Search

OBJECTIVES: To examine Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) performance in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) with 'normal' global cognition according to Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score. DESIGN: A cross-sectional comparison of the MoCA and the MMSE. SETTING: Two movement disorders centers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center. PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 131 patients with idiopathic PD who were screened for cognitive and psychiatric complications. MEASUREMENTS: Subjects were administered the MoCA and MMSE, and only subjects defined as having a normal age- and education-adjusted MMSE score were included in the analyses (N=100). As previously recommended in patients without PD, a MoCA score less than 26 was used to indicate the presence of at least mild cognitive impairment (MCI). RESULTS: Mean MMSE and MoCA scores+/-standard deviation were 28.8+/-1.1 and 24.9+/-3.1, respectively. More than half (52.0%) of subjects with normal MMSE scores had cognitive impairment according to their MoCA score. Impairments were seen in numerous cognitive domains, including memory, visuospatial and executive abilities, attention, and language. Predictors of cognitive impairment on the MoCA using univariate analyses were male sex, older age, lower educational level, and greater disease severity; older age was the only predictor in a multivariate model. CONCLUSION: Approximately half of patients with PD with a normal MMSE score have cognitive impairment based on the recommended MoCA cutoff score. These results suggest that MCI is common in PD and that the MoCA is a more sensitive instrument than the MMSE for its detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have become increasingly aware that data-analysis decisions affect results. Here, we examine this issue systematically for multinomial processing tree (MPT) models, a popular class of cognitive models for categorical data. Specifically, we examine the robustness of MPT model parameter estimates that arise from two important decisions: the level of data aggregation (complete-pooling, no-pooling, or partial-pooling) and the statistical framework (frequentist or Bayesian). These decisions span a multiverse of estimation methods. We synthesized the data from 13,956 participants (164 published data sets) with a meta-analytic strategy and analyzed the magnitude of divergence between estimation methods for the parameters of nine popular MPT models in psychology (e.g., process-dissociation, source monitoring). We further examined moderators as potential sources of divergence . We found that the absolute divergence between estimation methods was small on average (<.04; with MPT parameters ranging between 0 and 1); in some cases, however, divergence amounted to nearly the maximum possible range (.97). Divergence was partly explained by few moderators (e.g., the specific MPT model parameter, uncertainty in parameter estimation), but not by other plausible candidate moderators (e.g., parameter trade-offs, parameter correlations) or their interactions. Partial-pooling methods showed the smallest divergence within and across levels of pooling and thus seem to be an appropriate default method. Using MPT models as an example, we show how transparency and robustness can be increased in the field of cognitive modeling. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Objectives: This research addresses how younger and older adults' decisions and evaluations of gains and losses are affected by the way in which monetary incentives are provided. We compared 2 common incentive schemes in decision making: pay one (only a single decision is incentivized) and pay all (incentives across all decisions are accumulated)., Method: Younger adults (18-36 years; n = 147) and older adults (60-89 years; n = 139) participated in either a pay-one or pay-all condition and made binary choices between two-outcome monetary lotteries in gain, loss, and mixed domains. We analyzed participants' decision quality, risk taking, and psychometric test scores. Computational modeling of cumulative prospect theory served to measure sensitivity to outcomes and probabilities, loss aversion, and choice sensitivity., Results: Decision quality and risk aversion were higher in the gain than mixed or loss domain, but unaffected by age. Loss aversion was higher, and choice sensitivity was lower in older than younger adults. In the pay-one condition, the value functions were more strongly curved, and choice sensitivity was higher than in the pay-all condition., Discussion: An opportunity of accumulating incentives has similar portfolio effects on younger and older adults' decisions. In general, people appear to decide less cautiously in pay-all than pay-one scenarios. The impact of different incentive schemes should be carefully considered in aging and decision research., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

A central tenet of the adaptive-memory framework is that memory has not merely evolved to help us relive the past but to prepare us for the future. In reciprocal social exchange, for instance, people must learn from previous experiences to approach cooperators and to avoid cheaters. In this sense, adaptive memory is inherently prospective. The present research is the first to test this central assumption of the adaptive-memory framework. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants played a Prisoner's Dilemma game and encountered cheating, cooperating, and neutral partners. The faces of these partners later reappeared during an event-based prospective-memory task. Participants showed better prospective-memory performance for cooperator and cheater faces than for neutral control faces. Multinomial processing-tree modeling served to separate the prospective component (remembering that an action needs to be performed) from the retrospective component (recognizing the target faces) of prospective memory. Superior prospective-memory performance for cooperator and cheater faces was attributable to a stronger prospective component, whereas the retrospective component remained unaffected. Experiment 3 showed that emotional descriptions of targets were ineffective in increasing prospective memory, suggesting that emotional valence alone cannot account for the prospective-memory advantage found in Experiments 1 and 2. The results suggest that cooperating with someone or being cheated by someone has a strong impact on future-oriented cognition. Enhanced prospective memory for cooperator and cheater faces may have an important function for maintaining reciprocal relationships and for avoiding cheaters. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The aim of the present study was to critically evaluate the potential of using NIR and Raman spectroscopy for prediction of fatty acid features and single fatty acids in salmon muscle. The study was based on 618 homogenized salmon muscle samples acquired from Atlantic salmon representing a one year-class nucleus, fed the same high fish oil feed. NIR and Raman spectra were used to make regression models for fatty acid features and single fatty acids measured by gas chromatography. The predictive performance of both NIR and Raman was good for most fatty acids, with R 2 above 0.6. Overall, Raman performed marginally better than NIR, and since the Raman models generally required fewer components than respective NIR models to reach high and optimal performance, Raman is likely more robust for measuring fatty acids compared to NIR. The fatty acids of the salmon samples co-varied to a large extent, a feature that was exacerbated by the overlapping peaks in NIR and Raman spectra. Thus, the fatty acid related variation of the spectroscopic data of the present study can be explained by only a few independent principal components. For the Raman spectra, this variation was dominated by functional groups originating from long-chain polyunsaturated FAs like EPA and DHA. By exploring the independent EPA and DHA Raman models, spectral signatures similar to the respective pure fatty acids could be seen. This proves the potential of Raman spectroscopy for single fatty acid prediction in muscle tissue.

Motivational and emotional changes across adulthood have a profound impact on cognition. In this registered report, we conducted an experimental investigation of motivational influence on remembering intentions after a delay (prospective memory; PM) in younger, middle-aged, and older adults, using gain- and loss-framing manipulations. The present study examined for the first time whether motivational framing in a PM task has different effects on younger and older adults' PM performance ( N  = 180; age range: 18-85 years) in a controlled laboratory setting. Based on lifespan theories of motivation, we assumed that the prevention of losses becomes more relevant with increasing age: We expected that older adults show relatively higher PM performance in a task with loss-related consequences following PM failure than in a task in which successful PM leads to gains. The opposite pattern of performance was expected for younger adults. The findings suggest that the relevance of reward and positive gain-related consequences for successful remembering appears to decrease with age. As hypothesised, a motivational framing × age interaction indicated that age differences in memory performance were smaller with loss-related than gain-related consequences, supporting a loss-prevention view on motivated cognition.

Adolescents use some types of homophobic language (e.g., "that's so gay") as a form of banter, while other types are directly targeted as an intentional insult (e.g., calling someone a "fag, dyke, homo"). Little research has investigated adolescents' use and judgments about these types of homophobic language and whether judgments differ if they are used among friends or directed toward non-friend peers. This study investigated how relationship context and victim's (N = 477, M age  = 14.7, SD = 1.63) emotional responses related to judgments about anti-gay banter and homophobic name-calling. Adolescents evaluated homophobic name-calling as more wrong than anti-gay banter. While adolescents' evaluations of homophobic name-calling did not differ based on relationship context, adolescents did differentiate between anti-gay banter perpetrated by a friend vs. a peer. Further, emotional responses mediated these relationships in the anti-gay banter situation. These results suggest that adolescents' judgments about homophobic language are related to the relationship context and the type of homophobic language used., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Recording the fillet lipid percentage in European seabass is crucial to control lipid deposition as a means toward improving production efficiency and product quality. The reference method for recording lipid content is solvent lipid extraction and is the most accurate and precise method available. However, it is costly, requires sacrificing the fish and grinding the fillet sample which limits the scope of applications, for example grading of fillets, recording live fish or selective breeding of fish with own phenotypes are all limited. We tested a rapid, cost effective and non-destructive handheld microwave dielectric spectrometer (namely the Distell fat meter) against the reference method by recording both methods on 313 European seabass ( Dicentrarchus labrax ). The total method agreement between the dielectric spectrometer and the reference method was assessed by Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC), which was low to moderate CCC = 0.36-0.63. We detected a significant underestimation in accuracy of lipid percentage 22-26% by the dielectric spectrometer and increased imprecision resulting in the coefficient of variation (CV) doubling for dielectric spectrometer CV = 40.7-46% as compared to the reference method 27-31%. Substantial genetic variation for fillet lipid percentage was found for both the reference method ( h 2 = 0.59) and dielectric spectroscopy ( h 2 = 0.38-0.58), demonstrating that selective breeding is a promising method for controlling fillet lipid content. Importantly, the genetic correlation ( r g ) between the dielectric spectrometer and the reference method was positive and close to unity ( r g = 0.96), demonstrating the dielectric spectrometer captures practically all the genetic variation in the reference method. These findings form the basis of defining the scope of applications and experimental design for using dielectric spectroscopy for recording fillet lipid content in European seabass and validate its use for selective breeding., Competing Interests: MH and ML are currently employed at ABSA Culmarex. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Difford, Díaz-Gil, Sánchez-Moya, Aslam, Horn, Ruyter, Herlin, Lopez and Sonesson.)

Understanding how people of different ages decide in competition is a question of theoretical and practical importance. Using an experimental laboratory approach, this research investigates the ability of younger and older adults to think and act strategically with equal or unequal resources. In zero-sum games of resource allocation, younger adults (19-35 years) and older adults (65-81 years) made strategic decisions in competition against opponents of a similar age (Study 1; N = 120) or different age (Study 2; N = 120). The findings highlight people's ability to make good interpersonal decisions in complex scenarios: Both younger and older adults were aware of their relative strength (in terms of material resources) and allocated their resources adaptively. When competing against opponents of a similar age, people's gains were in line with game-theoretic predictions. However, younger adults made superior strategic allocations and won more frequently when competing against older adults. Measures of fluid cognitive and numerical abilities correlated with strategic behavior in interpersonal competition., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Objectives: Changes in motivational orientation across adulthood affect cognitive processes. The purpose of this research was to investigate if and how motivational incentives (gains or losses) affect prospective memory for intended actions in younger, middle-aged, and older adults., Methods: The consequences of memory hits and misses and the framing of the memory tasks were experimentally manipulated between participants: In a gain-framing condition, participants accumulated rewards, dependent on the proportion of target events to which they responded accurately. In a loss-framing condition, participants received an initial endowment from which losses were deducted, dependent on the proportion of targets they missed. We measured memory accuracy, perceived task importance, and ongoing-task performance., Results: Gains and losses had different effects on memory across age groups: Age × Motivational Valence interactions emerged across two studies. Older adults showed relatively better memory performance to avoid losses than to achieve gains. Moreover, higher age was associated with lower memory performance (Study 1) and slower but more accurate decisions in an ongoing activity (Study 2)., Discussion: The findings reveal that motivational incentives and the framing of consequences as gains or losses moderate the relation between age and memory performance. Older adults' memory performance may benefit when messages encourage the avoidance of losses. This may also help to design age-tailored interventions in applied settings (e.g., health-related behavior)., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Background: Product quality and production efficiency of Atlantic salmon are, to a large extent, influenced by the deposition and depletion of lipid reserves. Fillet lipid content is a heritable trait and is unfavourably correlated with growth, thus genetic management of fillet lipid content is needed for sustained genetic progress in these two traits. The laboratory-based reference method for recording fillet lipid content is highly accurate and precise but, at the same time, expensive, time-consuming, and destructive. Here, we test the use of rapid and cheaper vibrational spectroscopy methods, namely near-infrared (NIR) and Raman spectroscopy both as individual phenotypes and phenotypic predictors of lipid content in Atlantic salmon., Results: Remarkably, 827 of the 1500 individual Raman variables (i.e. Raman shifts) of the Raman spectrum were significantly heritable (heritability (h 2 ) ranging from 0.15 to 0.65). Similarly, 407 of the 2696 NIR spectral landscape variables (i.e. wavelengths) were significantly heritable (h 2 = 0.27-0.40). Both Raman and NIR spectral landscapes had significantly heritable regions, which are also informative in spectroscopic predictions of lipid content. Partial least square predicted lipid content using Raman and NIR spectra were highly concordant and highly genetically correlated with the lipid content values ([Formula: see text] = 0.91-0.98) obtained with the reference method using Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC = 0.63-0.90), and were significantly heritable ([Formula: see text] = 0.52-0.67)., Conclusions: Both NIR and Raman spectral landscapes show substantial additive genetic variation and are highly genetically correlated with the reference method. These findings lay down the foundation for rapid spectroscopic measurement of lipid content in salmonid breeding programmes.

Younger children's free recall from episodic memory is typically less organized than recall by older children. To investigate if and how repeated learning opportunities help children use organizational strategies that improve recall, the authors analyzed category clustering across four study-test cycles. Seven-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and young adults (N = 150) studied categorically related words for a free-recall task. The cognitive processes underlying recall and clustering were measured with a multinomial model. The modeling revealed that developmental differences emerged particularly in the rate of learning to encode words as categorical clusters. The learning curves showed a common pattern across age groups, indicating developmental invariance. Memory for individual items also contributed to developmental differences and was the only factor driving 7-year-olds' moderate improvements in recall., (© 2020 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)

This study investigated connections between sexual and gender minority youths' (SGMY) experiences with bullying victimization and their experiences with punishment. We interviewed 20 diverse adolescents (X = 18.45) about their experiences with bullying and school discipline. Using a qualitative mapping technique, we analyzed the pathways between victimization and punishment that emerged from our participants' narratives. Our analyses revealed that among the adolescents who had experienced victimization related to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity (or expression) (n = 17), most of them (n = 15) had also experienced punishment connected to their victimization. We identified five pathways linking victimization and bullying. Further, we found that the majority of participants were navigating school contexts rife with pervasive and ongoing harassment and that adults ineffectively intervened and often compounded the harm experienced., (© 2020 Society for Research on Adolescence.)

Value-based decisions often involve comparisons between benefits and costs that must be retrieved from memory. To investigate the development of value-based decisions, 9- to 10-year olds (N = 30), 11- to 12-year olds (N = 30), and young adults (N = 30) first learned to associate gain and loss magnitudes with symbols. In a subsequent decision task, participants rapidly evaluated objects that consisted of combinations of these symbols. All age groups achieved high decision performance and were sensitive to gain-loss magnitudes, suggesting that required core cognitive abilities are developed early. A cognitive-modeling analysis of performance revealed that children were less efficient in object evaluation (drift rate) and had longer nondecision times than adults. Developmental differences, which emerged particularly for objects of high positive net value, were linked to mnemonic and numerical abilities., (© 2019 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) adolescents face well-documented health disparities in suicide risk, substance use, and sexual health. These disparities are known to stem, in part, from stigma directed toward LGBTQ youth in the form of minority stressors such as violence, discrimination, and harassment. Given the proportion of time that LGBTQ students spend in school, schools provide a critical context within which protective factors may be developed and leveraged to improve the health and wellbeing of these populations. This article provides a summary of key findings from a discussion among researchers, practitioners, and community members who participated in " The State of LGBTQ Youth Health and Wellbeing: Strengthening Schools and Families to Build Resilience," a public symposium held in June 2017. We detail emerging science on and future priorities for school-based research with LGBTQ youth which were identified by attendees at this meeting, with a particular focus on intersectionality, supportive adults in schools, and in-school programs. We call for more school-based research on priority gaps such as how LGBTQ students' intersecting identities affect their in-school experiences, how to design professional development programs that cultivate supportive educators, and how to leverage gay-straight alliances/gender and sexuality alliances as sites of health programming for LGBTQ students.

Humans can exploit recognition memory as a simple cue for judgment. The utility of recognition depends on the interplay with the environment, particularly on its predictive power (validity) in a domain. It is, therefore, an important question whether people are sensitive to differences in recognition validity between domains. Strategic, intra-individual changes in the reliance on recognition have not been investigated so far. The present study fills this gap by scrutinizing within-person changes in using a frugal strategy, the recognition heuristic (RH), across two task domains that differed in recognition validity. The results showed adaptive changes in the reliance on recognition between domains. However, these changes were neither associated with the individual recognition validities nor with corresponding changes in these validities. These findings support a domain-adaptivity explanation, suggesting that people have broader intuitions about the usefulness of recognition across different domains that are nonetheless sufficiently robust for adaptive decision making. The analysis of metacognitive confidence reports mirrored and extended these results. Like RH use, confidence ratings covaried with task domain, but not with individual recognition validities. The changes in confidence suggest that people may have metacognitive access to information about global differences between task domains, but not to individual cue validities.

The aim of this study was to explore how individual differences in content of the omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA in skeletal muscle of slaughter-sized Atlantic salmon, are associated with expression of genes involved in key metabolic processes. All experimental fish were fed the same diet throughout life and fasted for 14 days prior to slaughter. Still, there were relatively large individual variations in EPA and DHA content of skeletal muscle. Higher DHA content was concurrent with increased expression of genes of the glycolytic pathway and the production of pyruvate and lactate, whereas EPA was associated with increased expression of pentose phosphate pathway and glycogen breakdown genes. Furthermore, EPA, but not DHA, was associated with expression of genes involved in insulin signaling. Expression of genes specific for skeletal muscle function were positively associated with both EPA and DHA. EPA and DHA were also associated with expression of genes related to eicosanoid and resolvin production. EPA was negatively associated with expression of genes involved in lipid catabolism. Thus, a possible reason why some individuals have a higher level of EPA in the skeletal muscle is that they deposit - rather than oxidize - EPA for energy.

Background: The replacement of fish oil (FO) and fishmeal with plant ingredients in the diet of farmed Atlantic salmon has resulted in reduced levels of the health-promoting long-chain polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids (n-3 LC-PUFA) eicosapentaenoic (EPA; 20:5n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; 22:6n-3) in their filets. Previous studies showed the potential of selective breeding to increase n-3 LC-PUFA levels in salmon tissues, but knowledge on the genetic parameters for individual muscle fatty acids (FA) and their relationships with other traits is still lacking. Thus, we estimated genetic parameters for muscle content of individual FA, and their relationships with lipid deposition traits, muscle pigmentation, sea lice and pancreas disease in slaughter-sized Atlantic salmon. Our aim was to evaluate the selection potential for increased n-3 LC-PUFA content and provide insight into FA metabolism in Atlantic salmon muscle., Results: Among the n-3 PUFA, proportional contents of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA; 18:3n-3) and DHA had the highest heritability (0.26) and EPA the lowest (0.09). Genetic correlations of EPA and DHA proportions with muscle fat differed considerably, 0.60 and 0.01, respectively. The genetic correlation of DHA proportion with visceral fat was positive and high (0.61), whereas that of EPA proportion with lice density was negative. FA that are in close proximity along the bioconversion pathway showed positive correlations with each other, whereas the start (ALA) and end-point (DHA) of the pathway were negatively correlated (- 0.28), indicating active bioconversion of ALA to DHA in the muscle of fish fed high FO-diet., Conclusions: Since contents of individual FA in salmon muscle show additive genetic variation, changing FA composition by selective breeding is possible. Taken together, our results show that the heritabilities of individual n-3 LC-PUFA and their genetic correlations with other traits vary, which indicates that they play different roles in muscle lipid metabolism, and that proportional muscle contents of EPA and DHA are linked to body fat deposition. Thus, different selection strategies can be applied in order to increase the content of healthy omega-3 FAin the salmon muscle. We recommend selection for the proportion of EPA + DHA in the muscle because they are both essential FA and because such selection has no clear detrimental effects on other traits.

The retention phase of a prospective memory (PM) task poses different challenges, including demands to store or maintain an intended action and to realize the right moment for action execution. The interplay of these processes in younger and older adults has not been explored so far. In this study, the authors examined the impact of maintenance load and task focality on PM in 84 younger and in 83 older adults. Results indicated that PM performance and ongoing task response times were strongly affected by maintenance load and age. However, a focality effect only emerged when maintenance load was low but not when attentional resources were deployed for maintaining a more demanding intention. These findings suggest that maintenance and monitoring requirements compete for similar attentional resources. Furthermore, maintenance load may affect postretrieval processes through its impact on working-memory resources, which can restrain the typical advantage of focal over nonfocal PM tasks.

Judgments about objects in the world are often based on probabilistic information (or cues). A frugal judgment strategy that utilizes memory (i.e., the ability to discriminate between known and unknown objects) as a cue for inference is the recognition heuristic (RH). The usefulness of the RH depends on the structure of the environment, particularly the predictive power (validity) of recognition. Little is known about developmental differences in use of the RH. In this study, the authors examined (a) to what extent children and adolescents recruit the RH when making judgments, and (b) around what age adaptive use of the RH emerges. Primary schoolchildren (M = 9 years), younger adolescents (M = 12 years), and older adolescents (M = 17 years) made comparative judgments in task environments with either high or low recognition validity. Reliance on the RH was measured with a hierarchical multinomial model. Results indicated that primary schoolchildren already made systematic use of the RH. However, only older adolescents adaptively adjusted their strategy use between environments and were better able to discriminate between situations in which the RH led to correct versus incorrect inferences. These findings suggest that the use of simple heuristics does not progress unidirectionally across development but strongly depends on the task environment, in line with the perspective of ecological rationality. Moreover, adaptive heuristic inference seems to require experience and a developed base of domain knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Attitudes toward lesbians and gays vary across national populations, and previous research has found relatively more accepting attitudes in the Netherlands as compared to the United States. In this study, we compared beliefs about and attitudes toward lesbians and gays in samples of Dutch and American heterosexual adolescents, utilizing survey data from 1,080 American adolescents (mean age = 15.86 years) attending two schools and from 1,391 Dutch adolescents (mean age = 16.27 years) attending eight schools. Findings indicated the Dutch participants were more tolerant of lesbians and gays, after adjusting for the gender, age, and racial/ethnic minority status of the participants. However, between-country differences were attenuated by accounting for the beliefs about lesbians and gays that participants used to justify their attitudes. American participants were more likely to justify their attitudes using beliefs related to social norms and religious opposition, while the Dutch participants were more likely to justify their attitudes using beliefs related to individual rights and the biological/genetic basis of homosexuality. The results suggest that the relative importance of particular beliefs about lesbians and gays to attitudes at the group level may be context dependent but also that certain beliefs are salient to attitudes across national contexts.

The recognition heuristic (RH) is a simple strategy for probabilistic inference according to which recognized objects are judged to score higher on a criterion than unrecognized objects. In this article, a hierarchical Bayesian extension of the multinomial r-model is applied to measure use of the RH on the individual participant level and to re-evaluate differences between younger and older adults' strategy reliance across environments. Further, it is explored how individual r-model parameters relate to alternative measures of the use of recognition and other knowledge, such as adherence rates and indices from signal-detection theory (SDT). Both younger and older adults used the RH substantially more often in an environment with high than low recognition validity, reflecting adaptivity in strategy use across environments. In extension of previous analyses (based on adherence rates), hierarchical modeling revealed that in an environment with low recognition validity, (a) older adults had a stronger tendency than younger adults to rely on the RH and (b) variability in RH use between individuals was larger than in an environment with high recognition validity; variability did not differ between age groups. Further, the r-model parameters correlated moderately with an SDT measure expressing how well people can discriminate cases where the RH leads to a correct vs. incorrect inference; this suggests that the r-model and the SDT measures may offer complementary insights into the use of recognition in decision making. In conclusion, younger and older adults are largely adaptive in their application of the RH, but cognitive aging may be associated with an increased tendency to rely on this strategy., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Event-based prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to perform intended actions after a delay. An important theoretical issue is whether and how people monitor the environment to execute an intended action when a target event occurs. Performing a PM task often increases the latencies in ongoing tasks. However, little is known about the reasons for this cost effect. This study uses diffusion model analysis to decompose monitoring processes in the PM paradigm. Across 4 experiments, performing a PM task increased latencies in an ongoing lexical decision task. A large portion of this effect was explained by consistent increases in boundary separation; additional increases in nondecision time emerged in a nonfocal PM task and explained variance in PM performance (Experiment 1), likely reflecting a target-checking strategy before and after the ongoing decision (Experiment 2). However, we found that possible target-checking strategies may depend on task characteristics. That is, instructional emphasis on the importance of ongoing decisions (Experiment 3) or the use of focal targets (Experiment 4) eliminated the contribution of nondecision time to the cost of PM, but left participants in a mode of increased cautiousness. The modeling thus sheds new light on the cost effect seen in many PM studies and suggests that people approach ongoing activities more cautiously when they need to remember an intended action., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.)

Sleep deprivation reduces cognitive performance; however, its effects on prospective memory (remembering to perform intended actions) are unknown. One view suggests that effects of sleep deprivation are limited to tasks associated with prefrontal functioning. An alternative view suggests a global, unspecific effect on human cognition, which should affect a variety of cognitive tasks. We investigated the impact of sleep deprivation (25 hours of sleep deprivation vs. no sleep deprivation) on prospective-memory performance in more resource-demanding and less resource-demanding prospective-memory tasks. Performance was lower after sleep deprivation and with a more resource-demanding prospective-memory task, but these factors did not interact. These results support the view that sleep deprivation affects cognition more globally and demonstrate that sleep deprivation increases failures to carry out intended actions, which may have severe consequences in safety-critical situations.

People often slow down their ongoing activities when they must remember an intended action, known as the cost or interference effect of prospective memory (PM). Only a few studies have examined adult age differences in PM interference, and the specific reasons underlying such differences are not well understood. The authors used a model-based approach to reveal processes underlying PM interference and age differences in these processes. Older and younger adults first performed a block of an ongoing lexical decision task alone. An embedded event-based PM task was added in a second block. Simultaneously accounting for the changes in response time distributions and error rates induced by the PM task, Ratcliff's (Psychological Review 85:59-108, 1978) diffusion model was used to decompose the nonlinear combination of speed and accuracy into psychologically meaningful components. Remembering an intention not only reduced processing efficiency in both age groups, but also prolonged peripheral nondecision times and induced response cautiousness. Overall, the findings suggest that there are multiple, but qualitatively similar factors underlying PM task interference in both age groups.

While first studies suggested that emotional task material may enhance prospective memory performance in young and older adults, the extent and mechanisms of this effect are under debate. The authors explored possible differential effects of cue valence on the prospective and retrospective component of prospective memory in young and older adults. Forty-five young and 41 older adults performed a prospective memory task in which emotional valence of the prospective memory cue was manipulated (positive, negative, neutral). The multinomial model of event-based prospective memory was used to analyze effects of valence and age on the two prospective memory components separately. Results revealed an interaction indicating that age differences were smaller in both emotional valence conditions. For older adults positive cues improved the prospective component, while negative cues improved the retrospective component. No main effect of valence was found for younger adults on an overt accuracy measure, but model-based analyses showed that the retrospective component was enhanced in the positive compared with the negative cue condition. The study extends the literature in demonstrating that processes underlying emotional effects on prospective memory may differ depending on valence and age., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Prospective memory involves remembering to perform intended actions in the future. Previous work with the multinomial model of event-based prospective memory indicated that adult age-related differences in prospective-memory performance were due to the prospective (not the retrospective) component of the task (Smith & Bayen, 2006 , Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 623). However, ongoing-task performance was also lower in older adults in that study. In the current study with young and older adults, the difficulty of the ongoing task was manipulated by varying the number of colors per trial to create easier and harder versions of the ongoing task for each age group. The easier version included 2 colors per trial for older adults and 4 colors for young adults. The harder version included 4 colors for older adults and 6 colors for young adults. By adjusting the ongoing-task difficulty, older adults were able to perform the ongoing task as well or better than the young adults. Analyses with the multinomial model revealed that making the ongoing task easier for older adults (or more difficult for young adults) did not eliminate age-related differences in prospective-memory performance and the underlying prospective component.

Cognitive process models, such as Ratcliff's (1978) diffusion model, are useful tools for examining cost or interference effects in event-based prospective memory (PM). The diffusion model includes several parameters that provide insight into how and why ongoing-task performance may be affected by a PM task and is ideally suited to analyse performance because both reaction time and accuracy are taken into account. Separate analyses of these measures can easily yield misleading interpretations in cases of speed-accuracy trade-offs. The diffusion model allows us to measure possible criterion shifts and is thus an important methodological improvement over standard analyses. Performance in an ongoing lexical-decision task was analysed with the diffusion model. The results suggest that criterion shifts play an important role when a PM task is added, but do not fully explain the cost effect on reaction time., ((PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).)

The objective of this research was to provide additional experimental validation of the multinomial processing tree (MPT) model of event-based prospective memory (Smith & Bayen, 2004). In particular, the parameters that measure trial-type detection in the ongoing task were examined. In three experiments with different response instructions, event-based prospective memory tasks were embedded in ongoing color-matching tasks. The results support the validity of the MPT model, that is, manipulations of ongoing-task difficulty affected the ongoing-task parameters of the MPT model, while leaving the estimates for the prospective and the retrospective components of prospective memory unaffected.

This study examines the relationship between intergroup contact and adolescents' attitudes regarding homosexuality and the treatment of lesbian and gay (LG) peers. Fourteen- through 18-year-olds (n = 1,069, 59.7% females) completed self-report attitude and judgment questionnaires about the acceptability of homosexuality, levels of comfort around LG peers, and the acceptability of excluding or teasing an LG peer. The results suggest that having an LG friend is related to more positive attitudes toward homosexuals/homosexuality and less tolerance toward the unfair treatment of LG peers. The findings lend further support to intergroup contact theory and provide evidence that the intimacy of contact is related to prejudice reduction, and offer general support that age is related to prejudicial attitudes, but less so to prejudicial behaviors.

As no comprehensive assessment instrument for impulse control disorders (ICDs) in Parkinson's disease (PD) exists, the aim of this study was to design and assess the psychometric properties of a self-administered screening questionnaire for ICDs and other compulsive behaviors in PD. The Questionnaire for Impulsive-Compulsive Disorders in Parkinson's Disease (QUIP) has 3 sections: Section 1 assesses four ICDs (involving gambling, sexual, buying, and eating behaviors), Section 2 other compulsive behaviors (punding, hobbyism, and walkabout), and Section 3 compulsive medication use. For validation, a convenience sample of 157 PD patients at 4 movement disorders centers first completed the QUIP, and then was administered a diagnostic interview by a trained rater blinded to the QUIP results. A shortened instrument (QUIP-S) was then explored. The discriminant validity of the QUIP was high for each disorder or behavior (receiver operating characteristic area under the curve [ROC AUC]: gambling = 0.95, sexual behavior = 0.97, buying = 0.87, eating = 0.88, punding = 0.78, hobbyism = 0.93, walkabout = 0.79). On post hoc analysis, the QUIP-S ICD section had similar properties (ROC AUC: gambling = 0.95, sexual behavior = 0.96, buying = 0.87, eating = 0.88). When disorders/behaviors were combined, the sensitivity of the QUIP and QUIP-S to detect an individual with any disorder was 96 and 94%, respectively. Scores on the QUIP appear to be valid as a self-assessment screening instrument for a range of ICDs and other compulsive behaviors that occur in PD, and a shortened version may perform as well as the full version. A positive screen should be followed by a comprehensive, clinical interview to determine the range and severity of symptoms, as well as need for clinical management., (Copyright 2009 Movement Disorder Society.)

This study investigated tenth- and twelfth-grade adolescents' (N ≤ 264) judgments about the acceptability of same-sex peers who varied in terms of their sexual orientation (straight, gay or lesbian) and their conformity to gender conventions or norms in regard appearance and mannerisms or activity. Overall, the results of this study suggest that adolescents' conceptions of the acceptability of their peers are related not just to sexual orientation but also conformity to gender conventions. Both straight and gay or lesbian individuals who were non-conventional in their appearance and mannerisms were rated as less acceptable than individuals who conformed to gender conventions or those who participated in non-conventional activities. Most surprisingly, for boys, the straight individual who was non-conforming in appearance was rated less acceptable than either the gay individual who conformed to gender norms or was gender non-conforming in choice of activity.

Ninth- and 11th-grade students (N = 379) were surveyed regarding their evaluations of excluding someone from a social group solely on the basis of his or her social reference group membership. Individuals evaluated exclusion in ambiguous and nonambiguous situations. Judgments and reasoning about exclusion were compared with judgments and reasoning about a more prototypically moral situation (denial of resources). Overall, participants evaluated exclusion as less wrong than denial of resources and used fewer moral and more conventional reasons to justify their judgments. Participants relied more on their group knowledge or stereotypes in evaluating ambiguous situations and more on their personal knowledge in evaluating nonambiguous situations. Age- and gender-related differences in evaluations, reasoning, and use of stereotypes were also found.

The authors investigated the early women physicians of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and their role in shaping the career and accomplishments of their student and later colleague, Dr. Sarah J. McNutt. These influences eventually led McNutt to be inducted into the American Neurologic Association (ANA). McNutt was educated at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children by early women physicians including Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and Mary Putnam Jacobi. McNutt worked to improve the educational opportunities for practicing physicians and nurses by developing postgraduate lectures and organizations. With her early colleagues she developed the New York Infirmary for Women and Children into a reputable hospital and woman's medical college. One of the consultants to the New York Infirmary for Women and Children was Royal W. Amidon, secretary of the ANA in 1883. McNutt's close association with the Clinical Society of the New York Post Graduate Medical School and Hospital brought her into direct contact with other prominent ANA members including C.L. Dana and W.A. Hammond. In 1884, McNutt was nominated by Amidon and Hammond as the first woman member to the ANA and was elected. Her ANA thesis was Double Infantile Spastic Hemiplegia. McNutt was elected into the ANA at a time when women physicians were first being recognized and included into mainstream medicine. Her historic election acknowledged her accomplishments and highlighted the proactive role of the early ANA in forging new medical policies in the United States.

Treatment of movement disorders has expanded beyond traditional therapies with oral medications to include injection of drugs like botulinum toxin and the use of surgical interventions in cases that do not respond to medical therapy. This article provides an overview to the diagnosis and treatment of tremor and dystonia. The distinguishing features of rest, postural, and kinectic tremor are detailed with medical and surgical modalities for treatment. A discussion of idiopathic and secondary dystonia with focus on diagnosis and medical and surgical treatments encompasses the second part of the article.