Cognitive Load Disrupts Implicit Theory-of-Mind Processing

Eye movements in Sally-Anne false-belief tasks appear to reflect the ability to implicitly monitor the mental states of other individuals (theory of mind, or ToM). It has recently been proposed that an early-developing, efficient, and automatically operating ToM system subserves this ability. Surprisingly absent from the literature, however, is an empirical test of the influence of domain-general executive processing resources on this implicit ToM system. In the study reported here, a dual-task method was employed to investigate the impact of executive load on eye movements in an implicit Sally-Anne false-belief task. Under no-load conditions, adult participants displayed eye movement behavior consistent with implicit belief processing, whereas evidence for belief processing was absent for participants under cognitive load. These findings indicate that the cognitive system responsible for implicitly tracking beliefs draws at least minimally on executive processing resources. Thus, even the most low-level processing of beliefs appears to reflect a capacity-limited operation.     

Presymptomatic Testing for Neurogenetic Diseases in Brazil: Assessing Who Seeks and Who Follows through with Testing

Diagnostic tests are available to detect several mutations related to adult-onset, autosomal dominant, neurodegenerative diseases. We aimed to describe our experience in a presymptomatic testing program run by the Brazilian Public Health System from 1999 to 2009. A total of 184 individuals were eligible for presymptomatic testing due to a risk for spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) - SCA3 (80%), Huntington’s disease (11.9%), familial amyloidotic neuropathy (4.3%), SCA1, SCA2, SCA6, or SCA7. Most were women (70%), married (54%), and had children prior to presymptomatic testing (67%). Their mean age at entrance was 34 (SD = 11 years). Educational level was above the average Brazilian standard. After receipt of genetic counseling, 100 individuals (54%) decided to undergo testing; of these, 51 were carriers. Since no individual returned for post-test psychological evaluation, we conducted a subsequent survey, unrelated to test disclosures. We contacted 57 individuals of whom 31 agreed to participate (24 had been tested, 7 had not). Several ascertainment concerns relating to these numerous losses prevented us from generalizing our results from this second survey. We concluded that: decision-making regarding presymptomatic testing seems to be genuinely autonomous, since after genetic counseling half the individuals who asked for presymptomatic testing decided in favor and half decided against it; general characteristics of Brazilians who sought presymptomatic testing were similar to many European samples studied previously; and individuals at risk for SCA3 may be at greater risk of depression. Although no clear-cut reason emerged for rejection of follow-up psychological sessions after presymptomatic testing, this finding suggests adjustments to our presymptomatic testing program are necessary.     

Validating Regulatory Sensory Processing Disorders Using the Sensory Profile and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 1?–5)

The objective was to validate Regulatory Sensory Processing Disorders’ criteria (DC:0-3R, 2005) using empirical data on the presence and severity of sensory modulation deficits and specific psychiatric symptoms in clinical samples. Sixty toddlers who attended a child mental health unit were diagnosed by a clinical team. The following two groups were created: toddlers with RSPD (N?=?14) and those with “other diagnoses in Axis I/II of the DC:0-3R″(OD3R) (N?=?46). Independently of the clinical process, parents completed the Infant Toddler Sensory Profile (as a checklist for sensory symptoms) and the Achenbach Behavior Checklist for ages 1?–5 (CBCL 1?–5). The scores from the two groups were compared. The results showed the following for the RSPD group: a higher number of affected sensory areas and patterns than in the OD3R group; a higher percentage of sensory deficits in specific sensory categories; and a higher severity of behavioral symptoms such as withdrawal, inattention, other externalizing problems and pervasive developmental problems in CBCL 1?–5. The results confirmed our hypotheses by indicating a higher severity of sensory symptoms and identifying specific behavioral problems in children with RSPD. The results revealed convergent validity between the instruments and the diagnostic criteria for RSPD and supported the validity of RSPD as a unique diagnosis. The findings also suggested the importance of identifying sensory modulation deficits in order to develop an early intervention to enhance the sensory capacities of children who do not fully satisfy the criteria for some DSM-IV-TR disorders.     

Perception of size-related formant information in male koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus)

Advances in bioacoustics allow us to study the perceptual and functional relevance of individual acoustic parameters. Here, we use re-synthesised male koala bellows and a habituation-dishabituation paradigm to test the hypothesis that male koalas are sensitive to shifts in formant frequencies corresponding to the natural variation in body size between a large and small adult male. We found that males habituated to bellows, in which the formants had been shifted to simulate a large or small male displayed a significant increase in behavioural response (dishabituation) when they were presented with bellows simulating the alternate size variant. The rehabituation control, in which the behavioural response levels returned to that of the last playbacks of the habituation phase, indicates that this was not a chance increase in response levels. Our results provide clear evidence that male koalas perceive and attend to size-related formant information in their own species-specific vocalisations and suggest that formant perception is a widespread ability shared by marsupials and placental mammals, and perhaps by vertebrates more widely.     

Auditory contagious yawning in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris): first evidence for social modulation

Dogs' capacity to 'catch' human yawns has recently attracted the attention of researchers in the field of animal cognition. Following recent studies suggesting that contagion yawning in humans, and some other primates, is empathy-related, some authors have considered the possibility that the same mechanism may underlie contagious yawning in dogs. To date, however, no positive evidence has been found, and more parsimonious hypotheses have been put forward. The present study explored the 'contagion-only' hypothesis by testing whether the mere sound of a human yawn can be sufficient to elicit yawning in dogs, in a way that is unaffected by social-emotional factors. Unexpectedly, results showed an interesting interplay between contagion and social effects. Not only were dogs found to catch human yawns, but they were also found to yawn more at familiar than unfamiliar yawns. Although not allowing for conclusive inferences about the mechanisms underlying contagious yawning in dogs, this study provides first data that renders plausible empathy-based, emotionally connected, contagious yawning in these animals.     

Counselor Demographics,Ageist Attitudes,and Multicultural Counseling Competence Among Counselors and Counselor Trainees

The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship among counselors’ self‐reported multicultural counseling competence and their attitudes of the geriatric population. A statistically significant negative correlation was found between participants’ attitudes of the geriatric population and their self‐reported multicultural counseling competence. Implications for training and practice are provided.     

Neural correlates of automatic mood regulation in girls at high risk for depression

Daughters of depressed mothers are at significantly elevated risk for developing a depressive disorder themselves. We have little understanding, however, of the specific factors that contribute to this risk. The ability to regulate negative affect effectively is critical to emotional and physical health and may play an important role in influencing risk for depression. We examined whether never-disordered daughters whose mothers have experienced recurrent episodes of depression during their daughters' lifetime differ from never-disordered daughters of never-disordered mothers in their patterns of neural activation during a negative mood induction and during automatic mood regulation. Sad mood was induced in daughters through the use of film clips; daughters then recalled positive autobiographical memories, a procedure shown previously to repair negative affect. During the mood induction, high-risk girls exhibited greater activation than did low-risk daughters in brain areas that have frequently been implicated in the experience of negative affect, including the amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, during automatic mood regulation, low-risk daughters exhibited greater activation than did their high-risk counterparts in brain areas that have frequently been associated with top-down regulation of emotion, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. These findings indicate that girls at high and low risk for depression differ in their patterns of neural activation both while experiencing, and while repairing negative affect, and suggest that anomalies in neural functioning precede the onset of a depressive episode.     

Thin-slice perception develops slowly

Body language and facial gesture provide sufficient visual information to support high-level social inferences from "thin slices" of behavior. Given short movies of nonverbal behavior, adults make reliable judgments in a large number of tasks. Here we find that the high precision of adults' nonverbal social perception depends on the slow development, over childhood, of sensitivity to subtle visual cues. Children and adult participants watched short silent clips in which a target child played with Lego blocks either in the (off-screen) presence of an adult or alone. Participants judged whether the target was playing alone or not; that is, they detected the presence of a social interaction (from the behavior of one participant in that interaction). This task allowed us to compare performance across ages with the true answer. Children did not reach adult levels of performance on this task until 9 or 10 years of age, and we observed an interaction between age and video reversal. Adults and older children benefitted from the videos being played in temporal sequence, rather than reversed, suggesting that adults (but not young children) are sensitive to natural movement in social interactions.     

Symmetry axiom of Haken–Kelso–Bunz coordination dynamics revisited in the context of cognitive activity

We present an axiomatic derivation of a model proposed by Haken, Kelso, and Bunz (1985) that describes dynamical aspects of the rhythmic coordination between two limbs. Elaboration of this model has included a symmetry parameter that captures the coordination consequences of an inherent or imposed frequency difference between the limbs. We modified one of the axioms involved in the model derivation, a symmetry axiom, in order to incorporate a new symmetry parameter. This new parameter defines a shift between (a) the laboratory coordinate system, in which the behavior is observed, and (b) a second, postulated coordinate system. It is this second coordinate system, in which the relevant state dynamics is assumed to take place and in which the state dynamics evolves under the impact of an attractor. The state dynamics as described in the attractor coordinate system is then mapped by means of the new symmetry parameter to the laboratory coordinate system. We discuss analytically the bifurcation diagram of the model and determine main effects and interaction effects of manipulations related to the symmetry parameters and related to the mode of coordination (in-phase and anti-phase). The theoretical results are brought to bear on the challenging experimental observation that concurrent cognitive activity (counting, encoding, retrieving, sentence analysis) changes the location of the bimanual coordination attractor but not its strength. The theoretical results suggest that cognitive activity may have the effect it has because it shifts the attractor coordinate system relative to the laboratory coordinate system.