Perseveration in Normal Aging: A Comparison of Perseveration Rates on Design Fluency and Verbal Generative Tasks

Three generative tasks (design generation, animal naming, words starting with m) from the Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test were administered to 73 healthy individuals in four age groups (18–39, 40–59, 60–74, 75–88) and scored for perseveration and productivity. Perseveration rates for design generation were significantly higher, and increased linearly as a function of age. The number of individuals who perseverated at least once on design generation also increased linearly, with highest prevalence in the oldest group. No age effects were found for perseveration on the verbal naming tasks. Perseverations across tasks were independent of one another. The design generation task may require multiple simultaneous processing skills, placing more demand on compromised executive processing in the elderly.     

Editorial Political Cartoons in Australia: Social Representations & and the Visual Depiction of Essentialism

Six million migrants from over 170 countries have resettled in Australia since 1945 ensuring religious diversity is now a hallmark of Australia’s population. However, not all religious groups are perceived in the same way. In this paper, we explore how representational processes differentially essentialise religious groups, in particular how some groups are ascribed an underlying nature that irrevocably defines who they are and how they will behave, whilst other groups are conveyed merely as coherent entities with similarity in goals and structure. We elucidate this through an analysis of the depiction of religious markers in Australian Editorial political cartoons. We mirror the near-exclusive focus on the Muslim and Christian religions, in the religious cartoons we sampled, to present an analysis of 6 exemplar cartoons. Drawing from visual analysis techniques (van Leeuwen 2001) and social representations theory (Moscovici 1984) we highlight how essentialist perceptions of religious groups are unwittingly fostered in everyday media communications. We discuss the implications of our analysis for the transnationalisation of religion.     

What people believe about memory

Two representative samples of adult Norwegians (n=2000) were asked a set of general and specific questions regarding their beliefs and opinions about human memory. The results indicate that on many questions, such as time of the earliest memories, inhibiting effects of collaboration, and memory for dramatic versus ordinary events, the views of the general public concurred with current research findings, and people in general had realistic views about their own memory performance. On other questions, such as the reliability of olfactory as compared with visual and auditory memory, the memory of small children in comparison with that of adults, the likelihood of repression of adult traumatic memories, and on more general questions such as the possibility of training memory and the capacity limitations of long-term memory, a large proportion of the participants expressed views that are less supported by scientific evidence. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Case study of the gender earnings gap: a longitudinal analysis of cohort data of same‐department graduates at a small liberal arts college

Consistent with similarly conducted studies, the authors found that within a fixed group of men and women, women's salaries fell behind those of men sometime in the later years of their careers. The data and analysis show that the gender‐based wages of the participants in this study diverged quickly after graduation from college, suggesting that men and women make career decisions early, well before children appear in their lives. Those decisions are affected by both labor market discrimination and gender socialization among the participants in this study.     

Exploring the Value of the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory–3 for Predicting Attrition and Recidivism Among Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence

This study explored the potential value of the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory–3 (SASSI‐3; F. G. Miller & Lazowski, 1999 ) as a means of predicting program attrition and recidivism among perpetrators of intimate partner violence, concluding that the SASSI‐3 is not an adequate predictor.     

The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to PTSD,Depression, Poly-Drug Use and Suicide Attempt in Reservation-Based Native American Adolescents and Young Adults

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with numerous risk behaviors and mental health outcomes among youth. This study examines the relationship between the number of types of exposures to ACEs and risk behaviors and mental health outcomes among reservation‐based Native Americans. In 2011, data were collected from Native American (N = 288; 15–24 years of age) tribal members from a remote plains reservation using an anonymous web‐based questionnaire. We analyzed the relationship between six ACEs, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, physical and emotional neglect, witness to intimate partner violence, for those <18 years, and included historical loss associated symptoms, and perceived discrimination for those <19 years; and four risk behavior/mental health outcomes: post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depression symptoms, poly‐drug use, and suicide attempt. Seventy‐eight percent of the sample reported at least one ACE and 40 % reported at least two. The cumulative impact of the ACEs were significant (p < .001) for the four outcomes with each additional ACE increasing the odds of suicide attempt (37 %), poly‐drug use (51 %), PTSD symptoms (55 %), and depression symptoms (57 %). To address these findings culturally appropriate childhood and adolescent interventions for reservation‐based populations must be developed, tested and evaluated longitudinally.     

Gating Out Misinformation: Can Young Children Follow Instructions to Ignore False Information?

The current study investigated the effects of misinformation on children's memory reports after practice with the logic-of-opposition instruction at time of test. Four- and 6-year-old children participated in a play event in Session 1. During a two-week delay, parents presented their children with either misinformation or correct information about the play event. Prior to a memory interview in Session 2, some misled children were given a developmentally appropriate logic-of-opposition instruction to not report information provided by their parents. Results indicated that children were misled by the incorrect information, but that the logic-of-opposition instruction aided in the children's retrieval of the original memory, particularly for the 6-year-olds. Implications of the results for memory malleability and social demand effects in children are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An unusual presentation of probable dementia: Rhyming,associations, and verbal disinhibition

We report a case of probable Alzheimer's disease who presented with the unusual feature of disinhibited rhyming. Core language skills were largely intact but generative language was characterized by semantic‐based associations, evident in tangential and associative content, and phonology‐based associations, evident in rhyming, in the context of prominent executive dysfunction. We suggest this pattern is underpinned by a failure to terminate or inhibit verbal associations resulting in a ‘loosening’ of associations at the level of conceptual preparation for spoken language.