Turning back the hands of time: Autobiographical memories in dementia cued by a museum setting

The current study examined the effects of cuing autobiographical memory retrieval in 12 older participants with dementia through immersion into a historically authentic environment that recreated the material and cultural context of the participants’ youth. Participants conversed in either an everyday setting (control condition) or a museum setting furnished in early twentieth century style (experimental condition) while being presented with condition matched cues. Conversations were coded for memory content based on an adapted version of Levine, Svoboda, Hay, Winocur, and Moscovitch (2002) coding scheme. More autobiographical memories were recalled in the museum setting, and these memories were more elaborated, more spontaneous and included especially more internal (episodic) details compared to memories in the control condition. The findings have theoretical and practical implications by showing that the memories retrieved in the museum setting were both quantitatively and qualitatively different from memories retrieved during a control condition.     

Age differences in reading time allocation for propositionally dense sentences

Younger and older adults read and immediately recalled a set of sentences which varied in propositional density. Reading was self-paced and sentence reading time was measured. Older adults spent differentially more time reading the propositionally dense sentences, and although the overall recall performance of older adults was slightly poorer than that of younger adults, age differences were constant across propositional density. Consistent with the Slowing Hypothesis, an analysis of effective reading time (time spent per proposition recalled) demonstrated that older adults were spending proportionately more time to effectively encode the sentences. In addition, a relative memorability analysis (Stine & Wingfield, 1988, 1990a) suggested that the increase in propositional density did not particularly disrupt the organization of the text representation for older adults in this self-paced reading situation. This contrasts with earlier findings in a listening situation. These data provide support for the applicability of the Slowing Hypothesis to language processing, but also suggest that older adults are able to effectively allocate reading time to propositionally dense sentences in order to facilitate organizational processing.     

The Emotional Development Scale: Assessing the Emotional Capacity of 4–12 Year Olds

The practice of assessing children’s emotional development based on a theoretical foundation of attachment theory, developmental psychology, and brain research is fast developing within the field of clinical psychology and family social work. The Emotional Development Scale (EDS) has been developed to assess the current emotional functioning level of 4–12 year olds within the theoretical framework of neuroaffective developmental psychology. Included in the pilot study were eight family treatment centers in Denmark, with 36 families participating. The psychometric investigation included analyses of interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency, while construct validity was analyzed by correlating EDS results between referred and nonreferred groups. The analysis between nonreferred and referred groups was based on the data from the empirical study and a preliminary ad hoc sample from Hogrefe Ltd. (n = 213). We concluded the EDS appears to be a reliable and partially valid tool that could aid in assessing the emotional development of 4–12 year olds. Further research on psychometric properties and clinical application of EDS is needed.     

Bright light treatment has limited effect in subjects over 55 years with mild early morning awakening

31 subjects, age 55 yr. or older, suffering from mild early morning awakening were randomized to either a bright light (10,000 lux) or to a red dim light placebo condition (200 lux). Light exposure took place in the evening in the patients' homes, 60 to 30 min. before bedtime and lasted for 3 wk. The subjects kept a sleep diary for 2 wk. and wore an actigraph for 1 wk. both before treatment and at post-treatment. Of the eight sleep diary outcome variables, significant effects that could be attributed to the light treatment were only detected for time spent in bed after final morning awakening. None of the six actigraph outcome variables yielded any significant effect of the light therapy. Explanations for the limited therapeutic effects of bright light treatment obtained in the present study are discussed, such as the criteria defining early morning awakening, the selection procedure, problems with compliance, age of the sample, and the dose of light. The lack of an objective circadian marker in this study could represent a problem concerning the timing of the light exposure. Despite the limited success of bright light therapy in this study, bright light therapy should still be considered as a treatment option for early morning awakening.     

Skepticism,relevant alternatives,and deductive closure

My view is that the relevant alternative position should be conceived of as in two parts:

Rapid speech processing and divided attention: processing rate versus processing resources as an explanation of age effects.

The authors conducted a dual-task study to examine age differences in speech processing under varying loads. Younger and older adults listened to and immediately recalled spoken passages presented at various speech rates (140-280 words per min). This task was performed alone as well as in a divided-attention condition in which subjects concurrently performed a picture recognition task. Consistent with the slowing hypothesis, older adults' immediate memory performance was differentially depressed when speech rates were very fast. The Age x Speech Rate interaction, however, was not exacerbated in the divided-attention condition. This suggests that aging may reduce the rate at which the processing operations underlying memory for speech are completed, but this is conceptually distinct from an age-related reduction in attentional capacity.