Representational neglect for words as revealed by bisection tasks

In the present study, we showed that a representational disorder for words can dissociate from both representational neglect for objects and neglect dyslexia. This study involved 14 brain-damaged patients with left unilateral spatial neglect and a group of normal subjects. Patients were divided into four groups based on presence of left neglect dyslexia and representational neglect for non-verbal material, as evaluated by the Clock Drawing test. The patients were presented with bisection tasks for words and lines. The word bisection tasks (with words of five and seven letters) comprised the following: (1) representational bisection: the experimenter pronounced a word and then asked the patient to name the letter in the middle position; (2) visual bisection: same as (1) with stimuli presented visually; and (3) motor bisection: the patient was asked to cross out the letter in the middle position. The standard line bisection task was presented using lines of different length. Consistent with the literature, long lines were bisected to the right and short lines, rendered comparable in length to the words of the word bisection test, deviated to the left (crossover effect). Both patients and controls showed the same leftward bias on words in the visual and motor bisection conditions. A significant difference emerged between the groups only in the case of the representational bisection task, whereas the group exhibiting neglect dyslexia associated with representational neglect for objects showed a significant rightward bias, while the other three patient groups and the controls showed a leftward bisection bias. Neither the presence of neglect alone nor the presence of visual neglect dyslexia was sufficient to produce a specific disorder in mental imagery. These results demonstrate a specific representational neglect for words independent of both representational neglect and neglect dyslexia.     

The Role of the Listener on the Emotional Valence of Personal Memories in Emerging Adulthood

Many scholars stressed the role of social interactions in the construction of autobiographical memories, especially in late adolescence and emerging adulthood. This paper aims to assess the impact of the listener attitude on narrator’s emotional valence of past life events concerning the end of a close relationship. 157 emerging adults have been asked to recall a memory and to randomly narrate it to a listener previously trained to be distracted and detached (DL group) versus attentive and empathic (AL group). A control group (CG) had only to reflect internally on the recalled memory. Participants had to allocate one or more emotions to their memory from a 12-item list in a recall task, a narrative/reflection task and a 15-day recall follow-up. The percentages of negative, positive and neutral emotions were assessed and changes among the three emotional allocations were measured. Results showed that participants of the AL group after the narrative task increased the positive emotional engagement of memories and decreased the negative emotions in comparison to DL participants and the CG ones. The authors interpret the results suggesting that narrating autobiographical memories to attentive peers is a way to co-construct their emotional meaning and discuss findings in the light of the knowledge on the lifespan period of emerging adulthood.     

Effect of partial occlusion on newborns' face preference and recognition

Many studies have shown that newborns prefer (e.g. Goren, Sarty & Wu, 1975; Valenza, Simion, Macchi Cassia & Umiltà, 1996) and recognize (e.g. Bushnell, Say & Mullin, 1989; Pascalis & de Schonen, 1994) faces. However, it is not known whether, at birth, faces are still preferred and recognized when some of their parts are not visible because hindered by other configurations, that is when faces are partly occluded. Also, it is not known whether newborns' preference for an upright over an inverted face and newborns' face recognition are differentially affected depending on the salience of the occluded face features. Seventy-seven newborns (mean age of 43.5 hrs) were tested using the preferential looking (Experiment 1) and the habituation techniques (Experiment 2). Results demonstrated that newborns prefer and recognize occluded faces even if some portions of them are not available, at least when the hindered features are not salient. On the contrary, these abilities are affected by obscuring high salience facial features (i.e. eyes). However, while in the case of face detection, eyes occlusion completely prevented newborns' face detection, in the case of face recognition an analogous stimulus manipulation heavily impaired, but did not totally preclude, newborns' recognition performance. The data collected improve our comprehension of newborns' way of processing and encoding information to detect and recognize faces.     

Aging and the intrusion superiority effect in visuo-spatial working memory

This study investigated the active component of visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) in younger and older adults testing the hypotheses that elderly individuals have a poorer performance than younger ones and that errors in active VSWM tasks depend, at least partially, on difficulties in avoiding intrusions (i.e., avoiding already activated information). In two experiments, participants were presented with sequences of matrices on which three positions were pointed out sequentially: their task was to process all the positions but indicate only the final position of each sequence. Results showed a poorer performance in the elderly compared to the younger group and a higher number of intrusion (errors due to activated but irrelevant positions) rather than invention (errors consisting of pointing out a position never indicated by the experiementer) errors. The number of errors increased when a concurrent task was introduced (Experiment 1) and it was affected by different patterns of matrices (Experiment 2). In general, results show that elderly people have an impaired VSWM and produce a large number of errors due to inhibition failures. However, both the younger and the older adults' visuo-spatial working memory was affected by the presence of activated irrelevant information, the reduction of the available resources, and task constraints.     

Domain‐specific and domain‐general precursors of mathematical achievement: A longitudinal study from kindergarten to first grade

Background. Many contributing factors, both domain specific and domain general, influence children's performance in school achievement. Aims. This research aims to verify the importance of kindergarten measures of cognitive abilities and numerical competence in the role of predicting mathematical school achievement at the end of first grade. Sample and Methods. A total of 70 children (38 females and 32 males) took part in the study. We tested the children at the beginning of their last year of kindergarten (time 1) on the following cognitive abilities: IQ, phonology, counting skills, verbal short‐term memory, visuo‐spatial short‐term memory, working memory, and processing speed. Then, we tested the same children at end of their last year of kindergarten (time 2) on a measure of numerical competence and at the end of their first year of primary school (time 3) on a test of math achievement. Results. Path analysis models revealed the direct influence of working memory and processing speed on predicting numerical competence in pre‐schoolers and the influence of processing speed and verbal IQ on predicting math achievement in first graders. Moreover, this study found a direct link between numerical competence and math achievement. Conclusions. Both domain‐specific and domain‐general factors contribute to determining math achievement at the end of first grade.     

Disagreement behind the veil of ignorance

In this paper we argue that there is a kind of moral disagreement that survives the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. While a veil of ignorance eliminates sources of disagreement stemming from self-interest, it does not do anything to eliminate deeper sources of disagreement. These disagreements not only persist, but transform their structure once behind the veil of ignorance. We consider formal frameworks for exploring these differences in structure between interested and disinterested disagreement, and argue that consensus models offer us a solution concept for disagreements behind the veil of ignorance.     

Writing Technique Across Psychotherapies—From Traditional Expressive Writing to New Positive Psychology Interventions: A Narrative Review

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy - Writing Therapy (WT) is defined as a process of investigation about personal thoughts and feelings using the act of writing as an instrument, with the aim of...