Typical Intellectual Engagement and Cognition in Old Age

ABSTRACT

Typical Intellectual Engagement (TIE) comprises the preference to engage in cognitively demanding activities and has been proposed as a potential explanatory variable of individual differences in cognitive abilities. Little is known, however, about the factorial structure of TIE, its relations to socio-demographic variables, and its influence on intellectual functioning in old age. In the present study, data of 364 adults (65–81 years) from the Zurich Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Aging (ZULU) were used to investigate the factorial structure of TIE and to examine the hypothesis that TIE is associated more strongly with crystallized intelligence than with fluid intelligence in old age. A measurement model of a second order factor based on a structure of four correlated first order factors (Reading, Problem Solving, Abstract Thinking, and Intellectual Curiosity) evinced an excellent fit. After controlling for age, sex, and formal education, TIE was more strongly associated with crystallized intelligence than with fluid intelligence, comparable to results in younger persons. More detailed analyses showed that this association is mostly defined via Reading and Intellectual Curiosity.     

发展性计算障碍儿童的数认知

发展性计算障碍作为一种特异性学习障碍,影响儿童的数学成就与数学学习观念,因而引起了多学科研究的关注和重视。文章分析了发展性计算障碍领域在数认知方面的已有研究,揭示了发展性计算障碍的数认知缺陷及内部差异,从一般认知加工障碍与数字加工模块障碍两个角度阐述了发展性计算障碍的可能成因,最后对当前研究进行了小结与展望,认为数认知缺陷的复杂关系、亚类型特征、成因之间的相互作用与机制还需进一步研究     

Primate Numerical Competence: Contributions Toward Understanding Nonhuman Cognition

Nonhuman primates represent the most significant extant species for comparative studies of cognition, including such complex phenomena as numerical competence, among others. Studies of numerical skills in monkeys and apes have a long, though somewhat sparse history, although questions for current empirical studies remain of great interest to several fields, including comparative, developmental, and cognitive psychology; anthropology; ethology; and philosophy, to name a few. In addition to demonstrated similarities in complex information processing, empirical studies of a variety of potential cognitive limitations or constraints have provided insights into similarities and differences across the primate order, and continue to offer theoretical and pragmatic directions for future research. An historical overview of primate numerical studies is presented, as well as a summary of the 17‐year research history, including recent findings, of the Comparative Cognition Project at The Ohio State University Chimpanzee Center. Overall, the archival literature on number‐related skills and counting in nonhuman primates offers important implications for revising our thinking about comparative neuroanatomy, cross‐species (human/ape) cognitive similarities and differences, and the evolution of cognition represented by the primate continuum.     

Severity of Emotional and Behavioral Problems Among Poor and Typical Readers

The purpose of this study was to examine the severity of behavioral and emotional problems among adolescents with poor and typical single word reading ability (N = 188) recruited from public schools and followed for a median of 2.4 years. Youth and parents were repeatedly assessed to obtain information regarding the severity and course of symptoms (depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, aggression, delinquent behaviors, inattention), controlling for demographic variables and diagnosis of ADHD. After adjustment for demographic variables and ADHD, poor readers reported higher levels of depression, trait anxiety, and somatic complaints than typical readers, but there were no differences in reported self-reported delinquent or aggressive behaviors. Parent reports indicated no differences in depression, anxiety or aggression between the two groups but indicated more inattention, somatic complaints, and delinquent behaviors for the poor readers. School and health professionals should carefully assess youth with poor reading for behavioral and emotional symptoms and provide services when indicated.     

Emergence of Information-Retrieval Strategies in Numerical Cognition: A Developmental Study

A series of simple addition problems was presented in a reaction time, true-false verification task to subjects in Grades 2 through 4 and in college. This information-processing paradigm was used to measure the solution strategies used for problems that sometimes are solved too rapidly and accurately to allow for meaningful error analysis. A series of structural models representing different processing sequences was tested against reaction times for solution to different two-term addition problems. Young children and adults alike used a memory access process to solve highly overlearned addition problems such as 1 + 1 = 2, but solution strategies of more difficult problems differed by age. Younger children adopted a slow, effortful, implicit counting strategy, with efficiency developing in the middle elementary school years; adults performed in a manner consistent with at least some models of memory retrieval found in the literature. Children were classified into two groups, independently of grade, based on slope values from a regression equation computed on individual subject data. The two groups comprised what appeared to be "fast" and "slow" processors, who differed in terms of speed of processing as well as strategy used. Our findings are discussed in terms of models of semantic memory and the development of automatic information-processing skills.     

Child witnesses to violence between parents: Critical issues in Behavioral and social adjustment

This study examined the impact of exposure to family violence on children's adjustment. Two groups of residents of shelters for battered women (current and former residents) were compared to a nonviolent control group. All three groups of mothers completed interviews and selfreport questionnaires related to both their own and their children's adjustment. Children recently witnessing violence tended to have the lowest levels of social competence ratings, and their mothers reported the most health and emotional difficulties. Former residents of shelters experienced the highest level of family/social disadvantage. The results are discussed in the context of previous research findings, and implications for intervention programs are outlined.This research was supported by a grant from the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Service and the Ontario Mental Health Foundation. The authors wish to thank the staff of transition houses in Cambridge, Catham, Guelph, Kitchener, Sarnia, and Woodstock for their generous support of this project.     

漫画认知发展特点的研究

对小学三年级至大学一年级五个年级的200名被试进行了测验,以考查被试的漫画认知的发展特点.研究结果表明:(1)各年级被试对漫画的认知具有明显的年龄特征,存在两个快速发展期,即三至五年级(9—12岁),初二至高二(14—18岁);(2)漫画认知在性别上略有差异,但就各年级而言差异不显著.     

控制能力终生发展理论

文章主要介绍德国心理学家Jutta Heckhausen和Richard Schulz的控制能力终生发展论。该理论的基础是：将控制能力看作由初级控制（Primary Control）、次级控制（Secondary Control）构成的双进程结构;并且根据3个维度（初级-次级,功能-功能失调,真实-虚幻）把与控制力有关的行为进行分类;控制能力的发展是初级、次级控制不断同化、顺应而达到平衡的过程。     

Developmental changes in dopamine neurotransmission in adolescence: Behavioral implications and issues in assessment

Adolescence is characterized by increased risk-taking, novelty-seeking, and locomotor activity, all of which suggest a heightened appetitive drive. The neurotransmitter dopamine is typically associated with behavioral activation and heightened forms of appetitive behavior in mammalian species, and this pattern of activation has been described in terms of a neurobehavioral system that underlies incentive-motivated behavior. Adolescence may be a time of elevated activity within this system. This review provides a summary of changes within cortical and subcortical dopaminergic systems that may account for changes in cognition and affect that characterize adolescent behavior. Because there is a dearth of information regarding neurochemical changes in human adolescents, models for assessing links between neurochemical activity and behavior in human adolescents will be described using molecular genetic techniques. Furthermore, we will suggest how these techniques can be combined with other methods such as pharmacology to measure the impact of dopamine activity on behavior and how this relation changes through the lifespan.     

语言与数量认知关系的新认识

数量认知研究近年有长足发展。文章从新近提出的独立于语言的两个数量表征核心系统,语言与精确数量运算,语言与算术事实的储存,语言对儿童早期数概念发展的影响,语言与数量认知关系的最新脑科学证据,以及语言在数量认知模型中的角色等方面,介绍和评述了人类存在依赖和不依赖语言的两级数量能力的新认识。对于是否还存在其它不依赖语言的理解数量的系统,以及这些非语言数量表征系统的认知机制,文章认为有待进一步研究     

Behavioral disordered children's conceptions of moral,conventional, and personal issues

This study employed a series of sorting tasks with 22 normal and 20 children with behavioral disorders (BD) to determine whether BD children discriminate among three classes of social actions viewed by normal children as distinct. These categories are (1) the moral (actions having intrinsic effects upon the rights or well-being of others), (2) the conventional (actions whose propriety is determined by social consensus), and (3) the personal (actions whose propriety is a matter of individual prerogative). Findings were that although BD children distinguished among the three forms of behavior, they differed with normals in the classifications of specific acts and in the reasons given for act classifications. Chief among these differences was the finding that BD children were less likely than normals to identify acts as within their personal domain.We wish to thank Mary Confray, Denise Jaffe, and Christopher Pellikan for their help with the data collection. Thanks are also due to Diana Algminas of the Proviso Area Exceptional Children's Program, Ted Lawrence of the West Suburban Association for Special Education, and Wayne Thorne of the Board of Education District No. 89 (Maywood and Melrose Park, Illinois) for the cooperation of schools in their respective districts. We wish also to thank Mark Oberlander and Ronald Brown for their suggestions regarding identification of the BD sample. Portions of these data were presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Los Angeles, April 1981.     

儿童社会认知发展的特点

社会认知是个体对社会性客体和社会现象及其关系的感知和理解活动。综合分析国内外已有研究,我们认为儿童社会认知发展具有如下主要特点：(1)儿童社会认知的发展是一个逐步区分认识社会性客体的过程;(2)儿童社会认知发展的核心体现是观点采择能力的发展：(3)儿童社会认知各方面的发展是非同步、不等速的;(4)儿童社会认知的发展具有认知发展的普遍规律．但不完全受认知发展的影响;(5)儿童社会认知的发展与社会交往密切相关。     

Building Bridges: Cognitive Development in Typical and Atypical Populations

Most research reported in the Journal of Cognition and Development focuses on typically developing children—those who are following what is assumed to be the most common path. This special issue was designed to foster a dialogue between cognitive developmentalists who work on typical development and those who work on atypical development, with the goal of illustrating how recent findings can advance thinking in both fields. The 6 target articles and 2 commentaries in this special issue provide a compelling demonstration of the symbiotic nature of the study of typical and atypical cognitive development.     

从认知逻辑视角看西方伦理学的发展

本文希望从认知伦理学的视角出发探讨伦理学的发展,以及人类对道德问题认知的过程与人类一般认知的逻辑之间的一致性。人类认知的逻辑是由概念到判断再到推论的过程,伦理学史由德性伦理学到规范伦理学再到话语伦理学、元伦理学和新德性伦理学的过程,实际上就是人类在道德认知上从概念伦理学到判断伦理学再到推论伦理学最后回归到概念伦理学的过程。     

手指的感知、运动以及数量表征对数字认知的促进作用

手指是儿童在习得数字符号之前最常使用的表征数量的工具,大量研究都表明手指在数字认知中具有促进作用。但是,目前仍不清楚手指在数字认知中的作用机制。综述从手指感知、手指运动以及手指数量表征三个方面总结了手指在数字认知中所起的作用。手指感知可能通过影响儿童的数量表征能力间接地影响其它数学能力;与表征量有关的手指运动可能促进了数量大小的加工。关于手指数量表征在数字认知中的作用存在两种有争议的观点：一种认为手指数量表征促进了儿童由非符号数量表征向符号数量表征的转化;另一种认为手指数量表征可能是一种数量语义表征方式。未来应该在发展、作用机制、性别差异等方向继续开展研究,进一步探讨手指在数字认知中所起的作用。     

Development of the Children's Dysfunctional Cognition Scale

One hundred and fifty six children (112 elementary school children, 44 children from classes for the emotionally disturbed) were administrated the Children's Dysfunctional Cognition (CDC) Scale for purposed of standardizing the instrument. Results indicate that the CDC is reliable and valid. The scale differentiates between normal and disturbed populations and is highly correlated with teacher's ratings of classroom behavior. Use of the scale in research paradigms focusing on the use of cognitive behavioral change techniques with children is suggested.     

Animal Cognition: The Bridge BetweenAnimal Learning and Human Cognition

Carefully controlled research with animals has demonstrated cognitive capacities for which traditional theories of associative learning cannot account. One example is the symbolic representation of stimuli. If two arbitrary stimuli are associated with a third event, an emergent relation can be shown to develop. A second example is the ability of animals to plan ahead, and to choose whether to plan ahead or not. Although animals have often been used to model drug effects in humans, these models have rarely been used to examine the effects of drugs on cognitive functioning. Furthermore, examination of the effects of drugs on the cognitive behavior of animals may help to identify the nature of the representations underlying the cognition.