Semantic Fluency Performance of Patients with Cortical and Subcortical Neurodegenerative Diseases

Previous studies using the Animals Fluency Test have shown that dementia patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Huntington's disease (HD), or Parkinson's disease (PD) produce fewer correct words and have smaller semantic cluster sizes than controls or PD patients without dementia (PDND). Although the number of correct words generated by the patients with AD was positively correlated with mental status, cluster size, surprisingly, was not. To increase word output and increase the reliability of estimates of cluster size, semantic fluency was reexamined using the Supermarket Fluency Task. Overall, patients with HD or PD with dementia (PDD) exhibited reduced cluster sizes compared to older controls or PDND patients, but cluster sizes were only marginally reduced for patients with AD. These effects were evident only for female participants, because the cluster sizes for elderly control men were substantially smaller than those of elderly women. For the female patients with AD, cluster size was correlated with mental status, but the relationship was nonlinear. Cluster size was normal for mildly demented patients with AD, but much reduced for moderately or severely demented participants. In contrast to a previous report, in the present study the proportion of category labels generated was increased for patients with HD with dementia but not for patients with AD. This finding questions one line of evidence that semantic memory stores undergo “bottom-up” degradation in AD. Together with previous results, these findings indicate that semantic cluster size reflects efficiency of access to semantic knowledge which is similarly compromised in subcortical and cortical diseases.     

Prediction of toddlers’ expressive language from maternal sensitivity and toddlers’ anger expressions: A developmental perspective

Despite evidence for the importance of individual differences in expressive language during toddlerhood in predicting later literacy skills, few researchers have examined individual and contextual factors related to language abilities across the toddler years. Furthermore, a gap remains in the literature about the extent to which the relations of negative emotions and parenting to language skills may differ for girls and boys. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate the associations among maternal sensitivity, children's observed anger reactivity, and expressive language when children were 18 (T1; n = 247) and 30 (T2; n = 216) months. At each age, mothers reported on their toddlers’ expressive language, and mothers’ sensitive parenting behavior was observed during an unstructured free-play task. Toddlers’ anger expressions were observed during an emotion-eliciting task. Using path modeling, results showed few relations at T1. At T2, maternal sensitivity was negatively related to anger, and in turn, anger was associated with lower language skills. However, moderation analyses showed that these findings were significant for boys but not for girls. In addition, T1 maternal sensitivity and anger positively predicted expressive language longitudinally for both sexes. Findings suggest that the relations between maternal sensitivity, anger reactivity and expressive language may vary depending on the child's developmental stage and sex.     

A general factor of personality,social desirability,cognitive ability,and the survey of work styles in an employment selection setting

How a general factor of personality (GFP) correlated with employment screening measures in an applied setting was examined. Participants were 540 adult insurance sales job applicants who completed scales from two personality measures, the five scales from the Survey of Work Styles (SWS), an intelligence measure, and a social desirability scale. A joint factor analysis of the personality questionnaires produced four first order factors. A single GFP was also extracted. Strong correlations were found between some of the personality factors and the SWS scales. Strong significant correlations were found between the GFP and three of the four personality factors with social desirability. Neither the GFP nor the personality factors correlated significantly with cognitive abilities.     

False recollection of the role played by an actor in an event

Two experiments demonstrated that eyewitnesses more frequently associate an actor with the actions of another person when those two people had appeared together in the same event, rather than in different events. This greater likelihood of binding an actor with the actions of another person from the same event was associated with high-confidence recognition judgments and “remember” responses in a remember–know task, suggesting that viewing an actor together with the actions of another person led participants to falsely recollect having seen that actor perform those actions. An analysis of age differences provided evidence that familiarity also contributed to false recognition independently of a false-recollection mechanism. In particular, older adults were more likely than young adults to falsely recognize a novel conjunction of a familiar actor and action, regardless of whether that actor and action were from the same or from different events. Older adults’ elevated rate of false recognition was associated with intermediate confidence levels, suggesting that it stemmed from increased reliance on familiarity rather than from false recollection. The implications of these results are discussed for theories of conjunction errors in memory and of unconscious transference in eyewitness testimony.     

A case of hand waving: Action synchrony and person perception

While previous research has demonstrated that people’s movements can become coordinated during social interaction, little is known about the cognitive consequences of behavioral synchrony. Given intimate links between the systems that regulate perception and action, we hypothesized that the synchronization of movements during a dyadic interaction may prompt increased attention to be directed to an interaction partner, hence facilitate the information that participants glean during a social exchange. Our results supported this prediction. Incidental memories for core aspects of a brief interaction were facilitated following in-phase behavioral synchrony. Specifically, participants demonstrated enhanced memory for an interaction partner’s utterances and facial appearance. These findings underscore the importance of action perception to social cognition.     

Interpersonal consequences of forgiveness: Does forgiveness deter or encourage repeat offenses?

Benefits of forgiveness have been well documented, but past research has not directly addressed the crucial question of whether forgiveness deters or invites repeat transgressions. Our research indicates that expressing forgiveness typically discourages future offenses. In Study 1, participants playing a form of the prisoner’s dilemma game were more likely to repeat their transgressions against unforgiving victims than forgiving victims, especially when victims had no chance to retaliate. In response to a hypothetical scenario presented in Study 2, participants reported that they would be less likely to risk offending someone for a second time if that person had forgiven their first offense. In Study 3, participants’ autobiographical recollections of their prior transgressions revealed that receiving forgiveness predicted higher repentance motivation.     

Binding object features to locations: Does the “spatial congruency bias” update with object movement?

One of the fundamental challenges of visual cognition is how our visual systems combine information about an object’s features with its spatial location. A recent phenomenon related to object–location binding, the “spatial congruency bias,” revealed that two objects are more likely to be perceived as having the same identity or features if they appear in the same spatial location, versus if the second object appears in a different location. The spatial congruency bias suggests that irrelevant location information is automatically encoded with and bound to other object properties, biasing perceptual judgments. Here we further explored this new phenomenon and its role in object–location binding by asking what happens when an object moves to a new location: Is the spatial congruency bias sensitive to spatiotemporal contiguity cues, or does it remain linked to the original object location? Across four experiments, we found that the spatial congruency bias remained strongly linked to the original object location. However, under certain circumstances—for instance, when the first object paused and remained visible for a brief time after the movement—the congruency bias was found at both the original location and the updated location. These data suggest that the spatial congruency bias is based more on low-level visual information than on spatiotemporal contiguity cues, and reflects a type of object–location binding that is primarily tied to the original object location and that may only update to the object’s new location if there is time for the features to be re-encoded and rebound following the movement.     

The strategic control of prospective memory monitoring in response to complex and probabilistic contextual cues

Participants use simple contextual cues to reduce deployment of costly monitoring processes in contexts in which prospective memory (PM) targets are not expected. This study investigated whether this strategic monitoring pattern is observed in response to complex and probabilistic contextual cues. Participants performed a lexical decision task in which words or nonwords were presented in upper or lower locations on screen. The specific condition was informed that PM targets (“tor” syllable) would occur only in words in the upper location, whereas the nonspecific condition was informed that targets could occur in any location or word type. Context was blocked such that word type and location changed every 8 trials. In Experiment 1, the specific condition used the complex contextual cue to reduce monitoring in unexpected contexts relative to the nonspecific condition. This pattern largely was not evidenced when the complex contextual cue was probabilistic (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 confirmed that strategic monitoring is observed for a complex cue that is deterministic, but not one that is probabilistic. Additionally, Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated a disadvantage associated with strategic monitoring—namely, that the specific condition was less likely to respond to a PM target in an unexpected context. Experiment 3 provided evidence that this disadvantage is attributable to impaired noticing of the target. The novel findings suggest use of a complex contextual cue per se is not a boundary condition for the strategic, context-specific allocation of monitoring processes to support prospective remembering; however, strategic monitoring is constrained by the predictive utility of the complex contextual cue.     

Brief experimental analysis of early reading interventions

The purpose of this study was to investigate how brief experimental analyses (BEAs) could be used to identify effective interventions for Kindergartners (2 girls and 2 boys, 5 years and 7-10 months old) with low performance and/or growth slope in letter sound fluency (LSF). Interventions were tested within a multielement design with brief mini-reversals until an intervention yielding at least 20% improvement on a specific subskill measure or a curriculum-based measure of LSF was identified. BEA-identified interventions were implemented one-on-one for 5 to 9 weeks. A multiple-baseline design across participants showed large intervention effects (average adjusted d = 2.4) on general outcome measures, supporting treatment validity of BEAs. Findings extend the BEA literature to younger participants, early reading interventions, and early reading measures.