There is growing evidence that Parkinson's disease patients without dementia exhibit cognitive deficits in some executive, memory and selective attention tasks. However, the impact of these deficits on their everyday cognitive functioning remains largely unknown. This issue was explored using self-report questionnaires. Twenty-four Parkinson's…

Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (PAMS) is a procedure for extracting latent core profiles in a multitest data set. The PAMS procedure offers several advantages compared with other profile analysis procedures. Most notably, PAMS estimates individual profile weights that reflect the degree to which an individual's observed profile…

Four experiments studied the role of GABA[subscript A] receptors in the temporal dynamics of memory retention. Memory for an active avoidance response was a nonmonotonic function of the retention interval. When rats were tested shortly (2 min) or some time (24 h) after training, retention was excellent, but when they were tested at intermediate…

Knowledge of emotion situations facilitates the interpretation, processing, and organization of significant personal event information and thus may be an important contributor to the development of autobiographical memory. This longitudinal study tested the hypothesis in a cross-cultural context. The participants were native Chinese children,…

This article reports on an experiment comparing the effects of three discrete types of deviance from native language (L1) phonetics and phonology on verbal short-term memory performance. A nonword repetition task was used to measure the recall of four stimulus types: (a) high-probability L1-sounding nonwords, (b) low-probability L1-sounding…

What is the time course of visual attention? Attentional blink studies have found that the 2nd of 2 targets is often missed when presented within about 500 ms from the 1st target, resulting in theories about relatively long-lasting capacity limitations or bottlenecks. Earlier studies, however, reported quite the opposite finding: Attention is…

Cognitive control theories attribute control to executive processes that adjust and control behavior online. Theories of automaticity attribute control to memory retrieval. In the present study, online adjustments and memory retrieval were examined, and their roles in controlling performance in the stop-signal paradigm were elucidated. There was…

Purpose: The initial diagnosis and treatment of cognitive disorders such as mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease is highly dependent on caregiver reports of patient performance of activities of daily living (ADLs). However, these reports may not always be reliable. We investigated the cognitive skills of caregivers, specifically their…

One of the most studied and least well understood phenomena in episodic memory is the word frequency effect (WFE). The WFE is expressed as a mirror pattern where uncommon low frequency words (LF) are better recognized than common high frequency words (HF) by way of a higher HR and lower FAR. One explanation for the HR difference is the early-phase…

We studied the roles of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in learning and relearning to inhibit context conditioned fear (freezing) in extinction. In Experiment 1, pre-extinction BLA infusion of the NMDA receptor (NMDAr) antagonist, ifenprodil, impaired the development and retention of inhibition but…

"Family Snapshots" are 100-words-or-less descriptive memories of times in the lives of families that highlight poignant moments. They complement other exercises within a family counseling course, including the use of genograms. Modeled after the "Washington Post Magazine"'s series "Life Is Short: Autobiography as Haiku," these snapshots give…

We analyze the timing of recall as a source of information about children's performance in complex working memory tasks. A group of 8-year-olds performed a traditional operation span task in which sequence length increased across trials and an operation period task in which processing requirements were extended across trials of constant sequence…

The nature of fluid intelligence was investigated by identifying variables that were, and were not, significantly related to this construct. Relevant information was obtained from three sources: re-analyses of data from previous studies, a study in which 791 adults performed storage-plus-processing working memory tasks, and a study in which 236…

This study investigated, in children aged 6-13 years, how different components of the working memory (WM) system (short-term storage and executive processes), within both verbal and visuospatial domains, relate to fluid intelligence. We also examined the degree of domain-specificity of the WM components as well as the differentiation of storage…

In this article, we discuss school schedules and their implications in the context of chronobiological contemporary knowledge, arguing for the need to reconsider time planning in the school setting. We present anecdotal observations regarding chronobiological challenges imposed by the school system throughout different ages and discuss the effects…