Age effects in emotional prospective memory: cue valence differentially affects the prospective and retrospective component

While first studies suggested that emotional task material may enhance prospective memory performance in young and older adults, the extent and mechanisms of this effect are under debate. The authors explored possible differential effects of cue valence on the prospective and retrospective component of prospective memory in young and older adults. Forty-five young and 41 older adults performed a prospective memory task in which emotional valence of the prospective memory cue was manipulated (positive, negative, neutral). The multinomial model of event-based prospective memory was used to analyze effects of valence and age on the two prospective memory components separately. Results revealed an interaction indicating that age differences were smaller in both emotional valence conditions. For older adults positive cues improved the prospective component, while negative cues improved the retrospective component. No main effect of valence was found for younger adults on an overt accuracy measure, but model-based analyses showed that the retrospective component was enhanced in the positive compared with the negative cue condition. The study extends the literature in demonstrating that processes underlying emotional effects on prospective memory may differ depending on valence and age.     

Differential Outcomes of Adolescents with Chronically Ill and Healthy Parents

Approximately 10% of children grow up with a parent who has been diagnosed with a chronic medical condition (CMC) and seem to be at risk for adjustment difficulties. We examined differences in behavioral, psychosocial and academic outcomes between 161 adolescents from 101 families with a chronically ill parent and 112 adolescents from 68 families with healthy parents, accounting for statistical dependence within siblings. Children between 10 and 20 years and their parents were visited at home and filled in questionnaires. Multilevel analyses showed that 20–60% of the variance in most adolescent outcomes was due to the family cluster effect, especially in internalizing problem behavior, caregiving variables and quality of parent attachment. Conversely, the variance in stress and coping variables and grade point average (GPA) was mainly due to individual characteristics. Adolescents with parents affected by CMC displayed more internalizing problems than the comparison group and scored higher on frequency of household chores, caregiving responsibilities, activity restrictions, isolation, daily hassles and stress. In addition, their grade point average was comparatively worse. No group differences in externalizing problems, coping skills and quality of parent attachment were found. In conclusion, the family cluster effect largely explains adolescent outcomes and should be accounted for. Adolescents with parents affected by CMC are subject to an increased risk for internalizing problems, adverse caregiving characteristics, daily hassles, stress and a low GPA. According to a family-centered approach, school counselors and health care practitioners should be alert to adjustment difficulties of children with a chronically ill parent.     

Answering the Ethical Question

Many philosophers have attempted to answer the ‘ethical question’: can the ethical value of an artwork ever contribute to its aesthetic value, and if so, how? In this paper, I consider a methodological question that arises out of this discussion: should attempts to address the ethical question use analytic tools found in contemporary philosophical literature, art criticism, or some combination of the two? I concur with arguments proposed elsewhere, which suggest that art criticism has an important role to play in addressing the ethical question. However, I argue that any fruitful attempt to answer the question must defend some particular way of understanding the ethical value of artworks, which suggests that we should address what I label the ‘art question’: what is the role and importance of art? This question, I suggest, is one with which philosophers can usefully engage. This division of labour offers a way forward in addressing this important issue.     

Epistemic closure and commutative, nonassociative residuated structures

K-axiom-based epistemic closure for explicit knowledge is rejected for even the most trivial cases of deductive inferential reasoning on account of the fact that the closure axiom does not extend beyond a raw consequence relation. The recognition that deductive inference concerns interaction as much as it concerns consequence allows for perspectives from logics of multi-agent information flow to be refocused onto mono-agent deductive reasoning. Instead of modeling the information flow between different agents in a communicative or announcement setting, we model the information flow between different states of a single agent as that agent reasons deductively. The resource management of the database of agent states for the deductive reasoning fragment in question is covered by the residuated structure that encodes the nonassociative Lambek Calculus with permutation, bottom, and identity: NLP ₀₁ .     

Projective Identification on Different Levels

Freud's investigation of that which lies beyond the pleasure principle is, among other things, an attempt to understand how thoughts on matter, biology, psychology and mythology become linked, despite the fact that each of these systems are independent and self-sufficient, each one working according to its own logic. Free energy, that we may liken to a kind of noise, is bound and organized in a process where subjective meaning is created. During this process, a meaningful connection between inner and outer reality is established. However, subjectivity also creates problems, since the individual needs to find his or her own self-realization, his or her own path towards the grave. Self-realization contains an aggressive potential, which—reminiscent of the workings of the immune system—may be aimed at everything that is not-self; at the unfamiliar or that which causes discomfort; at that which blocks the path towards the individual's mastery of the world.     

Seeing why they cannot see: Understanding the syndrome and causes of posterior cortical atrophy

Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a syndrome defined by focal neurodegeneration of the parietal, occipital, and occipito‐temporal cortices and associated with progressive dysfunction of visual processing, praxis, numeracy and reading. The condition is most commonly caused by (and viewed as an atypical presentation of) Alzheimer's disease, although can also be caused by other degenerative diseases. The current paper examines the relationship of PCA to other degenerative syndromes, and considers what comparisons of these syndromes and disease phenotypes can tell us about underlying disease mechanisms. The focus then turns to neuropsychological investigations of the cognitive basis of symptoms which, although unusual in the broader context of a dementia clinic, are particularly characteristic of the PCA syndrome, before exploring implications for clinical management and patient and carer support.