Bistable perception in normal aging: perceptual reversibility and its relation to cognition

The effects of age on the ability to resolve perceptual ambiguity are unknown, though it depends on frontoparietal attentional networks known to change with age. We presented the bistable Necker cube to 24 middle-aged and OAs (older adults; 56–78 years) and 20 YAs (younger adults; 18–24 years) under passive-viewing and volitional control conditions: Hold one cube percept and Switch between cube percepts. During passive viewing, OAs had longer dominance durations (time spent on each percept) than YAs. In the Hold condition, OAs were less able than YAs to increase dominance durations. In the Switch condition, OAs and YAs did not differ in performance. Dominance durations in either condition correlated with performance on tests of executive function mediated by the frontal lobes. Eye movements (fixation deviations) did not differ between groups. These results suggest that OAs’ reduced ability to hold a percept may arise from reduced selective attention. The lack of correlation of performance between Hold and executive-function measures suggests at least a partial segregation of underlying mechanisms.     

The role of coping, anxiety, and stress in depression post-acute coronary syndrome

Depressive symptoms are common and can affect prognosis following acute coronary syndromes (ACS). This study examined the psychological factors, coping, anxiety, and perceived stress associated with depression following ACS. Psychological variables were assessed in 15 females and 66 males (M = 57 years, SD = 12). Repeated measures at 2, 12, and 24 weeks post-ACS compared depression, anxiety, perceived stress, and coping resources as determined by the Cardiac Depression Scale, Beck Depression Inventory-II, State Trait Anxiety Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale, and Coping Resources Inventory. Depression, anxiety, and perceived stress remained high in the depressed group across time. Coping scores at 2 weeks post-ACS predicted depression scores at 24 weeks post-ACS. It appears that trait anxiety and coping resources are related to depressive symptoms post-ACS.     

Intra‐sentential context effects on the interpretation of logical metonymy⋆

Verbs such as enjoy in the student enjoyed the book exhibit logical metonymy: enjoy is interpreted as enjoy reading. Theoreticalwork [Computational Linguistics 17 (4) (1991) 409; The Generative Lexicon, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995] predicts that this interpretation can be influenced by intra‐sentential context, e.g., by the subject of enjoy. In this article, we test this prediction using a completion experiment and find that the interpretation of a metonymic verb is influenced by the semantic role of its subject. We present a Bayesian model that accounts for the interpretation of logical metonymy and achieves a good fit on our experimental data. We show that the parameters of the model can be estimated from completion data or from corpus data.     

Comment on “The Self‐Care of Psychologists and Mental Health Professionals” (Dattilio, 2015)—Working With the Mentally Ill Is a Mental Health Hazard: What Can We Do About It?

It has been known for many decades that the risk of burnout, psychological distress, mental illness, or suicidal ideation is higher in mental health professionals (MHP) compared with many other professions and the general population; however, MHPs often disregard their own mental health for the sake of helping others, sometimes with fatal consequences. Paradoxically MHP tends to avoid seeking professional help for their own mental health issues. Apart from the serious risk to one's health that this poses, MHPs are now mandated to report any impairment that affects their ability to practice. The aim of this commentary is to emphasise the heightened risk of mental illness among MHP, and includes some risk factors associated with burnout, psychological distress, or mental illness in MHP. It explores some of the barriers to help seeking, including stigma, and highlights mindfulness as a self‐care strategy to prevent psychological distress and burnout. The commentary makes recommendations for inclusions into current psychology postgraduate as well as undergraduate curriculum. It concludes with recommendation for suitable support from professional bodies to help maintain good mental health and to help prevent mental illness among MHPs.     

Culture,religion, and the underlying value dimensions of the metapersonal self-construal

The metapersonal self-construal (MPS) is presented in the context of a three-factor model of self-construal that is grounded in the literature on culture and values. The MPS is an understanding of the self as profoundly interconnected with all humanity and nature. It is distinct from the independent and interdependent self-construals and may emerge from one's cultural, religious, or spiritual background. Relating self-construal with a structural model of values, Study 1 indicated that while the independent and interdependent self-construals marked each end of a continuum, the MPS was associated with a unique cluster of values centred around universalism. Studies 2 and 3 found support for the predicted effects of membership in Buddhist groups and identification with Aboriginal culture on MPS. These results support the MPS as a unique understanding of the self that reflects surrounding beliefs and values. Implications for understanding the relationship between spirituality and well-being are discussed.     

Since when or how often? Dissociating the roles of age of acquisition (AoA) and lexical frequency in early visual word processing

The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of both word age of acquisition (AoA) and frequency of occurrence on the timing and topographical distribution of ERP components. The processing of early- versus late-acquired words was compared with that of high-frequency versus low-frequency words. Participants were asked to perform an orthographic task while EEG was recorded from 128 sites. RTs showed an effect of both word AoA and lexical frequency. ERPs revealed a neuro-functional dissociation between AoA and frequency effects in early word processing. AoA modulated the amplitude of left occipito-temporal selection-negativity, suggesting an effect of AoA on early orthographic and lexical access and revealing the crucial role of AoA in determining how words are neurally represented in the ventral pathway. Lexical frequency modulated the amplitude of left anterior negativity, providing evidence for the involvement of the left inferior frontal cortex in the processing of low-frequency words.     

The Passion as ludic practice—understanding public ritual performances in late modern society: a case study from the Netherlands

This article offers the case study of a contemporary mediatized Christian passion event that takes place annually in the public sphere in the Netherlands. Contributing to debates in various studies of religion regarding religious change in late modern societies, the authors propose the concept of ‘play’ that, although not a new concept to the study of religion or ritual, is well suited to investigate religious ritual in a liquid modern world that is characterized by, as scholars state, a global ludification of culture. Play helps to explain that and in what ways a mediatized event like The Passion in a digital media culture opens a ludic space for many people, where their hermeneutical faculty to deal with the sacred is activated. This can resolve the paradox that, in a still secularizing country like the Netherlands, a ritual on the suffering and death of Jesus Christ can be so popular.     

The neural basis of speech parsing in children and adults

Word segmentation, detecting word boundaries in continuous speech, is a fundamental aspect of language learning that can occur solely by the computation of statistical and speech cues. Fifty‐four children underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to three streams of concatenated syllables that contained either high statistical regularities, high statistical regularities and speech cues, or no easily detectable cues. Significant signal increases over time in temporal cortices suggest that children utilized the cues to implicitly segment the speech streams. This was confirmed by the findings of a second fMRI run, in which children displayed reliably greater activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus when listening to ‘words’ that had occurred more frequently in the streams of speech they had just heard. Finally, comparisons between activity observed in these children and that in previously studied adults indicate significant developmental changes in the neural substrate of speech parsing.     

Altered lateralization of dorsal language tracts in 6‐week‐old infants at risk for autism

Altered structural connectivity has been identified as a possible biomarker of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) risk in the developing brain. Core features of ASD include impaired social communication and early language delay. Thus, examining white matter tracts associated with language may lend further insight into early signs of ASD risk and the mechanisms that underlie language impairments associated with the disorder. Evidence of altered structural connectivity has previously been detected in 6‐month‐old infants at high familial risk for developing ASD. However, as language processing begins in utero, differences in structural connectivity between language regions may be present in the early infant brain shortly after birth. Here we investigated key white matter pathways of the dorsal language network in 6‐week‐old infants at high (HR) and low (LR) risk for ASD to identify atypicalities in structural connectivity that may predict altered developmental trajectories prior to overt language delays and the onset of ASD symptomatology. Compared to HR infants, LR infants showed higher fractional anisotropy (FA) in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF); in contrast, in the right SLF, HR infants showed higher FA than LR infants. Additionally, HR infants showed more rightward lateralization of the SLF. Across both groups, measures of FA and lateralization of these pathways at 6 weeks of age were related to later language development at 18 months of age as well as ASD symptomatology at 36 months of age. These findings indicate that early differences in the structure of language pathways may provide an early predictor of future language development and ASD risk.