Training the brain: fact and fad in cognitive and behavioral remediation

Putatively safe and effective for improving cognitive performance in both health and disease, products purported to train the brain appeal to consumers and healthcare practitioners. In an increasingly health-centered society, these applications constitute a burgeoning commercial market. Sparse evidence coupled with lack of scientific rigor, however, leaves claims concerning the impact and duration of such brain training largely unsubstantiated. On the other hand, at least some scientific findings seem to support the effectiveness and sustainability of training for higher brain functions such as attention and working memory. In the present paper we provide a tectonic integration and synthesis of cognitive training approaches. Specifically, we sketch the relative merits and shortcomings of these programs, which often appeal to parents who must choose between side-effect-laden medication and other less conventional options. Here we examine how neuroplasticity allows the healthy as well the impaired to benefit from cognitive training programs. We evaluate the evidence and consider whether brain training can be a stand-alone treatment or an adjunct to pharmacotherapy, outline promising future prospects, and highlight what training outcomes are plausible in line with available data. Future research would determine whether the field of brain training realizes its potential to revolutionize education and rehabilitation or withers away engulfed in controversy.     

Insights into spared memory capacity in amnestic MCI and Alzheimer's Disease via minimal interference

Impairment on standard tests of delayed recall is often already maximal in the aMCI stage of Alzheimer's Disease. Neuropathological work shows that the neural substrates of memory function continue to deteriorate throughout the progression of the disease, hinting that further changes in memory performance could be tracked by a more sensitive test of delayed recall. Recent work shows that retention in aMCI patients can be raised well above floor when the delay period is devoid of further material - 'Minimal Interference'. This memory enhancement is thought to be the result of improved memory consolidation. Here we used the minimal interference/interference paradigm (word list retention following 10 min of quiet resting vs. picture naming) in a group of 17 AD patients, 25 aMCI patients and 25 controls. We found (1) that retention can be improved significantly by minimal interference in patients with aMCI and patients with mild to moderate AD; (2) that the minimal interference paradigm is sensitive to decline in memory function with disease severity, even when performance on standard tests has reached floor; and (3) that this paradigm can differentiate well (80% sensitivity and 100% specificity) between aMCI patients who progress and do not progress to AD within 2 years. Our findings support the notion that the early memory dysfunction in AD is associated with an increased susceptibility to memory interference and are suggestive of a gradual decline in consolidation capacity with disease progression.     

Relation of occupational knowledge to career interests and competence perceptions in Italian children

The relations of differential occupational knowledge with interests and competence perceptions in children as well as how these relations were moderated by gender and grade were examined in this study using an Italian sample. Data were collected from samples of elementary school and middle school children (N = 539). The Inventory of Children's Activities—Revised (ICA-R; Tracey & Ward, 1998) was used to assess children's interest and competency perceptions in various activities associated with the Holland's RIASEC types. The Occupational Knowledge Scale (OKS) was created for this study, and consisted of a representative sampling of occupational titles to which children indicated their knowledge. Hierarchical regression results indicated a relationship between knowledge, interests, and competence perceptions in children. With regard to overall knowledge, no relationship was found between general knowledge and either grade or gender. More specific examination of the type of knowledge as it varied across the dimensions of People–Things, and Data–Ideas demonstrated that there appeared to be a specific pattern relating interest, gender, and grade to knowledge of occupations. For knowledge of people relative to things occupations, higher interest, higher grade level, and being female predicts stronger knowledge of people occupations. It was also found that interest in ideas predicts stronger knowledge of ideas occupations, and being male predicts stronger knowledge of high prestige occupations. Generally, competence perceptions did not have a unique relation with one's knowledge of People–Things, Ideas–Data, or Prestige; however, girls who reported higher competence had greater knowledge of ideas occupations.     

Getting Out of Our Own Way

This paper, a follow-up from a 2009 panel discussion at ABCT's Annual Convention, focuses on the choices that women make (or don't make) that can affect their careers. Women are particularly prone to feeling guilty about their choices, and while a few decades ago there was a great deal of sexism in the workplace, at this point in time, I believe that we are more likely to make assumptions that impede our careers rather than face external barriers. The paper covers some “stuck points” that stop women from advocating for themselves or results in guilt regardless of their choice.     

How Being Female Influenced My Professional Experiences and Growth

In this paper I describe some of my professional experiences as a female, both as a graduate student and throughout my career. My own experience was unique because I began graduate school a few months after arriving in the U.S. with limited knowledge of English in a very competitive and demanding program , in addition to the fact that I was a faculty wife in that department.     

The equivalence of two ways of computing distances from dissimilarities for arbitrary sets of stimuli

Given a set endowed with pairwise dissimilarities, the Dissimilarity Cumulation procedure computes the (quasi)distance between any two elements of the set as the infimum of the sums of dissimilarities across all finite chains of elements connecting the two elements. For finite sets, this procedure is known to be equivalent to recursive corrections for violations of the triangle inequality in any sequence of ordered triads of points which contains every triad a sufficient number of times. This paper extends this equivalence to infinite set.     

Understanding memory impairment with memory models and hierarchical Bayesian analysis

The study of human episodic memory is a topic that interests cognitive and mathematical psychologists as well as clinicians interested in the diagnosis and assessment of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders (ADRD). In this paper, we use simple cognitive models for the recognition and recall tasks typically applied in clinical assessments of ADRD to study memory performance in ADRD patients. Our models make use of hierarchical Bayesian methods as a way to model individual differences in patient performance and to facilitate the modeling of performance changes that occur during multiple recall tasks. We show how the models are able to account for different aspects of patient performance, and also discuss some of the predictive capabilities of the model. We conclude with a discussion on the scope to improve on our results by discussing the link between memory theory in psychology and clinical practice.     

EMOVAL : évaluation automatique de la valence et de l’activation émotionnelles des textes à l’aide d’une méta-norme de 5656 mots-racines

EMOVAL: automatic evaluation the emotional valence and arousal of texts using a 5656 root-words metanorm. EMOVAL is an emotional valence and arousal analysis model of texts. EMOVAL draws from linguistic tradition the hypothesis that every word has a denotative aspect (“meaning”) and a connotative aspect (“affective halo”). It uses a meta-analysis of seven French norms and one English norm with the objective to characterize the emotional valence of texts, paragraphs, or sentences in a pleasant or unpleasant way. The meta-analysis indicates that the seven French norms data are highly correlated in between (0.82 to 0.99), and highly correlated with the Affectiv Norm for English Words (Bradley et Lang, 1999) (0.81 to 0.97). Arousal values taken from Affective Norm for English Words (ANEW) (Bradley et Lang, 1999) and the Leleu (1987) norm are significately correlated (0.55). The metanorm has 5656 words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) characterized in valence (−1 to +1), and 3265 words characterized in arousal. These items are used by EMOVAL for valence judgments of texts. Two types of texts are proposed: the evaluation of the whole (702) or of extracts (110) of a corpus of sentences judged in a seven-point scale (−3 very unpleasant to +3 very pleasant) (Bestgen et al., 2004), and of 12 texts positively valenced (happiness and good surprise) and negatively valenced (fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and bad surprise). These two types of tests confirm the psychological pertinence of EMOVAL. Limits regarding the arousal dimension are discussed. The metanorm presented in this article can be obtained from the authors.     

La version française du dictionnaire pour le LIWC : modalités de construction et exemples d’utilisation

LIWC is, originally, a text analysis program that counts words of English texts in psychologically meaningful categories. It provides an analysis (in percentage) for 80 dimensions of language (functional words, topics, punctuation). The goal of this methodological note is to present the French LIWC. This version respects the structure of the categories of the English version of the software and gives explanations about the user guide such the preparation of the to be analyzed texts. Then, we explain the decisions for translating the English dictionary into French. We emphasize the constraints imposed by the morphology of written French language and the difficulties encountered (elision of the article, elision of negation and of verbs’ tense). Presenting the translation problems allows understanding the modalities of construction of the dictionary and allows for a LIWC user to build a personalized dictionary in order to analyze contents more suited to the research needs. A qualitative comparison of dimensions obtained with both the French and English versions for 66 bilingual texts of various types and contents provides satisfactory results. A statistical comparison of 119 expressive writings produced by students from three university courses (Humanities, Sciences and Psychology) about a given event (success or failure to an exam) shows the validity of the French version for identifying the expressed contents. Thus, this tool should be efficient for undertaking research in different fields of psychology (health, work and education) concerning oral and written language produced in different contexts.     

Empathy, values, morality and Asperger's syndrome

The aims of this study were, first, to re-address the issue of empathy among people with autism conditions; second, to explore the relationships between empathy and values among autistic populations and controls; and third, to explore the capacity for moral agency among those affected by autism. We compared responses of an Asperger group (N = 41) and a control group (N = 139) to measures of self-reported empathy (Davis's IRI) and value priorities (Schwartz's PVQ). Control group results were largely in line with previous studies, such that empathy subscales of perspective taking and empathic concern showed their strongest positive and negative relations to the Schwartz self-transcendence/self-enhancement dimensions. Results for the Asperger group showed that although on the one hand there were self-reported difficulties in perspective taking and the cognitive recognition of affect, and that on the other hand there were less connections between the empathy and value measures, there was nevertheless a comparable prioritization of moral values. Conclusions suggest that different people may acquire moral values through different mechanisms.