Life review therapy using autobiographical retrieval practice for older adults with clinical depression

The aim of this experiment was to examine the efficacy of life review based on autobiographical retrieval practice for treating depression in older adults. Thirty-seven clinically depressed older adults aged 64-83, who were also receiving pharmacological treatment, were randomly assigned to life review therapy or to a placebo condition with supportive therapy. Results indicated decreased depression for both conditions, with no significant differences between the two therapies. There was some indication of greater gain in production of specific memories among those in life review therapy. Patients who produced higher numbers of specific memories decreased their depression scores at a faster rate.     

The relationship between need for closure and memory for schema-related information among younger and older adults

Two studies were conducted to examine the relationships among need for closure (NFC) and schematic information processing in younger and older adults. The results show increased NFC to be associated with less schematic processing (i.e., less memory for schema-consistent items, and more memory for schema-irrelevant items, out of all items memorized correctly), among older than younger adults. The findings of the studies are interpreted as demonstrating the age-associated deficit in information processing consistent with the level of NFC. Moreover, the results indicate that positive mood may play a role in facilitating information processing consistent with the level of NFC among older and younger adults. Finally, we present a framework for predicting when older adults will and will not effectively use schematic processing, considered a compensatory strategy for decline in cognitive abilities.     

Asymmetry in the estimation of interpersonal distance and identity affirmation

An asymmetry effect is known to exist in the estimation of interpersonal distance, depending on whether the point of reference for the estimation is the subject (‘How far are the others from you?’) or the others How far are you from the others?). It looks as though, through the effect of a self-centring schema, subjects feel that others occupy their own space more than they occupy the space of others. A self-centring schema has also been found in many other processes involving judgment or comparison of oneself and others. It is generally interpreted as a sign of the affirmation and defence of personal identity. The three experiments reported here attempt to relate the asymmetries in the distances perceived between persons represented on a map to the following three areas in which one's sense of personal or group identity is involved: (1) in the perception of one's own specificity with respect to others (or of the specificity of the group to which one belongs with respect to other groups) (experiment 1), (2) in one's ability to put oneself in the place of others (exocentrism) (experiment 2). and (3) in the individuation of oneself by others (experiment 3). The results of these three experiments lead us to believe that it is indeed the processes of identification and affirmation of personal and group identity - along with the underlying categorization processes — that are the source of the asymmetries observed in interpersonal distance estimation. The consistency of the data obtained in different situations also validates the technique used for estimating interpersonal distance.     

PERSONALITY,DEMOGRAPHICS, AND ACCULTURATION OF VIETNAMESE AND NICARAGUAN REFUGEES TO THE UNITED STATES

The influx of refugees into the United States in recent years has led to a new interest in acculturation on the part of North American psychologists. Previous research in this area has usually focused on demographic, rather than psychological, variables as predictors of a willingness to acculturate. Using samples of Nicaraguan and Vietnamese refugees, the present study compared personality factors and age, level of education, and time in the U.S. as predictors of acculturation. Although results for the Nicaraguans were mixed, personality factors emerged as being better predictors in the Vietnamese group. This suggests that, in some cases, personality factors may be more basic to the process of acculturation than previously assumed.     

Event-related potential studies of cerebral specialization during reading : II. Studies of congenitally deaf adults

A number of methodological features were incorporated in a paradigm designed to maximize the likelihood of finding reliable event-related potential (ERP) signs of functional specializations between and within the cerebral hemispheres. Every subject was more accurate in identifying words presented to the right than to the left visual field. The morphology of the ERPs elicited by these words varied considerably as a function of electrode position both within and between the hemispheres. Amplitude asymmetries of ERP components recorded from occipital regions of the two hemispheres varied systematically with the position of the word in the visual field. On the other hand, ERPs from more anterior (temporal and frontal) regions displayed large asymmetries which were in the same direction regardless of the visual field of word presentation. The most prominent such asymmetry was in the negativity in the region 300–500 msec (N410) which was larger in the left than the right hemisphere in every subject. These results demonstrate that in this paradigm which demands specialized language processing ERPs are sensitive to aspects of cerebral organization both within and between the two hemispheres.     

How the bimodal format of presentation affects working memory: an overview

The best format in which information that has to be recalled is presented has been investigated in several studies, which focused on the impact of bimodal stimulation on working memory performance. An enhancement of participant’s performance in terms of correct recall has been repeatedly found, when bimodal formats of presentation (i.e., audiovisual) were compared to unimodal formats (i.e, either visual or auditory), in providing implications for multimedial learning. Several theoretical frameworks have been suggested in order to account for the bimodal advantage, ranging from those emphasizing early stages of processing (such as automatic alerting effects or multisensory integration processes) to those centred on late stages of processing (as postulated by the dual coding theory). The aim of this paper is to review previous contributions to this topic, providing a comprehensive theoretical framework, which is updated by the latest empirical studies.     

Vowel categorization during word recognition in bilingual toddlers

Toddlers’ and preschoolers’ knowledge of the phonological forms of words was tested in Spanish-learning, Catalan-learning, and bilingual children. These populations are of particular interest because of differences in the Spanish and Catalan vowel systems: Catalan has two vowels in a phonetic region where Spanish has only one. The proximity of the Spanish vowel to the Catalan ones might pose special learning problems. Children were shown picture pairs; the target picture’s name was spoken correctly, or a vowel in the target word was altered. Altered vowels either contrasted with the usual vowel in Spanish and Catalan, or only in Catalan. Children’s looking to the target picture was used as a measure of word recognition. Monolinguals’ word recognition was hindered by within-language, but not non-native, vowel changes. Surprisingly, bilingual toddlers did not show sensitivity to changes in vowels contrastive only in Catalan. Among preschoolers, Catalan-dominant bilinguals but not Spanish-dominant bilinguals revealed mispronunciation sensitivity for the Catalan-only contrast. These studies reveal monolingual children’s robust knowledge of native-language vowel categories in words, and show that bilingual children whose two languages contain phonetically overlapping vowel categories may not treat those categories as separate in language comprehension.     

The effect of inversion on 3- to 5-year-olds’ recognition of face and nonface visual objects

This study compared the effect of stimulus inversion on 3- to 5-year-olds’ recognition of faces and two nonface object categories matched with faces for a number of attributes: shoes (Experiment 1) and frontal images of cars (Experiments 2 and 3). The inversion effect was present for faces but not shoes at 3 years of age (Experiment 1). Analogous results were found for boys when faces were compared with frontal images of cars. For girls, stimulus inversion impaired recognition of both faces and cars at 3 to 4 years of age, becoming specific to faces only at 5 years of age (Experiments 2 and 3). Evidence demonstrates that the ability to extract the critical cues that lead to adults’ efficient face recognition is selectively tuned to faces during preschool years.     

Neural processing of vocal emotion and identity

The voice is a marker of a person's identity which allows individual recognition even if the person is not in sight. Listening to a voice also affords inferences about the speaker's emotional state. Both these types of personal information are encoded in characteristic acoustic feature patterns analyzed within the auditory cortex. In the present study 16 volunteers listened to pairs of non-verbal voice stimuli with happy or sad valence in two different task conditions while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. In an emotion matching task, participants indicated whether the expressed emotion of a target voice was congruent or incongruent with that of a (preceding) prime voice. In an identity matching task, participants indicated whether or not the prime and target voice belonged to the same person. Effects based on emotion expressed occurred earlier than those based on voice identity. Specifically, P2 (approximately 200 ms)-amplitudes were reduced for happy voices when primed by happy voices. Identity match effects, by contrast, did not start until around 300 ms. These results show an early task-specific emotion-based influence on the early stages of auditory sensory processing.