Reconnecting cognition in the lab and cognition in real life: The role of compensatory social and motivational factors in explaining how cognition ages in the wild

The papers in this Special Issue compellingly show that older adults' everyday cognitive life is governed not by the decline in elementary cognitive processes as measured in the lab, but by a multitude of compensatory mechanisms, most of which are of the social/motivational variety. Much of this compensatory behavior can be elicited with no or only little experimental prodding, underscoring the self-organizing or self-initiated nature of this type of behavior, even in advanced old age. We suggest that the study of compensation and the orchestration of cognitive, social, and motivational compensatory mechanisms in effective and healthy aging provides a meaningful challenge to traditional ways of examining developmental changes in cognitive performance.     

Three-dimensional spatial representation in freely swimming fish

Research on spatial cognition has focused on how animals encode the horizontal component of space. However, most animals travel vertically within their environments, particularly those that fly or swim. Pelagic fish move with six degrees of freedom and must integrate these components to navigate accurately--how do they do this? Using an assay based on associative learning of the vertical and horizontal components of space within a rotating Y-maze, we found that fish (Astyanax fasciatus) learned and remembered information from both horizontal and vertical axes when they were presented either separately or as an integrated three-dimensional unit. When information from the two components conflicted, the fish used the previously learned vertical information in preference to the horizontal. This not only demonstrates that the horizontal and vertical components are stored separately in the fishes' representation of space (simplifying the problem of 3D navigation), but also suggests that the vertical axis contains particularly salient spatial cues--presumably including hydrostatic pressure. To explore this latter possibility, we developed a physical theoretical model that shows how fish could determine their absolute depth using pressure. We next considered full volumetric spatial cognition. Astyanax were trained to swim towards a reward in a Y-maze that could be rotated, before the arms were removed during probe trials. The subjects were tracked in three dimensions as they swam freely through the surrounding cubic tank. The results revealed that fish are able to accurately encode metric information in a volume, and that the error accrued in the horizontal and vertical axes whilst swimming in probe trials was similar. Together, these experiments demonstrate that unlike in surface-bound rats, the vertical component of the representation of space is vitally important to fishes. We hypothesise that the representation of space in the brain of vertebrates could ultimately be shaped by the number of the degrees of freedom of movement that binds the navigating animal.     

Facilitated attentional disengagement from negative information in relation to self-reported depressive symptoms of Dutch female undergraduate students

Prior research has shown that depressive symptoms are associated with an enhanced attention toward negative stimuli and difficulty of disengaging attention from negative stimuli. The current study was an extension of a 2005 study by Koster and colleagues. A different stimulus presentation time and word set were used. The whole range of depressive symptoms was included in this sample instead of creating dichotomized groups. The Exogenous Cueing Task with negative, positive, and neutral cues was administered to 85 female undergraduate university students. Participants completed the Beck's Depression Inventory-II-NL questionnaire to measure self-reported depression. Contrary to previous findings, depressive symptoms were related to a facilitated rather than impaired attentional disengagement from negative stimuli. An explanation for the discrepancy with findings from Koster, et al. may be the different stimulus presentation time (1000 msec. instead of 500 or 1500 msec.).     

The effect of psychological stress and expectation on auditory perception: A signal detection analysis

Both psychological stress and predictive signals relating to expected sensory input are believed to influence perception, an influence which, when disrupted, may contribute to the generation of auditory hallucinations. The effect of stress and semantic expectation on auditory perception was therefore examined in healthy participants using an auditory signal detection task requiring the detection of speech from within white noise. Trait anxiety was found to predict the extent to which stress influenced response bias, resulting in more anxious participants adopting a more liberal criterion, and therefore experiencing more false positives, when under stress. While semantic expectation was found to increase sensitivity, its presence also generated a shift in response bias towards reporting a signal, suggesting that the erroneous perception of speech became more likely. These findings provide a potential cognitive mechanism that may explain the impact of stress on hallucination‐proneness, by suggesting that stress has the tendency to alter response bias in highly anxious individuals. These results also provide support for the idea that top‐down processes such as those relating to semantic expectation may contribute to the generation of auditory hallucinations.     

What Do the Theologically Educated Look Like?

What do the theologically educated look like? Nine outcomes of a theological education are suggested that respond to this question, outcomes particularly pertinent to the contemporary cultural setting and mission challenge of Western Europe. These outcomes are compared with the nine learning outcomes that the Church of England uses at the present time to assess candidates for ordained ministry. In the light of this comparison some broad recommendations are made for future emphases in theological education.     

Personality Traits and Relationship Satisfaction in Intimate Couples: Three Perspectives on Personality

Personality traits are important predictors of relationship satisfaction. However, the majority of previous study findings are based on self‐perceptions of personality. Thus, by means of the self‐, partner‐, and meta‐perceptions of personality, the present study focused on three different perspectives on the Big Five personality traits to examine dyadic associations with relationship satisfaction of intimate couples. The study was based on the first measurement occasion of the Swiss longitudinal study ‘Co‐Development in Personality: Longitudinal Approaches to Personality Development in Dyads across the Life Span’ and included data of 216 couples. The main analyses were based on Actor‐Partner Interdependence Model. Three general findings emerged. First, the three personality perspectives represented related, albeit distinct, constructs, and showed incremental validity with respect to relationship satisfaction. Second, neuroticism was negatively related to relationship satisfaction, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness were positively related to relationship satisfaction across all perspectives. Third, substantial associations between e xtraversion and relationship satisfaction were exclusively evident in terms of the partner‐ and meta‐perception. The present results contribute to the literature by showing that each perspective is essential for the understanding of the role of personality for relationship satisfaction. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Trait Procrastination,Hoarding, and Continuous Performance Attention Scores

We examined the relationship between chronic procrastination, hoarding, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and a computer measure of continuous performance with 84 adult patients evaluated for diagnoses. Patients were administered the General Procrastination Inventory, the Saving Inventory-Revised, the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale and the IVA + Plus Continuous Performance Test. Procrastination scores correlated negatively with auditory attention scores, while self-reported hoarding tendencies correlated negatively with visual attention. Measures of procrastiation, hoarding, and ADHD were positively correlated. Implications and limitations of findings are discussed as well as directions for futher research.     

Approach-avoidance,attentional and evaluation biases in hair pulling disorder and their relationship with symptom severity

The present study examined approach-avoidance, attentional and evaluation biases in Hair Pulling Disorder (HPD). Although none of the tasks showed indications of biased action tendencies in response to hair pulling-related pictures, or biased attention for hair pulling-related words, we found that patients were slower to react to hair pulling-related stimuli than to neutral stimuli. This slowing down may indicate that patients are ambivalent towards hair pulling. This “ambivalence” positively correlated with HPD symptom severity, but only on one of the three severity measures we assessed. Concerning action tendencies towards hair pulling-related words, patients were, however, faster to react to hair pulling-related words when compared to words related to resisting hair pulling. Future research is needed to disentangle this ambivalent response pattern in HPD.     

Young Children’s Physiological Reactivity during Memory Recall: Associations with Posttraumatic Stress and Parent Physiological Synchrony

Autonomic reactivity is implicated in stress response and social engagement – both key components of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – but few studies have examined autonomic reactivity in pediatric samples, and no known studies have examined physiological synchrony among children with PTSD and caregivers. In a sample of 247 young children (94 girls, 153 boys), most (85%) of whom had exposure to trauma and 40% who met criteria for PTSD, we examined children’s patterns of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) at baseline and in response to a memory recall task, as well as correspondence between parents’ and children’s RSA. Children with PTSD demonstrated significantly higher reactivity than other groups during their recollection of a traumatic memory, but not during other memory tasks. Regarding synchrony, caregivers’ and children’s RSA were more significantly and positively correlated during the trauma recall task among children who had had exposure to a potentially traumatic event but did not meet PTSD criteria, suggesting physiological synchrony may be protective in contexts of trauma. Overall, findings demonstrate physiological reactivity differences among young children with PTSD. While more work is needed to understand the meaning of parent-child physiological synchrony, these data suggest that children’s psychopathology is associated with physiological synchrony processes among young children with exposure to trauma.