Do attentional capacities and processing speed mediate the effect of age on executive functioning?

The executive processes are well known to decline with age, and similar data also exists for attentional capacities and processing speed. Therefore, we investigated whether these two last nonexecutive variables would mediate the effect of age on executive functions (inhibition, shifting, updating, and dual-task coordination). We administered a large battery of executive, attentional and processing speed tasks to 104 young and 71 older people, and we performed mediation analyses with variables showing a significant age effect. All executive and processing speed measures showed age-related effects while only the visual scanning task performance (selective attention) was explained by age when controlled for gender and educational level. Regarding mediation analyses, visual scanning partially mediated the age effect on updating while processing speed partially mediated the age effect on shifting, updating and dual-task coordination. In a more exploratory way, inhibition was also found to partially mediate the effect of age on the three other executive functions. Attention did not greatly influence executive functioning in aging while, in agreement with the literature, processing speed seems to be a major mediator of the age effect on these processes. Interestingly, the global pattern of results seems also to indicate an influence of inhibition but further studies are needed to confirm the role of that variable as a mediator and its relative importance by comparison with processing speed.     

Attention to negative words predicts daily rumination among people with clinical depression: evidence from an eye tracking and daily diary study

The present study examined relationships between attention to negative words and daily rumination and daily adjustment in a sample of clinically depressed individuals. We recorded eye movements of 43 individuals diagnosed with major depression while they were freely viewing dysphoric, threat-related, neutral, and positive words. Then, each day for one week, participants provided measures of their daily rumination and psychological adjustment. Multilevel analyses found that attention to dysphoric and threat-related words was positively related to daily rumination and attention to threat-related words was negatively related to daily adjustment. These findings suggest that the impaired ability to disengage from negative words is positively related to rumination in daily life and is negatively related to well-being, as defined in terms of Beck’s Triad.     

Windows executable software for the progressive demasking task

The progressive demasking (PDM) task is a perceptual identification task using degraded stimulus presentation procedures, but with the advantage of providing response time (RT) measures on each trial. Participants simply press a response button whenever they recognize a word. In this article, we present newly developed, easy-to-use freeware for PDM. Considering the difficulty of programming such a paradigm with standard experimental software, we developed a program based on high-level C libraries to be executed on Windows XP computers. The program execution is millisecond accurate forRT measurements and generates the fewest possible display duration errors.     

Some paraconsistent sentential calculi

In [8] Jakowski defined by means of an appropriate interpretation a paraconsistent calculusD ₂ . In [9] J. Kotas showed thatD ₂ is equivalent to the calculusM(S5) whose theses are exactly all formulasa such thatMa is a thesis ofS5. The papers [11], [7], [3], and [4] showed that interesting paraconsistent calculi could be obtained using modal systems other thanS5 and modalities other thanM. This paper generalises the above work. LetA be an arbitrary modality (i.e. string ofM's,L's and negation signs). Then theA-extension of a set of formulasX is {¦A X}}. Various properties ofA-extensions of normal modal systems are examined, including a problem of their axiomatizability     

A formal ontology of situations

A generalized Wittgensteinian semantics for propositional languages is presented, based on a lattice of elementary situations. Of these, maximal ones are possible worlds, constituting a logical space; minimal ones are logical atoms, partitioned into its dimensions. A verifier of a proposition is an elementary situation such that if real it makes true. The reference (or objective) of a proposition is a situation, which is the set of all its minimal verifiers. (Maximal ones constitute its locus.) Situations are shown to form a Boolean algebra, and the Boolean set algebra of loci is its representation. Wittgenstein's is a special case, admitting binary dimensions only.     

The theory of boolean algebras with an additional binary operation

This paper deals with Boolean algebras supplied with an additional binary operation, calledB-algebras for short.The aim of the paper is to generalize some theorems concerning topological Boolean algebras to more comprehensive classes ofB-algebras, to formulate fundamental properties ofB-algebras, and to find more important relationships of these algebras to other known algebras.The paper consists of two parts. At the beginning of the first one, several subclasses ofB-algebras are distinguished, and then, their basic properties, connections between them as well as certain relationships with other algebras, are investigated. In particular, it is shown that the class of Boolean algebras together with an arbitrary unary operation is polynomially equivalent to the class ofB ₁-algebras.The second part of the paper is concerned with the theory of filters and congruences inB-algebras.     

Logical space and metaphysical systems

The paper applies the theory presented in “A Formal Ontology of Situations” (this journal, vol. 41 (1982), no. 4) to obtain a typology of metaphysical systems by interpreting them as different ontologies of situations. Four are treated in some detail: Hume's diachronic atomism, Laplacean determinism, Hume's synchronic atomism, and Wittgenstein's logical atomism. Moreover, the relation of that theory to the “situation semantics” of Perry and Barwise is discussed.     

There are2^{\aleph _0 } logics with the relevance principle betweenR andRM

The aim of the paper is to prove the result announced by the title.