Long-term memory of haptic and visual information in older adults

ABSTRACT

The present study examined haptic and visual memory capacity for familiar objects through the application of an intentional free-recall task with three-time intervals in a sample of 78 healthy older adults without cognitive impairment. A wooden box and a turntable were used for the presentation of haptic and visual stimuli, respectively. The procedure consisted of two phases, a study phase that consisted of the presentation of stimuli, and a test phase (free-recall task) performed after one hour, one day or one week. The analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) indicated that there was a main effect only for the time intervals (F (2,71) = 12.511, p = .001, η² = 0.261), with a lower recall index for the interval of one week compared to the other intervals. We concluded that the memory capacity between the systems (haptic and visual) is similar for long retrieval intervals (hours to days).     

The Developmental Trajectory of Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Neuroimaging Studies

Neuropsychology Review - This systematic review explored the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the clinical time course of cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) in breast cancer patients...     

BRIEF REPORT Bilinguals' recall and recognition of emotion words

Recall of emotion words is superior to neutral words. Prior work reported in this journal (Anooshian & Hertel, 1994) found that this effect was absent in a second language. Words in a second language may thus lack the emotional associations of words acquired in childhood. To determine whether memory probes may be generally useful for assessing emotionality effects in a first versus a second language, Anooshian and Hertel's paradigm was extended in several ways. Recall was compared to recognition, and a variety of types of emotion words were studied, including taboo terms, and phrases likely to be learned in childhood (reprimands). Superior memory for emotion words was obtained in both the recall and recognition tasks, but this occurred in both the first and second language and indeed was stronger, for some stimuli, in the second language. This suggests that, even for bilingual speakers who acquire their second late (after age 12), words in the second language retain rich emotional associations.     

Team adaptability and task cohesion as resources to the non-linear dynamics of workload and sickness absenteeism in firefighter teams

ABSTRACT

The current study builds on the non-linear Dynamic Systems (NDS) perspective to test the assumption that change in sickness absenteeism is non-linear, and that such change is due to workload, team adaptability and task cohesion. Participants were 37 firefighter teams (n = 250 individuals) from a main European capital city. The research hypotheses were tested using SPSS and the “cusp” package, in the statistical software R. The results suggest that change in sickness absenteeism behaviours over time is non-linear, with the cusp catastrophe model predicting such behaviours better than the linear and logistic models. In our model, task cohesion functions as an asymmetry factor (i.e., the independent variable that determines the strength and discrepancy between the two stable states of the dependent variable) leading to a linear change in sickness absenteeism. Interestingly, both workload and team adaptability function as bifurcation (i.e., the independent variable that determines the change between the two stable states of the order parameter) and asymmetry factors leading to non-linear and linear change in sickness absenteeism over time. This study contributes to the growing evidence that incorporating the NDS perspective enables a better understanding of action teams, namely those working in extreme environments.     

The utilization of visual feedback information during rapid pointing movements

Three experiments were conducted to determine how variables other than movement time influence the speed of visual feedback utilization in a target-pointing task. In Experiment 1, subjects moved a stylus to a target 20 cm away with movement times of approximately 225 msec. Visual feedback was manipulated by leaving the room lights on over the whole course of the movement or extinguishing the lights upon movement initiation, while prior knowledge about feedback availability was manipulated by blocking or randomizing feedback. Subjects exhibited less radial error in the lights-on/blocked condition than in the other three conditions. In Experiment 2, when subjects were forced to use vision by a laterally displacing prism, it was found that they benefited from the presence of visual feedback regardless of feedback uncertainty even when moving very rapidly (e.g. less than 190 msec). In Experiment 3, subjects pointed with and without a prism over a wide variety of movement times. Subjects benefited from vision much earlier in the prism condition. Subjects seem able to use vision rapidly to modify aiming movements but may do so only when the visual information is predictably available and/or yields an error large enough to detect early enough to correct.