Aging, Training, and the Brain: A Review and Future Directions

As the population ages, the need for effective methods to maintain or even improve older adults’ cognitive performance becomes increasingly pressing. Here we provide a brief review of the major intervention approaches that have been the focus of past research with healthy older adults (strategy training, multi-modal interventions, cardiovascular exercise, and process-based training), and new approaches that incorporate neuroimaging. As outcome measures, neuroimaging data on intervention-related changes in volume, structural integrity; and functional activation can provide important insights into the nature and duration of an intervention’s effects. Perhaps even more intriguingly, several recent studies have used neuroimaging data as a guide to identify core cognitive processes that can be trained in one task with effective transfer to other tasks that share the same underlying processes. Although many open questions remain, this research has greatly increased our understanding of how to promote successful aging of cognition and the brain.     

Trauma and Resilience Among Refugee and Undocumented Immigrant Women

Migration and resettlement processes are often characterized by stressful and traumatic experiences. Immigrants may experience premigration trauma in their countries of origin and trauma during their migration journey. Furthermore, refugee and undocumented immigrant women navigate unique and ongoing stressors postmigration. In this study, the authors used a phenomenological approach to explore refugee and undocumented immigrant women's experiences of trauma and stress and the ways in which they develop resilience to cope with these experiences.     

A Guide for Assessing Clients’ Attachment to the Sacred: The Spiritual Attachment History

Current research supports that many people relate to God or a higher power in ways consistent with attachment theory, yet nothing exists assisting therapists in gathering attachment-focused background information regarding their clients’ spiritual lives. This paper fills that gap with the Spiritual Attachment History (SAH), a semi-structured interview guide adapted from an ICEEFT Training in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy attachment history handout, to help the authors meet their clients’ spiritual and relational clinical concerns. We describe how we developed the SAH and provide a case study of its incorporation into two treatment plans. We also discuss implications for training, for use by marriage and family therapists, for cross-cultural research, and the ethics of addressing spirituality as a cultural issue.     

Doing better but feeling worse. Looking for the "best" job undermines satisfaction

Expanding upon Simon's (1955) seminal theory, this investigation compared the choice-making strategies of maximizers and satisficers, finding that maximizing tendencies, although positively correlated with objectively better decision outcomes, are also associated with more negative subjective evaluations of these decision outcomes. Specifically, in the fall of their final year in school, students were administered a scale that measured maximizing tendencies and were then followed over the course of the year as they searched for jobs. Students with high maximizing tendencies secured jobs with 20% higher starting salaries than did students with low maximizing tendencies. However, maximizers were less satisfied than satisficers with the jobs they obtained, and experienced more negative affect throughout the job-search process. These effects were mediated by maximizers' greater reliance on external sources of information and their fixation on realized and unrealized options during the search and selection process.     

The over‐pruning hypothesis of autism

This article outlines the over‐pruning hypothesis of autism. The hypothesis originates in a neurocomputational model of the regressive sub‐type (Thomas, Knowland & Karmiloff‐Smith, 2011a, 2011b). Here we develop a more general version of the over‐pruning hypothesis to address heterogeneity in the timing of manifestation of ASD, including new computer simulations which reconcile the different observed developmental trajectories (early onset, late onset, regression) via a single underlying atypical mechanism; and which show how unaffected siblings of individuals with ASD may differ from controls either by inheriting a milder version of the pathological mechanism or by co‐inheriting the risk factors without the pathological mechanism. The proposed atypical mechanism involves overly aggressive synaptic pruning in infancy and early childhood, an exaggeration of a normal phase of brain development. We show how the hypothesis generates novel predictions that differ from existing theories of ASD including that (1) the first few months of development in ASD will be indistinguishable from typical, and (2) the earliest atypicalities in ASD will be sensory and motor rather than social. Both predictions gain cautious support from emerging longitudinal studies of infants at‐risk of ASD. We review evidence consistent with the over‐pruning hypothesis, its relation to other current theories (including C. Frith's under‐pruning proposal; C. Frith, 2003, 2004), as well as inconsistent data and current limitations. The hypothesis situates causal accounts of ASD within a framework of protective and risk factors (Newschaffer et al., 2012); clarifies different versions of the broader autism phenotype (i.e. the implication of observed similarities between individuals with autism and their family members); and integrates data from multiple disciplines, including behavioural studies, neuroscience studies, genetics, and intervention studies.     

Does Motivation Affect Emerging Adults’ Intelligence and Complex Postformal Problem Solving?

It has been suggested by some past research that there is a relationship between postformal thought and intelligence. Also, prior research suggests that motivated individuals tend to perform better on measured tasks, such as taking tests. The two distinct studies reported here first test the hypothesis that, supposing that IQ and postformal thought tap into some similar cognitive operations, individuals would use some similar patterns of responses in showing both intelligence and reported postformal operations. The participants in this research were two separate samples of 41 emerging adult undergraduate students from Towson University who chose to sign up through the research pool website. In the first study materials consisted of a consent form, demographic questionnaire, a use of postformal thought survey, and the WASI abbreviated test. In the second study a pretest and posttest reported motivation survey were added. In the first study no significant relations were found between the reported use of postformal thought and the WASI IQ scores. In the second study there was a significant correlation between motivation and intelligence and between motivation and an individual’s reported level of postformal thought. However, there was no significant relationship found between postformal thought and intelligence, even with motivation controlled. Further studies of the cognitive mechanisms underlying IQ and postformal complex problem solving may help determine the cognitive skills needed to differentially succeed at each of these skills.     

Can I Reach That Sticker? Preschoolers' Practical Judgments About Their Own and Others’ Body Size

Research to date has focused mostly on children's representation of their physical self as a prelude to the development of a theory of mind (ToM) and on their understanding of the self as distinct from others over time. Whether children approaching the well-known age of ToM mastery are also accurately appraising their own body's functional relationship to the everyday environment remains largely an unanswered question. Little work has investigated typical preschool-age children's explicit accuracy when making judgments about their own body's proportions. In the current study, 98 preschoolers made 16 practical judgments about whether their own body or an experimenter's body could fit through an apparatus (half of the apparatuses were 30% smaller than the body in question, and half were 30% larger). Overall, accuracy increased with age but was unrelated to body size. Children in all age groups performed above chance, and accuracy did not differ depending on target (e.g., self or other). Children in a comparison condition judging fit of inanimate objects (n = 23) performed similarly, though showed less evidence of “yes” bias, and there were no age-based differences in accuracy. Results are discussed with regard to preschoolers’ developing body awareness, as are implications for research protocols in which children are asked to accurately identify their own body size and shape from an array.     

Thematic Analysis of the Intersection of Spirituality and Eating Disorder Symptoms

The authors interviewed 12 female participants about the intersection of their spiritual beliefs and eating disorder symptoms. Three main themes emerged from the data: (a) spiritual beliefs as helpful, (b) choice not to ask for spiritual help, and (c) guilt.     

A Meta‐analysis of Letters of Recommendation in College and Graduate Admissions: Reasons for hope

Letters of recommendation are used extensively in academic admissions and personnel selection. Despite their prominence, comparatively little is known about their predictive power for multiple outcomes. This meta‐analysis combine the existing literature for college grade point average (GPA), academic outcomes of GPA, performance ratings, degree attainment, and research productivity for nonmedical school graduate programs, and GPA and internship performance ratings for medical school students. Intercorrelations with other commonly used predictors are also estimated and used to estimate incremental predictive power. Overall, letters of recommendation, in their current form, are generally positively but weakly correlated with multiple aspects of performance in post‐secondary education. However, letters do appear to provide incremental information about degree attainment, a difficult and heavily motivationally determined outcome.