Cognitive processing deficits in reading disabilities: A prefrontal cortical hypothesis

Much research investigating the neuropsychological underpinnings of reading disabilities has emphasized posterior brain regions. However, recent evidence indicates that prefrontal cortex may also play a role. This study investigated cognitive processes that are associated with prefrontal and posterior brain functions. Subjects were 12-year-old reading disabled and nondisabled boys. Discriminant analysis procedures indicated that measures of prefrontal functions distinguished between the two groups better than measures of posterior functions. The results suggest that reading disabled boys have difficulty with cognitive processes involving selective and sustained attention, inhibition of routinized responses, set maintenance, flexibility in generating and testing alternative hypotheses, and phonemically based language production.     

Training the equidistant principle of number line spacing

The characteristics of effective numerical trainings are still under scientific debate. Given the importance of number line estimation due to the strong relation between task performance and arithmetic abilities, the current study aimed at training one important number line characteristic: the equidistant spacing of adjacent numbers. Following an embodied training approach, second-graders were trained using a randomized crossover design to divide a presented line into different numbers of equal segments by walking the line with equally spaced steps. Performance was recorded, and feedback as to the correct equidistant spacing was provided using the Kinect sensor system. Training effects were compared to a control training with no involvement of task-specific whole-body movements. Results indicated more pronounced specific training effects after the embodied training. Moreover, transfer effects to number line estimation and arithmetic performance were partially observed. In particular, differential training effects for bounded versus unbounded number line estimation corroborate the assumption that not only bodily experiences but also the need for a flexible adaption of the perspective on the training material might influence training success. Hence, more pronounced training effects of the embodied training might stem from different cognitive processes involved.     

The illness reframing process in an ethnic-majority population of older people with incurable cancer: variations of cultural- and existential meaning-making adjustments

Increasing numbers of older people in Western countries are living with incurable cancer as a chronic disease, receiving palliative care from specialised healthcare contexts. The study's aim was to understand variations of cultural- and existential meaning-making adjustments in a Norwegian majority population of older people with incurable cancer. Semi-structured interviews from 21 participants, aged 70–88, were analysed according to three identified types of belief frames: atheistic/humanistic, religious, and spiritual. Kleinman's medical anthropology cultural framework was adapted and applied deductively together with a reframing metaphor concept in a four-part analytic process. Independent of the differences among the types of belief frames and heterogeneous illness reframing processes, changes in the existential cultural dimension seemed to facilitate psychosocial adjustments in relation to illness, daily living, relationships, and surroundings. The results point to the need for collecting and assessing the function of this type of patient information for better understanding the patient's framework of interpretation, and for identifying treatment-planning resources.     

Wisdom and Psychosocial Functioning in Later Life

We investigated the connection between wisdom‐related performance, personality, and generativity to further the understanding of how they are interrelated. Our sample consisted of 163 men and women 68–77 years of age, mostly White, and predominantly middle class. Wisdom was assessed with the performance‐based Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, with the remaining measures being mostly self‐report. As hypothesized, on the zero‐order level, wisdom‐related performance (WRP) was positively associated with (a) growth, a personality component indexed by Openness to Experience, psychological mindedness, and a sense of well‐being derived from growth, purpose in life, and autonomy; (b) adjustment, a personality component associated with life satisfaction, high levels of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, low Neuroticism, a sense of well‐being derived from positive relations with others, self‐acceptance, and environmental mastery; and (c) a generative concern for the welfare of others. Latent path analysis indicated that the bivariate associations between adjustment and wisdom and between generativity and wisdom were mediated by growth. Wise individuals are characterized by their ability to balance different personal strengths and interests, an integration that occurs, however, within the context of a dominant personality style marked by the pursuit of maturity through personal growth.     

Rumination and self-defining memories in the context of health concerns

Individuals with health anxiety report experiencing a strong sense of vulnerability to illness. Such beliefs may be driven by the biased recollection of past illness-related events. However, little research has explored the role of memory in health anxiety. In other disorders, rumination has also been identified as a process that leads individuals to recall memories dominated by the content of their concerns. This study examined the proposition that rumination might impact the content of “self-defining” autobiographical memories among 60 college students with varying health anxiety (35% with clinical-level health anxiety). Participants were randomised to experiential/ruminative self-focus conditions, and then they completed the Self-Defining Memory Task. Responses were coded for valence and illness-relatedness. Results indicated that rumination led participants to retrieve more illness-related self-defining memories, while higher health anxiety scores were associated with more negative, but not more illness-focused memories. Ruminative thinking appears to activate health concerns, and may play a role in maintaining ongoing health anxiety.     

Remembering in signs

In a short-term memory experiment, signs of American Sign Language in list lengths of three to seven items were presented to deaf college students whose native language is American Sign Language. A comparable short-term memory experiment for words (words representing the English translation-equivalents of the signs) was presented to hearing college students. Recall was written, immediate and ordered. Overall, short-term memory mechanisms in the deaf seem to parallel those found in hearing subjects, even with the modality change. A significant number of multiple intrusion errors made by deaf subjects to signs were based on formational properties of the signs themselves, a result paralleling the phonologically based errors in experiments with hearing subjects.Our results are consistent with a theory that the signs of American Sign Language are actually coded by the deaf in terms of simultaneous formational parameters such as Hand Configuration, Place of Articulation and Movement. Evidence is given that signs are treated by the deaf as consisting of independent parameters — specific to American Sign Language — which are essentially arbitrary in terms of meaning.     

Representation of inflected signs from American Sign Language in short-term memory

In order to help illuminate general ways in which language users process inflected items, two groups of native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) were asked to recall lists of inflected and uninflected signs. Despite the simultaneous production of base and inflection in ASL, subjects transposed inflections across base forms, recalling the base forms in the correct serial positions, or transposed base forms, recalling the inflections in the correct serial positions. These rearrangements of morphological components within lists occurred significantly more often than did rearrangements of whole forms (base plus inflection). These and other patterns of errors converged to suggest that ASL signers remembered inflected signs componentially in terms of a base and an inflection, much as the available evidence suggests is true for users of spoken language. Componential processing of regularly inflected forms would thus seem to be independent of particular transmission systems and of particular mechanisms for combining lexical and inflectional material.