A dissociation between the sense of familiarity and access to semantic information concerning familiar people

In the current study we examined the relationship between working memory capacity, inhibition/susceptibility to interference and fluid intelligence, measured by the Raven's Progressive Matrices (PM38), comparing groups of young (aged 18–35), young-old (aged 65–74), and old-old (aged 75–86) participants. Groups were administered two working memory tasks tapping into different mechanisms involved in working memory. The ability to control for irrelevant information was measured both considering memory errors (intrusion errors) in a working memory task and an index of susceptibility to interference obtained with a variant of the Brown-Peterson task. Regression analyses showed that the classical working memory measure was the most potent predictors of the Raven's score. Susceptibility to interference and intrusions errors contributed, but to a lower extent, to the Raven explained variance. These results confirm that working memory shares cognitive aspects with the fluid intelligence measure considered, whereas the role of inhibition to Raven scores is still in need of better evidence.     

Challenges of organizational learning: perpetuation of discrimination against employees with disabilities

This article examines why organizations struggle with learning how to prevent discrimination against their employees with disabilities. To explore this issue, qualitative archival data were collected and analyzed from 53 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) lawsuits filed against 44 organizations. Theoretical analysis of the qualitative data suggests that several organizationally based learning theories explain the difficulty organizations have with creating a disability-friendly work environment. These barriers to learning are embedded in complex defense mechanisms and discriminatory organizational routines. Furthermore, organizations have difficulties engaging in higher-order and vicarious learning. We conclude the article with examples of successful learning practices as they relate to barriers identified in the qualitative analysis.     

Coping Self-Efficacy as a Mediator of Distress Following a Natural Disaster

Social-cognitive theory and conservation-of-resources theory were utilized to understand individual differences in psychological response to natural disaster. Coping self-efficacy, lost resources, social support, and optimism were assessed along with demographic variables in predicting distress following Hurricane Opal. Participants included 67 residents of Okaloosa County, Florida. Multiple regression analyses indicated that coping self-efficacy was the strongest predictor of general distress and trauma-related distress. Loss of resources and gender were also important predictors of general distress. Path analyses demonstrated that lost resources directly influenced general distress, social support, optimism, and coping self-efficacy. These analyses also indicated that coping self-efficacy perceptions mediated the relationships between loss of resources and trauma-related distress, social support and both trauma and general distress, and optimism and both types of distress. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

The intermodal representation of speech in newborns

It has been proposed that speech is specified by the eye, the ear, and even the skin. Kuhl and Meltzoff (1984) showed that 4-month-olds could lip-read to an extent. Given the age of the infants, it was not clear whether this was a learned skill or a by-product of the primary auditory process. This paper presents evidence that neonate infants (less than 33 h) show virtually identical patterns of intermodal interaction as do 4-month-olds. Since they are neonates, it is unlikely that learning was involved. The results indicate that human speech is specified by both eye and ear at an age when built-in structural sensitivities provide the most plausible explanation.     

Properties of cognitive maps constructed from texts

Subjects in three experiments read texts describing the locations of landmarks in a fictitious town. Later they drew sketch maps and verified sentences describing the relative locations of the landmarks. We predicted that subjects would develop mental models of the town that were organized around important landmarks (“anchors”), as are cognitive maps constructed through real-world navigation. More specifically, we expected that landmarks used in the text as reference points for describing the locations of some other landmarks would emerge as anchors in the subjects’ cognitive maps and would consequently be recalled more accurately. Results showed that subjects represented such reference-point landmarks more accurately than they did the locations of other landmarks. This effect was independent of: (1) the perspective from which the text was written (route or survey); (2) whether or not a map was present at learning; (3) the order of information in the text (linear or anchors-first), and (4) the amount of information available to the subjects while drawing sketch maps (the full text, the landmark names only, or no information).     

Do maternal power assertive discipline and warmth interact to influence toddlers' emotional reactivity and noncompliance?

Emotional and behavioural self-regulation emerges during infancy and toddlerhood and is heavily influenced by parenting. Parents facilitate toddlers' behavioural regulation (e.g., compliance) by using appropriate control with warmth and managing children's emotional reactivity during situational demands. In contrast, power assertive discipline may strain children's regulatory skills, for example by evoking toddlers' negative affect. However, we have more to learn about how discipline relates to toddlers' self-regulation in the moment and whether concurrent displays of parental warmth may moderate these relations. Mother–toddler dyads (N = 74, M_age = 13.30 months) from low-to-middle income Turkish families participated in a 3-min laboratory task, in which toddlers needed to delay playing with an attractive toy. Maternal discipline, warmth, toddler's emotional reactivity, and noncompliance were coded from observations. Results showed that higher power assertive discipline was associated with more frequent emotional reactivity in toddlers whose mothers' showed warmth during the <84% of the task duration. Maternal warmth was negatively associated with child noncompliance, but warmth did not interact with power assertive discipline in relation to noncompliance. Results suggest that observed power assertive discipline is meaningfully related to toddlers' emotional reactivity and higher levels of expressed maternal warmth attenuates these relations.     

A double-blind,sham-controlled,trial of home-administered rhythmic 10-Hz median nerve stimulation for the reduction of tics,and suppression of the urge-to-tic,in individuals with Tourette syndrome and chronic tic disorder

Tourette syndrome (TS) and chronic tic disorder (CTD) are neurological disorders of childhood onset characterized by the occurrence of tics; repetitive, purposeless, movements or vocalizations of short duration which can occur many times throughout a day. Currently, effective treatment for tic disorders is an area of considerable unmet clinical need. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a home-administered neuromodulation treatment for tics involving the delivery of rhythmic pulse trains of median nerve stimulation (MNS) delivered via a wearable ‘watch-like’ device worn at the wrist. We conducted a UK-wide parallel double-blind sham-controlled trial for the reduction of tics in individuals with tic disorder. The device was programmed to deliver rhythmic (10 Hz) trains of low-intensity (1–19 mA) electrical stimulation to the median nerve for a pre-determined duration each day, and was intended to be used by each participant in their home once each day, 5 days each week, for a period of 4 weeks. Between 18th March 2022 and 26th September 2022, 135 participants (45 per group) were initially allocated, using stratified randomization, to one of the following groups; active stimulation; sham stimulation or to a waitlist (i.e. treatment as usual) control group. Recruited participants were individuals with confirmed or suspected TS/CTD aged 12 years of age or upward with moderate to severe tics. Researchers involved in the collection or processing of measurement outcomes and assessing the outcomes, as well as participants in the active and sham groups and their legal guardians were all blind to the group allocation. The primary outcome measure used to assess the ‘offline’ or treatment effect of stimulation was the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale–Total Tic Severity Score (YGTSS–TTSS) assessed at the conclusion of 4 weeks of stimulation. The primary outcome measure used to assess the ‘online’ effects of stimulation was tic frequency, measured as the number of tics per minute (TPM) observed, based upon blind analysis of daily video recordings obtained while stimulation was delivered. The results demonstrated that after 4-week stimulation, tic severity (YGTSS-TTSS) had reduced by 7.1 points (35 percentile reduction) for the active stimulation group compared to 2.13/2.11 points for the sham stimulation and waitlist control groups. The reduction in YGTSS–TTSS for the active stimulation group was substantially larger, clinically meaningful (effect size = .5) and statistically significant (p = .02) compared to both the sham stimulation and waitlist control groups, which did not differ from one another (effect size = −.03). Furthermore, blind analyses of video recordings demonstrated that tic frequency (tics per minute) reduced substantially (−15.6 TPM) during active stimulation compared to sham stimulation (−7.7 TPM). This difference represents a statistically significant (p < .03) and clinically meaningful reduction in tic frequency (>25 percentile reduction: effect size = .3). These findings indicate that home-administered rhythmic MNS delivered through a wearable wrist-worn device has the potential to be an effective community-based treatment for tic disorders.     

Water contaminant levels interact with parenting environment to predict development of depressive symptoms in adolescents

Contaminants in drinking water, such as lead, nitrate, and arsenic, have been linked to negative physical health outcomes. We know less, however, about whether such pollutants also predict mental health problems and, if so, the conditions under which such effects are strongest. In this longitudinal study, we examined whether drinking water contaminants interact with negative family environments (parental psychological control) to predict changes in depressive symptoms in 110 adolescents—a developmental period when symptoms often first emerge. We found that for adolescents in psychologically controlling families, levels of drinking water contaminants prospectively predicted depressive symptoms 2 years later; this effect was not present in adolescents in non‐controlling families. Importantly, these associations were not accounted for by family‐ or community‐level socioeconomic resources, demographic features, or by the adolescents’ stress exposure. These findings highlight the interplay of physical and psychological environments in influencing depressive symptoms in adolescents. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/thBV-DwnGcY