Combined visual and motor disorganization in patients with schizophrenia

Cognitive impairments are difficult to relate to clinical symptoms in schizophrenia, partly due to insufficient knowledge on how cognitive impairments interact with one another. Here, we devised a new sequential pointing task requiring both visual organization and motor sequencing. Six circles were presented simultaneously on a touch screen around a fixation point. Participants pointed with the finger each circle one after the other, in synchrony with auditory tones. We used an alternating rhythmic 300/600 ms pattern so that participants performed pairs of taps separated by short intervals of 300 ms. Visual organization was manipulated by using line-segments that grouped the circles two by two, yielding three pairs of connected circles, and three pairs of unconnected circles that belonged to different pairs. This led to three experimental conditions. In the “congruent condition,” the pairs of taps had to be executed on circles grouped by connecters. In the “non congruent condition,” they were to be executed on the unconnected circles that belonged to different pairs. In a neutral condition, there were no connecters. Twenty two patients with schizophrenia with mild symptoms and 22 control participants performed a series of 30 taps in each condition. Tap pairs were counted as errors when the produced rhythm was inverted (expected rhythm 600/300 = 2; inversed rhythm <1). Error rates in patients with a high level of clinical disorganization were significantly higher in the non-congruent condition than in the two other conditions, contrary to controls and the remaining patients. The tap-tone asynchrony increased in the presence of connecters in both patient groups, but not in the controls. Patients appeared not to integrate the visual organization during the planning phase of action, leading to a large difficulty during motor execution, especially in those patients revealing difficulties in visual organization. Visual motor tapping tasks may help detect those subgroups of patients

Episodic memory encoding and retrieval in face-name paired paradigm: An FNIRS study

Background: Episodic memory (EM) is particularly sensitive to pathological conditions and aging. In a neurocognitive context, the paired-associate learning (PAL) paradigm, which requires participants to learn and recall associations between stimuli, has been used to measure EM. The present study aimed to explore whether functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) can be employed to determine cortical activity underlying encoding and retrieval. Moreover, we examined whether and how different aspects of task (i.e., novelty, difficulty) affects those cortical activities. Methods: Twenty-two male college students (age: M = 20.55, SD = 1.62) underwent a face-name PAL paradigm under 40-channel fNIRS covering fronto-parietal and middle occipital regions. Results: A decreased activity during encoding in a broad network encompassing the bilateral frontal cortex (Brodmann areas 9, 11, 45, and 46) was observed during the encoding, while an increased activity in the left orbitofrontal cortex (Brodmann area 11) was observed during the retrieval. Increased HbO concentration in the superior parietal cortices and decreased HbO concentration in the inferior parietal cortices were observed during encoding while dominant activation of left PFC was found during retrieval only. Higher task difficulty was associated with greater neural activity in the bilateral prefrontal cortex and higher task novelty was associated with greater activation in occipital regions. Conclusion: Combining the PAL paradigm with fNIRS provided the means to differentiate neural activity characterising encoding and retrieval. Therefore, the fNIRS may have the potential to complete EM assessments in clinical settings

Motor Agency: A New and Highly Sensitive Measure to Reveal Agency Disturbances in Early Psychosis

Background: Early diagnosis of young adults at risk of schizophrenia is essential for preventive approaches of the illness. Nevertheless, classic screening instruments are difficult to use because of the non-specific nature of the signs at this preonset phase of illness. The objective of the present contribution was to propose an innovating test that can probe the more specific symptom of psychosis, i.e., the sense of agency, which is defined as being the immediate experience of oneself as the cause of an action. More specifically, we tested whether motor agency is abnormal in early psychosis. Methods: Thirty-two young symptomatic patients and their age-matched controls participated in the study. 15 of these patients were at ultra high-risk for developing psychosis (UHR), and 17 patients were suffering from first-episode psychosis (FEP). Patients ’ neurocognitive capacities were assessed through the use of seven neuropsychological tests. A motor agency task was also introduced to obtain an objective indicator of the degree of sense of agency, by contrasting force levels applied during other and self-produced collisions between a hand-held objet and a pendulum. Results: As reported in the literature for adult controls, healthy adolescents used more efficient force levels in self than in other-imposed collisions. For both UHR and FEP patients, abnormally high levels of grip force were used for self-produced collisions, leading to an absence of difference between self and other. The normalized results revealed that motor agency differentiated patients from controls with a higher level of sensitivity than the more classic neuropsychological test battery

Temporal Information Processing in Short- and Long-Term Memory of Patients with Schizophrenia

Cognitive deficits of patients with schizophrenia have been largely recognized as core symptoms of the disorder. One neglected factor that contributes to these deficits is the comprehension of time. In the present study, we assessed temporal information processing and manipulation from short- and long-term memory in 34 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 34 matched healthy controls. On the short-term memory temporal-order reconstruction task, an incidental or intentional learning strategy was deployed. Patients showed worse overall performance than healthy controls. The intentional learning strategy led to dissociable performance improvement in both groups. Whereas healthy controls improved on a performance measure (serial organization), patients improved on an error measure (inappropriate semantic clustering) when using the intentional instead of the incidental learning strategy. On the long-term memory script-generation task, routine and non-routine events of everyday activities (e.g., buying groceries) had to be generated in either chronological or inverted temporal order. Patients were slower than controls at generating events in the chronological routine condition only. They also committed more sequencing and boundary errors in the inverted conditions. The number of irrelevant events was higher in patients in the chronological, non-routine condition. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia imprecisely access temporal information from short- and long-term memory. In short-term memory, processing of temporal information led to a reduction in errors rather than, as was the case in healthy controls, to an improvement in temporal-order recall. When accessing temporal information from long-term memory, patients were slower and committed more sequencing, boundary, and intrusion errors. Together, these results suggest that time information can be accessed and processed only imprecisely by patients who provide evidence for impaired time comprehension. This could contribute to symptomatic cognitive deficits and strategic inefficiency in schizophrenia

Déterminer le profil motivationnel des lycéens : Une clé pour améliorer l'engagement dans la pratique physique ?

Environ 82% des garçons et 89% des filles n'atteignent pas l’objectif fixé par l’OMS d’une heure d’activité physique (AP) par jour en France (Kalman et al., 2015). Les recherches en psychologie ont permis de dégager différents points clés expliquant cette absence d'engagement dans l'AP. Le niveau de motivation pour l'activité et le plaisir de pratiquer sont largement représentatifs. De plus, les études sociologiques suggèrent que le type de pratique physique proposée soit un paramètre d'importance puisque l'usage du corps est socialement orienté. L’étude présentée a cherché d’une part à dégager différents profils d’élèves face à l’activité physique, et d’autre part à déterminer dans quelle mesure le profil motivationnel et la modalité de pratique impactent le niveau d'engagement en éducation physique et sportive (EPS). Nous avons interrogé 500 lycéens à l’aide de différents questionnaires psychométriques, afin de mesurer leurs motivations (SIMS), leur plaisir motivationnel (PALMS), leur niveau socio-économique (Echelle d’Affluence Familiale), leur niveau d’activité physique (IPAQ) et leur niveau de persistance dans l’activité physique. A l’aide de tablettes numériques, nous avons également fait passer un questionnaire (MOTUS), mesurant les significations qu’accordent les lycéens à leurs motifs d’engagements. Le principe consistait à laisser apparaître 64 mots les uns après les autres sur la tablette. Les élèves devaient cliquer sur « oui » si le mot leur faisant sens, ou « non » s’il ne leur correspondait pas. Le temps de réponse était mesuré, permettant ainsi de connaître les émotions ressentis à l’apparition de chaque mot (certitude ou incertitude). Ainsi, seuls les 5 les plus rapidement répondus étaient pris en compte, positivement s’il s’agissait d’un « oui », négativement sinon. Les résultats indiquent l’existence de 4 profils d’élèves : les "ennuyés", peu motivés et inactifs les "obligés", peu motivés mais actifs, les "intéressés", peu actifs mais motivés et les "enthousiastes", à la fois actifs et motivés. Chaque profil est caractérisé par un ensemble de mots clés : transpiration-intensité-ennui-culpabilité-rythme (ennuyés), beauté-santé-confort-sécurité-facile (obligés), bien être-fluidité-progrès-calme-ensemble (intéressés), force-muscle-santé-puissance-rapide (enthousiaste). Ces mots clés pourraient permettre à l’enseignant d’EPS de concevoir une intervention qui génère davantage de plaisir chez les élèves et les engage davantage dans une pratique régulière au quotidien

Using artificial ground color to promote a restorative sidewalk experience: an experimental study based on manipulated street view images

Color is frequently used in urban outdoor spaces, but little research has studied its psychological effects. This study explores the influence of sidewalk floor color on the restorative walking experience in a busy, inner city street lacking natural greenery. We used an achromatic street view image with no vegetation or trees as control. Red, green, and blue were used as “artificial” intervention colors in the sidewalk ground plane to generate 3 visual stimuli. Participants (n=66) rated the perceived restorativeness of the scene and their subjective mood on viewing each image via an online survey. The results indicate “artificial” green ground color, e.g. provided by paint or colored material, promoted a more restorative walking experience enhancing hedonic tone and arousal and increased relaxation more than red ground color. All three color-interventions improved perceived restorativeness and arousal. This study advances the understanding of the psychological impact of color in urban design

Imbalanced weighting of proactive and reactive control as a marker of risk-taking propensity.

According to the dual mechanisms of control (DMC), reactive and proactive control are involved in adjusting behaviors when maladapted to the environment. However, both contextual and inter-individual factors increase the weight of one control mechanism over the other, by influencing their cognitive costs. According to one of the DMC postulates, limited reactive control capacities should be counterbalanced by greater proactive control to ensure control efficiency. Moreover, as the flexible weighting between reactive and proactive control is key for adaptive behaviors, we expected that maladaptive behaviors, such as risk-taking, would be characterized by an absence of such counterbalance. However, to our knowledge, no studies have yet investigated this postulate. In the current study, we analyzed the performances of 176 participants on two reaction time tasks (Simon and Stop Signal tasks) and a risk-taking assessment (Balloon Analog Risk Taking, BART). The post-error slowing in the Simon task was used to reflect the spontaneous individuals' tendency to proactively adjust behaviors after an error. The Stop Signal Reaction Time was used to assess reactive inhibition capacities and the duration of the button press in the BART was used as an index of risk-taking propensity. Results showed that poorer reactive inhibition capacities predicted greater proactive adjustments after an error. Furthermore, the higher the risk-taking propensity, the less reactive inhibition capacities predicted proactive behavioral adjustments. The reported results suggest that higher risk-taking is associated with a smaller weighting of proactive control in response to limited reactive inhibition capacities. These findings highlight the importance of considering the imbalanced weighting of reactive and proactive control in the analysis of risk-taking, and in a broader sense, maladaptive behaviors

Data_Sheet_1_Investigating risk-taking and executive functioning as predictors of driving performances and habits: a large-scale population study with on-road evaluation.docx

IntroductionMaladaptive behavior often results from poor decision-making and by extension poor control over decisions. Since maladaptive behavior in driving, such as excessive speed, can lead to dramatic consequences, identifying its causes is of particular concern. The present study investigated how risk-taking and executive functioning are related to driving performance and habits among the general population.MethodFive hundred and eighty-nine participants completed an on-road driving session with a professional driving instructor and a self-reported checklist of difficult driving situations typically avoided. Additionally, participants completed a set of experimental tasks assessing risk-taking tendencies, reactive adaptive mechanisms, and two distinct forms of inhibition: interference control and response inhibition.ResultsThe results of the present study revealed several significant findings. Firstly, poor driving performance was associated with a high avoidance of challenging driving situations. Secondly, neither form of inhibition studied (interference control or response inhibition) predicted driving performance. Thirdly, while greater involvement in reactive adaptive mechanisms did not predict better on-road performance, it was associated with a reduced tendency to avoid difficult situations. Surprisingly, a higher propensity for risk-taking predicted better on-road performance.DiscussionOverall, these results underline limited links between executive functioning and driving performance while highlighting a potentially more complex relationship between risk-taking tendencies and driving. Executive functioning, however, appears to be linked to driving habits.</p