Chronic stress, cognitive functioning and mental health

This review aims to discuss the evidence supporting the link between chronic stress, cognitive function and mental health. Over the years, the associations between these concepts have been investigated in different populations. This review summarizes the findings that have emerged from older populations as well as from populations suffering from pathological aging, namely Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease. Although older adults are an interesting population to study in terms of chronic stress, other stress-related diseases can occur throughout the lifespan. The second section covers some of these stress-related diseases that have recently received a great deal of attention, namely burnout, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Given that chronic stress contributes to the development of certain pathologies by accelerating and/or exacerbating pre-existing vulnerabilities that vary from one individual to the other, the final section summarizes data obtained on potential variables contributing to the association between chronic stress and cognition.     

Rise time and formant transition duration in the discrimination of speech sounds: the Ba-Wa distinction in developmental dyslexia

Across languages, children with developmental dyslexia have a specific difficulty with the neural representation of the sound structure (phonological structure) of speech. One likely cause of their difficulties with phonology is a perceptual difficulty in auditory temporal processing (Tallal, 1980). Tallal (1980) proposed that basic auditory processing of brief, rapidly successive acoustic changes is compromised in dyslexia, thereby affecting phonetic discrimination (e.g. discriminating /b/ from /d/) via impaired discrimination of formant transitions (rapid acoustic changes in frequency and intensity). However, an alternative auditory temporal hypothesis is that the basic auditory processing of the slower amplitude modulation cues in speech is compromised (Goswami et al., 2002). Here, we contrast children's perception of a synthetic speech contrast (ba/wa) when it is based on the speed of the rate of change of frequency information (formant transition duration) versus the speed of the rate of change of amplitude modulation (rise time). We show that children with dyslexia have excellent phonetic discrimination based on formant transition duration, but poor phonetic discrimination based on envelope cues. The results explain why phonetic discrimination may be allophonic in developmental dyslexia (Serniclaes et al., 2004), and suggest new avenues for the remediation of developmental dyslexia.     

The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Participation des familles immigrantes à l’école: points de vue des parents congolais à Edmonton (Alberta)

Economic development in Alberta during the last decade has attracted a large number of immigrant families to the province. It is important to understand the role that immigrant parents play on the schooling process of their children. The objective of this study was to identify factors limiting the involvement of some immigrant parents in their children’s education. Field data describe how parents perceive their relationship with school teachers.     

Virtual/real transfer of spatial knowledge: benefit from visual fidelity provided in a virtual environment and impact of active navigation

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect the visual fidelity of a virtual environment (VE) (undetailed vs. detailed) has on the transfer of spatial knowledge based on the navigation mode (passive vs. active) for three different spatial recall tasks (wayfinding, sketch mapping, and picture sorting). Sixty-four subjects (32 men and 32 women) participated in the experiment. Spatial learning was evaluated by these three tasks in the context of the Bordeaux district. In the wayfinding task, the results indicated that the detailed VE helped subjects to transfer their spatial knowledge from the VE to the real world, irrespective of the navigation mode. In the sketch-mapping task, the detailed VE increased performances compared to the undetailed VE condition, and allowed subjects to benefit from the active navigation. In the sorting task, performances were better in the detailed VE; however, in the undetailed version of the VE, active learning either did not help the subjects or it even deteriorated their performances. These results are discussed in terms of appropriate perceptive-motor and/or spatial representations for each spatial recall task.     

Can we see syllables in monosyllabic words? A study with illusory conjunctions

Mathey, Zagar, Doignon, and Seigneuric (2006) reported an inhibitory effect of syllabic neighbourhood in monosyllabic French words suggesting that syllable units mediate the access to lexical representations of monosyllabic stimuli. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the perception of syllable units in monosyllabic stimuli. The illusory conjunction paradigm was used to examine perceptual groupings of letters. Experiment 1 showed that potential syllables in monosyllabic French words (e.g., BI in BICHE) affected the pattern of illusory conjunctions. Experiment 2 indicated that the perceptual parsing in monosyllabic items was due to syllable information and orthographic redundancy. The implications of the data are discussed for visual word recognition processes in an interactive activation model incorporating syllable units and connected adjacent letters (IAS; Mathey et al., 2006).     

Learning a new geometric concept: The role of working memory and of domain-specific abilities

It has been suggested that not only domain-specific factors but also working memory (WM) may play a crucial role in mathematical learning included Geometry, but the issue has not been deeply explored. In the present study, we examined the role of domain-specific factors and of verbal versus visuospatial WM on geometric learning of a new geometrical figure (trapezoid), never presented previously by the teachers participating to the study, after a lecture also involving manipulatives. Results on 105 children in their Year 4 indicated that not only some domain-specific components (geometric declarative knowledge and calculation) but also visuospatial working memory had a significant specific impact on the ability of solving geometric problems requiring to calculate the perimeter and the area of the new figure. On the contrary, verbal WM and geometrical mental imagery did not offer a specific contribution. These findings could have important educational implications, stressing the importance of taking into account the main different aspects supporting the acquisition of geometry.     

Does the Weekly Practice of Recalling and Elaborating Episodes Raise Well-Being in University Students?

Journal of Happiness Studies - Increasing well-being is a prominent worldwide goal that can be achieved primarily through social support and environmental factors. However, in times of social...     

Facial Reactions to Emotional Facial Expressions: Affect or Cognition?

This study investigated whether observers' facial reactions to the emotional facial expressions of others represent an affective or a cognitive response to these emotional expressions. Three hypotheses were contrasted: (1) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are due to mimicry as part of an affective empathic reaction; (2) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are a reflection of shared affect due to emotion induction; and (3) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are determined by cognitive load depending on task difficulty. Two experiments were conducted varying type of task, presentation of stimuli, and task difficulty. The results show that depending on the nature of the rating task, facial reactions to facial expressions may be either affective or cognitive. Specifically, evidence for facial mimicry was only found when individuals made judgements regarding the valence of an emotional facial expression. Other types of judgements regarding facial expressions did not seem to elicit mimicry but may lead to facial responses related to cognitive load.