Does prospective memory influence quality of life in community-dwelling older adults?

Older adults commonly experience declines in prospective memory, which describes one’s ability to “remember to remember,” and can adversely affect instrumental activities of daily living and healthcare compliance. However, the extent to which prospective memory failures may influence quality of life in typically aging older adults is not well understood. One-hundred and four community-dwelling older Australians (aged 50 to 82 years) were administered a comprehensive, neuropsychological battery that included the Memory for Intentions Screening Test (MIST), Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Questionnaire (IADLQ), and World Health Organization Quality of Life-8 (WHOQOL-8). Multiple regressions controlling for negative affect, medical comorbidities, and other neurocognitive functions revealed an interaction between prospective memory and instrumental activities of daily living in the concurrent prediction of quality of life. Among the 39 older adults who reported multiple problems on the IADLQ, lower performance-based prospective memory (MIST) and higher self-reported prospective memory failures in daily life (PRMQ) were significantly associated with lower quality of life (WHOQOL-8). Conversely, no significant associations were observed between prospective memory and quality of life in the 65 participants without IADL problems. Prospective memory difficulties adversely impact quality of life in community-dwelling older adults who experience problems independently managing their instrumental activities of daily living. These findings extend prior literature showing that prospective memory plays a unique role in the real-world outcomes of older adults and clinical populations and highlight the need to develop effective strategies to enhance prospective memory functioning in these vulnerable groups.     

Navigating Social Roles in Pursuit of Important Goals: A Communal Goal Congruity Account of STEM Pursuits

Our exploration of communal goal processes in decisions about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers integrates research on goal pursuit processes with research on stereotyping and on social role occupancy. Social roles encompass expectations and resources that can originate from group membership in broad social categories, such as gender, ethnicity, or nationality, or from more narrowly focused occupational and family roles. Our review elaborates on three ways in which social roles intersect with goal pursuit processes, with particular attention to how communal goals influence STEM pursuits. First, social roles influence goal selection or what goals are prioritized generally and at a particular time. Second, beliefs about social roles can influence the kinds of roles that people shy away from or seek out. Third, occupying a particular social role can actually facilitate or impede goal progress. With regard to STEM pursuits, we demonstrate that communal goals are valued both generally by people and especially by women, and that consensual stereotypes describe STEM fields as less likely to afford communal goals than other occupational roles. However, emphasizing the communal aspects of STEM fields elicits greater positivity toward these roles. Finally, we explore the ways in which STEM occupational roles are or might be enacted in communally‐oriented ways. The goal congruity perspective thus can offer a unifying framework to integrate an understanding of the social structure – that is, roles and contexts – with the social cognition of the individual – that is, critical motivational and cognitive processes.     

Rodney King and O. J. Revisited: The Impact of Race and Defendant Empathy Induction on Judicial Decisions

White university students participated in a study to investigate the impact of defendant race and empathetic induction on a subsequent juror decision-making task. Participants read a passage involving a Black or a White defendant in a criminal case. They were subsequently induced to feel no empathy, low empathy, or high empathy for the defendant. When compared to participants in the low- and control empathy conditions, those in the high-empathy condition reported greater target empathy, made attributions that were more situational, and assigned more lenient punishments. The results also indicate that group membership can moderate the impact of empathetic induction. When compared to the participants in the Black defendant condition, those in the White defendant condition reported greater target empathy, made attributions that were more situational, and assigned more lenient punishments. Implications for both empathy and judicial decision-making research are discussed.     

Fractal Dynamics of Heart Beat Interval Fluctuations in Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Receptor Subtype 2 Deficient Mice

Non-linear fractal analysis of cardiac interbeat time series was performed in corticotropin-releasing factor receptor subtype 2 (CRFR2) deficient mice. Heart rate dynamics in mice constitutes a self-similar, scale-invariant, random fractal process with persistent intrinsic long-range correlations and inverse power-law properties. We hypothesized that the sustained tachycardic response elicited by intraperitoneal (ip) injection of human/rat CRF (h/rCRF) is mediated by CRFR2. In wildtype control animals, heart rate was increased to about maximum levels (approximately 750 bpm) while in CRFR2-deficient animals baseline values were retained (approximately 580 bpm). The tachycardic response elicited by ip-application is mediated by CRFR2 and is interpreted to result from sympathetic stimulation. However, the functional integrity of CRFR2 would not present a prerequisite to maintaining the responsiveness and resiliency of cardiac control to external environmental perturbations experimentally induced by extrinsic ip-application of h/rCRF or under physiological conditions that may be associated with an increased peripheral release of CRF. Under stressful physiological conditions achieved by novelty exposure, CRFR2 is not involved in the cardiodynamic regulation to external short-term stress. While the hypothesis of involvement of CRFR2 in cardiac regulation upon pharmacological stimulation cannot be rejected, the present findings suggest that the mechanism of action is by sympathetic stimulation, but would not unambiguously allow to draw any conclusions as to the physiological role of CRFR2 in the control of cardiac dynamics.     

Evaluation of the Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP) Seventh Grade Violence Prevention Curriculum

We evaluated the impact of RIPP-7, a seventh grade violence prevention curriculum designed to strengthen and extend the effects of the sixth grade RIPP-6 curriculum. Classes of seventh graders at two urban middle schools serving predominantly African-American youth where RIPP-6 had been implemented the preceding school year were randomized to intervention (N = 239) and control groups (N = 237). Compared to students in the control group, students who participated in RIPP-7 had fewer disciplinary code violations for violent offenses during the following school year. A limited number of main effects were found on self-report outcome measures and measures of attitudes. Although significant main effects were not found on self-report measures of physical aggression, drug use, or anxiety, analyses of interactions with pretest scores indicated that intervention effects were significantly moderated by pretest scores for several outcome measures. Students most likely to benefit from the intervention were those who reported higher pretest rates of problem behaviors including violent behavior, nonphysical aggression, and delinquent behavior.     

Anxiety and Depression in Children and Adolescents: A Factor-Analytic Examination of the Tripartite Model

The tripartite model of Clark and Watson (1981) suggests that the oft-observed covariation between anxiety and depression can best be understood by examining three related yet distinct constructs: negative affectivity, positive affectivity, and elevated physiological arousal. In the present study, 510 boys and girls in the 4th, 7th, and 10th grades completed the Children's Depression Inventory and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to determine the goodness of fit of single-factor (i.e., negative affectivity), two-factor (i.e., anxiety and depression), and three-factor models (i.e., negative affectivity, positive affectivity, and physiological arousal). Analyses were conducted by examining each of the models in the whole sample first and then separately for boys and girls and for fourth, seventh, and tenth grade youths. Results failed to support the tripartite theory; rather, the findings supported a two-factor model in all cases. These factors represented the general constructs of anxiety and depression, and these factors remained significantly interrelated. Consistent with previous findings, the strength of these relations was stronger for boys than girls and for children than adolescents.     

Map-based navigation in mobile robots:: II. A review of map-learning and path-planning strategies

This article reviews map-learning and path-planning strategies within the context of map-based navigation in mobile robots. Concerning map-learning, it distinguishes metric maps from topological maps and describes procedures that help maintain the coherency of these maps. Concerning path-planning, it distinguishes continuous from discretized spaces and describes procedures applicable when the execution of a plan fails. It insists on the need for an integrated conception of such procedures, which must be tightly tailored to the specific robot that is used, notably to the capacities and limitations of its sensory-motor equipment, and to the specific environment that is experienced. A hierarchy of navigation strategies is outlined in the discussion, together with the sort of adaptive capacities each affords to cope with unexpected obstacles or dangers encountered on an animat or robot’s way to its goal.