Correction to: Towards a Better Understanding of Cognitive Deficits in Absence Epilepsy: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Due to an error during the editorial phase, a correction regarding Fig. 2 is added to the original article: “Towards a Better Understanding of Cognitive...     

How do horses (Equus caballus) learn from observing human action?

Animal Cognition - A previous study demonstrated that horses can learn socially from observing humans, but could not draw any conclusions about the social learning mechanisms. Here we develop this...     

Differential age effects for case and hue mixing in visual word recognition

The authors compare older adults' lexical-decision data with younger adults' data reported in P. Allen, A. F. Smith, et al. (2002). On the basis of their work, it was proposed that consistent-case wordswould be processed by the faster holistic (magnodominated) stream, but that mixed-case words would be processed by the slower analytic (interblob-dominated or blob-dominated) steams. Hue mixing was predicted to have no effect on consistent-case performance, but mixed-hue/mixed-case words were predicted to be recognized faster than monochrome/mixed-case words. Younger adults showed the predicted results, but older adults did not. These results suggest that holistic central processes are maintained, but that older adults exhibited an analytic decrement     

A computational account of altered error processing in older age: Dopamine and the error-related negativity

When participants commit errors or receive feedback signaling that they have made an error, a negative brain potential is elicited. According to Holroyd and Coles’s (in press) neurocomputational model of error processing, this error-related negativity (ERN) is elicited when the brain first detects that the consequences of an action are worse than expected. To study age-related changes in error processing, we obtained performance and ERN measures of younger and high-functioning older adults. Experiment 1 demonstrated reduced ERN amplitudes in older adults in the context of otherwise intact brain potentials. This result could not be attributed to uncertainty about the required response in older adults. Experiment 2 revealed impaired performance and reduced response- and feedback-related ERNs of older adults in a probabilistic learning task. These age changes could be simulated by manipulation of a single parameter of the neurocomputational model, this manipulation corresponding to weakened phasic activity of the mesencephalic dopamine system.     

Phenotypic, genetic, and nonshared environmental parallels in the structure of personality: a view from the multidimensional personality questionnaire

How closely do observed, phenotypic personality structures correspond with underlying, genetic, and environmental personality structures? This question was addressed using data from 2,490 pairs of twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry, who completed A. Tellegen's (1982) Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ). Phenotypic, additive genetic, and nonshared environmental correlations were computed among the MPQ's eleven primary scales. Principal component analyses of all three matrices revealed three broad, higher-order components that were readily interpreted as negative emotionality, positive emotionality, and constraint. The components from all three matrices were highly comparable, suggesting that the observed, phenotypic structure of personality corresponds closely with the underlying, etiological structure of personality.     

Epidemiological personology: the unifying role of personality in population-based research on problem behaviors

Epidemiological personology refers to a paradigm in which a developmental perspective on individual differences is paired with a population-based sampling frame to yield insights about the role of personality in consequential social outcomes. We review our work in epidemiological personology, linking personality to diverse, problematic social outcomes: Mental disorders, health-risk behaviors, and violence. We conclude that broad-band personality measurement is both feasible and fruitful in large-scale research on problem behaviors, and we call for increased collaboration between personality psychologists and researchers in fields such as public health, epidemiology, and sociology.