Estradiol or diarylpropionitrile administration to wild type, but not estrogen receptor beta knockout, mice enhances performance in the object recognition and object placement tasks

Cognitive processes mediated by the hippocampus and cortex are influenced by estradiol (E₂); however, the mechanisms by which E₂ has these effects are not entirely clear. As such, studies were conducted to begin to address the role of actions at the β form of the intracellular estrogen receptor (ERβ) for E₂’s cognitive effects in adult female mice. We investigated whether E₂ improved performance of wild type (WT) and ERβ knockout (βERKO) mice in tasks considered to be mediated by the cortex and hippocampus, the object recognition and object placement tasks. WT and βERKO mice were ovariectomized (ovx) and E₂ (0.1 mg/kg), an ERβ selective ER modulator (SERM), diarylpropionitrile (DPN; 0.1 mg/kg), or oil vehicle was administered to mice following training in these tasks. We hypothesized that if E₂ has mnemonic effects, in part, due to its actions at ERβ, then WT mice administered E₂ or DPN would have improved performance compared to vehicle WT controls, which would not be different from βERKO mice administered vehicle, E₂ or DPN. Alternatively, activation of ERα (with E₂, which is a ligand for both ERα and ERβ) may produce opposing effects on cognition and/or the activation of ERα and ERβ vs. either receptor isoform alone may produce a different pattern of effects. Results obtained supported the hypothesis that ERβ activation is important for mnemonic effects. Ovx WT, but not βERKO, mice administered E₂ or DPN had a greater percentage of time exploring a novel object in the object recognition task and a displaced object in the object placement task. Thus, actions at ERβ may be important for E₂ or SERMs to enhance cognitive performance of female mice in the object recognition and placement tasks.     

Varenicline ameliorates ethanol-induced deficits in learning in C57BL/6 mice

Ethanol is a frequently abused drug that impairs cognitive processes such as learning. Varenicline, an α4β2 nicotinic receptor partial agonist and α7 nicotinic receptor full agonist prescribed for smoking cessation, has been shown to decrease ethanol consumption. The current study investigated whether varenicline could ameliorate ethanol-induced deficits in learning and whether varenicline alters blood alcohol concentration in C57BL/6 mice. Conditioning consisted of two auditory conditioned stimulus (CS; 30 s, 85 dB white noise)—foot shock unconditioned stimulus (US; 2 s, 0.57 mA) pairings. For all studies, saline or ethanol (1.0, 1.5, 2.0 g/kg i.p.) was administered 15 min before training, and saline or varenicline (0.05, 0.1, 0.2 mg/kg i.p.) was administered 60 min before either training or testing. For blood alcohol analysis, saline or varenicline (0.1 mg/kg) was administered 60 min before collection, and saline or ethanol (1.0, 1.5, 2.0 g/kg) was administered 15 min before collection. Varenicline dose-dependently ameliorated ethanol-induced conditioning deficits for all three doses of ethanol when administered before training but not when administered 24 h later, before testing. In addition, varenicline did not alter blood alcohol concentration. The smoking cessation aid varenicline may have therapeutic uses for treating ethanol-associated disruptions in cognitive processes.     

Matching and oddity relational learning by pigeons (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Columba livia</Emphasis>): transfer from color to shape

Relational learning, as opposed to perceptual learning, is based on the abstract properties of the stimuli. Although at present there is no doubt that pigeons are capable of relational behavior, this study aims to further disclose the conditions under which it occurs. Pigeons were trained in an outdoor cage on a matching-to-sample or an oddity-from-sample task, with colored cardboard stimuli presented horizontally. The apparatus involved three sliding lids on which the stimuli were drawn and which, when displaced, revealed the reinforcement. The lids were either adjacent to each other or somewhat separated. Training sessions involved two colors, and test sessions six different colors (same dimension test), or six different shapes (different dimension test). One group of birds trained under the ‘adjacent’ condition failed when tested with new stimuli, but succeeded in both dimension tests after training under the ‘separate’ condition. Two other groups of birds succeeded in all tests after training under the latter condition. These results show that depending on procedural details, pigeons are or are not able to transfer from one visual dimension to another, thus extending previous related findings.     

Launching the post-college career: A study of mentoring antecedents

Drawing upon role-making theory, this study examines which new job market entrants, following college graduation, find informal mentors and how much mentoring they receive from these mentors using a predictive design. Our results suggest that individuals lower in negative affectivity and higher in cognitive ability as well as women, individuals who have previously had a mentor, and those who go to work for organizations with developmental climates are more likely to find informal mentors. In contrast, individuals higher in learning goal orientation and mentoring instrumentality receive more mentoring once a mentoring relationship has been established.     

What is an academic emotion? Insights from Filipino bilingual students’ emotion words associated with learning

We explored Filipino learners’ concept of academic emotions by studying the words they use to describe their emotional experiences associated with learning. Two main theoretical frames were used as reference in the analysis: Clore, Ortony, & Foss’ (1978) taxonomy of emotion words, and Pekrun’s (2006) dimensions of academic emotions. We asked Filipino learners to describe the positive and negative emotions that they associate with their learning experiences using an open ended questionnaire. The 676 students used 1337 words which were classified into root word categories; 38 categories which were mentioned by at least 1% of the participants were included in the analysis. The interpretive analysis suggested that Filipino learners’ concept of academic emotions includes appraisals of cognitive and even physical conditions, beyond the typical affective conditions assumed in theories of emotions and academic emotions. Moreover, Filipino learners’ concepts of academic emotions include a wider range of emotion concepts, and may require additional characteristic dimensions, compared to what is being studied in current academic emotions research.     

The interactivist model

A shift from a metaphysical framework of substance to one of process enables an integrated account of the emergence of normative phenomena. I show how substance assumptions block genuine ontological emergence, especially the emergence of normativity, and how a process framework permits a thermodynamic-based account of normative emergence. The focus is on two foundational forms of normativity, that of normative function and of representation as emergent in a particular kind of function. This process model of representation, called interactivism, compels changes in many related domains. The discussion ends with brief attention to three domains in which changes are induced by the representational model: perception, learning, and language.     

The easily learned,easily remembered heuristic in children

A previous study with adults [Koriat, A. (2008a). Easy comes, easy goes? The link between learning and remembering and its exploitation in metacognition. Memory & Cognition, 36, 416–428] established a correlation between learning and remembering: items requiring more trials to acquisition (TTA) were less likely to be recalled than those requiring fewer trials. Furthermore, learners’ judgments of learning (JOLs) seemed to rely on the easily learned, easily remembered (ELER) heuristic, that items requiring fewer TTAs are more likely to be recalled. This study extended investigation of these effects to 2nd- and 4th-grade children. When the list included hard and easy paired-associates (Experiment 1, N = 40, 7–10 years), recall and JOL decreased with increasing TTAs for both grades, supporting the validity of the ELER heuristic and its utilization in monitoring one's own learning. When presented only with hard pairs (Experiment 2, N = 60, 7–10 years), however, 4th graders’ but not 2nd graders’ JOLs evidenced reliance on this heuristic. The results suggest an early development of metacognitive heuristics that incorporate information about the links between characteristics of the encoding process and subsequent remembering.     

Behavioral and genetic characterization of habituation using Caenorhabditis elegans

This review surveys the literature that investigates the behavioral characterization and cellular and molecular mechanisms of habituation using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. In 1990, C. elegans was first observed to show habituation to a non-localized mechanical tap. The parameters that govern this behavioral plasticity in C. elegans were subsequently characterized, which lead to the important hypothesis that habituation is mediated by multiple mechanisms. Many tools are available to C. elegans researchers that allow for relatively easy genetic manipulation. This has lead to a number of recent genetic studies that have begun to identify key genes and molecules that play a role in the mechanisms of habituation. Some of these genes include a vesicular glutamate transporter, a glutamate receptor subunit, a dopamine receptor and downstream intracellular signaling molecules, such as G proteins and kinases. Some of these genes only affect certain parameters of habituation, but not others supporting the hypothesis that multiple mechanisms mediate habituation. The field of research has also led to the dissection of different phases of memory (short-term vs. long-term memory for habituation), which are triggered by different training paradigms. The differences in mechanism between these various forms of memory are also beginning to be revealed.     

The role of prior experience in language acquisition

Learners exposed to an artificial language recognize its abstract structural regularities when instantiated in a novel vocabulary (e.g., Gómez, Gerken, & Schvaneveldt, 2000; Tunney & Altmann, 2001). We asked whether such sensitivity accelerates subsequent learning, and enables acquisition of more complex structure. In Experiment 1, pre-exposure to a category-induction language of the form aX bY sped subsequent learning when the language is instantiated in a different vocabulary. In Experiment 2, while naíve learners did not acquire an acX bcY language, in which aX and bY co-occurrence regularities were separated by a c-element, prior experience with an aX bY language provided some benefit. In Experiment 3 we replicated this finding with a 24-hour delay between learning phases, and controlled for prior experience with the aX bY language's prosodic and phonological characteristics. These findings suggest that learners, and the structure they can acquire, change as a function of experience.     

The precursors of mathematics learning: Working memory,phonological ability and numerical competence

This research aims at identifying the precursors of mathematics learning at the beginning of primary school. There are few experimental studies on this topic and existing ones use between-subjects designs and correlation analysis. This paper analyses longitudinal data to investigate whether the relationship between basic abilities and mathematics learning is causally interpretable, rather than one where cognitive abilities are correlated to early mathematics learning in a cross-section design.