Accounting for Cognitive Aging: Context Processing,Inhibition or Processing Speed?

ABSTRACT

Age-related deficits in context processing were examined in relationship to two predominant theories of cognitive aging (the Inhibitory Deficit and Processing Speed Models). Older and younger adults completed a measure of context processing (AX Continuous Performance Test (CPT) task) as well as a computerized battery of inhibitory tasks: Stroop, garden path sentences, go no-go, and the stop-signal paradigm. Participants also completed a simple processing speed task. After controlling for baseline differences in processing speed, age effects were detected on the AX-CPT. Smaller, but significant age effects were noted on the Stroop and stop-signal tasks, but no significant age effects were found on the garden path sentence and go no-go tasks. Intertask correlations were weak, providing little evidence for a homogenous or uniform construct of inhibition. The sensitivity of the AX-CPT to cognitive aging is discussed in the context of existing theories of cognitive aging. The authors suggest that deficits in context processing and utilization may underlie cognitive aging phenomena.     

Discriminative stimulus effects of diazepam and buspirone in normal volunteers.

A within-subject design was used to characterize the effects of dose manipulations on discriminative and self-reported effects of oral diazepam and buspirone. Subjects were trained to discriminate diazepam (10 mg) versus placebo (n = 10), or buspirone (10 or 15 mg) versus placebo (n = 9). The compounds were identified to subjects by letter code before discrimination training began. In later sessions, correct identifications at 2 hr after the oral administration of drug earned money. All subjects showed accurate discrimination performance during the test-of-acquisition phase. In a low-dose generalization phase, diazepam and buspirone produced dose-related increases in drug identifications across a four-fold range of doses. In a subsequent low-dose training phase, in which subjects were trained to discriminate progressively lower drug doses, the median lowest discriminable dose of diazepam and buspirone was 2.5 and 7.5 mg, respectively. Dose-response functions for drug identifications were shifted leftward in the low-dose training phase relative to the low-dose generalization phase, suggesting that reinforcement of progressively lower doses enhances drug discriminability. The self-reported effects of diazepam and buspirone were similar (e.g., both drugs increased ratings of drug strength and clumsy/uncoordinated) and different (e.g., diazepam but not buspirone increased ratings of drowsy/sleepy; buspirone but not diazepam increased ratings of tense/nervous). This study demonstrates discriminative and self-reported effects of diazepam and buspirone at doses lower than previously shown to be behaviorally active, and suggests that at commonly used clinical doses, diazepam is relatively more discriminable than buspirone.     

Memory narrowing in children and adults

The memory narrowing effect posits that stress enhances memory for central information at the expense of memory for peripheral details. This effect is well established in adults, but not in children, although studies have not directly compared children's and adults' memory for central versus peripheral details of an identical distressing experience. In the present study, 9–12 year‐old and adult participants completed a laboratory stressor during which measures of self‐reported stress was collected. Two weeks later, participants returned for a surprise memory test regarding central and peripheral details of the laboratory stressor. Greater stress predicted memory narrowing in both children and adults, as indexed via decreased correct responses and increased don't know responses to questions about peripheral relative to central details. Findings have implications for theories concerning stress and memory, particularly in children, and for evaluating eyewitness memory in legal contexts. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pretreatment Correlates of the Therapeutic Alliance in the Chronically Depressed

We examined the relationship between patient characteristics and the working alliance in a multisite trial for chronic depression. Patients treated with the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP), alone (n = 169) or combined with nefazodone (n = 198), completed the Working Alliance Inventory during the 2nd week of treatment. Within the CBASP alone group, a history of drug abuse/dependence, lower peak social adjustment over the past five years, and lower current social adjustment predicted a significantly poorer alliance. Within the combination group, male gender and a distancing coping style predicted a significantly poorer alliance. Results should be interpreted with caution since they did not replicate across treatment groups, and the number of significant findings were not much greater than chance expectations.     

Myriad Philosophical Methodologies

This article offers an overview of philosophical methodologies. In an attempt to avoid a certain circularity, the article itself tries to avoid consciously or solely deploying and engaging with any current standard notion of what constitutes a philosophical method or philosophy itself. It hopes to find some of the possible places in which philosophy occurs, and this turns out to include (at least) such endeavours as literature, art, poetry, and linguistics. From here it considers how almost anything—for example, conversation, everyday life, and love—can also be philosophy. An attempt is made to identify some characteristic feature of philosophy as it occurs in all such forms. In the end, the simultaneous enacting of a peculiar optimism and particular humility both, in the search for knowledge, is put forward as potentially sufficient to at least begin to identify philosophy across its many guises.