Effect of mediated learning intervention on cognitive task performance with a deaf population.

Feuerstein's (1979) mediated learning theory was applied to a deaf population for investigating the cognitive modifiability of this population. The Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD) was employed in a pretest-posttest design for determining transfer of learning along cognitive and behavioral dimensions. Severely to profoundly deaf children (N?=?45) with hearing parents and between the ages of 9 and 13 years were randomly assigned to three groups—an experimental and two comparison groups. The subjects in the experimental group received examiner mediation as designed by Feuerstein. In one control condition (elaborated), the examiner provided limited feedback to the subjects, and in the other control condition (standard), the subjects performed the tasks following traditional psychometric procedures. The experimental group performed significantly better than the comparison groups on five of the six LPAD tasks, supporting the applicability of Feuerstein's theory of mediated learning. The experimental group also demonstrated significant transfer of learning on other cognitive and behavioral measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Functional limitations to daily living tasks in the aged: a focus group analysis

We assessed constraints on daily living of 59 healthy, active adults 65-88 years of age in focus group interviews. Individual comments about specific problems were coded along the dimensions of (a) the locus of the problem (motor, visual, auditory, cognitive, external, or health limitations); (b) the activity involved (e.g., transportation, leisure, housekeeping); (c) whether the problem was attributable to task difficulty or the perception of risk; and (d) response to limitations (perseverance, cessation, compensation, or self-improvement). The data provide information about the types of difficulties encountered in everyday activities as well as the way in which individuals respond to such difficulties. Each comment was also coded in terms of whether it was remediable via training, design changes, or some combination of the two. More than half of the problems that were reported had the potential to be improved in some way, thus providing direction for future research in human factors and aging. Actual or potential applications of this research include identifying problems and difficulties that older adults encounter in daily activities such as transportation and leisure; more specifically, determining the degree to which such problems are potentially remediable by human factors solutions. Applications of this research also include understanding the types of systems, products, and technologies that older adults interact with currently, or are interested in learning to use.     

Development and validation of the Signed Paired Associates Test.

Objective: To develop and validate a verbal (sign-based) test of learning and memory for individuals who are deaf. Method: Completed test development, determined performance norms, investigated correlation with IQ, and evaluated discriminant validity in healthy versus clinical participant samples. Participants: Thirty-eight deaf adults screened as free from brain impairment and 35 deaf adults referred for cognitive testing. Outcome measure: Signed Paired Associates Test (SPAT). Results: Healthy participant norms were similar to pilot study norms. SPAT performance was correlated with IQ. The healthy sample scored significantly better than the clinical sample on all 13 SPAT performance elements analyzed. Performance patterns paralleled those commonly found with other tests of verbal learning and memory. Conclusions: SPAT shows utility as a test of verbal learning and memory for sign language users and evidence of validity in detecting verbal cognitive impairment in that population. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of adult learning disability subtypes in the vocational rehabilitation system.

Objective: To examine the personal adjustment and vocational outcomes of adults with different subtypes of specific learning disabilities. Design: Cluster analysis was used to derive subtypes from a vocational rehabilitation population, and nonparametric tests were used to test hypotheses. Participants: Three hundred Sixty-one successfully employed persons were compared with 252 unsuccessfully employed persons. Main Outcome Measures: Rates of secondary psychiatric disorders, type of training, and category of vocational attainment were the outcome measures. Results: Subtype was associated with vocational outcome and training but not with prevalence of secondary psychiatric diagnosis. Conclusions: Subtypes of specific learning disabilities exist in the vocational rehabilitation population and are associated with differences in vocational training, success rates, and occupational placement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mathematical disabilities: Cognitive, neuropsychological, and genetic components.

Cognitive, neuropsychological, and genetic correlates of mathematical achievement and mathematical disability (MD) are reviewed in an attempt to identify the core deficits underlying MD in children. Three types of distinct cognitive, neuropsychological, or cognitive and neuropsychological deficits associated with MD are identified. The 1st deficit is manifested by difficulties in the representation or retrieval of arithmetic facts from semantic memory. The 2nd type of deficit is manifested by problems in the execution of arithmetical procedures. The 3rd type involves problems in the visuospatial representation of numerical information. Potential cognitive, neuropsychological, and genetic factors contributing to these deficits and the relationship between MD and reading disabilities are discussed. Finally, suggestions for the subtyping of math disorders are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A meta-analysis of self-regulated learning in work-related training and educational attainment: What we know and where we need to go.

Researchers have been applying their knowledge of goal-oriented behavior to the self-regulated learning domain for more than 30 years. This review examines the current state of research on self-regulated learning and gaps in the field's understanding of how adults regulate their learning of work-related knowledge and skills. Self-regulation theory was used as a conceptual lens for deriving a heuristic framework of 16 fundamental constructs that constitute self-regulated learning. Meta-analytic findings (k = 430, N = 90,380) support theoretical propositions that self-regulation constructs are interrelated—30% of the corrected correlations among constructs were .50 or greater. Goal level, persistence, effort, and self-efficacy were the self-regulation constructs with the strongest effects on learning. Together these constructs accounted for 17% of the variance in learning, after controlling for cognitive ability and pretraining knowledge. However, 4 self-regulatory processes—planning, monitoring, help seeking, and emotion control—did not exhibit significant relationships with learning. Thus, a parsimonious framework of the self-regulated learning domain is presented that focuses on a subset of self-regulatory processes that have both limited overlap with other core processes and meaningful effects on learning. Research is needed to advance the field's understanding of how adults regulate their learning in an increasingly complex and knowledge-centric work environment. Such investigations should capture the dynamic nature of self-regulated learning, address the role of self-regulation in informal learning, and investigate how trainees regulate their transfer of training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the locus of training gains in research on the plasticity of fluid intelligence in old age.

Cognitive training research has shown that many older adults have a substantial reserve capacity in fluid intelligence. Little is known, however, about the locus of plasticity. Two studies were conducted to examine whether training gains in fluid abilities are critically dependent on experimenter-guided training and/or whether older adults can achieve similar improvements by themselves on the basis of cognitive skills already available in their repertoire. Several comparisons were made: (a) between test performances after trainer-guided training in ability-specific cognitive skills and after self-guided retest practice (without feedback), (b) between performances under speeded and power conditions of assessment, (c) between performances on easy and difficult items, and (d) between the relative numbers of correct and wrong answers. Results suggest that a large share of the training improvement shown by the elderly can plausibly be explained as the result of the activation and practice of cognitive skills already available in the repertoire. The results also have implications for educational practice, pointing to the appropriateness of strategies of self-directed learning for many elderly adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning mathematics: A cognitive perspective.

During the past decade, rather than studying the outcomes of mathematics learning in experimentation with specific teaching strategies, cognitive psychology has been advancing understanding of the fundamental nature of mathematics learning. The promise of cognitive theories for instruction is illustrated by reviewing several studies on elementary mathematics. This research illuminates the formal structure of a mathematical procedure such as counting and the hierarchy of its subprocedures, the diagnosis of consistent errors in subtraction and decimals and the discovery of their underlying sources, the formulation of the role of schemata in executing arithmetic skills, and the comprehension of word problems. The development of mathematics skills is considered in terms of the distinction between procedural and propositional knowledge. Implications of a cognitively based understanding of mathematical learning for the effective design of instruction are discussed. (67 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning, retention, and conceptual usage in elderly patients with memory disorder.

Elderly patients clinically judged to be suffering from memory disorder show difficulty in learning paired-associates and the kind of tasks found in the Wechsler Performance Scale. The learning difficulty extends to other kinds of learning problems and retention processes are also affected. The relevance of some of Hebb's notions concerning the likely relations between learning and cognitive functioning in human adults was also examined. The results confirmed expectations and suggested that the sort of neuropsychological model elaborated by Hebb may be a useful source of working hypotheses in this area. 18 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining the nature of impairment in visual paired associate learning in amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Objective: Visual spatial learning is impaired in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) although the nature of this impairment is not clear. This study investigated the nature and magnitude of errors made by adults with amnestic MCI (aMCI) when learning pattern-location paired associations in a continuous manner. Method: Visual associate learning was measured using the Continuous Paired Associate Learning (CPAL) task in which 30 adults who met clinical criteria for aMCI and 30 matched controls were required to learn a set of associations between patterns and locations across increasing memory loads (two, four, six, and eight). Results: As hypothesized, the aMCI group made more total errors than controls for all memory loads above two. However, the rate of increase in errors with memory load in the aMCI group was approximately twice that for controls. Conclusions: In controls, errors on the CPAL task reflected almost exclusively difficulty in memory. In the aMCI group, errors on the CPAL reflected limitations in associative learning but also in short-term memory and response monitoring. These results suggest that impairments in specific aspects of executive function and working memory might contribute to poor performance on visual paired associate learning in aMCI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Different storage and retrieval deficits in normal aging and mild cognitive impairment: A multinomial modeling analysis.

The authors compared patients with mild cognitive impairment with healthy older adults and young control participants in a free recall test in order to locate potential qualitative differences in normal and pathological memory decline. Analysis with an extended multitrial version of W. H. Batchelder and D. M. Riefer's (1980) pair-clustering model revealed globally decelerated learning and an additional retrieval deficit in patients with mild cognitive impairment but not in healthy older adults. Results thus suggest differences in memory decline between normal and pathological aging that may be useful for the detection of risk groups for dementia, and they illustrate the value of model-based disentangling of processes and of multitrial tests for early detection of dementia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contraction of time in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been associated with anomalies in dopamine systems. Recent advances in the understanding of the core cognitive deficits in ADHD suggest that dopamine dysfunction might be expressed through shortened time scales in reward-based learning. Here this perspective is extended by the conjecture that temporal span in working memory systems might generally be shortened. As a test of this conjecture the authors focus on the implicit memory system involved in rhythmic movement, assessing the minimum tempo at which rhythmic feeling can be sustained in adults with diagnosed ADHD and in a control group of normal adults. The authors found that people with ADHD do in fact have a rhythm cut-off that is faster in tempo than those without ADHD. This finding is consistent with the idea that impaired dopamine dynamics have systemic consequences for cognitive function, essentially recalibrating the clock that sets the time scale for the subjective experience of temporal events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivational conflict and vocational development.

Presents a classification of the sources of motivational conflicts found in college students seeking counseling for vocational problems and their application to 82 vocational counseling cases. The major classification categories of synthetic difficulties, identity problems, gratification conflicts, change orientation, and overt pathology were derived from case notes and recent emphasis on a developmental approach to vocational choice that emphasizes personality development and treats successive choice points as transitional periods in a continuous process. Since the vocational choice task involves negotiating an integration of operating identity (needs, identification, skills, impulse-defense styles, and values) with occupational roles, the classification of motivational conflicts as a source of difficulty in vocational indecision offers a useful method for explicating issues in vocational-choice counseling. Applications to differential counseling processes are discussed. (l7 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related differences in irrelevant-speech effects.

Three experiments examined age-related differences in irrelevant-speech effects. Younger and older adults were required to recall short prose texts or lists of semantically related words presented visually together with distractor speech. In all experiments, older adults made more semantically related intrusion errors from the irrelevant speech than younger adults. Results of a source memory test suggested that these age-related differences in interference are most likely due to both inhibitory deficits and source-monitoring problems. The results lend partial support to the inhibition deficit theory of cognitive aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An investigation of classroom situational dimensions of emotional and behavioral adjustment and cognitive and social outcomes for Head Start children.

This study used a developmental-ecological approach to investigate the relationship across the school year between early problems in preschool classroom situations and a comprehensive set of readiness competencies for urban low-income children. Study 1 identified 3 reliable and unique underlying classroom situational dimensions where behavior problems occurred: structured learning, peer interaction, and teacher interaction situations. Boys and younger children evidenced more problematic behavior across all situations. Study 2 investigated the relationship between early problems in the situations and readiness outcomes. Early situational difficulties uniquely and differentially predicted lower peer social and classroom learning outcomes. In combination, both the type of behavior problem (what) and the situational problem (where) explained greater variance in the prediction of readiness outcomes, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of developmental trajectories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual recognition memory in high- and low-risk infant pigtailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina).

Pigtailed macaque infants were administered a series of visual recognition problems adapted from a standardized test developed for use with human infants. The subjects were classified as either low risk or high risk. The low-risk animals were normal, whereas the high-risk animals had developmental problems (e.g., hypoxia, failure-to-thrive) that sometimes are correlated with cognitive deficits later in life in humans. The test consisted of a series of problems in which two identical abstract black-and-white patterns were presented for a study period, followed by a two-part test trial in which the previously exposed pattern was paired with a novel one. Looking time to each target was recorded. The low-risk group easily differentiated novel from previously seen targets. The high-risk group gave no evidence of recognition. The results have implications for an animal model to examine factors contributing to intellectual deficits in human infants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Listening to discourse in distracting settings: The effects of aging.

Younger and older adults listened to discourse in quiet and in conversational noise, before answering questions concerning the material. Some questions required listeners to recall specific details; others were of a more integrative nature. When the listening situation was adjusted for individual differences in hearing, younger and older adults were equally adept at remembering the gist of the passages in both quiet and in two levels of noise. The two age groups also did not differ with respect to memory for specific details when listening in quiet or in a moderate level of noise, even when required to perform a concurrent task. Only at the loudest noise level did younger adults tend to recall more detail than older adults. However, when no adjustments were made to compensate for the poorer hearing of older adults (all participants tested under identical listening conditions), older adults could not recall as much detail as younger adults, either in quiet or in noise. The results indicate that the speech-comprehension difficulties of older adults primarily reflect declines in hearing rather than in cognitive ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The quality of friendships between children with and without learning problems

The nature and quality of preadolescent friendships between children with and without learning problems due to mental retardation or mild cognitive difficulties were investigated. Based on an assessment of the reciprocal relationship status of 373 children, including 54 with learning problems, 33 friend and 32 acquaintance dyads were identified. Of these dyads, half included a child with learning problems and half consisted of 2 children without learning problems. The dyads were observed performing a play task. Unlike friendships between children without disabilities, friendships between children with and without learning problems were marked by limited collaboration and shared decision-making, a low level of cooperative play and shared laughter, and an asymmetrical, hierarchical division of roles. The importance of advancing beyond the study of the social acceptance of children with learning problems to study the qualitative aspects of their friendships was discussed.     

Effects of Hypertension on Attention, Memory, and Executive Function in Older Adults.

Hypertension is associated with impairments in cognitive function in older adults, but the nature and extent of these deficits are unclear. Brief cognitive measures lack sensitivity, whereas comprehensive assessments produce numerous variables that are difficult to interpret. The authors performed a principal-components analysis using a computerized cognitive assessment battery and neuropsychological measures of executive function in 506 hypertensive and normotensive older participants. Composite factor scores were used to reanalyze data from 223 untreated participants without vascular complications. The hypertensive group had deficits in Speed of Cognition, Episodic and Working Memory, and Executive Function but not Continuity of Attention. Using composite scores simplified data interpretation and suggested differential effects of hypertension on cognitive performance not clearly evident in individual test results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of death within 11 years on cognitive performance in old age.

Six different cognitive tests and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were given to 3,572 active community residents aged 49 to 93 years. Causes of death were ascertained for 443 who died between 36 and 3,903 days later. Subsequent survival predicted test scores during the 3,903 days and independently during Days 36 to 1,826 and Days 1,827 to 3,903. Scores on the BDI and cumulative verbal learning and vocabulary tests predicted mortality after demographics and performance on other cognitive tests had been considered. Predictors were similar for deaths from heart disease, malignancies, and other causes. A new finding that cognitive tests did not predict survival duration within the sample of deceased explains previous findings of greater terminal decline in performance for young than for elderly adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)