Happier Elderly Residents. The Positive Impact of Physical Activity on Objective and Subjective Health Condition of Elderly People in Nursing Homes. Evidence from a Multi-Site Randomized Controlled Trial

Applied Research in Quality of Life - We explore the effects of adapted physical exercise programs in nursing homes, in which some residents suffer from dementia and/or physical limitations and...     

Everything is subjective under water surface,too: visual illusions in fish

Animal Cognition - The study of visual illusions has captured the attention of comparative psychologists since the last century, given the unquestionable advantage of investigating complex...     

Decay of Stimulus Spatial Code in Horizontal and Vertical Simon Tasks

Evidence on the processes underlying the horizontal and vertical Simon effect is still controversial. The present study uses experimental manipulations to selectively delay the stages of response execution, response selection, and stimulus identification in three experiments. A reduction is observed for both horizontal and vertical Simon effects when response execution is delayed by a go-signal presented 400–600 ms post-stimulus onset or when a spatial precue is presented 200–400 ms before the stimulus. When the overlap between stimulus spatial code formation and response selection is prevented by decreasing stimulus discriminability, the horizontal Simon effect decays, but the vertical Simon effect does not change. Activation theories, which propose a decay of the automatically activated response ipsilateral to the stimulus, mainly apply to the horizontal Simon effect. In contrast, translation theories, which propose that the effect occurs when stimulus features are translated into a response code, are more suitable to account for the vertical Simon effect.     

Interactions between perceptual and numerical space

Interactions between numbers and space have become a major issue in numerical cognition. Neuropsychological studies suggest that the interactions occur, before response selection, at a spatially organized representation of numbers (the mental number line). Reaction time (RT) studies, on the other hand, usually point to associations between response codes that do not necessarily imply a number line. There is only one such study that has found a spationumerical interaction between perception and semantics (SNIPS) effect before response selection. Here, in Experiment 1, we isolated the SNIPS effect from other numerical effects and corroborated the prediction that it can be induced by both left and right spatial cues. In Experiment 2, we isolated the peak of the time course of the SNIPS effect and corroborated the prediction that it occurs when a cue follows a target, and not when both appear simultaneously. The results reconcile neuropsychological and RT studies and support the hypothesis that numbers are represented along a left-to-right spatially organized mental number line. [corrected]     

A method for quantifying focused versus overview behavior in AOI sequences

We present a new measure for evaluating focused versus overview eye movement behavior in a stimulus divided by areas of interest. The measure can be used for overall data, as well as data over time. Using data from an ongoing project with mathematical problem solving, we describe how to calculate the measure and how to carry out a statistical evaluation of the results.     

Psychometric properties of scales of professional competence and treatment by health personnel in outpatient hospital surgeries

The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of two scales that assess the perceived quality and patient satisfaction with outpatient surgery in the Health Service of Murcia. These scales assess the degree of Professional Competence (PC) and Personnel Treatment (PT). The scales were administered to a sample of 2017 users of outpatient surgery in the Health Service of Murcia during the years 2008 and 2009. Exploratory factor analysis indicates a unidimensional structure for each scale. Internal consistency was adequate: .68 for PC and .75 for PT. The correlation between the PC scale and patients' global satisfaction was positive and statistically significant. The correlation between the PT scale and patients' global satisfaction was also statistically significant. The scales have shown their utility to detect areas of improvement and to plan intervention strategies.     

The role of personal values and basic traits in perceptions of the consequences of immigration: a three-nation study

Using data from Italy, Spain, and Germany (N= 1,569), this study investigated the role of basic values (universalism and security) and basic traits (openness and agreeableness) in predicting perceptions of the consequences of immigration. In line with Schwartz's (1992) theory, we conceptualized security as having two distinct components, one concerned with safety of the self (personal security) and the other with harmony and stability of larger groups and of society (group security). Structural equation modelling revealed that universalism values underlie perceptions that immigration has positive consequences and group security values underlie perceptions that it has negative consequences. Personal security makes no unique, additional contribution. Multi-group analyses revealed that these associations are invariant across the three countries except for a stronger link between universalism and perceptions of the consequences of immigration in Spain. To examine whether values mediate relations of traits to perceptions of immigration, we used the five-factor model. Findings supported a full mediation model. Individuals' traits of openness and agreeableness explained significant variance in security and universalism values. Basic values, in turn, explained perceptions of the consequences of immigration.     

A bilingual advantage in visual language discrimination in infancy

The origins of the bilingual advantage in various cognitive tasks are largely unknown. We tested the hypothesis that bilinguals' early capacities to track their native languages separately and learn about the properties of each may be at the origin of such differences. Spanish-Catalan bilingual and Spanish or Catalan monolingual infants watched silent video recordings of French-English bilingual speakers and were tested on their ability to discern when the language changed from French to English or vice versa. The infants' performance was compared with that of previously tested French-English bilingual and English monolingual infants. Although all groups of monolingual infants failed to detect the change between English and French, both groups of bilingual infants succeeded. These findings reveal that bilingual experience can modulate the attentional system even without explicit training or feedback. They provide a basis for explaining the ontogeny of the general cognitive advantages of bilinguals.     

Sleep-dependent consolidation of procedural motor memories in children and adults: the pre-sleep level of performance matters

In striking contrast to adults, in children sleep following training a motor task did not induce the expected (offline) gain in motor skill performance in previous studies. Children normally perform at distinctly lower levels than adults. Moreover, evidence in adults suggests that sleep dependent offline gains in skill essentially depend on the pre-sleep level of performance. Against this background, we asked whether improving children's performance on a motor sequence learning task by extended training to levels approaching those of adults would enable sleep-associated gains in motor skill in this age group also. Children (4-6 years) and adults (18-35 years) performed on the motor sequence learning task (button-box task) before and after ~2-hour retention intervals including either sleep (midday nap) or wakefulness. Whereas one group of children and adults, respectively, received the standard amount of 10 blocks of training before retention intervals of sleep or wakefulness, a further group of children received an extended training on 30 blocks (distributed across 3 days). A further group of adults received a restricted training on only two blocks before the retention intervals. Children after standard training reached lowest performance levels, whereas in adults performance after standard training was highest. Children with extended training and adults after reduced training reached intermediate performance levels. Only at these intermediate performance levels did sleep induce significant gains in motor sequence skill, whereas performance did not benefit from sleep in the low-performing children or in the high-performing adults. Spindle counts in the post-training nap were correlated with performance gains at retrieval only in the adults benefitting from sleep. We conclude that, across age groups, sleep induces the most robust gain in motor skill at an intermediate pre-sleep performance level. In low-performing children sleep-dependent improvements in skill may be revealed only after enhancing the pre-sleep performance level by extended training.