Cognitive control deployment is flexibly modulated by social value in early adolescence

Recent mechanistic models of cognitive control define the normative level of control deployment as a function of the effort cost of exerting control balanced against the reward that can be attained by exerting control. Despite these models explaining empirical findings in adults, prior literature has suggested that adolescents may not adaptively integrate value into estimates of how much cognitive control they should deploy. Moreover, much work in adolescent neurodevelopment casts social valuation processes as competing with, and in many cases overwhelming, cognitive control in adolescence. Here, we test whether social incentives can adaptively increase cognitive control. Adolescents (M_age = 14.64, 44 male, N = 87) completed an incentivized cognitive control task in which they could exert cognitive control to receive rewards on behalf of real peers who were rated by all peers in their school grade as being of either high- or low-status. Using Bayesian modeling, we find robust evidence that adolescents exert more cognitive control for high- relative to low-status peers. Moreover, we demonstrate that social incentives, irrespective of their high- or low-status, boost adolescent cognitive control above baseline control where no incentives are offered. Findings support the hypothesis that the cognitive control system in early adolescence is flexibly modulated by social value.     

Never Let Them See You Sweat: Silencing and Striving to Appear Perfect among U.S. College Women

Drawing on Goffman??s (1959) impression management, the present study examined how silencing the self (Jack & Dill, 1992) related to psychological distress in US college women. A sample of 149 women aged 18 to 25 enrolled at a large southwestern U.S. university completed a series of survey instruments aimed at gaining knowledge of how several potentially pressure-filled domains of women??s college environment (i.e., Body Image, Romance, Peers, Academics) may factor into a relationship between Silencing and Distress. Path analysis revealed that Silencing was directly, positively related to each source of pressure with the exception of Academic Engagement (where a negative relationship existed). Furthermore, Silencing was directly, positively related to Anxiety and Depression. Additionally, internalization of the thin ideal and competitiveness were predictive of distress among women who Present Perfection, or strive to appear perfect to others. Cluster analyses revealed 4 interpretable clusters of factors related to distress: Middle-of-the-Road, Moderately Appearance Focused, Other-Focused, and Reject Appearance Norms. The Other-Focused women showed the highest levels of distress and lowest academic engagement while those who Reject Appearance Norms showed the lowest distress and highest academic engagement. These relationships indicated that higher levels of attempting to appear perfect to others were related to higher levels of distress among US college women in our sample. This study points to a factor ??Presenting Perfection?? that may be instrumental in understanding self-silencing behaviors in college women, as well as further understanding the relation between body image, orientation toward others?? judgments, and distress.     

Gadd45b knockout mice exhibit selective deficits in hippocampus-dependent long-term memory

Growth arrest and DNA damage-inducible β (Gadd45b) has been shown to be involved in DNA demethylation and may be important for cognitive processes. Gadd45b is abnormally expressed in subjects with autism and psychosis, two disorders associated with cognitive deficits. Furthermore, several high-throughput screens have identified Gadd45b as a candidate plasticity-related gene. However, a direct demonstration of a link between Gadd45b and memory has not been established. The current studies first determined whether expression of the Gadd45 family of genes was affected by contextual fear conditioning. Gadd45b, and to a lesser extent Gadd45g, were up-regulated in the hippocampus following contextual fear conditioning, whereas Gadd45a was not. Next, Gadd45b knockout mice were tested for contextual and cued fear conditioning. Gadd45b knockout mice exhibited a significant deficit in long-term contextual fear conditioning; however, they displayed normal levels of short-term contextual fear conditioning. No differences between Gadd45b knockout and wild-type mice were observed in cued fear conditioning. Because cued fear conditioning is hippocampus independent, while contextual fear conditioning is hippocampus dependent, the current studies suggest that Gadd45b may be important for long-term hippocampus-dependent memory storage. Therefore, Gadd45b may be a novel therapeutic target for the cognitive deficits associated with many neurodevelopmental, neurological, and psychiatric disorders.     

Executive function on the Psychology Experiment Building Language tests

The measurement of executive function has a long history in clinical and experimental neuropsychology. The goal of the present report was to determine the profile of behavior across the lifespan on four computerized measures of executive function contained in the recently developed Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) test battery and evaluate whether this pattern is comparable to data previously obtained with the non-PEBL versions of these tests. Participants (N = 1,223; ages, 5–89 years) completed the PEBL Trail Making Test (pTMT), the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (pWCST; Berg, Journal of General Psychology, 39, 15–22, 1948; Grant & Berg, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38, 404–411, 1948), the Tower of London (pToL), or a time estimation task (Time-Wall). Age-related effects were found over all four tests, especially as age increased from young childhood through adulthood. For several tests and measures (including pToL and pTMT), age-related slowing was found as age increased in adulthood. Together, these findings indicate that the PEBL tests provide valid and versatile new research tools for measuring executive functions.     

The Implications of Adolescents’ Academic Word Knowledge for Achievement and Instruction

The purpose of the current study was to determine relationships between orthographic and morphological awareness of academic words and achievement across content areas. Participants (n = 256), diverse seventh and eighth graders, took three word knowledge measures; two standardized achievement measures were used as outcomes. Orthographic awareness of academic words explained variance in achievement, beyond overall breadth of vocabulary knowledge, with significant changes in R² ranging from 0.02 to 0.08. Morphological awareness of academic words explained variance in achievement, beyond overall breadth of vocabulary knowledge, with significant changes in R² ranging from 0.06 to 0.16.     

Theory of Mind and conduct problems in children: Deficits in reading the “emotions of the eyes”

A significant clinical feature of disorders of antisocial behaviour involves difficulties in social functioning. It has been suggested that deficits in “theory of mind” (ToM) reasoning—the ability to decode others’ emotions and thoughts—may underlie social difficulties in these populations. Success in demonstrating ToM impairment associated with antisocial behaviour and psychopathy in adults and children have been limited. In the current study, parent-reported conduct problems were concurrently measured with performance on an advanced test of ToM developed for children, the Child Eyes Test (Journal of Developmental and Learning Disorders, 5, 47–78). Preadolescent and young adolescent children (n=79) drawn from a community sample were required to identify emotions from photographic stimuli depicting the eye region of the face only. Findings suggested a generalised impairment in ToM in children with conduct problems, as indicated by a significant relationship between poor Eyes Test performance and conduct problems, even when IQ, sex and age were controlled for. The findings are discussed in the context of the amygdala theory of psychopathy, and the neural systems suggested to mediate performance on the Eyes Test.     

Intercultural Rhetoric and Reading Comprehension in a Second Language

Intercultural rhetoric has been studied in the context of second language writing for many decades. This article looks at the topic from a new perspective and offers an experimental study of the effects of intercultural rhetoric on reading comprehension. The experiment was set in Hong Kong, China, and assessed the reading comprehension (using a rational cloze design and quantitative and qualitative recall protocols) of 490 school students who were presented with four rhetorically different texts. Results suggest that the rhetoric of the students’ first language (Chinese) had clear effects on reading comprehension.