The link between deductive reasoning and mathematics

ABSTRACT

Recent studies have shown that deductive reasoning skills (including transitive and conditional inferences) are related to mathematical abilities. Nevertheless, so far the links between mathematical abilities and these two forms of deductive inference have not been investigated in a single study. It is also unclear whether these inference forms are related to both basic maths skills and mathematical reasoning, and whether these relationships still hold if the effects of fluid intelligence are controlled. We conducted a study with 87 adult participants. The results showed that transitive reasoning skills were related to performance on a number line task, and conditional inferences were related to arithmetic skills. Additionally, both types of deductive inference were related to mathematical reasoning skills, although transitive and conditional reasoning ability were unrelated. Our results also highlighted the important role that ordering abilities play in mathematical reasoning, extending findings regarding the role of ordering abilities in basic maths skills. These results have implications for the theories of mathematical and deductive reasoning, and they could inspire the development of novel educational interventions.     

Peer-Based Interventions on Academic Integrity: Assessing Immediate and Long Term Learning

The current study extends previous literature regarding the effectiveness of learning about academic integrity through peer instruction by assessing the impact of a peer instructional approach for actual and perceived learning gains over time. One trained residence don provided one interactive 30-min presentation covering four major aspects of academic integrity and misconduct (i.e., definition, detection, consequences, and importance of academic integrity) to groups of undergraduate students. In total, 192 participants attended the workshop and were surveyed for their knowledge of academic integrity immediately before the presentation, immediately after the presentation, and after a four week delay. Perceptions regarding the presentation also were assessed. Consistent with previous literature, results indicate perceived learning gains and preference for having an interactive presentation delivered by a residence don. In addition, actual gains in knowledge were found immediately after the presentation and gains remained evident over a four-week delay. Outcomes suggest that peer instruction is a viable and effective approach for educating students about academic integrity.     

Utility of a CPT in Diagnosing ADHD among a Representative Sample of High-Risk Children: A Cautionary Study

Continuous performance tests (CPTs) are widely used in the assessment and study of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Although CPTs have reliably found differences between children with ADHD and normal controls, discriminating between children with ADHD and children with subclinical levels of behavioral or cognitive problems is a more clinically relevant and difficult endeavor. Additionally, most studies use convenience samples from clinical care settings that may not represent the ADHD population as a whole. The current study assessed the utility of a clinically used CPT, the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA), in distinguishing between children with ADHD and children with subclinical levels of attention/behavior problems. Participants constituted a representative sample of elementary school students at high risk for ADHD, including 116 children with ADHD and 51 subclinical controls. Results found no significant differences between the ADHD and subclinical group on CPT variables, and CPT performance did not reliably predict group membership. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Neuropsychological and adaptive functioning in younger versus older children shunted for early hydrocephalus

Previous research on children with hydrocephalus has not carefully examined age-related changes in neuropsychological and behavioral status. We present data on 28 children with early hydrocephalus and spina bifida who were studied in two age groups: 5 - 7.5 and 9 - 12.5 years. Age-related differences in language, memory, visuomotor skills, and adaptive behaviors were examined. Consistent with other studies, the total sample showed impaired motor, performance, verbal, communication, and learning skills. Comparisons between older and younger children showed: (1) except for memory, neuropsychological patterns of functioning were generally comparable across the age groups, and (2) older children demonstrated more difficulty on specific adaptive functions (socialization, learning, conduct). Shunted hydrocephalic children may be conceptualized as exhibiting the syndrome of nonverbal learning disabilities. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Effects of retrieval practice and presentation modality on verbal learning: testing the limits of the testing effect

ABSTRACT

The testing effect refers to improved memory after retrieval practice and has been researched primarily with visual stimuli. In two experiments, we investigated whether the testing effect can be replicated when the to-be-learned information is presented auditorily, or visually?+?auditorily. Participants learned Swahili-English word pairs in one of three presentation modalities – visual, auditory, or visual?+?auditory. This was manipulated between-participants in Experiment 1 and within-participants in Experiment2. All participants studied the word pairs during three study trials. Half of participants practiced recalling the English translations in response to the Swahili cue word twice before the final test whereas the other half simply studied the word pairs twice more. Results indicated an improvement in final test performance in the repeated test condition, but only in the visual presentation modality (Experiments 1 and 2) and in the visual?+?auditory presentation modality (Experiment 2). This suggests that the benefits of practiced retrieval may be limited to information presented in a visual modality.     

Neuropsychological Impairments Associated with Resolution of Cortical Blindness Following Cyclosporine Neurotoxicity in Childhood

A reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy, associated with cortical blindness, has been reported in both adults and children treated with Cyclosporine. The present study reports neuropsychological findings in a 6-year-old male, who received an allogenic bone marrow transplant and Cyclosporine treatment. Although visual acuity and neuro-opthalmological findings were normal 6 days after the onset of cortical blindness, neuropsychological findings indicated residual deficits suggestive of achromatopsia, and impairments in visuospatial perception, visual memory, resolution of figure-ground relationships, facial recognition, and visual cognitive functions requiring imagery. Thirty days after the onset of symptoms, neuropsychological findings continued to demonstrate abnormalities in the use of color to resolve form, and impaired performance on measures which required visual imagery to provide figural closure.     

Verbal Memory Abilities of Children With Brain Tumors

Several critical neuroanatomical structures and pathways for memory performance are located in the third ventricle region. This led us to predict that verbal memory abilities would be more impaired in children treated for third ventricle tumors compared to those treated for cerebellar tumors. Archival data was obtained from 24 pediatric patients with third ventricle region tumors and 18 pediatric patients with cerebellar tumors. Neuroradiological verifications of tumor involvement and hydrocephalus severity (i.e., Evans Index) on preoperative scans and MRIs proximal to the time of the neuropsychological evaluation were conducted. The potential confounds of hydrocephalus severity, seizure medication, age, radiation treatment, and chemotherapy were addressed. Verbal IQ was comparable between tumor groups and in the Average range. The third ventricle region group performed significantly worse on list learning and delayed list recall compared to the cerebellar group. Their mean performance was in the clinically impaired range on both trials. The third ventricle region tumor group performed better than the cerebellar tumor group on Digit Span, a basic repetition, attention span task. These findings support the hypothesis that pediatric patients with third ventricle region brain tumors are more likely to be impaired on verbal recall tasks compared to pediatric patients with cerebellar brain tumors. In contrast, patients who were treated for cerebellar tumors were more impaired on the basic repetition, attention span task compared to patients who were treated for third ventricle tumors. Future studies should examine the specific neuroanatomical structures and pathways that are damaged and may influence differential cognitive impairments in children.     

Stimulus design is an obstacle course: 560 matched literal and metaphorical sentences for testing neural hypotheses about metaphor

Despite the ubiquity and importance of metaphor in thought and communication, its neural mediation remains elusive. We suggest that this uncertainty reflects, in part, stimuli that have not been designed with recent conceptual frameworks in mind or that have been hampered by inadvertent differences between metaphoric and literal conditions. In this article, we begin addressing these shortcomings by developing a large, flexible, extensively normed, and theoretically motivated set of metaphoric and literal sentences. On the basis of the results of three norming studies, we provide 280 pairs of closely matched metaphoric and literal sentences that are characterized along 10 dimensions: length, frequency, concreteness, familiarity, naturalness, imageability, figurativeness, interpretability, valence, and valence judgment reaction time. In addition to allowing for control of these potentially confounding lexical and sentential factors, these stimuli are designed to address questions about the role of novelty, metaphor type, and sensory-motor grounding in determining the neural basis of metaphor comprehension. Supplemental data for this article may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals .org/content/supplemental.     

Personality and politics: introduction to the special issue

This special issue of Journal of Personality brings together 10 original articles addressing the intersection of personality and politics. Articles build on classic traditions in political psychology by presenting both idiographic and nomothetic work on the motivational, cognitive, ideological, attitudinal, and identity correlates of many different aspects of political behavior. This work is used to understand political activism and leadership as well as everyday political behavior. We hope this collection of articles will inspire our readers to explore new investigations in personality and political psychology.