Reaction Time,Age, and Cognitive Ability: Longitudinal Findings from Age 16 to 63 Years in Representative Population Samples

Reaction time variables are used widely in studies of human cognitive ageing and in research on the information processing foundations of psychometric intelligence. The research is largely based on biased population samples. In the present study, large (500+), representative samples of the population of the West of Scotland were tested at ages 16, 36 and 56 years on simple and choice reaction time. Participants were re-tested eight years later, at which time they also took the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT). We report simple and choice reaction time means and their variabilities, their stability across 8 years, and their correlations with the PASAT. Simple and choice reaction times become slower and more variable with age. Women from age 36 to 63 show more variability in choice reaction times than men, an effect which remains after controlling for mean reaction time. Reaction time differences largely account for age differences, but not sex differences, in PASAT scores.     

A Cognitive-Behavioural Treatment Programme for Conduct Disorder: The Case of Tumeleng

This article presents a case study of a teenager with conduct disorder (CD) using a cognitive-behavioural treatment programme for anger and aggression. Unique features of the case included comorbid expressive language disorder and a history of multiple traumatic brain injuries, and a Tswana (Botswana) ethnic/cultural background. Indications for successful treatment were the participant's intrinsic motivation to change and be accepted by his peers, and his good memory. Factors that contraindicated successful treatment were the absence of his parents, due to his attending boarding school and comorbidity. The case provides evidence for the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for CD in an adolescent of a Tswana background with comorbid expressive language disorder and history of multiple head injuries.     

Personality,self-efficacy and risk-taking in parkour (free-running)

ObjectiveTo assess the effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between personality and risk-taking in parkour/free-running, a growing high-risk sport.DesignQuantitative cross-sectional study.Method277 parkour and free-running practitioners were recruited online to complete a survey assessing Big Five personality traits, self-efficacy and perceived risk-taking.ResultsGreater reckless risk-taking behaviours were associated with high neuroticism (p = .013) and low conscientiousness (p = .004). Mediation analysis showed that self-efficacy exerted a significant (95% CI) indirect mediation on the relationship between personality traits of neuroticism and conscientiousness, and risk-taking. Extraversion did not predict risk-taking, and was not significantly mediated by self-efficacy.ConclusionsSelf-efficacy plays a significant mediation role in the relationship between stable traits of neuroticism and conscientiousness, and risk-taking amongst parkour/free-running practitioners. This may help elucidate reasons underlying risky sports behaviours.     

Evolution and Process Thought

Five topics arising from evolutionary biology open new possibilities for fruitful dialogue between scientists and proponents of the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. These topics (with the main authors whose views are discussed) are: (1) Contingency and Teleology, Stephen Jay Gould, Simon Conway Morris; (2) The Baldwin Effect and Interiority, Bruce Weber and David DePew, Daniel Dennett, Terrence Deacon, Susan Oyama; (3) Complexity and Design, Michael Behe, David Griffin; (4) Hierarchical Levels and Downward Causation, Theo Meyering, Charles Hartshorne; and (5) Self-organization and Emergence, Terrence Deacon, Philip Clayton. In the final section, I look at the relation of science and metaphysics and ask whether the subjectivity postulated by process philosophy is accessible to scientific investigation.     

The Effect of Practice on Component Submovements is Dependent on the Availability of Visual Feedback

Participants (N = 16) were given extensive practice (1,500 trials) on a perceptual-motor aiming task. The full-vision (FV) group practiced with vision of their response cursor, whereas the no vision (NV) group practiced in a condition without vision. Movements were made as quickly and accurately as possible, and knowledge of results (KR) was provided. The authors tested the importance of vision early and late in practice by transferring participants to the NV condition without KR. The effects of practice differed between the two conditions. The FV group increased the speed of initial impulse to get to the target quickly, then relied on vision so make discrete error corrections. Transfer tests revealed that reliance on vision remained after extensive practice. For the NV group, practice effects were associated with a reduction in the extent to which discrete error corrections were produced.     

The Role of Video in Facilitating Perception and Action of a Novel Coordination Movement

Two groups (n = 10 in each) practiced a novel, bimanual coordination pattern that was demonstrated on video. One of the groups received augmented video feedback of their own responses after each trial following a demonstration. The video-feedback group showed better performance in acquisition and retention than the no-feedback group. On error-detection tests, the video-feedback group was better able to distinguish between correct and incorrect movement patterns. The authors concluded that video feedback helps to make relative phase information salient by aiding the discrimination process. Prepractice ability on a scanning task revealed that individuals who persevered with inphase-type movements, even though the task demands dictated otherwise, had the most difficulty determining and subsequently performing the required movement. Video feedback helped them to compensate for those difficulties.     

Online Versus Offline Processing of Visual Feedback in the Production of Component Submovements

The present authors tested the assumptions in R. S. Woodworth's (1899) 2-component model regarding the specific roles of vision in the production of both the initial impulse and the error-correction phases of movement. Participants (N = 40) practiced a rapid aiming task (1,500 trials), with either no visual feedback, vision of only the 1st 50% of the movement, vision of only the 1st 75% of the movement, or vision of the entire movement. Consistent with previous research, the availability of vision over the 1st half of the movement had no effect on aiming accuracy during acquisition. In contrast, when visual feedback was available over the 1st 75% of the movement and the entire movement, initial impulse endpoints were less variable and the efficiency of the error-correction phase was improved. Analysis of spatial variability at various stages in the movement revealed that participants processed visual feedback offline to improve programming of the initial impulse and processed it online in regulating the deceleration of the initial impulse.     

Similarities and differences in visual and spatial perspective-taking processes

Processes for perspective-taking can be differentiated on whether or not they require us to mentally rotate ourselves into the position of the other person (Michelon & Zacks, 2006). Until now, only two perspective-taking tasks have been differentiated in this way, showing that judging whether something is to someone’s left or right does require mental rotation, but judging if someone can see something or not does not. These tasks differ firstly on whether the content of the perspective is visual or spatial and secondly on whether the type of the judgement is early-developing (level-1 type) or later-developing (level-2 type). Across two experiments, we tested which of these factors was likely to be most important by using four different perspective-taking tasks which crossed orthogonally the content of judgement (visual vs. spatial) and the type of judgement (level-1 type vs. level-2 type). We found that the level-2 type judgements, of how something looks to someone else and whether it is to their left or right, required egocentric mental rotation. On the other hand, level-1 type judgements, of whether something was in front of or behind someone and of whether someone could see something or not, did not involve mental rotation. We suggest from this that the initial processing strategies employed for perspective-taking are largely independent of whether judgements are visual or spatial in nature. Furthermore, early developing abilities have features that make mental rotation unnecessary.     

Becoming Paladin: The Bodily Ground of World Becoming

In this article I will suggest that futures are made as embodied enactments of individuals and collectives. Values and identities are shaped as postures, gestures, movements, and expressions that are in themselves sites of personal and communal meaning. Bodily organizations are ground for senses of self, and the recognition, and reaction to, the otherness of others. Bodily organizations are shaped in encounters in families and social and cultural institutions that they in turn shape. Kinds of bodies and kinds of bodily enactments are cultivated in different communities. They can be sources of conflict or sources of transindividual and transcultural becoming. In this article I look at some ways bodily meanings are developed in both families and communities. I use the image of Paladin, a fictional television gunslinger character in the 1950s, among others, to describe processes of embodied self-formation that are derived from the media and other extra-familial sources. I look at the polycultural organization of individual psyches in our era, as well as somatically based community conflict and collaboration. I briefly describe how practiced experiences of somatic organization can be used as tools for personal and communal exploration of new possibility.