Factors Affecting Reported Rates of Self-Injury*

ABSTRACT: The magnitude of variation in reported rates of self-injury suggests that factors other than actual incidence affect these rates. Factors that relate to the scope of the reporting network and to the intensity of contacts within this network are examined in detail to determine their effect on the reporting process. Differences in study design and reporting procedures are found to explain most of this variation and suggest the need for standardized techniques in studying the epidemiology of self-injury.     

Religious and spiritual education in disability situations in Italy

In this short article, the authors focus on religious and spiritual education’s potential to offer social and spiritual inclusion for students with a disability. They take the view that the religious and spiritual education teacher in such situations is positioned better when seeing such teaching as a special vocation. They use Italy as the case study by which to explore a religious and spiritual education approach to teaching in disability situations.     

Implicit evidence on the dissociation of identity and emotion recognition

Cognitive Processing - Recognition of identity and of emotional facial expressions of individuals are both based on processing of the human face. While most studies show these abilities to be...     

Forming and updating vaccination beliefs: does the continued effect of misinformation depend on what we think we know?

Cognitive Processing - People may cling to false facts even in the face of updated and correct information. The present study confronted misconceptions about the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine...     

On pacing trials while scanning brain hemodynamics: The case of the SNARC effect

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Experimental designs used to describe psychological effects on overt human behavior are seldom suited to localize their corresponding neural substrates based on...     

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of the Left Temporal Lobe Modulates Insight

Creativity is the ability to come up with new and original solutions to problems. It is characterized along a dipole spectrum, with the opposing ends defined as convergent and divergent thinking. Previous studies have provided evidence that various cognitive functions and insight into non-verbal problems can be enhanced using non-invasive brain stimulation. The aim of this pilot study was to investigate whether convergent and divergent thinking, as well as insight, can be modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). Bilateral tDCS (1.5 mA, 20 minutes) was used to modulate activity of the right (AR tDCS) and the left (AL tDCS) ATL. Twenty-one participants performed a divergent thinking test (DTT) during tDCS, while a Remote Associates Task (RAT) was administered before and after tDCS to assess convergent thinking. A control experiment, using a Simple Reaction Time (SRT) Task, was conducted in 10 subjects before and after ATL tDCS in order to investigate whether its effects reflect attention or motor effects on the dominant hand. Results from this preliminary study showed that AL tDCS reduced RAT reaction times (RTs) by 20%. Both AL and AR tDCS did not change RAT accuracy, or the DTT total or sub-item scores. No differences were found in the SRT task after either AL or AR tDCS. These findings suggest that left but not right ATL is involved in convergent thinking. Conversely, both left and right temporal cortex tDCS-induced excitability changes failed to modulate divergent thinking. Limitations are discussed.     

Category Cued Recall Following Controlled Encoding as a Neuropsychological Tool in the Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease: A Review of the Evidence

Aim of the present review paper was to evaluate the hypothesis (included in the proposal of new research criteria for Alzheimer’s disease; Dubois et al., Lancet Neurology, 6, 734–746, 2007) that a neuropsychological tool which provides support for the semantic encoding of memorandum at the time of study and supplies category cues at the time of retrieval (i.e. the Grober-Buschke paradigm) is more effective than traditional measures of free recall in 1) differentiating patients affected by the amnestic form of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or by mild to moderate forms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) from healthy matches, 2) predicting the conversion of individuals with MCI to AD, and 3) differentiating AD patients from individuals affected by other forms of dementia. Results of the review are controversial regarding the superiority of the Grober-Buschke procedure in differentiating individuals affected by AD or MCI from healthy individuals. The only study that evaluated this issue directly found that the Grober-Buschke procedure was more sensitive and specific than more traditional memory tests in predicting the conversion of MCI patients to AD. Finally, two studies reported that patients affected by AD or other forms of dementia showed different performance patterns in the free and cued recall tasks of the Grober-Buschke procedure. In conclusion, although encouraging results are reported in the few studies that investigated the ability of this procedure to predict the evolution of individuals with amnestic MCI and to differentiate AD patients from patients with other forms of cortical and subcortical dementia, more experimental work is needed to confirm these positive findings.