Working Memory in Pediatric Epilepsy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Working memory is a multicomponent system that is supported by overlapping specialized networks in the brain. Baddeley’s working memory model includes four...     

Diagnosing children's writing disabilities: different tests give different results

Writing problems are common in children with clinical disorders. However, there are significant intra-individual differences between the ability to spell words, construct sentences, and compose text. Therefore, achievement tests measuring different writing skills may not be consistent in identifying children who have these various writing disabilities. Our study compared scores on the Woodcock-Johnson Written Language subtests (which measure the ability to produce single words and single sentences) with scores on the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test Written Expression subtest (which assesses compositional writing skills) in 54 children referred by their teachers to a school psychologist for writing problems. The Woodcock-Johnson only identified 35% of children as having significant writing problems, whereas the Wechsler test identified 78%. Our study suggests that the latter is more likely than the Woodcock-Johnson to identify students who have problems in compositional writing.     

How events are reviewed matters: effects of varied focus on eyewitness suggestibility

Witnesses to a crime or an accident perceive that event only once, but they are likely to think or talk about it multiple times. The way in which they review the event may affect their later memory. In particular, some types of review may increase suggestibility if the witness has been exposed to postevent misleading information. In Experiment 1, participants viewed a videotaped crime and then received false suggestions about the event. We found that participants who were then asked to focus on specific details when reviewing the event were more suggestible on a later source memory test than participants asked to review the main points. The findings of Experiment 2 suggest that this effect was not due to a criterion shift at test. These findings indicate that the type of rehearsal engaged in after witnessing an event can have important consequences for memory and, in particular, suggestibility.     

Self as verb and the metaphor of dance: An explanation of the self discovery experience within a constructivist framework

The concept of self discovery within a constructivist framework is difficult to explain given the central assumption of constructivism that self is a created construct rather than an entity to be discovered. Two problems are identified as impediments to constructivist accounts of the self discovery experience: first, their failure to adequately account for the embodied experience of self, and second, the difficulties inherent in using self as a noun to express a process.
It is proposed that if self is considered as a verb, as the action of a body-subject, the verbal contortionism of referring to self as a process in a language that places self as an entity may be overcome. The notion of self as verb places the individual firmly in the role of active embodied participant in the experience of self. The metaphor of "self'" as "dance" is explored to emphasize the materiality of the human animal that is argued to be central to the experience of self discovery.     

Implicit Science Stereotypes Mediate the Relationship between Gender and Academic Participation

While the gender gap in mathematics and science has narrowed, men pursue these fields at a higher rate than women. In this study, 165 men and women at a university in the northeastern United States completed implicit and explicit measures of science stereotypes (association between male and science, relative to female and humanities), and gender identity (association between the concept “self” and one’s own gender, relative to the concept “other” and the other gender), and reported plans to pursue science-oriented and humanities-oriented academic programs and careers. Although men were more likely than women to plan to pursue science, this gap in students’ intentions was completely accounted for by implicit stereotypes. Moreover, implicit gender identity moderated the relationship between women’s stereotypes and their academic plans, such that implicit stereotypes only predicted plans for women who strongly implicitly identified as female. These findings illustrate how an understanding of implicit cognitions can illuminate between-group disparities as well as within-group variability in science pursuit.     

The relationship between visual search and categorization of own- and other-age faces

Young adult participants are faster to detect young adult faces in crowds of infant and child faces than vice versa. These findings have been interpreted as evidence for more efficient attentional capture by own-age than other-age faces, but could alternatively reflect faster rejection of other-age than own-age distractors, consistent with the previously reported other-age categorization advantage: faster categorization of other-age than own-age faces. Participants searched for own-age faces in other-age backgrounds or vice versa. Extending the finding to different other-age groups, young adult participants were faster to detect young adult faces in both early adolescent (Experiment 1) and older adult backgrounds (Experiment 2). To investigate whether the own-age detection advantage could be explained by faster categorization and rejection of other-age background faces, participants in experiments 3 and 4 also completed an age categorization task. Relatively faster categorization of other-age faces was related to relatively faster search through other-age backgrounds on target absent trials but not target present trials. These results confirm that other-age faces are more quickly categorized and searched through and that categorization and search processes are related; however, this correlational approach could not confirm or reject the contribution of background face processing to the own-age detection advantage.     

THE PHYSICALIZED MIND AND THE GUT‐BRAIN AXIS: TAKING MENTAL HEALTH OUT OF OUR HEADS

As it becomes increasingly plausible that the mind–brain is explicable in naturalistic terms, science‐and‐religion scholars have the opportunity to engage creatively and proactively with facets of brain‐related research that better inform our understanding of human well‐being. That is, once mental health is recognized as being a whole‐body phenomenon, exciting theological conversations can take place. One fascinating area of research involves the “gut–brain axis,” or the interactive relationship between the microbiome in the gastrointestinal tract (i.e., gut bacteria), the central nervous system, and mental health. A growing body of literature explores the immensely significant interactions between the gut microbiome and mental health issues involving depression, anxiety, gene expression, and stress responses. One's mental health does not occur in a disembodied state, but in a complex physical environment that is strongly influenced by environmental factors, many of which we can control. This article argues that science‐and‐religion can welcome scientific research in this area, creatively incorporating such insights into a theology of mental health and physical well‐being.     

Chess knowledge predicts chess memory even after controlling for chess experience: Evidence for the role of high-level processes

The expertise effect in memory for chess positions is one of the most robust effects in cognitive psychology. One explanation of this effect is that chess recall is based on the recognition of familiar patterns and that experts have learned more and larger patterns. Template theory and its instantiation as a computational model are based on this explanation. An alternative explanation is that the expertise effect is due, in part, to stronger players having better and more conceptual knowledge, with this knowledge facilitating memory performance. Our literature review supports the latter view. In our experiment, a sample of 79 chess players were given a test of memory for chess positions, a test of declarative chess knowledge, a test of fluid intelligence, and a questionnaire concerning the amount of time they had played nontournament chess and the amount of time they had studied chess. We determined the numbers of tournament games the players had played from chess databases. Chess knowledge correlated .67 with chess memory and accounted for 16% of the variance after controlling for chess experience. Fluid intelligence accounted for an additional 13% of the variance. These results support the conclusion that both high-level conceptual processing and low-level recognition of familiar patterns play important roles in memory for chess positions.