What makes working memory spans so predictive of high-level cognition?

Working memory (WM) span tasks involving a complex activity performed concurrently with item retention have proven to be good predictors of high-level cognitive performance. The present study demonstrates that replacing these complex self-paced activities with simpler but computer-paced processes, such as reading successive letters, yields more predictive WM span measures. This finding suggests that strategic factors do not contribute to be relationship between WM spans and high-level cognition.     

Examining African self-consciousness and Black racial identity as predictors of Black men's psychological well-being

This study investigated African self-consciousness and Black racial identity as predictors of psychological distress and self-esteem for Black men. One hundred thirty Black men from a college and community sample completed the African Self-Consciousness Scale, the Racial Identity Attitude Scale-B, the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised, and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Canonical correlation analysis found 2 significant roots with the 1st root indicating that Black men whose attitudes reflected Preencounter and Immersion racial identity attitudes and who do not resist against anti-African/Black forces reported greater psychological distress and less esteem. Results from the 2nd root suggested that Black men whose attitudes reflect greater Internalization racial identity attitudes, greater resistance to anti-African/Black forces, and less identification with Blacks reported greater self-esteem.     

Symbolic distance affects two processing loci in the number comparison task

A dual-task procedure was used to investigate the attentional requirements of number processing. The results show that (1) numeric information in Task 2 can be retrieved in parallel with capacity-demanding processing in Task 1 but (2) comparing two quantities requires central capacity, which is depleted by switching from one task to another. This finding resolves an apparent discrepancy in the literature, in which digit magnitude information has not been retrieved in parallel with a second task (Logan & Schulkind, 2000), despite repeated demonstrations that this information is retrieved autonomously, even when it is deleterious to performance (Henik & Tzelgov, 1982). A model is proposed to reconcile existing findings with the new ones revealed in the present investigation.     

Cognitive discernible factors between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia (SZ) and schizoaffective disorders (SA) are associated with cognitive deficits. Generally, a schizoaffective diagnosis is associated with better prognosis on the level of social integration. It is also well established that cognition is an important factor for good social outcome in schizophrenia. We hypothesized that, although patients suffering from SA share symptoms with SZ, they can be differentiated on the basis of neurocognitive function and that SA perform better in several domains. METHOD: Performances of two groups SA (N = 13) and SZ (N = 44) were compared on several visual-motor tasks using CANTAB [Motor Screening (MOT), Reaction Time (RTI), Paired Associates Learning Task (PAL), and Stockings of Cambridge items (SOC)]. The two groups were matched for symptom severity. ANOVA with repeated measures was employed to determine whether any difference in cognitive scores during a 2-year period was significantly related to the diagnostic status. RESULTS: A significant and durable difference was observed between SZ and SA on motor screening and explicit memory tests where SA performed better. CONCLUSION: Neurocognitive tests may be relevant for distinguishing schizoaffective from schizophrenia, chiefly via tests tapping into visuo-spatial and visuo-motor coordination abilities (e.g., paired associated learning and motor screening).     

The self-organizing consciousness

We propose that the isomorphism generally observed between the representations composing our momentary phenomenal experience and the structure of the world is the end-product of a progressive organization that emerges thanks to elementary associative processes that take our conscious representations themselves as the stuff on which they operate, a thesis that we summarize in the concept of Self-Organizing Consciousness (SOC).     

Come with me: experimental evidence for intentional recruitment in Tonkean macaques

Animal Cognition - Recruitment is a process by which animals can initiate collective movements: the action of an individual prompts conspecifics to follow. Although it has been hypothesized that...     

Time-dependence between upper arm muscles activity during rapid movements: Observation of the proportional effects predicted by the kinematic theory

Rapid human movements can be assimilated to the output of a neuromuscular system with an impulse response modeled by a Delta-Lognormal equation. In such a model, the main assumption concerns the cumulative time delays of the response as it propagates toward the effector following a command. To verify the validity of this assumption, delays between bursts in electromyographic (EMG) signals of agonist and antagonist muscles activated during a rapid hand movement were investigated. Delays were measured between the surface EMG signals of six muscles of the upper limb during single rapid handwriting strokes. From EMG envelopes, regressions were obtained between the timing of the burst of activity produced by each monitored muscle. High correlation coefficients were obtained supporting the proportionality of the cumulative time delays, the basic hypothesis of the Delta-Lognormal model. A paradigm governing the sequence of muscle activities in a rapid movement could, in the long run, be useful for applications dealing with the analysis and synthesis of human movements.     

The autonomy of social reality: On the contribution of the theory of systems to the theory of society 1

Many contemporary schools of thought contend that the autonomy of the human world is an impossible and dangerous goal to aim at. It is shown that this is the result of the unwarranted identification of autonomy with self‐mastery. Autonomy has to be conceived of in terms of complexity and self‐transcendence (a bootstrapping). Among the paradigms that are thus revisited: Structuralism, Deconstruction, Methodological Individualism.     

Respiratory feedback in the generation of emotion

This article reports two studies investigating the relationship between emotional feelings and respiration. In the first study, participants were asked to produce an emotion of either joy, anger, fear or sadness and to describe the breathing pattern that fit best with the generated emotion. Results revealed that breathing patterns reported during voluntary production of emotion were (a) comparable to those objectively recorded in psychophysiological experiments on emotion arousal, (b) consistently similar across individuals, and (c) clearly differentiated among joy, anger, fear, and sadness. A second study used breathing instructions based on Study 1's results to investigate the impact of the manipulation of respiration on emotional feeling state. A cover story was used so that participants could not guess the actual purpose of the study. This manipulation produced significant emotional feeling states that were differentiated according to the type of breathing pattern. The implications of these findings for emotion theories based on peripheral feedback and for emotion regulation are discussed.