Age,skill, and contextual cuing in target detection

This study examined the extent to which structural regularities inherent in visual arrays help to guide target detection and reduce age-related differences in skilled visual search performance. The target-detection performance of medical laboratory technologists in 2 age groups (M = 24.3 years and M = 49.0 years) and age-matched novices was assessed using images of bacterial morphology taken from Gram's stain photomicrographs as targets and search arrays. For skilled observers, response times were longer for middle-aged adults than for young adults except when external location cues were available, or when contextual cues inherent in the array were available to guide target detection. These results demonstrate that contextual information aids the skilled search of middle-aged experts, and suggest that contextual cuing is 1 means by which middle-aged adults can circumvent the effects of normally age-deficient processes on performance in a skilled domain.     

Characterizing adult cognitive development

A paradigm of adult cognitive development is elaborated that is derived from concepts inherent in the study of consistency and change during the adult years. It is argued that the antecedents and consequences of adult cognition are substantially different from those that pertain to earlier growth-oriented developmental periods and to later decline-oriented periods. Adult cognition and its development are characterized in terms of adaptive competencies in specific domains, elasticity of function within selected domains, and knowledge encapsulation. Another major characteristic of adult development is that knowledge and computation are integrated or encapsulated with experience and use. It is suggested that these characteristics serve to distinguish adult cognitive development from the discontinuous emerging properties of earlier cognitive development and from the general deficiencies of cognitive function that are characteristic of very late life.     

Social Discrimination in a Personnel Selection Context: The Effects of an Authority's Instruction to Discriminate and Followers' Authoritarianism1

Social discrimination in a personnel‐selection context was studied using an in‐basket exercise. West German participants had to select personnel from an applicant pool that included West German applicants (in‐group members) and East German applicants (out‐group members). As predicted, we found a main effect for an authority's instruction to discriminate against out‐group members. This main effect was, as predicted, qualified by an Instruction Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) interaction effect. Only high scorers on RWA discriminated against out‐group members when instructed to do so.     

Determinants of retrieval solutions during cognitive skill training: Source confusions

Diverse outcomes, both facilitative and disruptive, have been reported for the effect of interpolated item recognition tests on the acquisition of a cognitive skill. We collected data from a repeated set of 12 artificial arithmetic problems, soliciting compute/retrieve strategy reports after every trial. In one condition, a recognition test was administered after every three blocks of training. Recognition testing was found to depress retrieve frequencies in both younger and older adults, particularly for newly acquired items. Pairing training items with similar recognition foils mitigated these effects. This pattern of results could be explained by assuming that the participants based compute/retrieve decisions on item familiarity or frequency, tracked across both skill trials and recognition trials, and on a threshold influenced by source confusion. Variations in the threshold parameter could lead to depressed reports of item retrieval (our findings) or to elevated retrieval decisions, as has been shown in some other studies.     

Three-dimensional perception of planar line segments

Two-dimensional line drawings can be perceived as three-dimensional images if they are viewed through a grating of parallel lines placed a short distance above the drawing. The position in space of the images is a function of the angle between the lines in the drawing and those in the viewer grating.     

Trauma exposure is associated with increased context-dependent adjustments of cognitive control in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and healthy controls

Recent evidence has suggested that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with alterations in prefrontal-cortex-dependent cognitive processes (e.g., working memory, cognitive control). However, it remains unclear whether these cognitive dysfunctions are related to PTSD symptomatology or trauma exposure. Furthermore, regarding cognitive control, research has only focused on the integrity of selected control functions, but not their dynamic regulation in response to changing environmental demands. Therefore, the present study investigated dynamic variations in interference control, in addition to overall interference susceptibility and working memory (WM) performance in matched groups of 24 PTSD patients and 26 traumatized and 30 nontraumatized healthy controls. The Simon task was used to measure overall interference susceptibility and the flexible adjustment of cognitive control, on the basis of the occurrence of response conflicts (conflict adaptation effect). WM performance was assessed with the forward and backward digit span tasks. Since we have previously shown that trauma exposure per se is associated with reduced hair cortisol concentrations (HCC), we further explored whether PTSD/trauma-related cognitive alterations are related to HCC in proximal 3-cm hair segments. The results revealed that PTSD patients and traumatized controls showed significantly more pronounced conflict adaptation effects than nontraumatized controls. Moreover, the conflict adaptation effect was positively related to the number of lifetime traumatic events and the frequency of traumatization. The groups did not differ in overall interference susceptibility or WM performance. Exploratory analyses revealed no association between HCC and the observed cognitive differences. These results suggest that context-driven control adjustments constitute a sensitive correlate of trauma exposure, irrespective of PTSD.     

Factor Structure of the Farsi Version of the Ways of Coping Questionnaire

Despite burgeoning research on coping with stress and its crucial role on people's psychological and physical well‐being, there is a dearth of psychometrically established instrument for use in Iran to measure coping. A Farsi translation of the Ways of Coping questionnaire (WOC) was administered to 739 participants from Tehran, Iran. The factor structure of the WOC was assessed with both explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses. A 7‐factor structure model with some important similarities and differences to the original version from the United States was confirmed. The Farsi version of WOC was found to have good construct reliability and model fit and has considerable potential to be used in future coping research among Iranian populations.     

Age and visual field differences in computing visual-spatial relations.

Age and brain hemispheric differences in visual-spatial performance were investigated using 2 versions of categorical and coordinate (metric) spatial relations tasks. Thirty-two young adults (M = 19.2 years) and 32 older adults (M = 68.8 years) participated. An overall age-related decrement in computing visual-spatial relations was obtained for lateralized presentations and when items were presented centrally. In contrast to some previous findings, there was no evidence to suggest differential aging of the right hemisphere in computing visual-spatial relations.     

Auditory and visual similarity effects in recognition and recall

The role of auditory and visual factors in short-term recall and recognition performance was evaluated. Auditory similarity, but not visual similarity, was found to be predictive of the probability of a correct response and response confidence for both types of tests. The results were interpreted as support for a single-trace model of recall and recognition performance.