Developmental plateau in visual object processing from adolescence to adulthood in autism

A lack of typical age-related improvement from adolescence to adulthood contributes to face recognition deficits in adults with autism on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). The current studies examine if this atypical developmental trajectory generalizes to other tasks and objects, including parts of the face. The CFMT tests recognition of whole faces, often with a substantial delay. The current studies used the immediate memory (IM) task and the parts-whole face task from the Let’s Face It! battery, which examines whole faces, face parts, and cars, without a delay between memorization and test trials. In the IM task, participants memorize a face or car. Immediately after the target disappears, participants identify the target from two similar distractors. In the part-whole task, participants memorize a whole face. Immediately after the face disappears, participants identify the target from a distractor with different eyes or mouth, either as a face part or a whole face.Results indicate that recognition deficits in autism become more robust by adulthood, consistent with previous work, and also become more general, including cars. In the IM task, deficits in autism were specific to faces in childhood, but included cars by adulthood. In the part-whole task, deficits in autism became more robust by adulthood, including both eyes and mouths as parts and in whole faces. Across tasks, the deficit in autism increased between adolescence and adulthood, reflecting a lack of typical improvement, leading to deficits with non-face stimuli and on a task without a memory delay. These results suggest that brain maturation continues to be affected into adulthood in autism, and that the transition from adolescence to adulthood is a vulnerable stage for those with autism.     

Unraveling Brain Functional Connectivity of encoding and retrieval in the context of education

Human memory is an enigmatic component of cognition which many researchers have attempted to comprehend. Accumulating studies on functional connectivity see brain as a complex dynamic unit with positively and negatively correlated networks in perfect coherence during a task. We aimed to examine coherence of network connectivity during visual memory encoding and retrieval in the context of education. School Educated (SE) and College Educated (CE) healthy volunteers (n = 60) were recruited and assessed for visual encoding and retrieval. Functional connectivity using seed to voxel based connectivity analysis of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) was evaluated. We noticed that there were reciprocal dynamic changes in both dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) region and PCC regions during working memory encoding and retrieval. In agreement with the previous studies, there were more positively correlated regions during retrieval compared to encoding. The default mode network (DMN) networks showed greater negative correlations during more attentive task of visual encoding. In tune with the recent studies on cognitive reserve we also found that number of years of education was a significant factor influencing working memory connectivity. SE had higher positive correlation to DLPFC region and lower negative correlation to DMN in comparison with CE during encoding and retrieval.     

Rotating With Rotated Text: A Natural Behavior Approach to Investigating Cognitive Offloading

Determining how we use our body to support cognition represents an important part of understanding the embodied and embedded nature of cognition. In the present investigation, we pursue this question in the context of a common perceptual task. Specifically, we report a series of experiments investigating head tilt (i.e., external normalization) as a strategy in letter naming and reading stimuli that are upright or rotated. We demonstrate that the frequency of this natural behavior is modulated by the cost of stimulus rotation on performance. In addition, we demonstrate that external normalization can benefit performance. All of the results are consistent with the notion that external normalization represents a form of cognitive offloading and that effort is an important factor in the decision to adopt an internal or external strategy.     

Evaluations Versus Expectations: Children's Divergent Beliefs About Resource Distribution

Past research reveals a tension between children's preferences for egalitarianism and ingroup favoritism when distributing resources to others. Here we investigate how children's evaluations and expectations of others' behaviors compare. Four‐ to 10‐year‐old children viewed events where individuals from two different groups distributed resources to their own group, to the other group, or equally across groups. Groups were described within a context of intergroup competition over scarce resources. In the Evaluation condition, children were asked to evaluate which resource distribution actions were nicer. In the Expectation condition, children were asked to predict which events were more likely to occur. With age, children's evaluations and expectations of others' actions diverged: Children evaluated egalitarian actions as nicer yet expected others to behave in ways that benefit their own group. Thus, children's evaluations about the way human social actors should behave do not mirror their expectations concerning those individuals' actions.     

SAwSu: An Integrated Model of Associative and Reinforcement Learning

Successfully explaining and replicating the complexity and generality of human and animal learning will require the integration of a variety of learning mechanisms. Here, we introduce a computational model which integrates associative learning (AL) and reinforcement learning (RL). We contrast the integrated model with standalone AL and RL models in three simulation studies. First, a synthetic grid‐navigation task is employed to highlight performance advantages for the integrated model in an environment where the reward structure is both diverse and dynamic. The second and third simulations contrast the performances of the three models in behavioral experiments, demonstrating advantages for the integrated model in accounting for behavioral data.     

反复胸闷胸痛伴心理精神障碍的诊疗进展

近年来,临床中关于反复胸闷胸痛患者的较高误诊率引起了广大医务工作者的重视,此类患者伴有的心理精神障碍往往被忽视,得不到合理的治疗,预后较差.本文主要讨论关于反复胸闷胸痛患者病因的鉴别、心理精神障碍引起胸闷胸痛的机制、胸闷胸痛与心理精神障碍的关系、“双心”医学诊疗模式以及反复胸闷胸痛的治疗进展,通过增强临床医生对“双心”医学的认识降低胸闷胸痛患者的误诊率、漏诊率,减少过度治疗,通过心血管医学和心理干预联合治疗,改善心血管疾病患者的预后、降低死亡率.     

PCI术前术后的心理障碍识别与处理

概述冠心病经皮冠状动脉介入治疗（PCI）术前术后患者合并心理障碍的较高发生率以及心理障碍对冠心病发生、发展及预后的影响,分析 PCI 术前术后患者出现焦虑抑郁等心理障碍的原因、产生机制及影响因素,强调心内科医生应及时识别 PCI 术前术后患者出现的心理障碍,并以“双心医学”方式对其进行心理精神医学及心血管专科医学治疗,同时对心血管专科医学治疗效果不明显的冠心病 PCI 患者,进行相关的鉴别诊断后也要进行心理精神医学的诊断和治疗,以便有利于 PCI 术患者的康复和预后,减少不必要的检查和治疗。     

Constructive criticism: An evaluation of Buller and Hardcastle's genetic and neuroscientific arguments against Evolutionary Psychology

David Buller and Valerie Hardcastle have argued that various discoveries about the genetics and nature of brain development show that most “central” psychological mechanisms cannot be adaptations because the nature of the contribution from the environment on which they are based shows they are not heritable. Some philosophers and scientists have argued that a strong role for the environment is compatible with high heritability as long as the environment is highly stable down lineages. In this paper I support this view by arguing that the discoveries Buller and Hardcastle refer to either do not show as strong a role for the environment as they suggest, or these discoveries show that the brain's developmental process depends in many cases on input from the environment that is highly stable across generations.     

Nonconceptualism and the cognitive impenetrability of early vision

This paper examines the relationship between cognitive impenetrability and perceptual nonconceptualism. I argue against the view, recently defended by Raftopoulos, that the (alleged) cognitive impenetrability of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for states of early vision and their content to be nonconceptual. I show that that view, here dubbed ‘the mutually entailing thesis’, admits two different standard interpretations depending on how we understand the property of being nonconceptual—corresponding to the distinction between the state and the content views of perceptual nonconceptualism. I first argue for the falsity of the state-nonconceptualist reading of the mutually entailing thesis, on the grounds that it mistakenly takes being nonconceptual to be a causal instead of a constitutive relationship. The content-nonconceptualist understanding of the thesis, I then argue, is disproved by plausible views regarding the content of experience. The mutually entailing thesis could only be true, I conclude, on a non-standard, causal interpretation of the notion of nonconceptual content. Yet, on that reading, the thesis would either be trivially true or would entirely fail to engage with the contemporary literature on perceptual nonconceptualism. Some potential relationships between the causal reading of the mutually entailing thesis and psychological research in this area are also briefly discussed.     

Why there might be a moral faculty: A reply to Johnson

Is there a cognitive faculty dedicated to the moral domain? Mark Johnson has developed a number of arguments against the existence of such a faculty. I claim that these arguments are not persuasive and that there may be a moral faculty.