Cognitive Psychology

Young adults are less likely to seek professional help even though they are most likely to experience mental health problems. The aim of the present study was to investigate young adults’ attitudes towards mental illness and self-stigma of help-seeking, identify possible determinants of attitudes and self-stigma, and examine the association between attitudes towards mental illness and self-stigma of help-seeking. The sample consisted of 485 Greek young adults (24.5% men, 75.5% women) aged 18–25 years (M = 19.54, SD = 1.83) who completed the Attitudes towards Severe Mental Illness (ASMI) and the Self-Stigma of Seeking Help Scale (SSOSH). The results indicated that Greek young adults hold mostly positive attitudes towards severe mental illness and help-seeking, while their unfavorable attitudes are mainly related to difficulties with viewing people with a severe mental disorder as similar to other people, and fear that by seeking professional help a person’s worth will be diminished. ...

Objective: Learning disorder is a problem that is often encountered in children in school, which can hinder their learning ability. Early detection of learning disorders involves observing the signs and symptoms of learning disorders in children, such as difficulty in reading, writing, counting, or memorizing information. In the early detection stage, the use of valid and reliable assessment tools can help identify children at risk of learning disorders. After early detection, the next step is appropriate management to help children overcome learning disorders. The management of children's learning disorders in schools involves a multidisciplinary approach that involves cooperation between teachers, psychologists, parents, and medical personnel. Method: Screening of 126 elementary school students in Surabaya using the Colorado Learning Difficulties Questionnaire (CLDQ) to assess the presence of learning disorders. The Indonesian Hyperactivity Child Behaviour Assessment Scale (SPPAHI) is used to assess the presence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Indonesian population. Results: Screening with CLDQ resulted 22 (17.5%) of 126 children required attention and referrals related to learning disorders in various aspects and 104 children (82.5%) within normal limits. Screening with SPPAHI showed 19 children (15.1%) had a high risk of ADHD and 107 children (84.9%) within normal limits. The study found 86.4% of children with learning disorders has a high risk of ADHD. Education of parents of children with learning disorders has been carried out as a follow-up to early detection. Conclusion: Early detection of learning disorders and parental education are useful in the management of learning disorders.

Cognitive load significantly influences learning effectiveness. All the three types of cognitive load—intrinsic, extraneous, and germane—are important for guiding teachers in preparing effective instructional designs for students. However, the techniques used to assess the relationship between brain activity and cognitive load during learning activities require further investigation. This study preliminarily examined cognitive load during mathematics computations based on cognitive-load theory. We used event-related potentials to compare carryover and without carryover additions under three types of stimuli (uncoloured Arabic numerals, colourful Arabic numerals, and Chinese numerals) to measure learners’ cognitive load. According to the concept and rationale of cognitive-load theory, the design defined the extraneous and germane cognitive load to measure the N1 and P2 components and the relevant behavioural data. The highest P2 amplitude was observed in the Chinese numerals conditio...

This article presents two studies that deepen the theme of how soundtracks shape our interpretation of audiovisuals. Embracing a multivariate perspective, Study 1 (N = 118) demonstrated, through an online between-subjects experiment, that two different music scores (melancholic vs. anxious) deeply affected the interpretations of an unknown movie scene in terms of empathy felt toward the main character, impressions of his personality, plot anticipations, and perception of the environment of the scene. With the melancholic music, participants felt empathy toward the character, viewing him as more agreeable and introverted, more oriented to memories than to decisions, while perceiving the environment as cozier. An almost opposite pattern emerged with the anxious music. In Study 2 (N = 92), we replicated the experiment in our lab but with the addition of eye-tracking and pupillometric measurements. Results of Study 1 were largely replicated; moreover, we proved that the anxious score, by increasing the participants' vigilance and state of alert (wider pupil dilation), favored greater attention to minor details, as in the case of another character who was very hard to be noticed (more time spent on his figure). Results highlight the pervasive nature of the influence of music within the process of interpretation of visual scenes.

Se presenta un caso clínico de fracaso escolar diagnosticado como dislexia evo-lutiva asociado a un estado afectivo o emocional deteriorado con episodios de encopresis. El sujeto manifestaba difi-cultades para el aprendizaje de faculta-des básicas como la lectura y la escritura y ...

Working memory and conscious perception are thought to share similar brain mechanisms, yet recent reports of non-conscious working memory challenge this view. Combining visual masking with magnetoencephalography, we demonstrate the reality of non-conscious working memory and dissect its neural mechanisms. In a spatial delayed-response task, participants reported the location of a subjectively unseen target above chance-level after a long delay. Conscious perception and conscious working memory were characterized by similar signatures: a sustained desynchronization in the alpha/beta band over frontal cortex, and a decodable representation of target location in posterior sensors. During non-conscious working memory, such activity vanished. Our findings contradict models that identify working memory with sustained neural firing, but are compatible with recent proposals of ‘activity-silent’ working memory. We present a theoretical framework and simulations showing how slowly decaying sy...

To test the hypothesis that if a learning task is difficult, familiar stimuli are reinforcers, but if it is easy, novel stimuli are reinforcers, subjects were given difficult or easy disjunctive learning tasks in which one class of response was followed by a previously exposed stimulus and the other class of response by a novel one. Familiar stimuli proved reinforcing (p < .01) when the task was difficult, but neither the novel nor the familiar stimuli proved reinforcing when it was easy. In three subsequent experiments, face-valid operations simplified the learning tasks. Neither novel nor familiar stimuli were consistently reinforcing, but stimulus familiarity interacted with another variable, tenuously identified as subjective difficulty, to produce reinforcement effects. A final experiment duplicated the first, except that the "familiar" stimulus was not preexposed but defined as one that was constantly accessible. As in the first experiment, when the task was difficult, familiar stimuli were predictably reinforcing (p < .01), but when it was easy, neither familiar nor novel stimuli by themselves produced predictable reinforcement effects. monograph, suggesting a positive relationship between frequency of stimulus exposure and attitudinal favorability, has generated a considerable number of studies. Although the results of many of these studies may be interpreted as showing that some form of positive exposure-attitudinal favorability relationship holds within fairly wide latitudes (

The current affordances of ICT havein the past decadedramatically increased the exposure of students to the number of various digital texts they use or are exposed to when acquiring an additional language. The print media has been supplemented or even sometimes substituted by the digital media at all levels of education, including higher education and university curricula. Various research has recently been conducted into the role of digital media in L2 acquisition and this paper attempts to systematically summarize the results of this research, with a specific focus on reading comprehension. This systematic review follows the PRISMA guidelines (Page et al., 2021). The 2010-2021 studies from Scopus and the Web of Science dealing with the topic have been collected and analyzed. Only experimental studies in peer-reviewed research journal papers have been included in the search. By applying this protocol review, 15 papers were selected for a synthesis. The results were classified as: (a) effect of media on reading comprehension, (b) pedagogical implications, (c) future research directions. The study concludes with some discussion and implications for researchers and practitioners from two perspectives: basic or fundamental Second Language Acquisition (FSLA) and instructed Second Language acquisition (ISLA).

This paper proposes an explanation of the cognitive change that occurs as the creative process proceeds. During the initial, intuitive phase, each thought activates, and potentially retrieves information from, a large region containing many memory locations. Because of the distributed, content-addressable structure of memory, the diverse contents of these many locations merge to generate the next thought. Novel associations often result. As one focuses on an idea, the region searched and retrieved from narrows, such that the next thought is the product of fewer memory locations. This enables a shift from association-based to causation-based thinking, which facilitates the fine-tuning and manifestation of the creative work.

A perceived limitation of evolutionary art and design algorithms is that they rely on human intervention; the artist selects the most aesthetically pleasing variants of one generation to produce the next. This paper discusses how computer generated art and design can become more creatively human-like with respect to both process and outcome. As an example of a step in this direction, we present an algorithm that overcomes the above limitation by employing an automatic fitness function. The goal is to evolve abstract portraits of Darwin, using our 2nd generation fitness function which rewards genomes that not just produce a likeness of Darwin but exhibit certain strategies characteristic of human artists. We note that in human creativity, change is less choosing amongst randomly generated variants and more capitalizing on the associative structure of a conceptual network to hone in on a vision. We discuss how to achieve this fluidity algorithmically.

makes the unwarranted assumption that nonmonotonicity supports a Darwinian view of creativity. Darwin's theory of natural selection was motivated by a paradox that has no equivalent in creative thought: the paradox of how change accumulates when acquired traits are not inherited. To describe a process of cumulative change in which acquired traits are retained is outside of the scope of the theory of natural selection. Even the early evolution of life itself (prior to genetically mediated template replication) cannot be described by natural selection. Specifically, natural selection cannot describe change of state that involves horizontal (Lamarckian) exchange, or occurs through interaction with an incompletely specified context. It cannot describe change wherein variants are evaluated sequentially, and wherein this evaluation can itself change the state space and/or fitness function, because no two variants are ever evaluated according to the same selection criterion. Concerns are also raised as to the methodology used in Simonton's study.

Very small but cumulated decreases in food intake may be sufficient to erase obesity over a period of years. We examine the effect of slight changes in the accessibility of different foods in a pay-by-weight-of-food salad bar in a cafeteria serving adults for the lunch period. Making a food slightly more difficult to reach (by varying its proximity by about 10 inches) or changing the serving utensil (spoon or tongs) modestly but reliably reduces intake, in the range of 8–16%. Given this effect, it is possible that making calorie-dense foods less accessible and low-calorie foods more accessible over an extended period of time would result in significant weight loss.

PILLAR 43 is an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional project to investigate into teamwork principles and prerequisites towards successful long-term internal space assignments. PILLAR 43 project should, on the one hand, support and enrich existing research on human factors in extreme environments by suggesting original approaches to increase creativity performance and, on the other, provide some new insights into the dynamics of cognitive behavior on individual and group levels

The study evaluated the mental health outcomes following a 12-week neurophysiological tremor intervention among adults in the Ekurhuleni region with traumarelated stressors. A quantitative methodology was used grounded in the Polyvagal theory, employing Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and Spearman's correlations to analyse the relationships between ACE dimensions (abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction) and trauma-related outcomes. The research objectives were: (1) to explore childhood experiences of traumatic events and adult life adversities, (2) to determine a correlation between adverse child events and the other dependent variables (e.g., somatic symptoms, anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress, as well as posttraumatic growth and resilience), (3) to determine the effect of the neurophysiological tremor intervention on the somatic symptoms, (4) to determine the effect of the intervention on anxiety, and depression, and posttraumatic stress symptoms, (5) to determine the effect of the intervention on posttraumatic growth, and ( ) resilience. The results revealed that 73.5% of the participants experienced physical childhood abuse, followed by emotional neglect, household substance abuse and household mental illness during childhood. Findings revealed significant correlations between household dysfunction and avoidance symptoms and between abuse and anxiety. The study demonstrated significant improvements in posttraumatic stress symptoms and their subdomains (i.e. intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations, and hyperarousal symptoms). Participants reported enhanced growth across posttraumatic growth dimensions (i.e. relating to others, personal strength, and an appreciation of life) and resilience. The study contributes to the growing evidence reinforcing neurophysiological tremor interventions for trauma recovery, emphasising ANS self-regulation for psychophysiological recovery.

Ribes and López&#39;s (1985) taxonomy proposed that psychological behavior is progressively complex and inclusive. In that respect, there is little research and data are not robust. A study was conducted with the purpose to increase data related to the complexity and inclusivity of the three less complex behaviors of the taxonomy, with three training sequences, namely: 1) ascending (contextual-supplementary-selector), 2) descending-ascending (supplementary -contextual-selector) and 3) descending (selector-supplementary-contextual). The objective was to evaluate the effect of the interaction history (related to training sequences) on differential (contextual), effective (supplementary) and precise (selector) behavior adjustment process. Results showed that a greater number of training sessions were required to improve the performance in functional organizations with greater complexity when participants lacked an interaction history related to programmed contingencies. But, when the i...

Fifty adults with mental retardation completed the Cognitive Assessment System and the Facial Discrimination Task. Performances on the Facial Discrimination Task Emotion and Age Tasks were significantly correlated to the Cognitive Assessment System total score. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that processing of emotional stimuli was related to simultaneous and successive processing; whereas attention and planning failed to add significantly. The Emotion and Age Tasks yielded similar results, suggesting that cognitive processes are involved in processing facial stimuli in a similar way regardless of the type of facial cues involved. The results are discussed vis-a `-vis modular models of emotion, future research directions, and the Age Task as a control task.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between cognitive distortions and cognitive failures among college students. The primary objective is to examine the direct relationship between cognitive distortions and cognitive failures among college students. Additionally, the study seeks to explore the predictive power of cognitive distortion sub-components in relation to cognitive failure and its components. Furthermore, the study aims to examine whether there are differences in cognitive distortions and failures based on sex and major. Data were collected from a sample of 486 college students, including 240 males.

The findings reveal a direct effect between cognitive distortions and cognitive failures, as illustrated by SEM. Some of the factors related to cognitive distortions significantly contribute to predicting cognitive failure components and the total score. Moreover, differences in cognitive failures were observed based on students' majors.

In conclusion, this study demonstrates a strong correlation between cognitive distortions and cognitive failures, with cognitive distortions directly affecting cognitive failures. These findings highlight the significance of addressing cognitive distortions in academic settings, with customized treatments potentially offering ways to reduce cognitive errors and enhance students' overall cognitive performance.

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) is a relatively new measure of implicit cognition that tests cognition as relational behavior instead of an associative activity and thus may provide a more specific measure of cognitive repertoires, including those for social biases, than better known implicit measures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT). A small body of IRAP research provides tentative evidence for this measure's potential. The current study adds to this research by using the IRAP to assess for social biases for race, religion, gender, and obesity. Overall results show medium to large effect sizes for all conditions except obesity, as well as interesting trends at the trial-type level. These outcomes and possible future directions of IRAP research are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the transformation of stimulus functions from socially relevant to arbitrary stimuli as a model of social stigmatization and categorization. Specifically, participants were trained to respond to arbitrary stimuli as if they were obese or thin stimuli via a matching-to-sample preparation. The impact of this relational conditioning was tested using the Implicit Association Test. The results showed that when participants met the fluency-based training criterion, the bias functions of obese/thin stimuli successfully transformed formally similar variants of the arbitrary stimuli. These results suggest it is possible to affect a transformation of bias functions to wholly arbitrary stimuli using a very brief conditioning history. A clearer conceptualization of the development of stigmatizing categories, particularly as it applies to obesity, might yield important insights into the social contexts that cultivate and maintain stigmatizing attitudes.

We suggest that meta-emotionsdefined as emotions about one's own emotionscontribute to the complexity of people's psychic life by modifying the intensity and quality of their first-order emotions, and influencing their decisions and behaviour. After addressing similarities and differences between first-order and second-order emotions, and the role played on the latter by emotion goals and evaluations about emotions, we try to show how, by revealing the consequences of emotions, meta-emotions orient people towards, and turn them away from, certain first-order emotions. We also suggest a number of favouring conditions for the elicitation of metaemotions: the "importance" of the first-order emotion; its perceived unexpectedness; the presence of other people; and the impact of the first-order emotion on the self-image. We finally consider the possible functions of meta-emotions, by pointing to their crucial role in emotion regulation and in fostering coherence with one's own values.

En 1913, Zacharie Le Rouzic publia une amulette gravée, accompagnée d'une brève description et d'une illustration. L'objet avait été trouvé en 1892 à proximité des trois dolmens de Mané Kerioned (Plouharnel, Carnac, Morbihan). Compte tenu des progrès réalisés depuis environ 25 ans dans l'identification et l'interprétation des gravures néolithiques dans le Morbihan, une nouvelle évaluation de ce petit objet est proposée ici, en tenant également compte des cupulettes qui s'y trouvent. La forme et
l´ensemble des gravures de la petite plaque en schiste, qui pourrait peut-être considérée comme une amulette, présentent des correspondances avec le corpus des gravures et des arrangements récurrents de cupules rencontrés en Bretagne entre la fin du Mésolithique et le Néolithique moyen. Le programme du planétarium "Stellarium" permet d'illustrer facilement l'éventail des résultats. Les conclusions présentées sont une évidence supplémentaire que les superstructures intellectuelles en général et les contextes cartographiques astronomiques en particulier ont peut-être été reléguées un peu trop precipité par certains représentants de l'archéologie préhistorique en Europe dans le domaine de l'inexplorable. Cela peut paraître étonnant au vu de l'importance culturelle incontestable des symboles astraux évidents, du proche Orient pré-métallique (entre autres aussi des constellations de cupulettes sur des sceaux cylindriques) jusqu'en Asie de l'Est.

As digital advancements reshape communication, researchers need interdisciplinary methods to understand the cognitive processes involved. This essential reference for advanced students and researchers provides a comprehensive introduction to innovative research methods in cognitive translation and interpreting studies (CTIS). International experts from diverse disciplines share best practices for investigating cognitive processes in multilectal mediated communication. They emphasize the application of these methods across research domains situated at the interface of cognition and communication. The book offers an in-depth analysis of key research methods, explaining their rationales, uses, affordances, and limitations. Each chapter focuses on one or two closely related research methods and their tools, including surveys, interviews, introspective techniques, keylogging, eyetracking, and neuroimaging. The book guides readers in planning research projects and in making informed methodological choices. It also helps readers understand the basics of popular tools, fostering more rigorous research practices in data collection. Additionally, it provides practical suggestions on study design, participant profiling, and data analysis to deepen our understanding of texts, tasks, and their users.

U ovome su radu prikazane norme za semantičke kategorije koje se pojavljuju u svakodnevnome jeziku. Popis 64 kategorije preuzet je iz normi na engleskome jeziku (Van Overschelde i sur., 2004), a dodane su još dvije kategorije. U istraživanju su sudjelovala 194 ispitanika (M = 38, Ž = 156), većinom studenti Sveučilišta u Rijeci (92.3 %). Zadatak ispitanika bio je navesti četiri tipična pripadnika za svaku kategoriju, a odgovori su bilježeni pomoću računala. U radu su prikazane mjere koje opisuju status kategorije, a to su ukupan broj navedenih entiteta (pripadnika kategorije), broj entiteta s frekvencijom jednakom ili većom od deset, broj visokofrekventnih entiteta čija je proporcija pojavljivanja jednaka ili veća od .80 te indeks konzistentnosti odgovaranja. Naveden je i rang kategorija prema indeksu konzistentnosti odgovaranja. Osim toga, za svaku su kategoriju prikazani odgovori s frekvencijom pojavljivanja jednakom ili većom od deset, a za svaki je navedeni entitet prikazana prop...

BackgroundConscious perception is thought to involve the large-scale, coordinated activation of distant brain regions, a process termed ignition in the Global Workspace Theory and integration in Integrated Information Theory, which are two of the major theories of consciousness.MethodsHere, we provide evidence for this process in humans by combining a magnetically-induced phosphene perception task with electroencephalography. Functional cortical networks were identified and characterized using graph theory to quantify the impact of conscious perception on local (segregation) and distant (integration) processing.ResultsConscious phosphene perception activated frequency-specific networks, each associated with a specific spatial scale of information processing. Integration increased within an alpha-band functional network, while segregation occurred in the beta band.ConclusionsThese results bring novel evidence for the functional role of distinct brain oscillations and confirm the key ...

from a gender perspective. The data were collected from an equally divided sample of 100 male and female adults (age 20-79 years) from different regions of Jordan by means of a 31-item checklist of potentially impolite behaviors. The findings revealed an effect for gender as, despite evident similarities, male and female respondents manifest differences in their perceptions of what constitutes (im)polite behavior. The study concludes with recommendations for further research.

This study examines EFL teachers' beliefs, practices, and the (mis)match between them in regard to the language used as a medium of grammar instruction. The participants are nine experienced female EFL secondary-stage Jordanian teachers. Data were collected through a mixed quantitative-qualitative descriptive-analytical approach. Teachers' beliefs were investigated by a questionnaire, their practices via a classroom observation checklist, and the (mis)match between them was discussed during a focus group of teachers. The results showed that all teachers' beliefs were matching their practices, a consistency that was attributed to contextual factors, students' preferences, students' language proficiency and teachers' experiences as learners. KEYWORDS grammar teaching, mother tongue, language as a medium of instruction, teachers' beliefs, classroom practices

This paper offers an account of the word order of wh-questions in Omani Arabic as they occur in simple and long-distance questions. In simple questions, the word order of the Inflectional Phrase (IP) varies between Object Verb Subject (OVS) and Verb Object Subject (VOS) as examples (1) and (2) below illustrate. In OVS order, the object referring to the wh-word is expectedly fronted and the order of the subject and verb accords with one of the word order variations exhibited elsewhere in the language. However, VOS word order is peculiar to simple whquestions since it is not attested in affmnative sentences. Ahmed. What did Ahmed eat? Conversely, wh-words impose a unitary SVO word order when they occur in long-distance questions. Example (3) shows that the trace t which sYntactically functions as the object to the verb [kal] 'ate' is preceded by an SV word order. Such a restriction to only SVO is examined in light of Radford's (1997) adverb constituency test and explored in relation to the ECP (Chomsky 1981). In explaining this order, I will also adopt some version of the Lexical Clause Hypothesis (Fukui & Speas 1986). This hypothesis stipulates that subjects can originate inside a lexical projection, usually within VP. They don't have to move to a position higher in the tree.

Extensive studies have shown that a sports expert is superior to a sports novice in visually perceptual-cognitive processes of sports scene information, however the attentional and neural basis of it has not been thoroughly explored. The present study examined whether a sport expert has the attentional superiority on scene information relevant to his/her sport skill, and explored what factor drives this superiority. To address this problem, EEGs were recorded as participants passively viewed sport scenes (tennis vs. non-tennis) and negative emotional faces in the context of a visual attention task, where the pictures of sport scenes or of negative emotional faces randomly followed the pictures with overlapping sport scenes and negative emotional faces. ERP results showed that for experts, the evoked potential of attentional competition elicited by the overlap of tennis scene was significantly larger than that evoked by the overlap of non-tennis scene, while this effect was absent for novices. The LORETA showed that the experts' left medial frontal gyrus (MFG) cortex was significantly more active as compared to the right MFG when processing the overlap of tennis scene, but the lateralization effect was not significant in novices. Those results indicate that experts have attentional superiority on skill-related scene information, despite intruding the scene through negative emotional faces that are prone to cause negativity bias towards their visual field as a strong distractor. This superiority is actuated by the activation of left MFG cortex and probably due to self-reference.

Extensive studies have shown that a sports expert is superior to a sports novice in visually perceptual-cognitive processes of sports scene information, however the attentional and neural basis of it has not been thoroughly explored. The present study examined whether a sport expert has the attentional superiority on scene information relevant to his/her sport skill, and explored what factor drives this superiority. To address this problem, EEGs were recorded as participants passively viewed sport scenes (tennis vs. non-tennis) and negative emotional faces in the context of a visual attention task, where the pictures of sport scenes or of negative emotional faces randomly followed the pictures with overlapping sport scenes and negative emotional faces. ERP results showed that for experts, the evoked potential of attentional competition elicited by the overlap of tennis scene was significantly larger than that evoked by the overlap of non-tennis scene, while this effect was absent fo...

This study examines how the domains of reward and attention, which are often studied as independent processes, in fact interact at a systems level. We operationalize divided attention with a continuous performance task and variables from signal detection theory (SDT), and reward/aversion with a keypress task measuring approach/avoidance in the framework of relative preference theory (RPT). Independent experiments with the same subjects showed a significant association between one SDT and two RPT variables, visualized as a three-dimensional structure. Holding one of these three variables constant, further showed a significant relationship between a loss aversion-like metric from the approach/avoidance task, and the response bias observed during the divided attention task. These results indicate that a more liberal response bias under signal detection (i.e., a higher tolerance for noise, resulting in a greater proportion of false alarms) is associated with higher &quot;loss aversion.&...

Emergent Recursive Intelligence (ERI) is a novel AI paradigm in which an artificial intelligence continually improves itself through self-referential (recursive) learning loops. Unlike static models that require periodic human updates, an ERI-based system refines its own algorithms, resolves internal contradictions, and reprioritises knowledge on the fly. The result is an AI that emerges new capabilities over time-discovering insights and strategies that were not explicitly programmed-and does so recursively, i.e. through iterative self-improvement. This makes ERI strategically significant: it lays the foundation for Astrala Nexus to build AI systems that learn how to learn, adapt to novel situations and evolve alongside their human partners. In essence, ERI transforms AI from a static tool into a dynamic collaborator capable of growth. Astrala Nexus leverages ERI as its core principle, drawing on leading scientific and philosophical frameworks to ensure this technology is both cutting-edge and deeply grounded.

El estudio tuvo como propósito describir las características de la producción del habla en niños con implante coclear tardío de 8 a 12 años de edad. Es un estudio cualitativo descriptivo con diseño de casos múltiples. La muestra estuvo conformada por 14 niños de un CEBE de Lima, con pérdida auditiva neurosensorial bilateral profunda, alteraciones del habla de origen fonético fonológico y con implante coclear tardío. Los datos se recogieron a través de la observación sistemática con apoyo del Protocolo MBGR de Marchesan y Cols, adaptado por el equipo de habla CPAL (2011). Los resultados indican que la producción del habla en los niños de ocho a doce años con ICT se caracteriza por ser imprecisa e ininteligible al presentar omisiones, sustituciones y distorsiones de todos los fones de forma sistemática y asistemática. En todos los casos estudiados los fones /m/, /p/, /t/, son producidos adecuadamente; los fonos más frecuentes en sustitución son /b/ por /m, p, j/; /t/ por /n, j/; /d/ p...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the angles of mental rotation when attempting to spatially orientate and the resulting response times and levels of accuracy. By means of a computer program, participants were presented with 64 mental rotational trials. The mental rotational trials consisted of a triangle placed in the center of the screen with a standard stick symbol of an aircraft appearing at various headings and orientations around the triangle. The participants were required to imagine themselves inside the flight deck of the aircraft, and then respond as quickly and accurately as possible to where the triangle is in relation to their orientation. Analysis of the data indicated that as the amount of angular displacement increased from the straight ahead and directly behind positions, the response times and accuracy rates increased and decreased respectively. Additionally, responses for the cardinal orientations were faster than the non-cardinal orientations.

The effects of bilingualism on child development have been extensively examined in last decades. Research reveals that simultaneous use of two or more languages affects child’s language development, cognitive and social skills. The current study focuses on the so-far understudied theory of emotion understanding in bilingual children. A cohort of 593 bilingual and monolingual 5–6-year-olds took the Russian version of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) that assesses three components of emotion understanding: emotion understanding of external causes of emotions, reflective causes of emotions; and mental causes of emotions. Our results revealed no group differences between overall emotion understanding and understanding of external and reflective causes of emotions. However, monolingual children had a slightly better understanding of mental causes of emotions compared to bilingual children, when controlling for age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence. These results suggest that ch...

Open-ended learning is a core research field of machine learning and robotics aiming to build learning machines and robots able to autonomously acquire knowledge and skills and to reuse them to solve novel tasks. The multiple challenges posed by open-ended learning have been operationalized in the robotic competition REAL 2020. This requires a simulated camera-arm-gripper robot to (a) autonomously learn to interact with objects during an intrinsic phase where it can learn how to move objects and then (b) during an extrinsic phase, to re-use the acquired knowledge to accomplish externally given goals requiring the robot to move objects to specific locations unknown during the intrinsic phase. Here we present a &#39;baseline architecture&#39; for solving the challenge, provided as baseline model for REAL 2020. Few models have all the functionalities needed to solve the REAL 2020 benchmark and none has been tested with it yet. The architecture we propose is formed by three components: ...

The main goal of this study was to investigate how readers' visual attention distribution during reading of conflicting science information is related to their scientific reasoning behavior. A total of 25 university students voluntarily participated in the study. They were given conflicting science information about earthquake predictions to read while their eye movements during reading were recorded by the FaceLAB eye tracking system. After reading, the participants were interviewed to probe their reasoning performance. Our study showed that when university students were asked to read and reason about conflicting science information, those who paid more cognitive attention and efforts to the text areas related to backing theory, data, and warrants demonstrated better performances in coordinating theory and evidence, identifying evidence, and providing rebuttals, compared to students who paid less attention and made fewer cognitive efforts to these areas. The association between students' background knowledge and performance of scientific reasoning was weak. Compared to those with irrelevant backgrounds, students with relevant background knowledge tended to read more of the facts when the science information involved a simple experimental study, while their attention was directed more to data and claims when the experimental study was complicated or unfamiliar.

Having a positive attitude in writing is very important since the positive attitude will make the students approach writing in a good way and will enable them to finish the writing task well. Thus, an appropriate instrument to measure the writing attitude is needed. Yet, scarce research is dedicated to investigating the validity and reliability of the writing attitude scale.

Simultaneous execution of memory retrieval and cognitively demanding interventions alter the subjective experience of aversive memories. This principle can be used in treatment to target traumatic memories. An often-used interpretation is that cognitive demand interferes with memory reconsolidation. Laboratory models applying this technique often do not meet some important procedural steps thought necessary to trigger reconsolidation. It remains therefore unclear whether cognitively demanding interventions can alter the reconsolidation process of aversive memories. Here, 78 (41 included) healthy participants completed an established 3-day threat conditioning paradigm. Two conditioned stimuli were paired with a shock (CS+ s) and one was not (CS-). The next day, one CS+ (CS+ R), but not the other (CS+), was presented as a reminder. After 10 min, participants performed a 2-back working memory task. On day three, we assessed retention. We found successful acquisition of conditioned threat and retention (CS+ s > CS-). However, SCRs to the CS+ R and the CS+ during retention did not significantly differ. Although threat conditioning was successful, the well-established cognitively demanding intervention did not alter the reconsolidation process of conditioned threat memories. These findings challenge current views on how cognitively demand may enhance psychotherapy-outcome. Experimental studies consistently show that reactivation of aversive memories while simultaneously executing a cognitively demanding intervention can alter these reactivated memories such that they become less aversive when retrieved later (for a meta-analysis see 1 ). This principle is used in eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy (EMDR 2 ;) to target traumatic memories. A popular interpretation of this finding is that simultaneous execution of memory retrieval and a cognitively demanding intervention alters the reconsolidation process of the retrieved memory. Here, reconsolidation refers to a process in which a reminder 3 can return a consolidated memory to a labile state after which the memory would require to be re-stabilised for the memory to be maintained . Indeed, pharmacological interventions applied during this critical time period (i.e. up to 6 h after reactivation; e.g. ) were shown to disrupt the reconsolidation processing leading to impairment of the reactivated memory ( 4 , but see for alternative accounts of these findings). However, cognitively demanding intervention studies often do not meet some important procedural steps thought necessary to destabilise the memory and trigger a reconsolidation process. Interestingly, it has been shown that the reconsolidation process of aversive memories can be impaired with other non-cognitively demanding tasks that induce new learning . However, it remains unclear whether cognitively demanding interventions can alter the reconsolidation process of aversive memories. Reconsolidation is an intricate process, which requires some procedural steps for the memory to destabilise and potentially be interfered with 15 . For example, animal studies have suggested that following memory reactivation, molecular processes such as protein synthesis, have to take place before the memory is fully destabilised , similar to consolidation 20,21 . Therefore, it is possible that memory destabilisation does not happen instantaneously and that cognitively demanding interventions that occur simultaneously with memory reactivation therefore might not affect the reconsolidation process. Indeed, cognitively demanding intervention studies typically do not include a delay between the initial memory retrieval and the intervention for memory destabilisation to take place. These interventions might therefore not be able to interfere with the reconsolidation process.

Regulation of emotional behavior is essential for human social interactions. Recent work has exposed its cognitive complexity, as well as its unexpected reliance on portions of the anterior PFC (aPFC) also involved in exploration, relational reasoning, and counterfactual choice, rather than on dorsolateral and medial prefrontal areas involved in several forms of cognitive control. This study anatomically qualifies the contribution of aPFC territories to the regulation of prepotent approach-avoidance action tendencies elicited by emotional faces, and explores a possible structural pathway through which this emotional action regulation might be implemented. We provide converging evidence from task-based fMRI, diffusion-weighted imaging, and functional connectivity fingerprints for a novel neural element in emotional regulation. Task-based fMRI in human male participants (N ϭ 40) performing an emotional approach-avoidance task identified aPFC territories involved in the regulation of action tendencies elicited by emotional faces. Connectivity fingerprints, based on diffusion-weighted imaging and resting-state connectivity, localized those task-defined frontal regions to the lateral frontal pole (FPl), an anatomically defined portion of the aPFC that lacks a homologous counterpart in macaque brains. Probabilistic tractography indicated that 10%-20% of interindividual variation in emotional regulation abilities is accounted for by the strength of structural connectivity between FPl and amygdala. Evidence from an independent replication sample (N ϭ 50; 10 females) further substantiated this result. These findings provide novel neuroanatomical evidence for incorporating FPl in models of control over human action tendencies elicited by emotional faces.

Humans move through the environment to reach a place mainly using two strategies: egocentric, taking the viewer's position as a point of reference, and allocentric, employing external landmarks in order to create a mental map of the environment. Aging seems to be associated with a deterioration in these functions, and although participants are evaluated with both virtual and real-environment tasks, performance on these two strategies is not frequently compared. Our objective was to evaluate egocentric and allocentric spatial memory in young and older adult populations using three tasks performed in real environments that allow the perception of 3-D information present in our daily orientation and make it possible to analyse each strategy separately. Twenty-eight young adults and 27 older adults performed Egocentric and Allocentric Spatial Memory Tasks, the Spatial Span task from CANTAB to assess visuospatial span and visuospatial working memory, and Benton's Judge of Line Orientation Test to measure the ability to establish judgments of spatial relations. Young adults outperformed older adults on spatial memory tasks. The older group improved across allocentric blocks. Young men outperformed older men on both the egocentric and allocentric tasks, whereas young women only achieved better scores than older women on the allocentric task. Our findings support the existence of agerelated differences in spatial memory performance.

Spatial orientation is an important function in daily life because it allows us to reach a target place when moving through our environment, using self-centered (egocentric) or environmental information (allocentric). Compared to other cognitive functions, spatial orientation has been studied less in preschool ages. Some brain areas, such as the hippocampus and the temporal as well as the parietal and frontal cortices, are involved in spatial orientation. Therefore, when these brain regions are altered in neurological conditions or in atypical development in children, we would expect impairment of spatial abilities. The aim of this study is to review studies, published in recent years, that use egocentric and allocentric spatial orientation tasks for assessing spatial memory in preschool children, with the final goal of finding out which tests could be included in a clinical neuropsychological evaluation. We observed that although egocentric spatial orientation emerges first during development, allocentric spatial orientation tasks are employed at very early ages. Most of these tasks are performed in real environments, allowing children's self-movements and using environmental modifications, but technologies such as virtual or augmented reality are increasingly used. Other aspects are discussed, such as the lack of consensus in the nomenclature, the difficulty of tracing the course of development of spatial orientation, or the ecological validity of the tests used. We finally observed that there is greater interest in studying the allocentric framework than the egocentric one, which makes it difficult to compare the use of the two frames of reference during a neuropsychological evaluation in preschool-aged children.

The pursuit of happiness is an age-old human quest; so is the axiom of “know thyself ”. This book proposal explores the link between these two ancient ideas, relevant even in modern times. Using the backdrop of my personal quest for happiness in combination with findings from various scientific disciplines, I argue that our happiness, at least in part, is under our control, and that self-awareness can be an empowering tool in finding lasting happiness. There are three parts to this book proposal: Part I reviews the scientific literature on wellbeing and explores answers to the question: What makes us happy? Part II presents a new definition of selfawareness along with challenges associated with knowing our selves, and also offers ways to become more selfaware. Part III provides specific suggestions for people to use their self-awareness to enhance their well-being. The objective of the proposed book is to inspire people to take charge of their happiness by taking charge of themselve...