An Evaluation of Change Over Time in Everyday Cognitive Competence Among Alzheimer’s Patients

This short-term longitudinal study was designed to examine the pattern of change in everyday cognitive competence as assessed by an objective measure (i.e. the Test of Everyday Problem Solving for Cognitively Challenged Elderly; EPCCE; Willis, 1993) and by self- and caregiver reports (i.e. Instrumental Activities of Daily Living; IADL; Lawton & Brody, 1969). Patient and caregiver characteristics and clinical assessments were explored as predictors. Participants included 100 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients and their caregivers who were part of the Stanford Longitudinal Study. Four waves of data were examined via hierarchical linear modeling. Major findings revealed that the EPCCE and the patient IADL formed a linear pattern of decline while the caregiver IADL demonstrated a curvilinear form. Second, different sets of predictors explained the variance in the competence measures at initial status. Finally, the predictors did not account for a significant amount of variance in the instantaneous rate of change on any of the measures; however, a portion of the variance in the acceleration in the caregiver IADL was explained.     

Is Perceptual Priming Affected by Culture? A Study With German Middle-Class and Cameroonian Nso Farmer Children

The authors explored priming in children from different cultural environments with the aim to provide further evidence for the robustness of the priming effect. Perceptual priming was assessed by a picture fragment completion task in 3-year-old German middle-class and Cameroonian Nso farmer children. As expected, 3-year-olds from both highly diverging cultural contexts under study showed a priming effect, and, moreover, the effect was of comparable size in both cultural contexts. Hence, the children profited similarly from priming, which was supported by the nonsignificant interaction between cultural background and identification performance as well as the analysis of absolute difference scores. However, a culture-specific difference regarding the level of picture identification was found in that German middle-class children identified target as well as control pictures with less perceptual information than children in the Nso sample. Explanations for the cross-cultural demonstration of the priming effect as well as for the culturally diverging levels on which priming occurs are discussed.     

Aggressive interactions among female,semi-captive pampas deer (Ozotoceros bezoarticus) increase within the hierarchy and after short-term removal of the male

Two trials were carried out to determine: (a) if there is a positive relation between the frequency of aggressive interactions among female pampas deer and their position within the hierarchy (HI), (b) if short-term removal of the male triggers an increase in the frequency of aggression, and (c) if the magnitude of this increase is related to the individual rank position of the female. Each of 19 breeding groups comprised one adult male and from four to six adult females. The HI was determined for each female and all aggressive interactions were recorded. These were recorded while the male was present (i.e., all of Trial 1 and the “with male” period in Trial 2) and after removal of the male (i.e., the “without male” period in Trial 2). The individual percentage change in the frequency of aggressive interactions after male removal was calculated. In Trial 1 the HI, the frequency of different types of aggressive interaction and the total of aggressive interactions were positively related (all: p < .001; General Linear Mixed Model [GLMM]). In Trial 2, the frequency of total aggressive interactions increased after male removal (F(1, 27) = 3.5; p < .001; GLMM). The individual percentage changes in aggressive interaction between periods were positively related to HI (F(6, 24) = 2.56; p = .05; GLMM). For female pampas deer maintained in breeding groups, we conclude that the frequency of aggressive interactions increases within the hierarchy. Aggression also increases after the short-term removal of the male, mainly among females of higher social status.     

Playing with fire: effects of negative mood induction and working memory on vocabulary acquisition

We investigated the impact of emotions on learning vocabulary in an unfamiliar language to better understand affective influences in foreign language acquisition. Seventy native English speakers learned new vocabulary in either a negative or a neutral emotional state. Participants also completed two sets of working memory tasks to examine the potential mediating role of working memory. Results revealed that participants exposed to negative stimuli exhibited difficulty in retrieving and correctly pairing English words with Indonesian words, as reflected in a lower performance on the prompted recall tests and the free recall measure. Emotional induction did not change working memory scores from pre to post manipulation. This suggests working memory could not explain the reduced vocabulary learning in the negative group. We argue that negative mood can adversely affect language learning by suppressing aspects of native-language processing and impeding form-meaning mapping with second language words.     

Crying as a Form of Parent–Infant Communication in the Context of Maternal Depression

In cases of maternal depression certain complex factors interfere with communication with the child. The present study sought to investigate forms of parent–infant communication in families in which the mother was experiencing postpartum depression. Particular emphasis was placed on analysis of crying patterns and on methods employed by parents to soothe the child. The study sample comprised 15 families in which the mother had a diagnosis of postpartum depression. Semi-structured interviews were performed, followed by qualitative content analysis. Results showed that depressed mothers—and, at times, their husbands—reported difficulties in communication with their child, particularly in distinguishing different types of cries and in ways of soothing the infant. Postpartum depression is discussed as a specific diagnosis, beyond its relational aspect, which affects the family as a whole.     

Truth table tasks: The relevance of irrelevant

Two types of truth table tasks are used investigating mental representations of conditionals: a possibilities-based and a truth-based one. In possibilities tasks, participants indicate whether a situation is possible or impossible according to the conditional rule. In truth tasks participants evaluate whether a situation makes the rule true or false, or is irrelevant with respect to the truth of the rule. Comparing the two-option version of the possibilities task with the truth task in Experiment 1, the possibilities task yields logical answer patterns whereas the truth task yields defective patterns. Adding the irrelevant option to the possibilities task in Experiment 2 leads to a considerable amount of defective patterns in the possibilities task, but still to more logical patterns in the possibilities task than in the truth task. Experiment 3 shows that directionality matters since rule-to-situation tasks yield more logical answer patterns than do situation-to-rule tasks. We conclude that both task types are not comparable as such since wording, number of options and directionality influence the results.     

Referential Set Presentation Effects on Complementation by 6-Year-Olds

What difficulties do children encounter when responding to complementation instructions? The responses of 50 children to six complementation requests were examined. For half of the children, the objects in the referential set were pooled, and for the other half, they were physically separated by category (pencils were presented in a pencil box, buttons in a sewing kit, and balls of yarn in a knitting basket). Reinforcing the identifying status of the semantic property by separating the objects into categories led to an increase in the number of responses bearing on the subset designated in the instructions (e.g., in response to “Give me everything that is not a black button,” the children handed over only the nonblack buttons). In contrast, older children gave responses based on the entire set. The meaning attributed by children to object properties and the effects of that attribution on processing mode merit further study.     

Proximal and distal adjustments of reaching behavior in preterm infants

The authors aimed to investigate proximal and distal adjustments of reaching behavior and grasping in 5-, 6-, and 7-month-old preterm infants. Nine low-risk preterm and 10 full-term infants participated. Both groups showed the predominance of unimanual reaching, an age-related increase in the frequency of vertical-oriented and open hand movement, and also an increase in successful grasping from 6 to 7 months. The frequency of open hand was higher in the preterm group at 6 months. Intrinsic restrictions imposed by prematurity did not seem to have impaired reaching performance of preterm infants throughout the months of age.