Aging and retrospective revaluation of causal learning

In a 2-stage causal learning task, young and older participants first learned which foods presented in compound were followed by an allergic reaction (e.g., STEAK-BEANS→ REACTION) and then the causal efficacy of 1 food from these compounds was revalued (e.g., BEANS→ NO REACTION). In Experiment 1, unrelated food pairs were used, and although there were no age differences in compound- or single-cue-outcome learning, older adults did not retrospectively revalue the causal efficacy of the absent target cues (e.g., STEAK). However, they had weaker within-compound associations for the unrelated foods, and this may have prevented them from retrieving the representations of these cues. In Experiment 2, older adults still showed no retrospective revaluation of absent cues even though compound food cues with pre-existing associations were used (e.g., STEAK-POTATO), and they received additional learning trials. Finally, in Experiment 3, older adults revalued the causal efficacy of the target cues when small, unobtrusive icons of these cues were present during single-cue revaluation. These findings suggest that age-related deficits in causal learning for absent cues are due to ineffective associative binding and reactivation processes.     

Book reviews

Mary T. Malone, Women and Christianity, II: The Medieval Period AD 1000–1500 (Blackrock: Columba Press, 2001), ISBN 1–85607–339–4 (pbk), 198 pp.

Nicholas Sagovsky, Ecumenism, Christian Origins and the Practice of Communion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ISBN 0–521–77269–9 (hbk), 221 pp.

John D. Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church (trans. Elizabeth Theokritoff; Boston, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001), ISBN 1–885652–43–7 (pbk).

Peter Matheson, The Imaginative World of the Reformation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), ISBN 0–8006–3291–5 (pbk), xiv + 153 pp. Illus.

Carol Rittner and John K. Roth (eds.), Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust (London/NY: Leicester University Press/Continuum, 2002), ISBN 0–7185–0274–2 (pbk), 256 pp.

Paul Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ISBN 0–521–80041–2 (hbk), xiii + 344 pp.     

Theory of mind and executive function: working-memory capacity and inhibitory control as predictors of false-belief task performance

This study of the relationship between theory of mind and executive function examined whether on the false-belief task age differences between 3 and 5 ears of age are related to development of working-memory capacity and inhibitory processes. 72 children completed tasks measuring false belief, working memory, and inhibition. Significant age effects were observed for false-belief and working-memory performance, as well as for the false-alarm and perseveration measures of inhibition. A simultaneous multiple linear regression specified the contribution of age, inhibition, and working memory to the prediction of false-belief performance. This model was significant, explaining a total of 36% of the variance. To examine the independent contributions of the working-memory and inhibition variables, after controlling for age, two hierarchical multiple linear regressions were conducted. These multiple regression analyses indicate that working memory and inhibition make small, overlapping contributions to false-belief performance after accounting for age, but that working memory, as measured in this study, is a somewhat better predictor of false-belief understanding than is inhibition.     

Intact retention in acute alcohol amnesia

Research on alcohol amnesia has focused on memory processes that are disrupted during intoxication. The present experiment examined the possibility that certain memory processes might be resistant to the amnesic effects of alcohol. Intoxicated and sober subjects studied a list of 29 words. They were then given one of three different retention tests: free recall, identification of degraded words based on the procedure used by Warrington and Weiskrantz (1970), and yes/no recognition. As expected, free recall was significantly impaired by alcohol intoxication. In contrast, in the identification test, intoxicated subjects benefited to the same degree as sober subjects from prior exposure to the items. The two groups did not differ in immediate recognition memory. The results of the free-recall and identification tasks are similar to findings with chronic amnesic patients and suggest that perceptual fluency is not affected by alcohol, whereas elaborative processes supporting recall are particularly sensitive to disruption during intoxication. The failure to find recognition impairment at the level of intoxication used in this study distinguishes temporary alcohol amnesia from chronic amnesia.     

Cognitive effort and the word frequency effect in recognition and lexical decision

Cognitive effort requirements for high and low frequency words were assessed during study for a recognition test and during the performance of a lexical decision task. Recognition for these words was tested following each task. Low frequency words received greater effort than high frequency words during study for recognition, and these words were subsequently recognized better than high frequency words. Cognitive effort requirements during performance of an incidental lexical decision task were similar to those during study for recognition. Moreover, recognition performance following the lexical decision task resembled performance following a recognition expectancy. Overall, the results indicate that low frequency words require more extensive processing than high frequency words and that this difference in processing may be a factor in recognition word frequency effects.     

Aging, working memory, and discrimination learning

Older adults easily learn probabilistic relationships between cues and outcomes when the predictive event is the occurrence of a cue, but have greater difficulty when the predictive event is the nonoccurrence of a cue (Mutter & Pliske, 1996; Mutter & Plumlee, 2004; Mutter & Williams, 2004). This study explored whether this age-related deficit occurs in a simpler learning context and whether it might be related to working memory (WM) decline. We gave younger and older adults simultaneous discrimination tasks that allowed us to compare their ability to learn deterministic relationships when either the occurrence (feature positive; FP) or the nonoccurrence (feature negative; FN) of a distinctive feature predicted reinforcement. We also included a group of younger adults who performed the discrimination tasks under a concurrent WM load. Both age and WM load had a detrimental effect on initial FP and FN discrimination; however, these effects persisted only in FN discrimination after additional learning experience. Learning predictive relationships requires inductive reasoning processes that apparently do not operate as efficiently in individuals with reduced WM capacity. The impact of WM decline may ultimately be greater for negative cue-outcome relationships because learning these relationships requires more difficult inductive reasoning processes, which place greater demands on WM.     

Cognitive efficiency on a match to sample task decreases at the onset of puberty in children

Electrocortical evidence indicates that a wave of synaptic proliferation occurs in the frontal lobes around the age of puberty onset. To study its potential influence on cognition, we examined 246 children (10-17 years) and 49 young adults (18-22 years) using a match-to-sample type of task to measure reaction times to assess emotionally related information. Based upon the instruction set, subjects made a yes/no decision about the emotion expressed in a face, a word, or a face/word combination presented tachistoscopically for 100 ms. The faces were images of a single individual with a happy, angry, sad or neutral expression. The words were 'happy,' 'angry,' 'sad,' or 'neutral,' In the combined stimulus condition, subjects were asked to decide if the face and word matched for the same emotion. Results showed that compared to the previous year, reaction times were significantly slower for making a correct decision at 11 and 12 years of age in girls and boys, the approximate ages of puberty onset. The peripubertal rise in reaction time declined slowly over the following 2-3 years and stabilized by 15 years of age. Analyses of the performance of 15-17 year olds revealed significantly longer reaction times in females to process both faces and words compared to males. However, this sex difference in late puberty appeared to be transient since it was not present in 18-22 year olds. Given the match-to-sample nature of the task employed, the puberty related increases in reaction time may reflect a relative inefficiency in frontal circuitry prior to the pruning of excess synaptic contacts.     

Enduring cognitive dysfunction in unipolar major depression: A test–retest study using the Stroop paradigm

Hammar, Å., Sørensen, L., Årdal, G., Oedegaard, K.J., Kroken, R., Roness, A. & Lund, A. (2009). Enduring cognitive dysfunction in unipolar major depression: A test–retest study using the Stroop‐paradigm. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. The aim of the study was to investigate automatic and effortful information processing with the Stroop paradigm in a long term perspective in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Patients were tested at two test occasions: at inclusion with a Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) score >18, and after 6 months, when most patients had experienced symptom reduction. The Stroop paradigm is considered to measure aspects of attention and executive functioning and consists of three conditions/cards: naming the color of the patches (Color), reading of the color‐words (Word) and naming the ink color of color‐words (Color‐Word). The Color‐Word condition is proved to be the most cognitive demanding task and requires the proband to actively suppress interference and is therefore considered to require more effortful information processing, whereas naming the color of the patches and reading the color‐words are expected to be more automatic and less cognitive demanding. A homogenous group of 19 patients with unipolar recurrent MDD according to DSM‐IV and a HDRS score of >18 were included in the study. A control group was individually matched for age, gender and level of education. Depressed patients performed equal to the control group on the Color and Word cards at both test occasions. However, the patients were impaired compared with the control group on the Color‐Word card task at both test occasions. Thus, the depressed patients showed no improvement of effortful attention/executive performance as a function of symptom reduction. The results indicate that the depressed patients showed impaired cognitive performance on cognitive demanding tasks when symptomatic and that this impairment prevailed after 6 months, despite significant improvement in their depressive symptoms.