Executive functioning in adolescent anorexia nervosa: Neuropsychology versus self- and parental-report

There is limited research concerning the relationship between neuropsychological assessment and self-report of executive functioning in adolescent anorexia nervosa (AN); available studies demonstrate only low to moderate correlations. Therefore, this study examines the association between neuropsychological test performance and self-report in AN. Forty adolescent inpatients with AN completed an extensive neuropsychological assessment, including set-shifting, central coherence, and questionnaires assessing executive functioning in daily life (BRIEF-SR). Their parents filled out an analog version (BRIEF-PF). Statistical analyses revealed low to medium positive and negative correlations between neuropsychological measures and BRIEF subscales. Similarly, self- and parental ratings were only slightly positively correlated, with patients scoring significantly higher than their parents on two subscales. The results support previous findings of modest correlations between self-report and performance-based testing and emphasize the importance of a multiple format assessment of executive functioning in adolescent AN.     

Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) fail to show understanding of means-end connections in a string-pulling task

Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) were tested in four experiments for their understanding of means-end connections. In each of the experiments, the dogs attempted to retrieve a food treat that could be seen behind a barrier and which was connected, via string, to a within-reach wooden block. In the experiments, either one or two strings were present, but the treat was attached only to one string. Successful retrieval of the treat required the animals to pull the appropriate string (either by pawing or by grasping the wooden block in their jaws) until the treat emerged from under the barrier. The results showed that the dogs were successful if the treat was in a perpendicular line to the barrier, i.e. straight ahead, but not when the string was at an angle: in the latter condition, the typical response was a proximity error in that the dogs pawed or mouthed at a location closest in line to the treat. When two strings that crossed were present, the dogs tended to pull on the wrong string. The combined results from the experiments show that, although dogs can learn to pull on a string to obtain food, they do not spontaneously understand means-end connections involving strings.     

Biased reasoning: adaptive responses to health risk feedback

The present study examined reactions toward repeated self-relevant feedback. Participants in a community health screening received feedback about their cholesterol level on two separate occasions. Reactions to the first feedback were examined with regard to feedback valence and expectedness. The findings showed that negative feedback was devalued, but only when it was unexpected. Feedback consistency was incorporated into analyses of the second feedback. Again, results showed that negative feedback was not always devalued-only when it was inconsistent with the first feedback. Furthermore, positive feedback was not unconditionally accepted. When receiving unexpected positive feedback of low consistency, recipients were doubtful about its accuracy. Conversely, expected positive feedback was accepted regardless of its consistency. These results suggest that negative or unexpected positive feedbacks evoke greater sensitivity to feedback consistency, indicating elaborate cognitive processing. Theoretical accounts of these findings are discussed.     

Curiosity about people: the development of a social curiosity measure in adults

Curiosity refers to the desire for acquiring new information. The aim of this study was to develop a questionnaire to assess social curiosity, that is, interest in how other people think, feel, and behave. The questionnaire was administered to 312 participants. Factor analyses of the 10-item Social Curiosity Scale (SCS) yielded 2 factors: General Social Curiosity and Covert Social Curiosity. Evidence of convergent validity was provided by moderately high correlations of the SCS with other measures of curiosity and self-perceived curiosity, whereas discriminant validity was demonstrated by low correlations of the SCS with other personality traits, such as neuroticism and agreeableness. Of interest, social interaction anxiety was observed to facilitate covert social curiosity while inhibiting general social curiosity.     

Do you see what I see? Testing horses’ ability to recognise real-life objects from 2D computer projections

Animal Cognition - The use of 2-dimensional representations (e.g. photographs or digital images) of real-life physical objects has been an important tool in studies of animal cognition. Horses are...     

Information Retrieval in Tip of the Tongue States: New Data and Methodological Advances

Research on Tip of the Tongue (ToT) states has been used to determine whether access to syntactic information precedes access to phonological information. This paper argues that previous studies have used insufficient analyses when investigating the nature of seriality of access. In the first part of this paper, these complex issues are discussed and suitable analyses proposed. In the second part, new experimental data are presented. In Experiment 1, English speakers were asked to give information about mass/count status and initial phoneme of nouns, when in a ToT state. In Experiment 2, German speakers were asked to report grammatical gender and initial phoneme of nouns, when in a ToT state. Evidence that syntactic and phonological information are accessed independently was obtained for both languages. Implications for models of language production and further methodological issues in ToT research are discussed.     

Turning it Upside Down: Areas of Preserved Cognitive Function in Schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia demonstrate marked impairments on most clinical neuropsychological tests. These findings suggest that patients suffer from a generalized form of cognitive impairment, with little evidence of spared performance documented in several large meta-analytic reviews of the clinical literature. In contrast, we review evidence for relative sparing of aspects of attention, procedural memory, and emotional processing observed in studies that have employed experimental approaches adapted from the cognitive and affective neuroscience literature. These islands of preserved performance suggest that the cognitive deficits in schizophrenia are not as general as they appear to be when assayed with clinical neuropsychological methods. The apparent contradiction in findings across methods may offer important clues about the nature of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. The documentation of preserved cognitive function in schizophrenia may serve to sharpen hypotheses about the biological mechanisms that are implicated in the illness.     

Achievement and self-concept of students with learning disabilities

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model by Marsh (Am Educ Res J 23:129–149, 1986) assumes that, besides social comparisons with their classmates, students engage in intraindividual, dimensional comparisons, comparing their own achievement in one subject with their achievement in other subjects. These dimensional comparison processes are assumed to result in negative paths from achievement in one subject (e.g., math) to self-concept in another (e.g., the verbal domain). In a study with N = 270 students, we investigated the generalizability of the I/E model to students with learning disabilities. Analyses showed positive correlations between math and German achievement and positive effects of achievement in both subjects on the corresponding domain-specific self-concept. Verbal and math self-concepts were almost uncorrelated. Moreover, there were negative effects of achievement in one domain on self-concept in the other. Our results therefore indicate that the I/E model can be generalized to students with learning disabilities.     

Can dogs defy gravity? A comparison with the human infant and a non-human primate

We conducted four experiments with 56 adult dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) involving tasks where food was dropped through an opaque tube connected either vertically or diagonally to one of two or three goal boxes. In the first experiment, modelled after studies with children and primates, the dogs first searched significantly more often in the location directly beneath the drop-off point (a gravity bias), although this box was not connected with the tube. These results are comparable to those of human infants and cotton-top tamarins. Experiments 2–4 tested which problem solving strategy the dogs applied to find the food. Results show that they do not understand the physical mechanism of the tube itself, and they apply one of three search strategies: search the gravity box (the one below the drop-off box); search the box in the middle; learn the correct location of the goal box. When the goal box was in the same location the dogs learned to search there over trials, that is, they learned to ‘defy gravity’, but when the location of the goal box changed over trials they showed no learning. These findings are compared with those from human infants and cotton-top tamarins: like these species, the dogs can learn to overcome a gravity bias, but only when the reward is to be found in a consistent location.