Analyzing feature distinctiveness in the processing of living and non-living concepts in Alzheimer’s disease

The conceptual structure account (CSA) is a model specifying the role of the living and non-living domain dichotomy in the structure of semantic memory. According to this model, feature distinctiveness and the perceptual–functional inter-correlation of concepts are assumed to play a major role in impairing the ability to discriminate between living and non-living concepts in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The hypothesis was tested in this study by using naming and sorting tasks traditionally considered as assessing distinctiveness, and a property verification task where distinctiveness and perceptual–functional inter-correlation were objectively controlled against norms especially created for this purpose. Alzheimer’s patients (n = 59) with minimal, mild or moderate dementia and normal elderly adults (n = 31) participated in the study. Overall, the findings did not support the CSA predictions. They revealed a distinctiveness effect on response accuracy with shared features dominating distinctive features regardless of domain. They also revealed more difficulties in the tasks involving effortful processes. The results stress the need to consider both cognitive demands of tasks and structural aspects of knowledge in the evaluation of semantic memory in AD.     

The costs of crossing paths and switching tasks between audition and vision

Switching from one functional or cognitive operation to another is thought to rely on executive/control processes. The efficacy of these processes may depend on the extent of overlap between neural circuitry mediating the different tasks; more effective task preparation (and by extension smaller switch costs) is achieved when this overlap is small. We investigated the performance costs associated with switching tasks and/or switching sensory modalities. Participants discriminated either the identity or spatial location of objects that were presented either visually or acoustically. Switch costs between tasks were significantly smaller when the sensory modality of the task switched versus when it repeated. This was the case irrespective of whether the pre-trial cue informed participants only of the upcoming task, but not sensory modality (Experiment 1) or whether the pre-trial cue was informative about both the upcoming task and sensory modality (Experiment 2). In addition, in both experiments switch costs between the senses were positively correlated when the sensory modality of the task repeated across trials and not when it switched. The collective evidence supports the independence of control processes mediating task switching and modality switching and also the hypothesis that switch costs reflect competitive interference between neural circuits.     

内隐联想测验研究进展述评

内隐联想测验作为基于反应时范式的内隐社会认知研究方法,自1998年由Greenwald提出后,得到了广泛的应用。但因其本身具有一定局限性,近10年来,研究者们对这一方法进行了不断地修正和改进,先后发展出了GO／NO—GO联想任务、外部情感西蒙作业等;近几年又提出了单类内隐联想测验、单靶内隐联想测验和单属性内隐联想测验等,这些方法丰富充实了内隐联想测验,是对Greenwald提出的IAT的继承和发展。     

Predictors of time-based prospective memory in children

This study identified age differences in time-based prospective memory performance in school-aged children and explored possible cognitive correlates of age-related performance. A total of 56 7- to 12-year-olds performed a prospective memory task in which prospective memory accuracy, ongoing task performance, and time monitoring were assessed. Additional tests of time estimation, working memory, task switching, and planning were performed. Results showed a robust relationship between age and prospective memory performance even after controlling for ongoing task performance. Developmental differences in time monitoring were also observed, with older children generally adopting a more strategic monitoring strategy than younger children. The majority of age-related variance in prospective memory task performance could be explained by cognitive resources, in particular planning and task switching. In contrast, no further independent contribution of time estimation was observed. Findings are in line with the development of strategic behavior, as well as executive functioning, in school-aged children.     

The effect of visual signals on spatial decision making

We examined the effect of an irrelevant visual transient on the decision where to look for a hidden object. Participants also performed a conventional ‘inhibition of return’ localization task. In Experiments 1 and 2 the two tasks were blocked and in Experiments 3 and 4 they were randomly interleaved. In every experiment there was a bias to select the cued location in the spatial decision task. This facilitory effect was greatest when the cue occurred at a strategically unfavored location and even occurred for participants who reported strategically selecting a non-cued location, indicating that the facilitory effect is automatic and independent of other strategic biases. Inhibition of return was observed only when the tasks were blocked and the localization task preceded the decision task. The findings suggests that spatial decisions engage different attentional control settings than those engaged when detecting visual transients; and that this attentional mode affects the processing of visual transients such that they do not inhibit the subsequent speeded detection of onset targets.     

The problem of delayed causation in a video game: Constant, varied, and filled delays

A first-person shooter video game was adapted for the study of causal decision making within dynamic environments. The video game included groups of three potential targets. Participants chose which of the three targets in each group was producing distal explosions. The actual source of the explosion effect varied in the delay between the firing of its weapon and the effect (from 0 to 2 s), whether these programed average delays were constant or varied from shot to shot, and whether the delays were unfilled or filled with an auditory event. In Experiment 1, participants’ choice accuracy was highest with shorter delays, but there was no effect of filling the delay and some beneficial effect of varying the delay. These results were re-examined in Experiment 2 but with participants experiencing the same average delay for seven subsequent decisions before the next average delay was introduced. In this experiment, men showed a strong and consistent benefit of filling a delay whereas women did not. Participants’ behavior is considered within the context of a model that assumes that choice behavior is driven by experienced contiguity for the target and foils.     

Building an Expanded Therapeutic Alliance: A Task Analysis with Families Trapped in Parental-Adolescent Conflict

Parental-adolescent conflict is part of the normal developmental cycle of families, but when it occurs in a dysfunctional way, it is associated with the appearance of various harmful conditions for the family system and for the adolescent in particular. Family therapy is one of the main options for psychotherapeutic intervention in these cases and has ample evidence of its effectiveness. The success of this intervention is conditioned to the construction of an adequate therapeutic alliance with the family, but the process of this task has not been clarified yet. The present study is a task analysis, the purpose of which was to create a heuristic model of how an expanded alliance may be built in these kinds of cases. The model was revised and improved from the intensive analysis of six cases. The resulting model can be a useful guide for family therapists in that it describes the specific client and therapist behaviors involved in balancing the alliance, as well as the potential obstacles and suggested ways to resolve them.     

A Task Analysis of Client Re-engagement: Therapeutic De-escalation of High-Conflict Coparents

Parents who are engaged in protracted conflict following a divorce are often referred to coparenting therapy. Episodes of intense conflict are common during these therapy sessions and often result in coparents disengaging from the therapist while they engage in escalating conflict with each other, potentially disrupting their progress in therapy. The purpose of this study was to identify how therapists successfully re-engage clients in the session. To understand this process, 24 disengagement events (12 successful and 12 unsuccessful) from 13 cases were analyzed using a task analytic approach. The sample included coparent dyads referred by the judicial system to a high-conflict coparenting therapy program. Task analysis was used to create a model of how re-engagement unfolds in treatment. The empirical model that resulted has five phases: (1) disengagement from the therapeutic process, (2) disruption of the conflict, (3) de-escalating the most escalated coparent, (4) de-escalating the other coparent, and (5) therapist buffered re-engagement. Successful episodes of re-engagement tended to have therapists who remained active throughout the conflict episode, used structuring interventions aimed at disrupting and then regulating the most escalated partner, blocked attempts to re-engage in conflict, and then repeated this process with the less escalated partner. Additional interventions that promote therapeutic re-engagement are described for each phase, and implications for clinicians and researchers are discussed.     

Successive incrementing non-matching-to-samples in rats: An automated version of the odor span task

The odor span task is a procedure frequently used to study remembering of multiple stimuli in rodents. A large arena is used and odor stimuli are presented using scented cups. Selection of each odor is reinforced when first presented, but not on subsequent presentations; correct selections depend on remembering which stimuli were previously presented. The use of an arena setting with manual stimulus presentation makes the odor span task labor-intensive and limits experimental control; thus, an automated version of the task would be of value. The present study used an operant chamber equipped with an olfactometer and trained rats using successive conditional discrimination procedures under an incrementing non-matching-to-samples contingency. High rates of responding developed to odor stimuli when they were session-novel with low rates of responding to subsequent presentations of that odor. Additional experiments assessed variations of the procedure to determine the role of the frequency of odor presentation and the retention interval separating sample and comparison. Discrimination was impaired with long retention intervals suggesting the importance of this variable. These findings confirmed that rats differentiate between stimuli that are session-novel and those previously encountered and support the use of an automated procedure as an alternative to the odor span task.     

From Glossy to Greasy: The Impact of Learned Associations on Perceptions of Food Healthfulness

We demonstrate that consumers have learned that unhealthy snacks such as potato chips tend to be sold in glossy packages, whereas healthier snacks such as crackers tend to be sold in matte packages (in studies 1–3). As a result, consumers who see a snack food package with a glossy [matte] surface will infer lesser [greater] healthfulness of its contents (study 4), consume less [more] of it (study 5), and be more likely to choose a glossy [matte] package from an assortment of snack packages if motivated to engage in tasty [healthful] eating (study 6). Theoretical and managerial implications as well as future research opportunities are discussed.