Mental models in propositional reasoning and working memory's central executive

We examine the role of working memory's central executive in the mental model explanation of propositional reasoning by using two working memory measures: the classical “reading span” test by Daneman and Carpenter (1980 Daneman, M. and Carpenter, P. A. 1980. Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19: 450–466. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and a new measure. This new “reasoning span” measure requires individuals to solve very simple anaphora problems, and store and remember the word solution in a growing series of inferential problems. We present one experiment in which we check the involvement of the central executive in conditional and disjunctive inference tasks and compare predictions of the new reasoning span test with those of the classical reading span test. The results of the experiment confirm that reasoning responses, which according to mental model theory require high cognitive work, are predicted by working memory measures. Results also show that some reasoning responses are probably obtained by means of superficial biases or strategies that do not load working memory. The reasoning span test, which involves the central executive to a greater degree, predicts reasoning performance better than the reading span test. The significance and possibilities of the new measure in studying reasoning are discussed.     

Follower need for cognitive closure as moderator of the effectiveness of leader procedural fairness

Leader procedural fairness is an important factor in leadership effectiveness, but the study of the contingencies of its influence is still in its infancy. Addressing this issue we focus on the moderating role of follower need for cognitive closure, the disposition to reduce uncertainty and swiftly reach closure in judgement and decision. We propose that need for closure captures followers sensitivity to the uncertainty-reducing influence of leader procedural fairness. Across three studies designed to yield complementary evidence (two surveys and a scenario experiment), we find support for the hypothesis that perceived leader procedural fairness has a stronger (positive) relationship with leadership effectiveness for followers higher in need for closure. This support is found across a variety of indicators reflecting different aspects of leadership effectiveness: effort and performance, social identification, job satisfaction, and leader evaluations. We discuss how these findings advance our understanding of the uncertainty-reducing role of leader fairness.     

A set of high quality colour images with Spanish norms for seven relevant psycholinguistic variables: The Nombela naming test

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a new corpus of 140 high quality colour images belonging to 14 subcategories and covering a range of naming difficulty. One hundred and six Spanish speakers named the items and provided data for several psycholinguistic variables: age of acquisition, familiarity, manipulability, name agreement, typicality and visual complexity. Furthermore, we also present lexical frequency data derived internet search hits. Apart from the large number of variables evaluated, these stimuli present an important advantage with respect to other comparable image corpora in so far as naming performance in healthy individuals is less prone to ceiling effect problems. Reliability and validity indexes showed that our items display similar psycholinguistic characteristics to those of other corpora. In sum, this set of ecologically valid stimuli provides a useful tool for scientists engaged in cognitive and neuroscience-based research.     

Young Tennis Players’ Competitive Task Involvement and Performance: The Role of Goal Orientations,Contextual Motivational Climate,And Coach-Initiated Motivational Climate

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of situational and dispositional factors in contributing to competitive task involvement and performance in young tennis players. One hundred fifty-one adolescent tennis players and their coaches participated in the study. Participants responded to instruments measuring pre-game dispositional goal orientations and perceptions of the motivational climate and post-game task involvement in the competition by assessing concentration, loss of self-consciousness, and autotelic experience, perceptions of coach-initiated motivational climate in competition, and self-evaluation of game performance. In addition, coaches evaluated the players’ performance. Results showed that task involvement was predicted by players’ perceptions of a coach-initiated learning motivational climate in competition. Loss of self-consciousness was predicted by the players’ perceptions of a coach-initiated performance climate in competition. Finally, coaches’ and players’ assessment of performance were predicted by autotelic experience, concentration, and by perception of coach-initiated learning and performance orientation in competition.     

Return of Genetic Results in the Familial Dilated Cardiomyopathy Research Project

The goal of the Familial Dilated Cardiomyopathy (FDC) Research Project, initiated in 1993, has been to identify and characterize FDC genetic cause. All participating individuals have been consented for the return of genetic results, an important but challenging undertaking. Since the inception of the Project we have enrolled 606 probands, and 269 of these had 1670 family members also enrolled. Each subject was evaluated for idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDC) and pedigrees were categorized as familial or sporadic. The coding regions of 14 genes were resequenced in 311 to 324 probands in five studies. Ninety-two probands were found to carry nonsynonymous rare variants absent in controls, and with Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment of 1988 (CLIA) compliant protocols, relevant genetic results were returned to these probands and their consented relatives by study genetic counselors and physicians in 353 letters. In 10 of the 51 families that received results >1 year ago, at least 23 individuals underwent CLIA confirmation testing for their family’s rare variant. Return of genetic results has been successfully undertaken in the FDC Research Project. This report describes the methods utilized in the process of returning research results. We use this information as a springboard for providing guidance to other genetic research groups and proposing future directions in this arena.     

Performance of an Adapted Version of the Timed Up-and-Go Test in People with Cognitive Impairments

In clinical practice, older people with cognitive impairment may have difficulties to understand the instructions of the Timed Up-and-Go (TUGT) test and present a bad performance. The purpose of this study was to identify differences in the TUGT performance, in an adapted version, between older adults with preserved cognition (PC), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), and to identify the association between the adapted TUGT performance and cognition among groups. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 118 community-dwelling older adults divided in three groups: PC (n?=?40), MCI (n?=?40) and AD (n?=?38). The evaluation was composed by the adapted TUGT and cognitive assessment (Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination and Frontal Assessment Battery). Only the cadence of TUGT presented significant difference between groups, specifically between AD versus MCI and PC groups. The main correlations were found between time of TUGT with fluency domain and global cognitive function, especially in the AD Group. The findings contribute to the understanding of how cognition interferes on functional mobility in older people with MCI and AD. The adapted TUGT is easy to perform in clinical practice and can be useful when assessing mobility in people with cognitive impairment.     

The Impact of Abuse and Learning Difficulties on Emotion Understanding in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

Children's affective experiences and cognitive abilities have an impact on emotion understanding. However, their relative contribution, as well as the possibility of an interaction between them, has rarely been examined. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the influence of severe abuse and learning difficulties on simple and complex components of emotion understanding in late childhood and early adolescence. A total of 28 older children and young adolescents were selected for the study. Half of the participants had suffered from severe abuse, and half of these abused children additionally had learning disabilities. The remaining half of the sample had no history of abuse but were matched with the abused children on learning difficulties, age and gender. The participants’ emotion understanding was assessed with the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC). Results showed that (a) learning difficulties but not abuse had an impact on emotion understanding, (b) there was no interaction effect of abuse and learning difficulties on emotion understanding, and (b) the observed effects of learning difficulties were most apparent for the understanding of relatively complex components of emotion and not for simple components. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.     

Emotion Comprehension: The Impact of Nonverbal Intelligence

A substantial body of research has established that emotion understanding develops throughout early childhood and has identified three hierarchical developmental phases: external, mental, and reflexive. The authors analyzed nonverbal intelligence and its effect on children's improvement of emotion understanding and hypothesized that cognitive level is a consistent predictor of emotion comprehension. In all, 366 children (182 girls, 184 boys) between the ages of 3 and 10 years were tested using the Test of Emotion Comprehension and the Coloured Progressive Matrices. The data obtained by using the path analysis model revealed that nonverbal intelligence was statistically associated with the ability to recognize emotions in the 3 developmental phases. The use of this model showed the significant effect that cognitive aspect plays on the reflexive phase. The authors aim to contribute to the debate about the influence of cognitive factors on emotion understanding.     

What COP and Kinematic Parameters Better Characterize Postural Control in Standing Balance Tasks?

The authors’ aim was to determine which variables allow for the characterization of motor balance behavior. Traditional measures and nonlinear measures of center of pressure (COP; n = 30) and kinematics (n = 10) were tested in their absolute and relative consistency in a 30-s standing balance task protocol under stable and unstable conditions. Regarding COP variables, mean velocity (mVel), permutation entropy (PE) and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) exhibited high consistency between trials and ranked individuals more accurately compare with other metrics. In the kinematic signal mVel, PE and DFA had good intrasession reliability values in unstable conditions. Overall, the intrasession reliability values were better in the unstable condition than in the stable condition and the measures calculated using derived data had better intrasession reliability values. In conclusion, mVel, PE, and DFA allow for the good characterization of motor balance behavior in a simplified protocol where velocity time series are analyzed.     

The Cognitive Effectiveness of Subtitle Processing

In an experimental study, we analyzed the cognitive processing of a subtitled film excerpt by adopting a methodological approach based on the integration of a variety of measures: eye-movement data, word recognition, and visual scene recognition. We tested the hypothesis that the processing of subtitled films is cognitively effective: It leads to a good understanding of film content without requiring a significant tradeoff between image processing and text processing. Following indications in the psycholinguistic literature, we also tested the hypothesis that two-line subtitles whose segmentation is syntactically incoherent can have a disruptive effect on information processing and recognition performance. The results highlighted the effectiveness of subtitle processing: Regardless of the quality of line segmentation, participants had a good understanding of the film content, they achieved good levels of performance in both word and scene recognition, and no tradeoff between text and image processing was detected. Eye-movement analyses enabled a further characterization of cognitive processing during subtitled film viewing. This article discusses the theoretical implications of the findings for both subtitling and multiple-source communication and highlights their methodological and applied implications.