The Developmental Trajectory of Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Neuroimaging Studies

Neuropsychology Review - This systematic review explored the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the clinical time course of cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) in breast cancer patients...     

Children’s prior experiences of their successes and failures modulate belief alignment

ABSTRACT

An ability to flexibly learn from others while at other times relying upon one’s own judgements is an important adaptive human capacity. The present research investigated how others’ epistemic states and prior experience of their own independent ability in a given task modulate young children’s selective learning. In particular, we asked whether 4-year-old children’s judgement concerning the location of a hidden object is modulated both by an informant’s knowledge states and by the absence/presence of a prior experience with a particular task. We found that the children were more likely to align their judgement according to the informant’s verbal report when the informant was knowledgeable than when she was ignorant – but only when they had explicitly experienced their own incapability to accurately guess an object’s location. The findings suggest that 4-year-old children are able to combine their own experience with others’ input to make their judgement.     

Team adaptability and task cohesion as resources to the non-linear dynamics of workload and sickness absenteeism in firefighter teams

ABSTRACT

The current study builds on the non-linear Dynamic Systems (NDS) perspective to test the assumption that change in sickness absenteeism is non-linear, and that such change is due to workload, team adaptability and task cohesion. Participants were 37 firefighter teams (n = 250 individuals) from a main European capital city. The research hypotheses were tested using SPSS and the “cusp” package, in the statistical software R. The results suggest that change in sickness absenteeism behaviours over time is non-linear, with the cusp catastrophe model predicting such behaviours better than the linear and logistic models. In our model, task cohesion functions as an asymmetry factor (i.e., the independent variable that determines the strength and discrepancy between the two stable states of the dependent variable) leading to a linear change in sickness absenteeism. Interestingly, both workload and team adaptability function as bifurcation (i.e., the independent variable that determines the change between the two stable states of the order parameter) and asymmetry factors leading to non-linear and linear change in sickness absenteeism over time. This study contributes to the growing evidence that incorporating the NDS perspective enables a better understanding of action teams, namely those working in extreme environments.