Specificity of cognitive and behavioral complaints in post-traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury.

Characterization of cognitive and behavioral complaints is explored in Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) samples according to the severity of PTSD, depression and general anxiety conditions. Self-reported questionnaires on cognitive and behavioral changes are administered to PTSD, MTBI, MTBI/PTSD and control groups. Confounding variables are controlled. All groups report more complaints since the traumatic event. PTSD and MTBI/PTSD groups report more anxiety symptoms, depression and complaints compared to the MTBI group. Relatives of the PTSD group confirm most of the behavioral changes reported. Results suggest the utility of self-reported questionnaires to personalize cognitive and behavioral interventions in PTSD and MTBI to cope with the impacts of the traumatic event.

A prospective two-year examination of cognitive and behavioral correlates of provoked vestibulodynia outcomes.

Note de l'éditeur : This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the journal. It is not the copy of record. / Cet article ne constitue pas la version officielle, et peut différer de la version publiée dans la revue.

The agreement between ipsative and normative questionnaires using compositional data analysis techniques

The main instrument used in psychological measurement is the self-report questionnaire. One of its major drawbacks however is its susceptibility to response biases. A known strategy to control these biases has been the use of so-called ipsative items. Ipsative items are items that require the respondent to make between-scale comparisons within each item. The selected option determines to which scale the weight of the answer is attributed. Consequently in questionnaires only consisting of ipsative items every respondent is allotted an equal amount, i.e. the total score, that each can distribute differently over the scales. Therefore this type of response format yields data that can be considered compositional from its inception. Methodological oriented psychologists have heavily criticized this type of item format, since the resulting data is also marked by the associated unfavourable statistical properties. Nevertheless, clinicians have kept using these questionnaires to their satisfaction. This investigation therefore aims to evaluate both positions and addresses the similarities and differences between the two data collection methods. The ultimate objective is to formulate a guideline when to use which type of item format. The comparison is based on data obtained with both an ipsative and normative version of three psychological questionnaires, which were administered to 502 first-year students in psychology according to a balanced within-subjects design. Previous research only compared the direct ipsative scale scores with the derived ipsative scale scores. The use of compositional data analysis techniques also enables one to compare derived normative score ratios with direct normative score ratios. The addition of the second comparison not only offers the advantage of a better-balanced research strategy. In principle it also allows for parametric testing in the evaluation

The role of parental investments for cognitive and noncognitive skill formation : evidence for the first 11 years of life. 'El papel de la influencia de los padres en el desarrollo cognitivo y la formación de habilidades cognitivas : evidencias de los primeros 11 años de vida'.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Play=learning : how play motivates and enhances children's cognitive and social-emotional growth.

En este recurso para estudiantes e investigadores en psicología del desarrollo, expertos en desarrollo infantil y aprendizaje piden reconsiderar las formas de juego que facilita el desarrollo en todos los campos ya que el juego proporciona a los niños la oportunidad de maximizar sus capacidades de atención, aprender a llevarse bien con sus compañeros, cultivar su creatividad, trabajar a través de sus emociones y obtener las habilidades académicas que son la base para el aprendizaje futuro.

Extending the coordination of cognitive and social perspectives. 'Extensión de la coordinación de las perspectivas cognitiva y social'.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Influence of social motivation, self-perception of social efficacy and normative adjustment in the peer setting

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Conversational success in Williams syndrome: communication in the face of cognitive and linguistic limitations

Williams syndrome (WS) is characterized by apparent relative strengths in language, facial processing and social cognition but by profound impairment in spatial cognition, planning and problem solving. Following recent research which suggests that individuals with WS may be less linguistically able than was once thought, in this paper we begin to investigate why and how they may give the impression of linguistic proficiency despite poor standardized test results. This case study of Brendan, a 12-year-old boy with WS, who presents with a considerable lack of linguistic ability, suggests that impressions of linguistic competence may to some extent be the result of conversational strategies which enable him to compensate for various cognitive and linguistic deficits with a considerable degree of success. These conversational strengths are not predicted by his standardized language test results, and provide compelling support for the use of approaches such as Conversation Analysis in the assessment of individuals with communication impairments.

Do children with Williams syndrome really have good vocabulary knowledge? Methods for comparing cognitive and linguistic abilities in developmental disorders

The comparison of cognitive and linguistic skills in individuals with developmental disorders is fraught with methodological and psychometric difficulties. In this paper, we illustrate some of these issues by comparing the receptive vocabulary knowledge and non-verbal reasoning abilities of 41 children with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder in which language abilities are often claimed to be relatively strong. Data from this group were compared with data from typically developing children, children with Down syndrome, and children with non-specific learning difficulties using a number of approaches including comparison of age-equivalent scores, matching, analysis of covariance, and regression-based standardization. Across these analyses children with Williams syndrome consistently demonstrated relatively good receptive vocabulary knowledge, although this effect appeared strongest in the oldest children.

Cognitive and bodily selves: how do they interact following brain lesion?

Dualism has long distinguished between the mental and the body experiences. Probing the structure and organisation of the self traditionally calls for a distinction between these two sides of the self coin. It is far beyond the scope of this chapter to address these philosophical issues, and our starting point will be the simple distinction between reflective processes involved in the elaboration of body image, self awareness and self-recognition (i.e. ‘the self’) and the sensori-motor dialogues involved in action control, reactions and automatisms (i.e. ‘the body’ schema). This oversimplification does not take into account the complex interactions taking place between these two levels of description, but our initial aim will be to distinguish between them, before addressing the question of their interactions. Cognitive and sensori-motor processes have frequently been distinguished (review: Rossetti and Revonsuo 2000), and it may be proposed that a similar dissociation can be put forward, a priori, between a central representation of self and a bodily representation corresponding to body schema (Figure 1).

A cognitive and psycholinguistic investigation of neologisms

Background: Jargon aphasia with neologisms (i.e., novel nonword utterances) is a challenging language disorder that lacks a definitive theoretical description as well as clear treatment recommendations (Marshall, 2006). Aim: The aims of this two part investigation were to determine the source of neologisms in an individual with jargon aphasia (FF), to identify potential facilitatory semantic and/or phonological cuing effects in picture naming, and to determine whether the timing of the cues relative to the target picture mediated the cuing advantage. Methods and Procedures: FF’s underlying linguistic deficits were determined using several cognitive and linguistic tests. A series of computerized naming experiments using a modified version of the 175 item-Philadelphia Naming Test (Roach, Schwartz, Martin, Grewal, & Brecher, 1996) manipulated the cue type (semantic versus phonological) and relatedness (related versus unrelated). In a follow-up experiment, the relative timing of phonological cues was manipulated to test the effect of timing on the cuing advantage. The accuracy of naming responses and error patterns were analyzed. Outcome and Results: FF’s performance on the linguistic and cognitive test battery revealed a severe naming impairment with relatively spared word and nonword repetition, auditory comprehension of words and monitoring, and fairly well preserved semantic abilities. This performance profile was used to evaluate various explanations for neologisms including a loss of phonological codes, monitoring failure, and impairments in semantic system. The primary locus of his deficit appears to involve the connection between semantics to phonology, specifically, when word production involves accessing the phonological forms following semantic access. FF showed a significant cuing advantage only for phonological cues in picture naming, particularly when the cue preceded or coincided with the onset of the target picture. Conclusions: When integrated with previous findings, the results from this study suggest that the core deficit of this and at least some other jargon aphasics is in the connection from semantics to phonology. The facilitative advantage of phonological cues could potentially be exploited in future clinical and research studies to test the effectiveness of these cues for enhancing naming performance in individuals like FF.

Cognitive and environmental factors influencing the process of spatial knowledge acquisition within virtual reality environments

As the fidelity of virtual environments (VE) continues to increase, the possibility of using them as training platforms is becoming increasingly realistic for a variety of application domains, including military and emergency personnel training. In the past, there was much debate on whether the acquisition and subsequent transfer of spatial knowledge from VEs to the real world is possible, or whether the differences in medium during training would essentially be an obstacle to truly learning geometric space. In this paper, the authors present various cognitive and environmental factors that not only contribute to this process, but also interact with each other to a certain degree, leading to a variable exposure time requirement in order for the process of spatial knowledge acquisition (SKA) to occur. The cognitive factors that the authors discuss include a variety of individual user differences such as: knowledge and experience; cognitive gender differences; aptitude and spatial orientation skill; and finally, cognitive styles. Environmental factors discussed include: Size, Spatial layout complexity and landmark distribution. It may seem obvious that since every individual's brain is unique - not only through experience, but also through genetic predisposition that a one size fits all approach to training would be illogical. Furthermore, considering that various cognitive differences may further emerge when a certain stimulus is present (e.g. complex environmental space), it would make even more sense to understand how these factors can impact spatial memory, and to try to adapt the training session by providing visual/auditory cues as well as by changing the exposure time requirements for each individual. The impact of this research domain is important to VE training in general, however within service and military domains, guaranteeing appropriate spatial training is critical in order to ensure that disorientation does not occur in a life or death scenario.

GANEing traction: the broad applicability of NE hotspots to diverse cognitive and arousal phenomena

GANE proposes that local glutamate-norepinephrine interactions enable “winner-take-more” effects in perception and memory under arousal. A diverse range of commentaries addressed both the nature of this ‘hotspot’ feedback mechanism and its implications in a variety of psychological domains, inspiring exciting avenues for future research.