Visual recognition memory for large and small binary pictures.

Recognition memory for pictures was tested using matrices of 0s and 1s as stimuli in two experiments. In the first experiment dimensionality of matrices was varied (5 X 5 and 10 X 10 matrices). The results showed better recognition memory for 10 X 10 matrices. The second experiment investigated the importance of certain areas, such as center or surround, using 10 X 10 matrices only. The results suggested that neither center nor surround is given unusual weight.     

How Valuable Is It?

The Journal of Value Inquiry -     

Parents’ Beliefs about High School Students’ Spatial Abilities: Gender Differences and Associations with Parent Encouragement to Pursue a STEM Career and Students’ STEM Career Intentions

In the present study, we investigated whether parents’ beliefs about their high school aged adolescents’ spatial abilities (i.e., spatial visualization, mental manipulation, and navigation abilities) differed based on their child’s gender. We also examined whether these beliefs related to parents’ encouragement of their child to pursue a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) career as well as students’ actual STEM major and career intentions. Data were collected from 117 pairs of U.S. high school students and one of their parents. We found that parents of young men thought their child had higher mental manipulation and navigation abilities than did parents of young women, even after statistically controlling for adolescents’ actual spatial abilities. Parents who perceived that their child had higher mental manipulation ability were more likely to encourage their child to pursue a STEM career, and those students were more likely to report that they intended to pursue a STEM career. These findings suggest that parents’ beliefs about how good their child is at spatial tasks may be based more strongly on gender stereotypes than on their child’s actual spatial abilities. Helping to make parents aware of these beliefs could be a potential lever of intervention to increase women’s participation in STEM careers.

     

COVID-19 and Religious Ethics

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID-19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.     

An experimental comparison of Pycnogenol and methylphenidate in adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Twenty-four adults (24 to 53 years old) with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Combined Type, were studied in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study of Pycnogenol and methylphenidate. Pycnogenol is an antioxidant derived from the bark of the French maritime pine tree. Methylphenidate is a standard pharmaceutical intervention for ADHD. Anecdotal reports suggest that Pycnogenol improves concentration in adults with ADHD without adverse side effects. Participants received Pycnogenol, methylphenidate, and placebo, each for three weeks, in a randomized and counterbalanced order. Although ADHD symptoms improved during treatment, neither methylphenidate nor Pycnogenol outperformed the placebo control, as measured by self-report rating scales, rating scales completed by the individual's significant other, and a computerized continuous performance test. The conservative dosage levels and relatively brief length of treatment may have contributed to the absence of significant differences among treatment conditions. Implications for future research are noted.     

Who is exaggerating cognitive impairment and who is not?

This chart review examined the effects of effort on neuropsychological assessment and test performance patterns among genuine and exaggerating patients, with and without neurological findings, as aids to diagnosing symptom exaggeration. The sample consisted of 561 consecutive patients involved in compensation claims. With a flexible neuropsychological test (NPT) battery, the claims were assessed over 2 days. The sample included 303 patients evaluated for traumatic brain injury, 55 patients with neurological disease, and 203 patients assessed for other conditions (eg, depression or chronic pain). An average of 38 ability measures per patient were used to generate an overall NPT domain score. Composite scores were also computed for symptom validity tests, self-report measures of psychiatric symptoms, and memory complaint inventory. Seven NPT cognitive subdomain scores were multiply regressed onto the symptom validity test composite, accounting for 45% of its total variance. Patients were also assigned to Genuine or Exaggerator groups based on symptom validity test performance. The NPT for Exaggerating patients averaged 1.43 standard deviations below that of Genuine patients, suggesting that NPT scores for most Exaggerating patients are underestimates of their true ability. Factor analysis results differed between these groups. As a result, clinicians might avoid falsely identifying genuine patients as exaggerating by incorporating their self-reports of psychiatric symptoms and memory complaints into the diagnostic process.     

On the self-protective nature of inconsistency-negativity management: using the person memory paradigm to examine self-referent memory

How do individuals remember feedback that is inconsistent or negative? According to the inconsistency-negativity resolution model, individuals are motivated to reduce uncertainty and resolve inconsistency even when threat to self is potential. They more deeply process and better remember negative self- than other-referent information. According to the inconsistency-negativity neglect model, individuals are motivated to protect the self against threat. They engage in more shallow processing and remember less negative self- than other-referent information. Participants read and recalled either self- or other-referent mixed-valence information. The neglect model was supported in personality and minimal feedback settings. A chronometric exploration of processing mechanisms and the ruling out of a retrieval interference account clarified aspects of the model. Individuals are hypersensitive to threat potential: They will protect the self against even hypothetical threat.     

Prefrontal brain activity predicts temporally extended decision-making behavior

Although functional neuroimaging studies of human decision-making processes are increasingly common, most of the research in this area has relied on passive tasks that generate little individual variability. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ability of brain activity to predict overt behavior. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying behavior during a dynamic decision task that required subjects to select smaller, short-term monetary payoffs in order to receive larger, long-term gains. The number of trials over which the longterm gains accrued was manipulated experimentally (2 versus 12). Event-related neural activity in right lateral prefrontal cortex, a region associated with high-level cognitive processing, selectively predicted choice behavior in both conditions, whereas insular cortex responded to fluctuations in amount of reward but did not predict choice behavior. These results demonstrate the utility of a functional neuroimaging approach in behavioral psychology, showing that (a) highly circumscribed brain regions are capable of predicting complex choice behavior, and (b) fMRI has the ability to dissociate the contributions of different neural mechanisms to particular behavioral tasks.