Impaired verb fluency: a sign of mild cognitive impairment

We assessed verb fluency vs. noun and letter-based fluency in 199 subjects referred for cognitive complaints including Subjective Cognitive Impairment, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's disease. ANCOVAs and factor analyses identified verb, noun, and letter-based fluency as distinct tasks. Verb fluency performance in Mild Cognitive Impairment differed significantly from Subjective Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Reduced verb fluency thus appears to be a linguistic marker for incipient dementia. One possibility is that the verb fluency deficit in Mild Cognitive Impairment results from degenerative processes known to occur in the parahippocampal region.     

Bi-phasic hitting with constraints on impact velocity and temporal precision

The aim of the experiment was to investigate how bi-phasic hitting movements are organized to comply with both impact and temporal precision constraints. 'Bi-phasic' refers to a sequential movement with a preparatory movement away from the interception location followed by a strike phase. The interception location was fixed, as the motion of the hitting device was constrained to follow a straight path orthogonal to that of the approaching balls. We manipulated the required temporal precision by projecting balls with different constant approach speeds (1, 1.5, and 2m/s). Different impact constraints were imposed by instructing participants first to simply hit the ball and subsequently to hit the ball to a designated target area located either 55 or 105 cm away from the interception location. We determined several kinematic variables and used Principal Component Factor Analysis to classify these variables. The analysis revealed two independent factors: a 'velocity' factor (formed by impact velocity, peak velocity of the preparatory phase, peak velocity of the strike phase, and amplitude of the strike) and a 'timing' factor (formed by onset of the preparatory phase, moment of peak velocity of the preparatory phase, and onset of the strike phase). The 'velocity' factor scaled significantly with the required impact constraint and the 'timing' factor scaled significantly with ball speed.     

Context effects on lexical choice and lexical activation

Speakers are regularly confronted with the choice among lexical alternatives when referring to objects, including basic-level names (e.g., car) and subordinate-level names (e.g., Beetle). Which of these names is eventually selected often depends on contextual factors. The present article reports a series of picture-word interference experiments that explored how the designated target name (basic level vs. subordinate level) and contextual constraints rendering the name alternative either appropriate or inappropriate affect lexical activation and lexical choice. The experimental data demonstrate clear context effects on the eventual lexical choice. However, they also show that alternative nonselected object names are phonologically activated, even if a constraining context makes these alternative names currently inappropriate.     

Cross-Cultural Reactions to Academic Sexual Harassment: Effects of Individualist vs. Collectivist Culture and Gender of Participants

Male and female university students from the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Ecuador, Pakistan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Turkey read a standardized scenario in which a male professor was accused of sexually harassing a female graduate student. Respondents from individualist countries judged the professor to be guilty of sexual harassment more often than did those from collectivist countries. Women rendered significantly more guilty judgments and assigned more severe punishments to the accused professor than did men. Implications for the individualist–collectivist classification system and cross-cultural research are discussed.     

Tinnitus als soziale Infektion?

Background

11 out of 35 male employees of a central alert team with rescue coordination function developed a tinnitus disorder. This clinical case-study highlights the psychodynamic background of this accumulation.

Methods

Employees were investigated by psychometric questionnaires and semistructured psychodynamic biografical interviews. Additionally aspects of group dynamics and organisational structure were assessed.

Results

All staff members reported adverse work conditions. Medical and psychometric examination of the tinnitus patients did not reveal severe pathological findings. The interviews identified psychodynamic conflicts dealing with autonomy and regulation of self-esteem. All tinnitus patients reported a very adverse or punitive father relation and difficulties in performing a stabile male role and self-image. Group dynamics was dominated by paranoid and regressive tendencies complicated by maladaptive coping, crude perception of external facts and a pronounced experience of aggressive impulses.

Conclusion

The remobilisation of infantile powerlessness, ineffectiveness and helplessness triggered by adverse work conditions and the introduction of a new culture of personal responsibility within the work organisation together with an impaired coping of separation conflicts enforced by traumatic aspects of the relation with the father may have promoted the tinnitus symptomatology. Additionally, due to the missing awareness of the importance of such group dynamical processes the employers contributed to an increasing psychosocial distress, which promoted the accumulated manifestation of tinnitus as a conflict expressive symptom.     

How global versus local perception fits regulatory focus

We propose a reciprocal relation between regulatory-focus systems and global versus local processing styles-specifically, that global processing fits a promotion focus on advancement, whereas local processing fits a prevention focus on security. In Study 1, participants were shown large letters made of small letters and decided if either of two specific letters appeared on the screen. Strength of promotion focus was positively correlated with speed of processing global letters and negatively correlated with speed of processing local letters, whereas the reverse was true for strength of prevention focus. In Study 2, participants first worked on a global or local task and later chose between two objects. Consistent with our fit proposal, participants who had performed the global task assigned a higher price to their chosen object if they had chosen it in a promotive, eager manner than if they had chosen it in a preventive, vigilant manner, whereas the reverse was true for participants who had performed the local task.     

Sensory sensitivity, attachment experiences, and rejection responses among adults with borderline and avoidant features

Both avoidant and borderline personality disorder (APD and BPD) are theoretically associated with temperamental vulnerabilities, adverse attachment experiences, and negative (pessimistic or catastrophic) reactions to the threat of perceived rejection; however, more work is needed to differentiate how these processes account for the etiology and maintenance of both disorders. In this study, 156 adults completed questionnaires measuring APD and BPD features, temperament (sensory-processing sensitivity), mood, and attachment experiences. A vignette task was devised to examine pessimistic cognitive-affective reactions in situations signaling potential rejection. Both APD and BPD were associated with temperamental sensitivity, but BPD was uniquely linked with a subscale measuring sensitivity to mental and emotive stimuli, whereas APD was uniquely linked with a subscale measuring the control and avoidance of aversive stimulation. Compared to APD, BPD was more strongly linked with negative moods (anxiety, anger, sadness) and insecure attachment to parents, whereas APD was more strongly linked (than BPD) to pessimistic cognitive-affective responses to rejection-related situations.     

Stability, growth, and decline in adult life span development of declarative memory: cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a population-based study

Five-year changes in episodic and semantic memory were examined in a sample of 829 participants (35-80 years). A cohort-matched sample (N=967) was assessed to control for practice effects. For episodic memory, cross-sectional analyses indicated gradual age-related decrements, whereas the longitudinal data revealed no decrements before age 60, even when practice effects were adjusted for. Longitudinally, semantic memory showed minor increments until age 55, with smaller decrements in old age as compared with episodic memory. Cohort differences in educational attainment appear to account for the discrepancies between cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Collectively, the results show that age trajectories for episodic and semantic memory differ and underscore the need to control for cohort and retest effects in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, respectively.     

Studying individual aging in an interindividual context: typical paths of age-related, dementia-related, and mortality-related cognitive development in old age

This study has 2 objectives: (a) to explore typical paths of cognitive development associated with aging, terminal decline, and dementia and (b) to promote and illustrate an individual-oriented approach to the study of cognitive aging based on longitudinal panel data from a population-based sample (N = 500; age range-sub(T1)= 60-80, where T refers to time) tested at 3 occasions 5 years apart. Results document interindividual differences in multivariate patterns of change. Although cognitive changes generally covary, the present study indicates that subgroups of individuals develop along different paths characterized by selective changes in subsets of cognitive functions. Typical progression of dementia followed a developmental cascade from low declarative memory, via low functioning across all observed cognitive measures, to dementia diagnosis, and finally, death.     

Developing human-nonhuman chimeras in human stem cell research: ethical issues and boundaries

The transplantation of adult human neural stem cells into prenatal non-humans offers an avenue for studying human neural cell development without direct use of human embryos. However, such experiments raise significant ethical concerns about mixing human and nonhuman materials in ways that could result in the development of human-nonhuman chimeras. This paper examines four arguments against such research, the moral taboo, species integrity, "unnaturalness," and human dignity arguments, and finds the last plausible. It argues that the transfer of human brain or retinal stem cells to nonhuman embryos would not result in the development of human-nonhuman chimeras that denigrate human dignity, provided such stem cells are dissociated. The article provides guidelines that set ethical boundaries for conducting such research that are consonant with the requirements of human dignity.