Cognitive neuropsychology is more than single-case studies.

S. M. Sokol et al (see record 1991-27965-001) claim that "the cognitive neuropsychology approach" is limited to the single-case study design. The present article takes issue with this claim. Contrary to the beliefs of Sokol et al, it is argued that (1) cognitive modularity is best studied by group design, (2) the possibility of neural reorganization in patients should be tested through converging evidence from different populations using various methods, and (3) cognitive neuropsychology can benefit from being a part of cognitive neuroscience where both neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying normal cognition are relevant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Neuroscience of cognitive development: The role of experience and the developing brain.

Reviews the book, Neuroscience of cognitive development: The role of experience and the developing brain by Charles A. Nelson, Michelle de Haan, and Kathleen M. Thomas (see record 2006-09288-000). The goal of this book is to provide a state-of-the-art introduction to the neural bases of cognitive development. The first chapter reviews different aspects of brain development. Chapter two illustrates how experience induces changes in the developing brain as well as in the adult brain, and addresses the question of similarities and differences between neural plasticity in children and adults. The next chapter introduces different methods to study the brain and discusses advantages and disadvantages of each method. In Chapters four through eleven, the authors review the current knowledge about the neurological bases in a number of key areas of cognitive development. The book should be of interest to psychologists who seek a thorough review of the neurological bases associated with various cognitive abilities in infants and children. It might also usefully accompany a graduate course on developmental neuroscience, keeping in mind that the book presupposes a good grasp of neuroanatomy, and of the methods used in the study of the brain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive mastery and children's humor.

Reviews theory and research dealing with cognitive aspects of children's humor. Alternate means of defining cognitive mastery are discussed, and it is suggested that a Piagetian theoretical framework may offer the most promising approach to studying the relationship between cognitive mastery and the comprehension and appreciation of humor. Special attention is given to the operation of the cognitive congruency principle in children's humor. Suggestions for future theoretical and research efforts are made. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Section 2: Multisensory integration.

Introduces a section of this Special Edition in Cognitive Neuroscience, which examines the neural mechanisms and cognitive factors that influence the formation of multimodal percepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Section 2: Intégration multisensorielle.

Introduces a section of this Special Edition in Cognitive Neuroscience, which examines the neural mechanisms and cognitive factors that influence the formation of multimodal percepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A distinction between dogmatic and rigid thinking.

"The purpose of this study was to investigate certain cognitive aspects of the phenomenon of dogmatism, to distinguish such aspects from rigidity, and to demonstrate the operation of personality organization upon cognitive behavior." The findings are in accord with the hypotheses posed and lend support to the validity of the formulation of the construct of dogmatism and its differentiation from rigidity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions: Patricia S. Goldman-Rakic.

Cites Patricia S. Goldman-Rakic for the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. Goldman-Rakic is credited with undertaking the most sophisticated neural analysis of a higher order cognitive function ever performed. Goldman-Rakic studied the knowledge of the existence, character, and spatial location of objects. The development and organization of this cognitive function were analyzed at the levels of the cell, the brain systems, and the behavioral processes with which it is involved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A multitrait-multimethod study of academic and social intelligence in college students.

Two multitrait-multimethod studies of academic and social intelligences show that cognitive and behavioral aspects of social intelligence (Experiment 1) and several cognitive aspects of social intelligence (i.e., social perception, social knowledge, and social insight; Experiment 2) can be discriminated. Verbal, nonverbal, self-, and other-report measures were administered to 134 female college students (Experiment 1) and to 227 male and female college students (Experiment 2). Convergent and discriminant validities were established for cognitive and behavioral dimensions of social intelligence (Experiment 1) and for two dimensions of cognitive social intelligence (social knowledge and social perception; Experiment 2). In both studies, the cognitive social intelligence factors had poor convergent validities, and research participants were college students attending a highly selective university. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Network models contribute to cognitive and social neuroscience.

Cognitive neuroscience emerged to integrate cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience has recently emerged to integrate social psychology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. This article comments on these theoretical integration efforts because they help reverse psychology's long history of division and disunification. The second point of this article notes that network theories and models are also helping to unify cognitive and social neuroscience. Throughout this article the author refers to the burgeoning parallel distributed processing-connections neural network literature that includes social cognitive neuroscience in addition to most other fields of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explicit category learning in Parkinson's disease: Deficits related to impaired rule generation and selection processes.

The present study examined the source of explicit category learning deficits previously noted in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Task stimuli consisted of 4 binary-valued cues that together determined category assignment, although some cues were more important for the categorization decision. Participants verbalized the hypotheses being tested to provide several measures of the hypothesis testing. Analyses of these verbal protocols indicated that PD patients were impaired on rule generation and selection but not rule shifting. Patients had particular difficulty noting the relative importance of the cues. Specific aspects of performance were differently correlated with neuropsychological measures of working memory and hypothesis testing ability. Together, the results suggest that the cognitive processes required for explicit category learning are mediated by partially distinct neural mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neural and cognitive plasticity: From maps to minds.

Some species and individuals are able to learn cognitive skills more flexibly than others. Learning experiences and cortical function are known to contribute to such differences, but the specific factors that determine an organism's intellectual capacities remain unclear. Here, an integrative framework is presented suggesting that variability in cognitive plasticity reflects neural constraints on the precision and extent of an organism's stimulus representations. Specifically, it is hypothesized that cognitive plasticity depends on the number and diversity of cortical modules that an organism has available as well as the brain's capacity to flexibly reconfigure and customize networks of these modules. The author relates this framework to past proposals on the neural mechanisms of intelligence, including (a) the relationship between brain size and intellectual capacity; (b) the role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and the maintenance of stimulus representations; and (c) the impact of neural plasticity and efficiency on the acquisition and performance of cognitive skills. The proposed framework provides a unified account of variability in cognitive plasticity as a function of species, age, and individual, and it makes specific predictions about how manipulations of cortical structure and function will impact intellectual capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spinning in the scanner: Neural correlates of virtual reorientation.

Recent studies have used spatial reorientation task paradigms to identify underlying cognitive mechanisms of navigation in children, adults, and a range of animal species. Despite broad interest in this task across disciplines, little is known about the brain bases of reorientation. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine neural activity in adults during a virtual reality version of the reorientation task. Three environments that varied in the cues provided were studied: a rectangular room with 4 identical gray walls (Geometry), a square room with 3 gray walls and 1 red wall (Feature), and a rectangular room with 3 gray walls and 1 red wall (Feature + Geometry). Multiple areas within the medial temporal lobe (MTL) showed increased activation when a feature was present compared with when reorientation was based only on geometric cues. In contrast, reliance on geometric cues significantly activated a number of non-MTL structures, including the prefrontal cortex and inferior temporal gyrus. These results provide neural evidence for processing differences between the 2 types of cue as well as insight into developmental and comparative aspects of reorientation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computational explorations of the influence of structured knowledge on age-related cognitive decline.

Experience in a domain can sometimes offset cognitive declines that occur with aging. Using a series of neural network simulations of learning chess opening positions, the authors investigated how structured knowledge in a distributed representation may influence age-related declines. Aging manipulations implemented as modulations of neural noise showed increased knowledge as being protective of performance on a chess memory span task, whereas changes in neural plasticity and neural loss lead to main effects without interactions and steeper declines for the initially more able. The models could also simulate the increase in variability in older groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marcia K. Johnson: 2006 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.

Presents the citation to Marcia K. Johnson, who received the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions "for raising and illuminating fundamental questions about the cognitive and neural processes that constitute the subjective experience of mental life." A brief profile and a selected bibliography, as well as Johnson's award address, entitled Memory and Reality (see record 2006-21079-028), accompany the citation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The validity of importance.

Studied the usefulness of weighting by importance when combining measures of satisfaction with job aspects into a measure of overall satisfaction. Results with 380 clerical workers question the validity of the information that is used for importance weighting. It is concluded that the model of cognitive behavior that relates the importance of job aspects to the evaluation of overall job attitude should be revised. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpersonal preference and cognitive organization.

The paper describes "an empirical test of certain aspects of Heider's theory of cognitive organization." The method, procedures, and results are described and illustrated by tables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of ethanol on nonspatial working memory and attention in rats.

Investigation into the neural basis for ethanol-induced cognitive dysfunction requires the use of valid animal models. An operant signal detection procedure was developed to assess simultaneously the processes of sustained attention and working memory in rats, and to determine the effects of ethanol on these cognitive functions. Ethanol, at 0.75 g/kg intraperitoneal/ly (ip), produced delay- and stimulus length-dependent decreases in choice accuracy, effects that are consistent with deficits in both working memory and sustained attention. Local infusion of ethanol directly into the medial septal area resulted in a selective loss of choice accuracy at the long delay. The impairment by intraseptal ethanol did not interact with stimulus length. Thus, the working memory impairment, but not the decrement in sustained attention, was mimicked by intraseptal ethanol. The current model provides a foundation for studying the neural basis of ethanol's cognitive effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Event-related functional MRI: Implications for cognitive psychology.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has rapidly emerged as a powerful technique in cognitive neuroscience. We describe and critique a new class of imaging experimental designs called event-related fMRI that exploit the temporal resolution of fMRI by modeling fMRI signal changes associated with behavioral trials as opposed to blocks of behavioral trials. Advantages of this method over block designs include the ability to (a) randomize trial presentations, (b) test for functional correlates of behavioral measures with greater power, (c) directly examine the neural correlates of temporally dissociable components of behavioral trials (e.g., the delay period of a working memory task), and (d) test for differences in the onset time of neural activity evoked by different trial types. Consequently, event-related fMRI has the potential to address a number of cognitive psychology questions with a degree of inferential and statistical power not previously available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Introduction to the Special Section on the Emotional Concomitants of Brain Damage.

Emphasizes the theoretical and clinical implications of studying emotion after brain damage. Theoretically, it is one way of elucidating critical neural substrates of emotion and the interaction of cognitive and noncognitive determinants. Clinically, the cognitive and other behavioral changes associated with certain types of brain damage may make traditional methods of assessing emotion inaccurate. This special section is designed to review current knowledge regarding these issues and to emphasize their theoretical and clinical importance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Women's sexual self-schema.

Sexual self-schemas are cognitive generalizations about sexual aspects of oneself that are derived from past experience, manifest in current experience, influential in the processing of sexually relevant social information, and guide sexual behavior. In Part 1, a measure of a cognitive self-view of women's sexuality was developed. The construct includes 2 positive aspects, an inclination to experience passionate–romantic emotions and a behavioral openness to sexual experience, and a negative aspect, embarrassment or conservativism, which may be a deterrent to sexual–romantic affects and behaviors. In Part 2, the role of sexual schema in intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects of sexuality was examined. In Part 3, a bivariate model was explored and 4 self-views (positive, co-schematic, aschematic, and negative) were proposed and compared. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)