Maternal ratings of infant regulatory competence from 6 to 12 months: influence of perceived stress, birth-weight, and intervention: a randomized controlled trial

Mothers’ reports of preterm and term infants’ temperament from 6 to 12 months of age were studied, with intervention and stress as predictors. Preterm infants with a birth weight <2000 g were randomized to an intervention (71) or a control (69) group. A control group of healthy term infants (74) was also established. The intervention was a modified version of the “Mother–Infant Transaction Program”, aimed at sensitizing caregivers to the infants’ individual characteristics. Temperament was measured with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, and stress with the Parenting Stress Index. There were no group differences in temperament at 6 or 12 months or in change during the same period. There was a strong association between stress and negative reactivity in the preterm control group at 12 months. In the preterm intervention group, there were strong negative correlations between stress and regulatory competence at 6 months. The intervention seemed to change the relationship between stress and temperament. The strength of this association indicates that the intervention sensitized mothers to the temperamental regulatory competence of their preterm infants.     

Gender and education impact on brain aging: a general cognitive factor approach

In cognitive aging research, the study of a general cognitive factor has been shown to have a substantial explanatory power over the study of isolated tests. The authors aimed at differentiating the impact of gender and education on global cognitive change with age from their differential impact on 4 psychometric tests using a new latent process approach, which intermediates between a single-factor longitudinal model for sum scores and an item-response theory approach for longitudinal data. The analysis was conducted on a sample of 2,228 subjects from PAQUID, a population-based cohort of older adults followed for 13 years with repeated measures of cognition. Adjusted for vascular factors, the analysis confirmed that women performed better in tests involving verbal components, while men performed better in tests involving visuospatial skills. In addition, the model suggested that women had a slightly steeper global cognitive decline with oldest age than men, even after excluding incident dementia or death. Subjects with higher education exhibited a better mean score for the 4 tests, but this difference tended to attenuate with age for tests involving a speed component.     

The temporal dynamics of consolidation and reconsolidation decrease during postnatal development

The temporal dynamics of consolidation and reconsolidation of taste/odor aversion memory are evaluated during rat pup growth at postnatal days 3, 10, and 18. This is assessed through the temporal gradients of efficacy of a protein synthesis inhibitor (anisomycin) in inducing amnesia after either acquisition (consolidation) or reactivation (reconsolidation). The results show a progressive reduction with age of the delay during which the inhibitor is able to induce amnesia. Control experiments rule out a reduction of anisomycin efficacy due to blood brain barrier growth or decrease in protein synthesis inhibition. Thus, these results present the first evidence that the protein synthesis-dependent phase of memory stabilization requires less time with age. This decrease occurs in parallel for consolidation and reconsolidation. Such changes in the dynamics of memory processing could contribute to the cognitive improvement associated with development.     

The predictive value of numerical magnitude comparison for individual differences in mathematics achievement

Although it has been proposed that the ability to compare numerical magnitudes is related to mathematics achievement, it is not clear whether this ability predicts individual differences in later mathematics achievement. The current study addressed this question in typically developing children by means of a longitudinal design that examined the relationship between a number comparison task assessed at the start of formal schooling (mean age = 6 years 4 months) and a general mathematics achievement test administered 1 year later. Our findings provide longitudinal evidence that the size of the individual’s distance effect, calculated on the basis of reaction times, was predictively related to mathematics achievement. Regression analyses showed that this association was independent of age, intellectual ability, and speed of number identification.     

Reconceptualizing relative deprivation in the context of dramatic social change: the challenge confronting the people of Kyrgyzstan

The present study investigated the relationship between Temporal Collective Relative Deprivation and collective well‐being in the context of dramatic social change in Kyrgyzstan. Traditional research has evaluated Temporal Collective Relative Deprivation by comparing a group's present situation to a point in the recent past or future. We argue that a reconceptualization of Temporal Collective Relative Deprivation is needed. We hypothesized, first, that examining several, as opposed to a single, points of comparison will better predict collective well‐being. Secondly, we hypothesized that the points of comparison that will best predict collective well‐being will not necessarily correspond to the most recent past or future. Third, we hypothesized that the overall trajectory of Temporal Collective Relative Deprivation perceived across time will influence the level of collective well‐being. A sample of 565 Kyrgyz participants completed a questionnaire. Hierarchical regressions and group‐based trajectory modeling confirmed our three hypotheses. Theoretical and methodological implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Étude développementale de l’interprétation de combinaisons conceptuelles nominales « relation » et « propriété »

The present research addresses how people interpret novel noun-noun conceptual combinations. First, we focused on two types of conceptual combinations: property and relational combinations. Secondly, we manipulated the order of the constituents. Finally, we studied if the interpretation in terms of “Property” or “Relation” changes along with age. So, four groups of 6-, 8- and 10-year-old children and adults participated in a production task. Our results indicated that the interpretations in terms of relation were more frequent for the “Relation” combinations compared to the “Property” ones. Property-transferring interpretations increased with age when Property combinations are presented. The most frequent interpretations followed the order Head noun-Modifier, which is opposite to the order observed in English.     

Episodic memory deficits slow down the dynamics of cognitive procedural learning in normal ageing

Cognitive procedural learning is characterised by three phases, each involving distinct processes. Considering the implication of episodic memory in the first cognitive stage, the impairment of this memory system might be responsible for a slowing down of the cognitive procedural learning dynamics in the course of ageing. Performances of massed cognitive procedural learning were evaluated in older and younger participants using the Tower of Toronto task. Nonverbal intelligence and psychomotor abilities were used to analyse procedural dynamics, while episodic memory and working memory were assessed to measure their respective contributions to learning strategies. This experiment showed that older participants did not spontaneously invoke episodic memory and presented a slowdown in the cognitive procedural learning associated with a late involvement of working memory. These findings suggest that the slowdown in the cognitive procedural learning may be linked with the implementation of different learning strategies less involving episodic memory in older participants.     

Effect of tuned parameters on an LSA multiple choice questions answering model

This article presents the current state of a work in progress, whose objective is to better understand the effects of factors that significantly influence the performance of latent semantic analysis (LSA). A difficult task, which consisted of answering (French) biology multiple choice questions, was used to test the semantic properties of the truncated singular space and to study the relative influence of the main parameters. A dedicated software was designed to fine-tune the LSA semantic space for the multiple choice questions task. With optimal parameters, the performances of our simple model were quite surprisingly equal or superior to those of seventh- and eighthgrade students. This indicates that semantic spaces were quite good despite their low dimensions and the small sizes of the training data sets. In addition, we present an original entropy global weighting of the answers’ terms for each of the multiple choice questions, which was necessary to achieve the model’s success.     

Cognitive processes involved in blame and blame-like judgments and in forgiveness and forgiveness-like judgments

Experiment 1 compared the cognitive processes involved in blame and forgiveness judgments under identical experimental conditions. Experiment 2 was a replication of Experiment 1 with 4 judgment scales: willingness to prosecute, willingness to avenge, resentment level, and willingness to make up. Participants were presented with 32 scenarios in which a doctor made a medical error. These situations contained 5 items: the degree of proximity with the doctor (e.g., a family doctor known since childhood), the degree of negligence, the severity of consequences, apologies or contrition, and cancellation of consequences. Functional cognitive analysis grouped judgments into 2 categories: blame-like judgments (blame, prosecution, and revenge) and forgiveness-like judgments (resentment, forgiveness, and reconciliation). Blame-like judgments were characterized by additive integration rules, with negligence followed by apologies as the 2 main cues. Forgiveness-like judgments were characterized by an interactive integration rule, with apologies followed by negligence as the 2 main cues.