Academic goals and learning strategies in secondary education Spanish students with social anxiety / Metas académicas y estrategias de aprendizaje en estudiantes españoles de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria con ansiedad social

The purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between high social anxiety, academic goals and learning strategies in a sample of 2,022 (51.1% male) Spanish adolescents aged 12–16. The Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI), Achievement Goal Tendencies Questionnaire (AGTQ) and Learning and Studies Skills Strategies Inventory — High School Version (LASSI-HS) were used to assess the variables. The results showed no statistically significant differences in goal orientations between students with and without high social anxiety. However, students with high social anxiety used learning strategies significantly less. In addition, the logistic regression results indicated that high social anxiety acts as a significant predictor for setting social reinforcement goals and learning and study strategies.     

Recognition memory deficits in mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACT There is no agreement on the pattern of recognition memory deficits characteristic of patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Whereas lower performance in recollection is the hallmark of MCI, there is a strong controversy about possible deficits in familiarity estimates when using recognition memory tasks. The aim of this research is to shed light on the pattern of responding in recollection and familiarity in MCI. Five groups of participants were tested. The main participant samples were those formed by two MCI groups differing in age and an Alzheimer's disease group (AD), which were compared with two control groups. Whereas one of the control groups served to assess the performance of the MCI and AD people, the other one, composed of young healthy participants, served the purpose of evaluating the adequacy of the experimental tasks used in the evaluation of the different components of recognition memory. We used an associative recognition task as a direct index of recollection and a choice task on a pair of stimuli, one of which was perceptually similar to those studied in the associative recognition phase, as an index of familiarity. Our results indicate that recollection decreases with age and neurological status, and familiarity remains stable in the elderly control sample but it is deficient in MCI. This research shows that a unique encoding situation generated deficits in recollective and familiarity mechanisms in mild cognitive impaired individuals, providing evidence for the existence of deficits in both retrieval processes in recognition memory in a MCI stage.     

A gestural repertoire of 1- to 2-year-old human children: in search of the ape gestures

Animal Cognition - When we compare human gestures to those of other apes, it looks at first like there is nothing much to compare at all. In adult humans, gestures are thought to be a window into...     

Comparison of the home advantage in nine different professional team sports in Spain

Home advantage is a well-established phenomenon in many sports. The present study is unique in that it includes different sports analysed in the same country, at the same level of competition, and over the same time period. Nine team sports from Spain were included: baseball, basketball, handball, indoor soccer, roller hockey, rugby, soccer, volleyball, and water polo. Data for five seasons (2005-2006 to 2009-2010) were obtained, totaling 9,472 games. The results confirmed the existence of home advantage in all nine sports. There was a statistically significant difference between the sports; home advantage was highest in rugby (67.0%), and lowest in volleyball (55.7%), water polo (56.2%), and roller hockey (58.3%). The design of the study controlled for some of the likely causes of home advantage, and the results suggested that the high home advantage for rugby was likely a reflection of the continuous, aggressive, and intense nature of the sport.     

Species comparative studies and cognitive development

The comparative study of infant development and animal cognition brings to cognitive science the promise of insights into the nature and origins of cognitive skills. In this article, I review a recent wave of comparative studies conducted with similar methodologies and similar theoretical frameworks on how two core components of human cognition--object permanence and gaze following--develop in different species. These comparative findings call for an integration of current competing accounts of developmental change. They further suggest that evolution has produced developmental devices capable at the same time of preserving core adaptive components, and opening themselves up to further adaptive change, not only in interaction with the external environment, but also in interaction with other co-developing cognitive systems.     

Knowing without knowing: implicit cognition and the minds of infants and animals / Saber sin saber: la cognición implícita y las mentes de niños pequeños y animales

The main aim of this paper is to highlight the need to address the conceptual problem of ‘implicit knowledge’ or ‘implicit cognition’ — a notion especially important in the study of the nonverbal minds of animals and infants. We review some uses of the term ‘implicit’ in psychology and allied disciplines, and conclude that conceptual clarification of this notion is not only lacking, but largely avoided and reduced to a methodological problem. We propose that this elusive notion is central in the study not only of animal and infant minds, but also the human adult mind. Some promising approaches in developmental and evolutionary psychology towards innovative conceptualization of implicit knowledge remain conceptually underdeveloped and in need of reconsideration and re-elaboration. We conclude by suggesting that the challenge of implicit cognition and nonverbal minds will only be solved through a concerted interdisciplinary approach between psychology and other disciplines.     

Differences in familiarity according to the cognitive reserve of healthy elderly people / Diferencias en familiaridad en función de la reserva cognitiva en ancianos sanos

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between cognitive reserve and familiarity processes in recognition memory. We hypothesize that people with high cognitive reserve are able to better compensate in alternative information retrieval processes. Forty-five participants, divided into high and low cognitive reserve groups, conducted a recognition experiment where they were asked to discriminate between studied and non-studied words that varied in perceptual familiarity. The results indicated that participants were able to use perceptual familiarity to improve their level of recognition. More importantly, people with high cognitive reserve used familiarity better than those with low cognitive reserve. The results provide the first empirical evidence indicating that people with high cognitive reserve are more efficient at balancing recollection and familiarity processes, and thus maintain a better performance level than those with low cognitive reserve.