepts are, I propose a view of concepts as complex computational structures. This account suggests that conceptual change can come in varying degrees, with the most extreme consisting of fundamental conceptual reorganizations. These degrees of conceptual change are illustrated by the development of the concept of an acid.I am grateful to Michael Ranney and Gilbert Harman for comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Social class transitions: Three guiding questions for moving the study of class to a dynamic perspective

We argue that social psychological theories of social class should move toward a more dynamic view that considers class change experiences to supplement more static perspectives focused on backgrounds or current positions. Indeed, social class is a unique demographic form of hierarchy because of its dynamism: social class is relatively malleable compared to race and gender; it can change multiple times in one's lifespan; and unlike age, it is something individuals can strive to change and that they often believe is possible to change. We review work from a variety of fields, including sociology, psychology, and organizational behavior, that begins to tackle the question of social class change experiences. Drawing on theories of social class transitions, acculturation, and identity change, we present an organizing framework suggesting three objective, structural features of social class change that should inform individuals' experience of changing class: What direction am I going (resource expectations)? How did I get here (predictability)? Where should I be (social comparisons)? We review emerging work as well as gaps in existing theory and suggest avenues for future research.     

Bootstrapping Processes in the Development of Students' Commonsense Matter Theories: Using Analogical Mappings,Thought Experiments,and Learning to Measure to Promote Conceptual Restructuring

This study explores whether the development of students' understanding of matter as something that occupies space and has weight involves conceptual change and restructuring rather than only simple belief revision. Based on an analysis of how the concepts in students' initial matter theory (henceforth MT1) may differ from the concepts in the matter theory that is a target of middle school instruction (MT2), I propose ways that concepts in a given theory cohere with each other and identify the sources of the new ideas in MT2 and the learning processes by which those new ideas can be acquired. I test implications of these analyses by designing a curriculum unit that exploits these learning mechanisms, by using the curriculum with 4 classes of eighth-grade Earth Science students, and by assessing 42 students' thinking about matter, object size, and weight (via individual interviews and written tests) before and after the teaching unit. Consistent with the hypothesis of conceptual restructuring, the data not only show coherencies in students' thinking about matter, size, and weight before and after teaching, but also coordinated patterns of change. The implications for the design of science instruction are discussed.     

Group and individual change in the treatment of drug addictions: a follow-up study in therapeutic communities

The pre-post treatment change of 112 patients in two therapeutics Spanish communities is described. The Addiction Severity Index (ASI) was used at intake and at the end of the treatment program. Results of the treatment program were evaluated by applying composite scores (CS) of the ASI, and the evolution of each patient was evaluated using the Reliable Change Index (RCI). 69.7% of the sample completed treatment, and 30.3% dropped out prematurely. At intake, the percentage of people who could improve in the different areas of the ASI ranged between 35.1% for alcohol consumption and 95.3% for family relationships. At the follow-up, the percentage of subjects who showed significant statistical improvements in the different areas varied between 7.9% in family relations and 66.7% in alcohol consumption. The percentage of patients who deteriorated was less than 10% for all variables. Implications for further research and clinical practice are commented upon.     

Sortal concepts, object individuation, and language

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary enterprise. This review highlights how the philosophical notion of a 'sortal'--a concept that provides principles of individuation and principles of identity - has been introduced into cognitive developmental psychology. Although the notion 'sortal' originated in metaphysics, importing it into the cognitive sciences has bridged a gap between philosophical and psychological discussions of concepts and has generated a fruitful and productive research enterprise. As I review here, the sortal concept has inspired several lines of empirical work in the past decade, including the study of object individuation; object identification; the relationship between language and acquisition of kind concepts; the representational capacities of non-human primates; object-based attention and cognitive architecture; and the relationship between kind concepts and individual concepts.     

A comparison of pecking generated by serial, delay, and trace autoshaping procedures

Pigeons were exposed to serial, delay, and trace autoshaping procedures. In Experiment I, all conditioned stimuli (CSs) were changes in illumination of the response key. The number of trials to acquisition of the keypeck increased from serial, to 4-sec delay, 8-sec delay, and 8-sec trace procedures, in that order. In Experiment II, which used a longer intertrial interval, trials to criterion increased from 8-sec delay, to 28-sec delay, 8-sec trace, and 28-sec trace procedures, in that order. In Experiment III, two groups received serial procedures in which the first CS was either a tone or a houselight, and the second was a keylight. The tone group acquired the key peck more rapidly than the houselight group. Early in conditioning in these experiments, and when the conditioned stimulus was a change in the keylight, there was a short latency to the onset of pecking and pecking was directed at the CS. After extensive conditioning, or when the CS was relatively diffuse, pecking still occurred, but had a longer latency and was not reliably directed toward the conditioned stimulus.     

Abstract concepts,compositionality, and the contextualism-invariantism debate

Invariantists argue that the notion of concept in psychology should be reserved for knowledge that is retrieved in a context-insensitive manner. Contextualists argue that concepts are to be understood in terms of context-sensitive ad hoc constructions. I review the central empirical evidence for and against both views and show that their conclusions are based on a common mischaracterization of both theories. When the difference between contextualism and invariantism is properly understood, it becomes apparent that the way the question of stability is currently investigated will not lead to a consensus. Instead of focusing directly on stability, we should turn our attention to other desiderata on a theory of concepts. In particular, I show that invariantism, but not contextualism, fails to account for compositionality and abstract concepts.     

Climate Change,Responsibility, and Justice

In this paper I make the following claims. In order to see anthropogenic climate change as clearly involving moral wrongs and global injustices, we will have to revise some central concepts in these domains. Moreover, climate change threatens another value (“respect for nature”) that cannot easily be taken up by concerns of global justice or moral responsibility.     

The Significance of Jewishness for Wittgenstein's Philosophy

In this paper I consider one of the influential challenges to the notion that perceptual experience might be completely conceptually structured, a challenge that rests on the idea that conceptual structure cannot do justice to the fineness of grain of perceptual experience. In so doing, I canvass John McDowell's attempt to meet this challenge by appeal to the notion of demonstrative concepts and review some criticisms recently leveled at McDowell's deployment of demonstrative concepts for this purpose by Sean D. Kelly. Finally, I suggest that, though Kelly's criticisms might challenge McDowell's original presentation of demonstrative concepts, a modified notion of demonstrative concepts is available to the conceptualist that is proof against Kelly's criticisms.     

Preference,resistance to change,and the cumulative decision model

According to behavioral momentum theory (Nevin & Grace, 2000a), preference in concurrent chains and resistance to change in multiple schedules are independent measures of a common construct representing reinforcement history. Here I review the original studies on preference and resistance to change in which reinforcement variables were manipulated parametrically, conducted by Nevin, Grace and colleagues between 1997 and 2002, as well as more recent research. The cumulative decision model proposed by Grace and colleagues for concurrent chains is shown to provide a good account of both preference and resistance to change, and is able to predict the increased sensitivity to reinforcer rate and magnitude observed with constant‐duration components. Residuals from fits of the cumulative decision model to preference and resistance to change data were positively correlated, supporting the prediction of behavioral momentum theory. Although some questions remain, the learning process assumed by the cumulative decision model, in which outcomes are compared against a criterion that represents the average outcome value in the current context, may provide a plausible model for the acquisition of differential resistance to change.     

Working with Norms in Social Work Practice: Introjection,Discipline, and Self-Determination

Since its beginnings, social work has emphasized the ways in which environmental factors and internal dynamics influence individuals. I propose that practitioners continue and strengthen this emphasis by exploring the role that norms play in conflicts and choices. Contemporary and longstanding concepts from sociology and psychoanalysis concerning norms can help us explore what we can change in ourselves, what norms might be outside our capacity to influence, and what change can be undertaken through advocacy or another method. In considering norms, I discuss the introjection process, research in sociology, and the role that discipline and self-determination (including external and internal freedom) play in our choices.     

How Mathematical Concepts Get Their Bodies

When the traditional distinction between a mathematical concept and a mathematical intuition is tested against examples taken from the real history of mathematics one can observe the following interesting phenomena. First, there are multiple examples where concepts and intuitions do not well fit together; some of these examples can be described as “poorly conceptualised intuitions” while some others can be described as “poorly intuited concepts”. Second, the historical development of mathematics involves two kinds of corresponding processes: poorly conceptualised intuitions are further conceptualised while poorly intuited concepts are further intuited. In this paper I study this latter process in mathematics during the twentieth century and, more specifically, show the role of set theory and category theory in this process. I use this material for defending the following claims: (1) mathematical intuitions are subject to historical development just like mathematical concepts; (2) mathematical intuitions continue to play their traditional role in today's mathematics and will plausibly do so in the foreseeable future. This second claim implies that the popular view, according to which modern mathematical concepts, unlike their more traditional predecessors, cannot be directly intuited, is not justified.     

Preparation for speeded action as a psychophysiological concept

Mental preparation aids performance and induces multiple physiological changes that should inform concepts of preparation. To date, however, these changes have been interpreted as being due to a global preparatory process (e.g., attention or alertness). The authors review psychophysiological and performance investigations of preparation. Concepts of the central regulation of action offer an integrative framework for understanding the psychophysiology of preparation. If people process multiple streams of information concurrently, then preparatory processing requires a form of supervisory attention- central regulation to maintain unity of action. This concept is consistent with existing psychophysiological results and links them to current views of information processing. Conversely, psychophysiological measures may provide indices to test concepts within theories of the central regulation of action.     

Coherence and Conservatism in the Dynamics of Belief

In this paper I discuss the foundations of a formal theory of coherent and conservative belief change that is (a) suitable to be used as a method for constructing iterated changes of belief, (b) sensitive to the history of earlier belief changes, and (c) independent of any form of dispositional coherence. I review various ways to conceive the relationship between the beliefs actually held by an agent and her belief change strategies (that also deal with potential belief sets), show the problems they suffer from, and suggest that belief states should be represented by unary revision functions that take sequences of inputs. Three concepts of coherence implicit in current theories of belief change are distinguished: synchronic, diachronic and dispositional coherence. Diachronic coherence is essentially identified with what is known as conservatism in epistemology. The present paper elaborates on the philosophical motivation of the general framework; formal details and results are provided in a companion paper.     

Sellars,concepts and conceptual change

Much discussion in recent philosophy of science assumes an holistic view of conceptual systems without providing any analysis of the nature of such systems. For several decades, however, Sellars has been attempting to develop and defend such a view. In this paper I examine Sellars' version of an holistic theory of concepts, discuss some of the objections to this view, and consider what insight Sellars' analysis can provide for problems concerning the introduction of new scientific concepts, and the nature of conceptual change in science.I want to thank Peter Barker, Gary Gutting, Paul Teller, Michael Tye, and especially Richard Burian, for comments on earlier versions of this paper.     

Conceptual engineering for mathematical concepts

In this paper I investigate how conceptual engineering applies to mathematical concepts in particular. I begin with a discussion of Waismann’s notion of open texture, and compare it to Shapiro’s modern usage of the term. Next I set out the position taken by Lakatos which sees mathematical concepts as dynamic and open to improvement and development, arguing that Waismann’s open texture applies to mathematical concepts too. With the perspective of mathematics as open-textured, I make the case that this allows us to deploy the tools of conceptual engineering in mathematics. I will examine Cappelen’s recent argument that there are no conceptual safe spaces and consider whether mathematics constitutes a counterexample. I argue that it does not, drawing on Haslanger’s distinction between manifest and operative concepts, and applying this in a novel way to set-theoretic foundations. I then set out some of the questions that need to be engaged with to establish mathematics as involving a kind of conceptual engineering. I finish with a case study of how the tools of conceptual engineering will give us a way to progress in the debate between advocates of the Universe view and the Multiverse view in set theory.     

Arousal,Suppression, and Persistence: Frustration Theory,Attention, and its Disorders

Abstract

In this article I deal first with the relevance of theories of frustration and general persistence to the concept of attention, and offer an interpretation of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in terms of persistence deficits. After summarising these theories and the manner in which they integrate the concepts of arousal, suppression, and persistence, I describe relevant developmental work in infant rats comprising an ontogenetic sequence of first appearance of a number of reward-schedule effects, and suggest their possible utility as a behavioural assay. Finally, I briefly review neuroanatomical and behavioural work on fetal alcohol and its possible implications for theories of attention and hyperactivity, and provide some data from experiments on fetal alcohol effects in infant rats which may have some relevance to such an interpretation.     

Repetition priming in task switching: Do the benefits dissipate?

In task-switching research, one process that has been implicated as a possible source of switch cost is repetition priming. In four experiments, an examination was made of the claim that repetition priming dissipates over the interval between trials and thereby causes switch cost to decrease with increases in the response-cue interval (RCI). In Experiments 1 and 2, RCI was manipulated within participants, producing the standard RCI effect on switch cost. In Experiments3 and 4, RCI was manipulated between participants and had no effect on switch cost. The role of experimental design and the mixed pattern of effects on switch and repeat trials in Experiments1 and 2 suggest that a passive architectural process such as priming dissipation is not responsible for the RCI effect on switch cost. Repetition priming may still be responsible for some or all of switch cost, but it appears to be more stable over time than was previously thought.