Motivational reserve: motivation-related occupational abilities and risk of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease

Midlife motivational abilities, that is, skills to initiate and persevere in the implementation of goals, have been related to mental and physical health, but their association with risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has not yet been directly investigated. This relation was examined with data from the German Study on Ageing, Cognition, and Dementia in Primary Care Patients (AgeCoDe). A total of 3,327 nondemented participants (50.3% of a randomly selected sample) aged 75-89 years were recruited in primary care and followed up twice (after 1.5 and 3 years). Motivation-related occupational abilities were estimated on the basis of the main occupation (assessed at follow-up II) using the Occupational Information Network (O* NET) database, which provides detailed information on worker characteristics and abilities. Cox proportional hazards models were used to evaluate the relative risk of developing MCI and AD in relation to motivation-related occupational abilities, adjusting for various covariates. Over the 3 years of follow-up, 15.2% participants developed MCI and 3.0% developed AD. In a fully adjusted model, motivation-related occupational abilities were found to be associated with a reduced risk of MCI (HR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.64-0.92). Motivation-related occupational abilities were associated with reduced risk of AD in ApoE ε4 carriers (HR: 0.48; CI: 0.25-0.91), but not in noncarriers (HR: 0.99; CI: 0.65-1.53). These results suggest that midlife motivational abilities are associated with reduced risk of MCI in general and with reduced risk of AD in ApoE ε4 carriers. Revealing the mechanisms underlying this association may inform novel prevention strategies for decelerating cognitive decline in old age.     

Same-gender distractors are not so easy to reject: ERP evidence of gender categorization

Social categorization appears to be an automatic process that occurs during person perception. Understanding social categorization better is important because mere categorization can lead to stereotype activation and, in turn, to discrimination. In the present study we used a novel approach to examine event-related potentials (ERPs) of gender categorization in the “Who said what?” memory paradigm, thus allowing for a more in-depth understanding of the specific mechanisms underlying identity versus categorization processing. After observing video clips showing a “discussion” among female and male targets, participants were shown individual statements, each accompanied by one of the discussants’ faces. While we measured ERPs, participants had to decide whether or not a given statement had previously been made by the person with the accompanying face. In same-person trials, statements were paired with the correct person, whereas in the distractor trials, either a same-gender or a different-gender distractor was shown. As expected, participants were able to reject different-gender distractors faster than same-gender distractors, and they were more likely to falsely choose yes for a same-gender than for a different-gender distractor. Both findings indicate gender-based categorization. ERPs, analyzed in a 300- to 400-ms time window at occipito-temporal channels, indicated more negative amplitudes for yes responses both for the same person and for same-gender distractors, relative to different-gender distractors. Overall, these results show gender-based categorization even when the task was to assess the identifying information in a gender-neutral context. These findings are interpreted as showing that gender categorization occurs automatically during person perception, but later than race- or age-based categorization.     

Beyond conflict: Functional facets of the work-family interplay

The present paper deals with three positive facets of the work-family interplay, i.e., transfer of competencies, transfer of positive mood, and cross-domain compensation. The latter refers to the experience that engagement in one domain helps dealing with failures in the other domain. In two correlational studies (N₁ = 107 working mothers, N₂ = 146 working men and women), cross-domain compensation predicted domain-specific well-being even when we controlled for work-family conflicts and the two other positive facets (viz., transfer of competencies and positive mood). In an additional experiment (N₃ = 63 working men and women), which exclusively focused on compensation, participants were asked to remember a job-related failure. Then they were instructed to think about a positive job-related experience (i.e., intradomain compensation) or family-related experience (i.e., cross-domain compensation). Compared to a control group, both experimental groups showed faster emotional recovery, with cross-domain compensation being a slightly more effective strategy at the beginning of that recovery.     

Event-related potentials indicate different processes to mediate categorical and associative priming in person recognition

Whether representations of people are stored in associative networks based on co-occurrence or are stored in terms of more abstract semantic categories is a controversial question. In the present study, participants performed fame decisions to unfamiliar or famous target faces (Experiment 1) or names (Experiment 2), which were primed, either by highly associated celebrity names or by names from the same occupational category, or were unprimed. Reaction times and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Reaction times yielded significant priming effects for both associated and same category conditions. ERPs to targets in the associated condition were significantly more positive than were ERPs in all other conditions over central and parietal areas (300-600 ms; N400 priming effect). By contrast, a more posterior effect was found for categorical priming. These findings held for both cross-domain (Experiment 1) and within-domain conditions (Experiment 2). Results (a) demonstrate behavioral and ERP evidence for categorical priming in person recognition, consistent with the assumption that shared semantic information units can mediate semantic priming, and (b) suggest that associative and categorical priming are based on mechanisms that are at least partially different.     

What is the reference in reference repulsion?

Reference repulsion is a mechanism posited to explain systematic biases of direction judgment of single drifting dot displays (Rauber and Treue, 1998 Perception 27 393-402). Rauber and Treue obtained systematic but, surprisingly, very different effects depending upon whether standard and comparison stimuli were presented simultaneously or successively. Successive effects were described as exhibiting repulsion from both vertical and horizontal cardinal axes, whereas simultaneous effects showed repulsion from horizontal only. We contend that the proposed mechanism makes no testable predictions because the so-called reference can only be specified a posteriori, a fact acknowledged by Rauber and Treue. We attempted to replicate Rauber and Treue's experiments, but we obtained no systematic biases of direction judgment. Comparisons across several studies suggest that errors in direction judgments of single drifting dot patterns vary widely in magnitude and direction, as might be expected with what are essentially baseline or pretest measures. In our view, reference repulsion describes neither a real perceptual mechanism nor a predictable pattern of direction misjudgments.     

The nomological network of self‐management strategies and career success

Changes in the labour market require people to show more self‐management than before if they want to succeed. The present research was conducted to analyse the nomological network of general self‐management strategies (i.e. selection of goals; optimization as implementation of goal‐pursuing behaviour), specific self‐management strategies (i.e. career planning) and central indicators of career success, i.e. objective career success (pay, position), self‐referent subjective success (career satisfaction), and other‐referent career success (comparative judgment). In a large sample of professionals (N=1,185), we found in support of our hypotheses that the generalized strategy of optimization was linked to the domain‐specific strategy of career planning, and that domain‐specific career planning was directly linked to all outcome measures. The generalized strategy of optimization was directly linked to subjective success, but only indirectly to objective success. The link from self‐management to subjective success was independent of objective success. Most interestingly, and in accord with our social comparison assumption, objective success was more closely linked to other‐referent success than to self‐referent success. Implications for career research and career counselling are discussed.     

Social support from work and family domains as an antecedent or moderator of work-family conflicts?

On the basis of Conservation of Resources theory, we investigated how social support from supervisor, co-workers, life partner, and family members is associated with work-family conflicts in N = 107 working mothers. We used data from a cross-sectional questionnaire and a standardized diary to examine two possible forms of interplay: (a) Social support as an antecedent of work-family conflicts, and (b) moderating effects of social support on the relationship between domain-specific strain and work-family conflicts. Overall, results favored social support as an antecedent of work-family conflicts.     

Problem Solvers Adjust Cognitive Offloading Based on Performance Goals

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university.¹ Although cognitive offloading has frequently been associated with improved performance, it is yet unclear how flexible problem solvers are at matching their offloading habits with their current performance goals (can people improve goal‐related instead of generic performance, e.g., when being in a hurry and aiming for a “quick and dirty” solution?). Here, we asked participants to solve a cognitive task, provided them with different goals—maximizing speed (SPD) or accuracy (ACC), respectively—and measured how frequently (Experiment 1) and how proficiently (Experiment 2) they made use of a novel external resource to support their cognitive processing. Experiment 1 showed that offloading behavior varied with goals: Participants offloaded less in the SPD than in the ACC condition. Experiment 2 showed that this differential offloading behavior was associated with high goal‐related performance: fast answers in the SPD, accurate answers in the ACC condition. Simultaneously, goal‐unrelated performance was sacrificed: inaccurate answers in the SPD, slow answers in the ACC condition. The findings support the notion of humans as canny offloaders who are able to successfully incorporate their environment in pursuit of their current cognitive goals. Future efforts should be focused on the finding's generalizability, for example, to settings without feedback or with high mental workload.     

German Inflection: The Exception That Proves the Rule

Language is often explained as the product of generative rules and a memorized lexicon. For example, most English verbs take a regular past tense suffix (ask-asked), which is applied to new verbs (faxed, wugged), suggesting the mental rule "add - ed to a Verb." Irregular verbs (break-broke, go-went) would be listed in memory. Alternatively, a pattern associator memory (such as a connectionist network) might record all past tense forms and generalize to new ones by similarity; irregular and regular patterns would differ only because of their different numbers of verbs. We present evidence that mental rules are indispensible. A rule concatenates a suffix to a symbol for verbs, so it does not require access to memorized verbs on their sound patterns, but applies as the "default," whenever memory access fails. We find 21 such circumstances for regular past tense formation, including novel, unusual-sounding, and rootless and headless derived words; in every case, people inflect them regularly (explaining quirks like flied out, sabre-tooths, walk-mans). Contrary to the connectionist account, these effects are not due to regular words constituting a large majority of vocabulary. The German participle -t applies to a much smaller percentage of verbs than its English counterpart, and the German plural -s applies to a small minority of nouns. But the affixes behave in the language like their English counterparts, as defaults. We corroborate this effect in two experiments eliciting ratings of participle and plural forms of novel German words. Thus default suffixation is not due to numerous regular words reinforcing a pattern in associative memory. Because default cases do not occupy a cohesive similarity space, but do correspond to the range of a symbol, they are evidence for a memory-independent, symbol-concatenating mental operation.     

Dynamical Social Psychology: Complexity and Coherence in Human Experience

Human experience reflects the interplay of multiple influences operating on various time scales to promote constantly evolving patterns of thought, emotion, and action. Although the complexity and dynamism of personal and social phenomena have long been recognized, they are difficult to investigate using traditional research methods. This article provides an overview of dynamical social psychology, an approach adapted from dynamical systems theory that is designed to capture the complementary tendencies of stability and dynamism at different levels of social reality, from private thoughts to intergroup relations. Utilizing time-series analyses and computer simulations, this perspective documents the emergence of global properties from the interaction of basic elements in mental and social systems and investigates the time-dependent relation between external influences and a system’s internally generated dynamics. The dynamical approach enables social psychology to advance as a precise science while preserving the basic insights that launched the field over a century ago.