The Relation of Lifetime Cognitive Activity and Lifetime Access to Resources to Late-life Cognitive Function in Older African Americans

ABSTRACT

Research in older Caucasians has demonstrated that cognitive activity is related to cognitive function in late adulthood. Knowledge of this association is limited in older minority populations. We examined the relation of cognitive activity and access to cognitive resources, with cognitive function in a group of 108 older African Americans. We constructed two scales to measure the frequency of cognitive activity and the presence of resources that promote cognitive activity during early and late life. Both measures had high internal consistency and the cognitive activity scale had adequate temporal stability over a 4-week interval. In analyses that controlled for age and education, more frequent lifetime cognitive activity was related to current cognitive function, but lifetime cognitive resources only approached significance. The results suggest that both measures are psychometrically sound in a minority population and that lifetime cognitive activity may contribute to current cognitive function in African Americans.     

Body size and body esteem in women: The mediating role of possible self expectancy

We predicted that an expectancy of acquiring a feared fat self and an expectancy of acquiring a hoped-for thin self both mediate the impact of body size on women's body esteem. We also predicted that the mediating pathway through the feared fat self would be stronger than that through the hoped-for thin self. A community sample of 251 women reported their age, height, weight, and completed measures of body esteem and expectancy perceptions of acquiring the feared fat and hoped-for thin selves. Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) demonstrated that expectancies about the feared fat self and about the hoped-for thin self mediated the relationship between body size and body esteem. Bayesian SEM also revealed that the pathway through the feared fat self was stronger than that through the hoped-for thin self. Implications for future research and the development of eating pathology are discussed.     

Anticipating the Societal Challenges of Nanotechnologies

“In this article we sketch out the landscape for this Special Issue on anticipating and embedding the societal challenge of nanotechnologies. Tools that actors may choose to employ for these processes are articulated, and further explored through the introduction of the seven articles which comprise this Issue. Taken together, these articles create a cogent narrative on the societal challenges posed by nanotechnologies. They are drawn together by three distinct themes, each of which is briefly considered within this context of this Introductory article”.     

Information underpinning anticipation of goal-directed throwing

We identified the information used to anticipate throw direction in handball. In two experiments, we examined how anticipation performance is affected when the information from one of five body areas (right arm, shoulders, hips, trunk, or total throw side) was either neutralized or decoupled from the motion of other body segments. In the first experiment, performance was significantly reduced when information from the throwing arm was neutralized, irrespective of skill levels. Skilled participants were negatively affected when the shoulders, hips, and trunk were neutralized, whereas less-skilled participants showed trends toward improvement under identical conditions. In the second experiment, partially disrupting relative motion via decoupling was not enough to reduce the anticipation performance among skilled participants to chance levels, whereas less-skilled participants lost their ability to anticipate in three conditions. Our findings suggest that skilled and less-skilled participants employ different information extraction strategies, yet information from the throwing arm is critical to anticipation for both groups. The two experiments suggest that relative motion mediated by both the absolute displacement trajectories of individual marker locations and their relative timings are important in informing anticipation, irrespective of skill level.     

No time-stretching illusion when a tone is followed by a noise

A sine tone is perceived as longer when it is preceded by a more intense noise than when presented in isolation. This is the time-stretching illusion. We conducted an experiment where the method of constant stimuli was used to examine whether a tone would also be stretched when it was followed by a noise. The duration of a tone was overestimated when it was preceded by a noise, but not when followed by a noise or when located between two consecutive noises. Moreover, the increasing of the noise intensity (from ?6 to +6 dB) relative to the tone intensity resulted in larger overestimations, but only in the condition where a tone was preceded by a noise. In brief, the duration of a tone is stretched when this tone is preceded by a noise and if this tone is not followed by a noise.     

Genetic differences in response to novelty and spatial memory using a two-trial recognition task in mice

A two-trial memory task, based on a free-choice exploration paradigm in a Y-maze, was previously developed to study recognition processes in Sprague-Dawley rats. Because this paradigm avoids the use of electric shock or deprivation that may have nonspecific effects and does not require learning of a rule, it may be particularly useful for studying memory in mice. Four inbred strains (Balb/cByJ, DBA/2J, C57BL/6J, and SJL/J), an F1 hybrid (C57BL/6 x SJL/J), and one outbred strain (CD1) were used to validate this task in mice and to characterize a strain distribution in response to novelty and working memory. Exploration was measured with a short (2 min) intertrial interval (ITI) between acquisition and retrieval, while memory was examined with longer intervals (30 min, 1 h, and 2 h). A study of the time course of the response to novelty revealed varying degrees of preference and/or habituation to novelty among the different strains, with CD1 exhibiting a very high response to novelty and others showing lower (C57 x SJL hybrids) to complete absence (SJL) of exploration of novelty. Memory span, assessed with increasing ITIs, varied widely among strains from 30 min (C57 x SJL hybrids) to at least 2 h (C57 and BALB). Such demonstrated sensitivity to a wide range of behavioral phenotypes supports the use of this spatial memory task as an effective tool for the study of genetic influences on the response to novelty and recognition processes in mice.     

Explanatory Style and Health: Mechanisms Linking Pessimism to Illness1

This study tests the relationship between pessimistic explanatory style and illness with questionnaire data. Questionnaires were administered to 234 college students at a mid‐sized Western university. Four variables were tested as potential mediators of the pessimistic explanatory style/illness relationship: symptoms of depression, perceived stress, social support, and poor health practices. Results indicated that only the global dimension of pessimistic explanatory style was related to experiences of illness, and hence was the only dimension that could be mediated by the proposed variables. Results demonstrated that symptoms of depression mediated the relationship between global attributions for negative events and illness. Exploratory analyses also suggest that stress is implicated in this process such that it increases symptoms of depression, which in turn influence illness.