Religious Affiliation, Ethnicity, and Child Mortality in Chiapas, México

We investigate whether there is a relationship between religious affiliation and child mortality among indigenous and nonindigenous groups in Chiapas, México. Our analysis relies on Brass-type estimates of child mortality by ethnicity and religious affiliation and multivariate analyses that adjust for various socioeconomic and demographic factors. The data are from the 2000 Mexican Census 10 percent sample. Among indigenous people, Presbyterians have lower rates of child mortality than Catholics. However, no significant differentials are found in child mortality by religious affiliation among nonindigenous people. The indigenous health ministry of the Presbyterian Church and the social and cultural transformations that tend to accompany religious conversion may have an impact on child survival among disadvantaged populations such as the indigenous people in Chiapas.     

Enhanced cognitive activity--over and above social or physical activity--is required to protect Alzheimer's mice against cognitive impairment, reduce Abeta deposition, and increase synaptic immunoreactivity

Although social, physical, and cognitive activities have each been suggested to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD), epidemiologic studies cannot determine which activity or combination of activities is most important. To address this question, mutant APP transgenic AD mice were reared long-term in one of four housing conditions (impoverished, social, social+physical, or complete enrichment) from 1(1/2) through 9 months of age. Thus, a stepwise layering of social, physical, and enhanced cognitive activity was created. Behavioral evaluation in a full battery of sensorimotor, anxiety, and cognitive tasks was carried out during the final 5 weeks of housing. Only AD mice raised in complete enrichment (i.e., enhanced cognitive activity) showed: (1) protection against cognitive impairment, (2) decreased brain beta-amyloid deposition, and (3) increased hippocampal synaptic immunoreactivity. The protection provided by enhanced cognitive activity spanned multiple cognitive domains (working memory, reference learning, and recognition/identification). Cognitive and neurohistologic benefits of complete enrichment occurred without any changes in blood cytokine or corticosterone levels, suggesting that enrichment-dependent mechanisms do not involve changes in the inflammatory response or stress levels, respectively. These results indicate that the enhanced cognitive activity of complete enrichment is required for cognitive and neurologic benefit to AD mice-physical and/or social activity are insufficient. Thus, our data suggest that humans who emphasize a high lifelong level of cognitive activity (over and above social and physical activities) will attain the maximal environmental protection against AD.     

Beliefs and data on the relationship between consistency and accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Two studies concerned with consistency and accuracy of eyewitness testimony were conducted. In Study 1 potential jurors indicated the degree to which they considered that various witness on‐stand behaviours indicated testimonial accuracy. Witness statements that were inconsistent with previous statements were considered to be the strongest indicators of inaccuracy. Study 2 examined the relationship between consistency and accuracy of testimony. Witnesses viewed a film of a robbery and were interviewed twice (2 weeks apart) about the crime in a 4 (interview format)×2 (interview occasion) design. Regardless of whether consistency was operationalised in terms of direct contradictions between interviews, or degree of agreement on detail across interviews, no more than 10% of the variance in overall accuracy rate was explained by any individual measure. Number of contradictions and overall agreement between interviews did, however, make additive contributions to prediction of overall accuracy. Also, higher correlations between contradiction‐based consistency measures and interview two accuracy rate were detected. Neither consistency nor accuracy for specific testimonial dimensions were predictive of accuracy on the other dimensions, or overall accuracy. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intuition and Reflection in Arithmetic: Michael Potter

If arithmetic is not analytic in Kant's sense, what is its subject matter? Answers to this question can be classified into four sorts according as they posit logic, experience, thought or the world as the source, but in each case we need to appeal to some further process if we are to generate a structure rich enough to represent arithmetic as standardly practised. I speculate that this further process is our reflection on the subject matter already obtained. This suggestion seems problematic, however, since it seems to rest on a confusion between the empirical and the metaphysical self.     

Pitch Range Variations Improve Cognitive Processing of Audio Messages

This study explores the effect of different speaker intonation strategies in audio messages on attention, autonomic arousal, and memory. In this study, participants listened to 16 radio commercials, produced to vary in pitch range across sentences. Dependent variables were self‐reported effectiveness and adequacy, psychophysiological arousal and attention, immediate word recall and recognition of information. Results showed that messages conveyed with pitch variations achieved better scores compared to commercials with a homogenous pitch range across the sentences. This was especially the case when high pitch intonation was followed by low pitch within a sentence. The results increase our understanding of the influence of pitch range on processing by establishing a concrete strategy as a best practice for improving attention and memory.     

Does test-enhanced learning transfer for triple associates?

Test-enhanced learning and transfer for triple-associate word stimuli was assessed in three experiments. In each experiment, training and final-test trials involved the presentation of two words per triple associate (triplet), with the third word having to be retrieved. In agreement with the prior literature on different stimuli, training through testing with feedback yielded markedly better final-test performance than did restudy. However, in contrast to the positive transfer reported for paired associate stimuli, minimal or no positive transfer was observed, relative to a restudy control, from a trained cue combination (e.g., A, B, ?) to other cue combinations from the same triplet that required a different response (e.g., B, C, ?). That result also held when two unique cue combinations per triplet were tested during training, and for triplets with low and high average associative strengths. Supplementary analyses provided insight into the overall transfer effect: An incorrect response during training appears to yield positive transfer relative to restudy, whereas a correct response appears to yield no, or even negative, transfer. Cross-experiment analyses indicated that test-enhanced learning is not diminished when two or three cue combinations are presented during training. Thus, even though learning through testing is highly specific, testing on all possible stimulus–response combinations remains the most efficient strategy for the learning of triple associates.