Impaired emotion recognition in music in Parkinson’s disease

Music has the potential to evoke strong emotions and plays a significant role in the lives of many people. Music might therefore be an ideal medium to assess emotion recognition. We investigated emotion recognition in music in 20 patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) and 20 matched healthy volunteers. The role of cognitive dysfunction and other disease characteristics in emotion recognition was also evaluated.     

溶栓后PCI,从不行到可行

再灌注治疗STEMI的方法有直接PCI和溶栓。我国各地医疗条件差别较大,只有12%的STEMI患者能够及时接受直接PCI,超过半数的患者仍行溶栓治疗,故溶栓在我国再灌注策略中占有重要地位。虽然溶栓后即刻PCI即易化PCI被证实不如直接PCI,但溶栓并非STEMI治疗的终点。目前国外循证证据显示溶栓后早期转运PCI优于溶栓失败后再转运行补救PCI,值得我国借鉴学习。     

We remember the good things: Age differences in learning and memory

We combined a feedback-based learning task with a recognition memory paradigm to investigate how reward-based learning affects the event-related potential (ERP) correlates of recognition memory in younger and older adults. We found that positive, but not negative learning improves memory and results in an increased early ERP old–new effect, which is typically associated with familiarity-based memory. This indicates that reward-based learning supports a fast and relatively automatic memory retrieval process. Furthermore, we found age-related impairments in reward-based learning, whereas memory for the learned information was intact in the elderly, suggesting that declarative memory might be less affected by aging.     

Violence et qualité de vie : étude de l’effet du genre dans un contexte tunisien

This study aims at a better understanding of concrete violence phenomena and their implication, particularly in matters of men's and women's health and quality of life. Our study was carried out in Tunisia with a sample population of 720 male and female adults from different age groups and various socio-economic contexts. Diverse forms of violence (physical, psychological, and sexual) undergone during different phases of life (childhood, adolescence, and adulthood) were measured in a bid to investigate their linkage with the quality of the population's personal life. The results tend to corroborate that the violence one undergoes at a specific moment in one's life affects the quality of one's personal life. It is more particularly women who are the ones most affected and the quality of their personal lives is of a poor quality in comparison with men's.     

The co-evolution of tools and minds: cognition and material culture in the hominin lineage

The structuring of our environment to provide cues and reminders for ourselves is common: We leave notes on the fridge, we have a particular place for our keys where we deposit them, making them easy to find. We alter our world to streamline our cognitive tasks. But how did hominins gain this capacity? What pushed our ancestors to structure their physical environment in ways that buffered thinking and began the process of using the world cognitively? I argue that the capacity to engage in these behaviours is a by-product of increased tool investment and tool curation, which in turn was necessary because of increasingly heterogeneous environments. The minute tools are carried and cared for, they begin to undergo selection for added functions, becoming available as cognitive primers and as signals. I explore the trajectory of this co-evolutionary feedback loop of hominins and their tools, and demonstrate the role tools have in shaping our thinking.     

Disregarding Preliminary Information When Rating Job Applicants' Performance: Mission Impossible?1

Firms allocate considerable resources to test job applicants' skills and to ensure that hiring decisions are nondiscriminatory. Interpreting selection output in light of preliminary information may undermine the impartiality of personnel selection decisions. In this study, human resource managers were presented preliminary information about a candidate's performance and asked to rate him according to a detailed assessment‐center report of his performance. We examined several interventions for reducing reliance on preliminary information: retrieving assessment‐center information, generating a rating model, or both. Participants (N = 167) excluded preliminary information from the interventions, but relied on it when rating the candidate. The documented failure to control for the effects of preliminary information on subsequent judgments can contribute to improved selection procedures.     

Two‐Step Testing in Employee Selection: Is score inflation a problem?

Unproctored Internet testing in employee selection has become increasingly popular over the past few years. However, there is a concern that cheating during unproctored administrations may influence the test results in terms of score inflation. The current research attempts to determine the extent of cheating on an unproctored Internet test of perceptual speed by analyzing data from a parallel version of the test administered in a proctored setting. Among a sample of 856 job applicants from nine European countries, there was no evidence that cheating occurred. In fact, evidence of an effect operating in the opposite direction was obtained. These results indicate that the use of unproctored Internet testing is appropriate for this type of test.     

Gender Role Ideology as a Moderator of the Relationship between Social Power Tactics and Marital Satisfaction

The study examined whether the Power Interaction Model is applicable for explaining the choice of power tactics in conflict situations among Israeli married couples. In addition, gender role ideology was tested as a moderator of the relationship between power usage and marital satisfaction. Seventy-eight couples reported on self usage and spouse’s usage of power tactic behaviors during conflicts and completed questionnaires assessing marital satisfaction, gender role ideology (traditional, liberal) and demographics. Findings indicated greater agreement within couples for harsh rather than for soft tactic preference. As expected, preference for harsh tactics was associated with lower marital satisfaction yet gender role ideology moderated this association. The role of conflict and power usage in traditional and liberal families was addressed.     

Brain lesion and memory functioning: Short-term memory deficit is independent of lesion location

We analyzed the effects of patterns of brain lesions from penetrating head injuries on memory performance in participants of the Vietnam Head Injury Study (Grafman et al., 1988). Classes of lesion patterns were determined by mixture modeling (L. K. Muthén & B. O. Muthén, 1998-2004). Memory performance was assessed for short-term memory (STM), semantic memory, verbal episodic memory, and visual episodic memory. The striking finding was that large STM deficits were observed in all classes of brain-injured individuals, regardless of lesion location pattern. These effects persist despite frequent concomitant effects of depressive symptomatology and substance dependence. Smaller deficits in semantic memory, verbal episodic memory, and visual episodic memory depended on lesion location, in a manner roughly consistent with the existing neuropsychological literature. The theoretical and clinical implications of the striking, seemingly permanent STM deficits in individuals with penetrating head injuries are discussed.     

Dimensions in data: testing psychological models using state-trace analysis

Cognitive science is replete with fertile and forceful debates about the need for one or more underlying mental processes or systems to explain empirical observations. Such debates can be found in many areas, including learning, memory, categorization, reasoning and decision-making. Multiple-process models are often advanced on the basis of dissociations in data. We argue and illustrate that using dissociation logic to draw conclusions about the dimensionality of data is flawed. We propose that a more widespread adoption of 'state-trace analysis'--an approach that overcomes these flaws--could lead to a re-evaluation of the need for multiple-process models and to a re-appraisal of how these models should be formulated and tested.