Stronger evidence for own-age effects in memory for older as compared to younger adults

Three studies examined whether younger and older adults better recall information associated with their own than information related to another age group. All studies compared young and older adults with respect to incidental memory for previously presented stimuli (Studies 1 and 2: everyday objects; Study 3: vacation advertisements) that had been randomly paired with an age-related cue (e.g., photo of a young or an old person; the word "young" or "old"). All three studies found the expected interaction of participants' age and age-associated information. Studies 1 and 2 showed that the memory bias for information arbitrarily associated with one's own as compared to another age group was significant for older adults only. However, when age-relevance was introduced in a context of equal importance to younger and older adults (information about vacations paired either with pictures of young or older adults), the memory bias for one's own age group was clearly present for both younger and older adults (Study 3).     

Perceptual comparisons with laterally presented pictures and environmental sounds

Two experiments studied perceptual comparisons with cues that vary in one of four ways (picture, sound, spoken word, or printed word) and with targets that are either pictures or environmental sounds. The basic question probed whether modality or differences in format were factors that would influence picture and sound perception. Also of interest were cue effect differences when targets are presented on either the right or left side. Students responded to a same-different reaction time task that entailed matching cue-target pairs to determine whether the successive stimulus events represented features drawn from the same basic item. Cue type influenced reaction times to pictures and environmental sounds, but the effects were qualified by response type and with picture targets by presentation side. These results provide some additional evidence of processing asymmetry when pictures are directed to either the right or left hemisphere, as well as for some asymmetries in cross-modality cuing. Implications of these findings for theories of multisensory processing and models of object recognition are discussed.     

The association between parent-child conflict and adolescent conduct problems over time: results from a longitudinal adoption study

A handful of prior adoption studies have confirmed that the cross-sectional relationship between child conduct problems and parent-child conflict at least partially originates in the shared environment. However, as the direction of causation between parenting and delinquency remains unclear, this relationship could be better explained by the adolescent's propensity to elicit conflictive parenting, a phenomenon referred to as an evocative gene-environment correlation. In the current study, the authors thus examined the prospective relationship between conduct problems and parent-child conflict in a sample of adoptive families. Participants included 672 adolescents in 405 adoptive families assessed at 2 time points roughly 4 years apart. Results indicated that parent-child conflict predicts the development of conduct problems, whereas conduct problems do not predict increases in parent-child conflict. Such findings suggest that evocative gene-environment correlations are highly unlikely to be an explanation of prior shared environmental effects during adolescence. Moreover, because the adolescents in this study do not share genes with their adoptive parents, the association between conduct problems and parent-child conflict is indicative of shared environmental mediation in particular. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Relations of SARS-related stressors and coping to Chinese college students' psychological adjustment during the 2003 Beijing SARS epidemic

This study examined the main and interactive relations of stressors and coping related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) with Chinese college students' psychological adjustment (psychological symptoms, perceived general health, and life satisfaction) during the 2003 Beijing SARS epidemic. All the constructs were assessed by self-report in an anonymous survey during the final period of the outbreak. Results showed that the relations of stressors and coping to psychological adjustment varied by domain of adjustment. Regression analyses suggested that the number of stressors and use of avoidant coping strategies positively predicted psychological symptoms. Active coping positively predicted life satisfaction when controlling for stressors. Moreover, all types of coping served as a buffer against the negative impact of stressors on perceived general health. These findings hold implications for university counseling services during times of acute, large-scale stressors. In particular, effective screening procedures should be developed to identify students who experience a large number of stressors and thus are at high risk for developing mental health problems. Intervention efforts that target coping should be adapted to take account of the uncontrollability of stressors and clients' cultural preferences for certain coping strategies. A multidimensional battery of psychological adjustment should be used to monitor clients' psychological adjustment to stressors and evaluate the efficacy of intervention.     

Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale: A psychometric study in a Portuguese sample

BackgroundThe Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS, Brazelton &; Nugent, 1995) is an instrument conceived to observe the neonatal neurobehavior. Data analysis is usually performed by organizing items into groups. The most widely used data reduction for the NBAS was developed by Lester, Als, and Brazelton (1982).ObjectiveExamine the psychometric properties of the NBAS items in a sample of 213 Portuguese infants.MethodThe NBAS was performed in the first week of infant life (3 days ± 2) and in the seventh week of life (52 days ± 5).ResultsPrincipal component analyses yielded a solution of four components explaining 55.13% of total variance. Construct validity was supported by better neurobehavioral performance of 7-week-old infants compared with 1-week-old infants.ConclusionChanges in the NBAS structure for the Portuguese sample are suggested compared to Lester factors in order to reach better internal consistency of the scale.     

A combined fMRI and DTI examination of functional language lateralization and arcuate fasciculus structure: Effects of degree versus direction of hand preference

The present study examined the relationship between hand preference degree and direction, functional language lateralization in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, and structural measures of the arcuate fasciculus. Results revealed an effect of degree of hand preference on arcuate fasciculus structure, such that consistently-handed individuals, regardless of the direction of hand preference, demonstrated the most asymmetric arcuate fasciculus, with larger left versus right arcuate, as measured by DTI. Functional language lateralization in Wernicke’s area, measured via fMRI, was related to arcuate fasciculus volume in consistent-left-handers only, and only in people who were not right hemisphere lateralized for language; given the small sample size for this finding, future investigation is warranted. Results suggest handedness degree may be an important variable to investigate in the context of neuroanatomical asymmetries.     

SLV330, a cannabinoid CB1 receptor antagonist,ameliorates deficits in the T-maze,object recognition and Social Recognition Tasks in rodents

Cannabinoid CB₁ receptor (CB₁R) signaling has been suggested to play an important role in the regulation of memory and cognition. In the present study, our aim was to investigate whether the CB₁R antagonist SLV330 (doses ranging from 0.3 to 10 mg/kg, given orally, p.o.) could ameliorate impairments in distinct aspects of cognition using different disruption models in both mice and rats. Effects of SLV330 were tested on working memory deficits in the T-maze Continuous Alternation Task (T-CAT) in mice; episodic memory deficits in the Object Recognition Task (ORT) and Social Recognition Task (SRT) in rats. The acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (AChEI) donepezil (Aricept®, approved for symptomatic treatment of Alzheimer’s disease) and nicotine were used as reference compounds.SLV330 markedly improved aging and scopolamine-induced memory deficits in the T-CAT in mice with a lowest effective dose (LED) of 1 mg/kg p.o., while reversing the cognitive dysfunction induced by the N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist dizocilpine (MK-801) only at the middle dose of 3 mg/kg. In the ORT, we have found that combined administration of subthreshold doses of SLV330 (1 mg/kg, p.o.) and the AChEI donepezil (0.1 mg/kg, p.o.), that had no discernable effects on performance when given alone, enhanced memory performance in Wistar rats with deficits induced by the muscarinic antagonist scopolamine, suggestive of additive synergistic effects of SLV330 and donepezil on cognitive impairment. Finally, SLV330 was found to have cognition enhancing properties in a time delay paradigm in the SRT at a LED dose of 3 mg/kg (p.o.).In conclusion, the CB₁R antagonist SLV330 was found to clearly improve memory in several preclinical models for cognitive impairment.     

Viewer perspective affects central bottleneck requirements in spatial translation tasks

A psychological refractory period (PRP) approach and the locus of slack logic were applied to examine the novel question of whether spatial translation processes can begin before the central bottleneck when effector or noneffector stimuli are processed from an egocentric (viewer-centered) perspective. In single tasks, trials requiring spatial translations were considerably slower than trials without translations (Experiment 1). Dual tasks consisted of tone discriminations (Task 1) and spatial translations (Task 2) using PRP methods with different manipulations on perceptual and response demands. When a viewer-centered perspective was used, the effect of spatial translation was reduced at short compared with long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) when the potential for code overlap between tasks was removed (Experiments 2, 3, and 4); this finding supports the view that translation processes can begin before the central bottleneck. When an allocentric (non-viewer-centered) perspective was used (Experiment 5), the slowing associated with spatial translation was additive with SOA, suggesting that the processes of spatial translation cannot begin before the bottleneck. These findings highlight the importance of viewer perspective on central bottleneck requirements. Findings are further discussed in relation to the dorsal-ventral model of action and perception.     

The nature of phoneme representation in spoken word recognition

Four experiments used the psychological refractory period logic to examine whether integration of multiple sources of phonemic information has a decisional locus. All experiments made use of a dual-task paradigm in which participants made forced-choice color categorization (Task 1) and phoneme categorization (Task 2) decisions at varying stimulus onset asynchronies. In Experiment 1, Task 2 difficulty was manipulated using words containing matching or mismatching coarticulatory cues to the final consonant. The results showed that difficulty and onset asynchrony combined in an underadditive way, suggesting that the phonemic mismatch was resolved prior to a central decisional bottleneck. Similar results were found in Experiment 2 using nonwords. In Experiment 3, the manipulation of task difficulty involved lexical status, which once again revealed an underadditive pattern of response times. Finally, Experiment 4 compared this prebottleneck variable with a decisional variable: response key bias. The latter showed an additive pattern of responses. The experiments show that resolution of phonemic ambiguity can take advantage of cognitive slack time at short asynchronies, indicating that phonemic integration takes place at a relatively early stage of spoken word recognition.     

For Better and Worse: Social Influences on Coronary Heart Disease Risk

From the neighborhoods we live in to those we marry, other people are a part of our everyday lives. Mounting evidence suggests that these social factors constitute risk and resilience influences for coronary heart disease (CHD). The current aim is to summarize the literature into four representative categories relating to CHD risk: social environments, social roles, social resources, and close relationships. The argument is made that these factors moderate and mediate stress and associated physiological responses constituting a psychosomatic pathway to disease.