The effects of an intensive training and feedback program on investigative interviews of children

In the present study, we assessed the effectiveness of an extensive training and feedback program with investigative interviewers of child victims of alleged abuse and neglect in a large Canadian city. Twelve investigative interviewers participated in a joint training initiative that lasted eight months and involved classroom components and extensive weekly verbal and written feedback. Interviewers were significantly more likely to use open-ended prompts and elicited more information from children with open-ended prompts following training. These differences were especially prominent following a subsequent ‘refresher’ training session. No negative effects of training were observed. Clear evidence was found of the benefits of an intensive training and feedback program across a wide variety of investigative interviews with children. Although previous research has found benefits of training with interviewers of child sexual assault victims, the current study extends these findings to a wide range of allegations and maltreatment contexts

Harmonizing neuropsychological assessment for mild neurocognitive disorders in Europe

INTRODUCTION Harmonized neuropsychological assessment for neurocognitive disorders, an international priority for valid and reliable diagnostic procedures, has been achieved only in specific countries or research contexts. METHODS To harmonize the assessment of mild cognitive impairment in Europe, a workshop (Geneva, May 2018) convened stakeholders, methodologists, academic, and non-academic clinicians and experts from European, US, and Australian harmonization initiatives. RESULTS With formal presentations and thematic working-groups we defined a standard battery consistent with the U.S. Uniform DataSet, version 3, and homogeneous methodology to obtain consistent normative data across tests and languages. Adaptations consist of including two tests specific to typical Alzheimer's disease and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. The methodology for harmonized normative data includes consensus definition of cognitively normal controls, classification of confounding factors (age, sex, and education), and calculation of minimum sample sizes. DISCUSSION This expert consensus allows harmonizing the diagnosis of neurocognitive disorders across European countries and possibly beyond

Effects of context and individual differences on memory for prior remembering.

Though people often remember experiences from their lives, they are also able to remember whether a memory has previously been retrieved, which is known as memory for prior remembering. Frequent failures of memory for prior remembering can have negative consequences on how people perceive their own cognitive health. The recurrence of traumatic memory retrieval can be interpreted as a consequence of intrusive memory for prior remembering. This dissertation was conducted to improve our understanding of the factors that influence the efficacy of memory for prior remembering. The two factors that were investigated were context change and individual differences. Participants (N = 180) completed a three-phase memory procedure. In the first phase, participants learned a series of cue-target word pairs. In the second phase, participants were given a cued-recall test (Test 1) for some of the pairs that they learned. Half of those targets were tested in the same context as the learning phase (same-context targets) and the other half were tested in a new context in which one feature had changed from the learning phase (changed-context targets). Three different types of contextual features could have changed in between-subjects fashion: the semantic context, background color context, or screen location context. In the third phase, participants were given a second cued-recall test (Test 2) in which all of the learned targets were tested in the original study context. During the third phase, participants were also asked to make a judgment about whether each target was retrieved during Test 1. Results showed that memory for prior remembering was only impaired for changed-context targets in the semantic change condition. Participants also completed questionnaires to measure individual differences in dispositional mindfulness and absorption. The only significant predictor of memory for prior remembering was absorption and only in the semantic change condition. The findings support a distinction between categorizing contextual features into local and global categories based on their associations with memory for stimuli and memory for prior remembering. Individual difference findings are discussed with respect to whether attention is focused on internal thoughts or external stimuli. Future directions and implications are also discussed

Permutation entropy and irreversibility in gait kinematic time series from patients with mild cognitive decline and early alzheimer’s dementia

Gait is a basic cognitive purposeful action that has been shown to be altered in late stages of neurodegenerative dementias. Nevertheless, alterations are less clear in mild forms of dementia, and the potential use of gait analysis as a biomarker of initial cognitive decline has hitherto mostly been neglected. Herein, we report the results of a study of gait kinematic time series for two groups of patients (mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer’s disease) and a group of matched control subjects. Two metrics based on permutation patterns are considered, respectively measuring the complexity and irreversibility of the time series. Results indicate that kinematic disorganisation is present in early phases of cognitive impairment; in addition, they depict a rich scenario, in which some joint movements display an increased complexity and irreversibility, while others a marked decrease. Beyond their potential use as biomarkers, complexity and irreversibility metrics can open a new door to the understanding of the role of the nervous system in gait, as well as its adaptation and compensatory mechanismsThis research was funded through the Premio del Ilustre Colegio Profesional de Fisioterapeutas de la Comunidad De Madrid, prize number ICPFM-IX-201

More Than Memories? Schema Transference from Media Characters to Real People

This study focused on whether personality traits and evaluations of television personalities are used to make inferences about new Social interaction partners. It tested the hypothesis that priming schemas of television personalities will bias inferences made about a stranger. The results were mixed. Participants in the experimental condition made more biased inferences about a stranger than did participants in the control condition. This transference was not influenced by participants\u27 parasociability, and methodological limitations prevented conclusive study of the influence of affective evaluations in this effect. Future studies should attempt to increase methodological control and introduce a diverse set of measures to test for possible mediating and moderating variables

The Impact of Probable Depression on Daily Performance in College Students: Morningness Versus Eveningness

In the present study responses on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (GDS- SF), and Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CESD) were compared in 1,617 college undergraduates. Also, the eveningness-morningness dimension, as measured by the Horne and Ostberg guestionnaire (H&O), was examined among the probably depressed student population. In addition, the impact of the probable depression on performance on various memory tests at different times of day was investigated. Finally, performance of the probably depressed students was compared with performance of the nondepressed students. In the first part of the study 1,617 undergraduates were surveyed and 136 completed the second part. A series of mixed analyses of variance revealed that scores on the 3 depression scales were significantly correlated (correlation for BDI and GDS-SF r=.763, for BDI and CESD r=.778, for GDS-SF and CESD r=.726). Further, there were significant, negative correlations between the Horne and Ostberg guestionnaire scores and the responses on the 3 depression scales (for BDI r=-.174, GDS-SF r=-.182, CESD r=.-176). Also, the probable depression was related to performance on various memory tests among college students. The analysis of the number of words correctly recalled on the California Verbal Learning Test revealed a significant main effect of group, F(1,130)=12.51, £\u3c.001. The overall mean for nondepressed was M=11.48, for probably depressed M=10.36. Also, the analysis of the performance on the WAIS-R Digit Symbol test revealed a main effect of group, F(1,129)=20.54, £\u3c.001. The overall mean for nondepressed was M=74.70, for probably depressed M=67.95. Discrepancies of the present results with other research findings in this area are discussed. In addition, conclusions and recommendations for future research are provided

The Domain-Generality and Durability of Efficient Learning

People differ in how quickly they learn information and how long they remember it, and a common finding in the literature is that a quicker rate of learning coincides with better retention for the learned material. Zerr and colleagues (2017) termed the relation between learning rate and retention as learning efficiency, with more efficient learning representing both a faster acquisition rate and better memory performance after a delay. Zerr et al. also demonstrated in separate experiments that how efficiently someone learns is stable across a range of days and years. The current thesis includes two experiments addressing additional questions regarding efficient learning. Experiment 1 (N = 119) examined whether efficient learning is generalizable across stimuli, including Lithuanian-English (verbal-verbal) and Chinese-English (visuospatial-verbal) paired associates. Experiment 2 (N = 190) assessed whether faster learners demonstrate better retention at a longer delay of 1 week, and also preliminarily examined whether faster and slower learners demonstrate differential rates of forgetting. These experiments demonstrated that learning efficiency is generalizable across stimuli and that faster learners maintain a retentive advantage at longer delays of 1 week

Aspects of the Assessment and Intervention with Memory and Executive Functions in People with Neurological Conditions

This thesis examined two contemporary conundrums relevant to the practice of neuropsychology. Through systematic review and meta-analysis, the first project examined the treatment effects of errorless learning (EL) a compensatory technique designed to facilitate learning for people with memory impairment resulting from neurological conditions. This review of EL in the field of memory rehabilitation is timely. To date, there is only one meta-analysis of the treatment effects of EL, completed nearly twenty years ago which did not control for potential biases. Subsequently there has been a natural progression in the use of EL from well-controlled laboratory-based tasks to its integration into memory rehabilitation programmes. In addition to examining the overall effect of EL in people with amnesic disorders, this review was also the first to report the treatments effects from studies of patients with progressive conditions separately from studies of non-progressive neurological conditions. Results indicate that EL is an effective technique to help people with memory disorders learn new information. This informs clinicians of the appropriateness of its use in practice. However, potential publication bias was identified, along with variation in methodology and quality of the studies reviewed and analysed. Until steps are taken to produce studies which are suffice in size, well controlled and the publication of non-significant results are encouraged, caution must be applied to avoid over-estimating the clinical benefits of EL to patients. The second element of this project aimed to investigate issues around long-reported concerns of a lack of correspondence between test performance on neuropsychological measures and everyday decision-making ability in patients with acquired brain injury (ABI). Reduced decision-making capacity is a common consequence of ABI. The results can have devastating consequences for an individual and the support systems around them. Accurate assessment of a person’s decision-making ability is crucial to inform support needs. This project examined this issue with a service evaluation in a specialist cognitive rehabilitation service. The evaluation explored the relationships between standardised tests of cognitive function and a custom clinician-rated measure of everyday decision-making. Results provide evidence towards the accuracy of the tests used in the service to assess the cognitive components of decision-making. The results also evidence how elements of the assessment battery employed by the service meet existing clinical standards. This evaluation suggests that at a group level, despite concerns in the literature around a lack of ecological validity, tests of executive function are more useful in the assessment of decision-making than those from broader cognitive domains. In addition, the results identify a specific measure of planning to be important in the assessment of decision-making. This work informs clinicians in the service on how to approach the cognitive assessment of decision-making and evidence some potential for modifications in their battery. These results could lead to increased accuracy of assessment, with increased potential for patient challenges in this domain to be identified. This review may also provide a framework for other services on how to approach evidencing their standard of cognitive assessment of decision-making, despite the lack of specific national guidelines

The role of context in human memory augmentation

Technology has always had a direct impact on what humans remember. In the era of smartphones and wearable devices, people easily capture on a daily basis information and videos, which can help them remember past experiences and attained knowledge, or simply evoke memories for reminiscing. The increasing use of such ubiquitous devices and technologies produces a sheer volume of pictures and videos that, in combination with additional contextual information, could potentially significantly improve one’s ability to recall a past experience and prior knowledge. Calendar entries, application use logs, social media posts, and activity logs comprise only a few examples of such potentially memory-supportive additional information. This work explores how such memory-supportive information can be collected, filtered, and eventually utilized, for generating memory cues, fragments of past experience or prior knowledge, purposed for triggering one’s memory recall. In this thesis, we showcase how we leverage modern ubiquitous technologies as a vessel for transferring established psychological methods from the lab into the real world, for significantly and measurably augmenting human memory recall in a diverse set of often challenging contexts. We combine experimental evidence garnered from numerous field and lab studies, with knowledge amassed from an extensive literature review, for substantially informing the design and development of future pervasive memory augmentation systems. Ultimately, this work contributes to the fundamental understanding of human memory and how today’s modern technologies can be actuated for augmenting it