Evaluating autobiographical skills and their relationship with suggestibility in children: development and validation of the Children Recalling Autobiographical Memory

IntroductionAutobiographical narrative skills and resistance to suggestibility factors are central aspects in children’s testimony. While the assessment of suggestibility relies on standardized questionnaire, no such an instrument exists to reliably assess autobiographical skills in children. This aspect is further important when considering that the development of such skills seems to be related to the suggestibility, that is, suggestibility would be reduced in presence of higher autobiographical skills. However, no direct test of this relationship is available in literature, also due to the lack of quantitative instruments for assessing autobiographical skills.MethodsTo fulfill both these methodological and theoretical issues, in this study a new tool was validated to measure the main autobiographical narrative skills (Where, What, When, Who, and How) in relation to both Retrospective Memory and Prospective Memory: the Children Recalling Autobiographical Memory (CRAM). We recruited a sample of 321 children aged 7–16 years.Results and discussionThe result of the EFA analysis showed one-factor model, and revealed also good fit indexes and internal reliability. After validating this new tool, we further used it to test our main hypothesis, that is, children with higher autobiographical memory skills were less vulnerable to interrogative suggestibility as assessed by Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 2 (GSS2). A hierarchical linear regression model showed a reduction in suggestibility with age and level of autobiographical skills. Moreover, the level of such skills moderate the effect of age, such as only in presence of high or moderate level of autobiographical skills the age significantly reduces the level of suggestibility

Attentional processes during P3-based Brain Computer Interface task in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients

To be available for a wide range of end-users a brain-computer interface (BCI) should be flexible and adaptable to end-users’ cognitive strengths and weaknesses. People’s cognitive abilities change according to the disease they are affected by, and people suffering from the same disease could have different cognitive capacities. We aimed at investigating how the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease, and two different cognitive attentional aspects [1] influenced the usage of a P3-based BC

Mistrust and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories Differently Mediate the Effects of Psychological Factors on Propensity for COVID-19 Vaccine

Vaccination is considered a key factor in the sanitary resolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, vaccine hesitancy can undermine its diffusion with severe consequences on global health. While beliefs in conspiracy theories, mistrust in science and in policymakers, and mistrust in official information channels may also increment vaccine hesitancy, understanding their psychological causes could improve our capacity to respond to the pandemic. Thus, we designed a cross-sectional study with the aim of probing vaccine propensity in the Italian population and explored its relationship with sociodemographic and psychological variables, and with misbeliefs in COVID-19. A battery of questionnaires was administered to a sample of 374 Italian adults during the first national lockdown (April 2020). The materials included an original instrument—Beliefs in COVID-19 Inventory—and questionnaires measuring perceived stress, anxiety, death anxiety, psychological distress, psychoticism, paranoia, anger, and somatization. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on Beliefs in COVID-19 suggested the existence of three factors: belief in conspiracy theories, mistrust in medical information, and mistrust in medicine and science. These factors were positively correlated with female sex, age, religious beliefs, psychiatric conditions, and psychological variables, while negatively correlated with education levels. We conducted a mediation analysis by means of a structural equation model, including psychological factors as predictors, beliefs in COVID-19 scales as mediators, and vaccine propensity as an outcome. The model showed that death anxiety had a direct positive effect on the propensity to get vaccinated. It also showed that death anxiety reduced the propensity to get vaccinated through a mediated path in believing in conspiracy theories, whereas paranoia was linked to a reduction in vaccination adherence with the mediation effect of mistrust in medical science. Psychological distress reduced vaccination propensity by increasing both conspiracy beliefs and mistrust. On the other hand, anxiety increased the propensity to get vaccinated through a decrease in both belief in conspiracy theories and mistrust in science. Our results suggest that psychological dimensions are differentially related to belief in conspiracy theories, to mistrust in science, and to the propensity to get vaccinated. Based on this result, we propose an original interpretation of how conspiracy beliefs build on a paranoid and suspicious attitude. We also discuss the possible clinical implications of treatment for such pathological beliefs

Illusions of integration are subjectively impenetrable:Phenomenological experience of Lag 1 percepts during dual-target RSVP

We investigated the relationship between different kinds of target reports in a rapid serial visual presentation task, and their associated perceptual experience. Participants reported the identity of two targets embedded in a stream of stimuli and their associated subjective visibility. In our task, target stimuli could be combined together to form more complex ones, thus allowing participants to report temporally integrated percepts. We found that integrated percepts were associated with high subjective visibility scores, whereas reports in which the order of targets was reversed led to a poorer perceptual experience. We also found a reciprocal relationship between the chance of the second target not being reported correctly and the perceptual experience associated with the first one. Principally, our results indicate that integrated percepts are experienced as a unique, clear per-ceptual event, whereas order reversals are experienced as confused, similar to cases in which an entirely wrong response was given

Emotional faces, visuo-spatial working memory and anxiety

Recent research has demonstrated competition for limited cognitive resources, via emotional prioritization, occurs not only during attentional capture, but also extends to visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM). However, to what extent VSWM biases are influenced by individual differences such as anxiety has received limited attention. Here, we investigated this using a novel change detection paradigm with memory arrays containing 3, 4 or 5 emotional faces (angry, happy and neutral) and participants (n=41), preselected to be high or low trait anxious. The task of participants was to detect if a probe face, presented in the location of one of the original memory array faces, was the ‘same’ or ‘different’. On ‘no change’ trials results revealed that high anxious participants demonstrated poorer performance for larger set sizes than low anxious participants per se. Additionally, high anxious participants demonstrated a threat bias, whereas low anxious participants trended toward emotion superiority. On ‘change’ trials, change detection altered as a function of expression change; change detection was typically greatest when either the memory or probe face was angry. Results reveal VSWM capacity is modulated by trait anxiety and stimulus threat value, as well as highlight the importance of actively investigating (or controlling for) individual differences.N/

number of mediastinal lymph nodes as a prognostic factor in pn2 non small cell lung cancer a single centre experience and review of the literature

Lung cancer is one of the most common cause of cancer-related death for men and women in the world. The prevalent histology is non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC), including squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma and large cell carcinoma (Moretti et al., 2009), with a 5year survival rate of 67% (stage IA) to <5% (stage IV) (End, 2006). Currently the most important predictor of survival in lung cancer is the stage (TNM) (Kligerman and Abbot, 2010; Goldstraw, 2009). Despite the new staging system (Kligerman and Abbot, 2010), stage III NSCLC remains a very heterogeneous disease , with a 5-year survival rate ranging from 35% to 5%. There are two major treatment targets for of patients with stage III : locoregional control and control of micrometastases, preventing distant metastatic disease (Penland et al., 2004; Bradley et al., 2005). The standard of care is represented by multimodality treatment, comprehending surgery for resectable disease, perioperative chemotherapy and radiation therapy (RT) for patients with pathological (p) N2 disease (Okamoto, 2008). In current TNM classification system, N category is defined exclusively by anatomic nodal location, though number of lymph nodes confirmed to be a fundamental prognostic factor as in other type of tumours. In our study, we assessed, in patients with stage III N2 category NSCLC disease, the prognostic value of the number of lymph nodes after multimodality treatment

Emotion based attentional priority for storage in visual short-term memory

A plethora of research demonstrates that the processing of emotional faces is prioritised over non-emotive stimuli when cognitive resources are limited (this is known as ‘emotional superiority’). However, there is debate as to whether competition for processing resources results in emotional superiority per se, or more specifically, threat superiority. Therefore, to investigate prioritisation of emotional stimuli for storage in visual short-term memory (VSTM), we devised an original VSTM report procedure using schematic (angry, happy, neutral) faces in which processing competition was manipulated. In Experiment 1, display exposure time was manipulated to create competition between stimuli. Participants (n = 20) had to recall a probed stimulus from a set size of four under high (150 ms array exposure duration) and low (400 ms array exposure duration) perceptual processing competition. For the high competition condition (i.e. 150 ms exposure), results revealed an emotional superiority effect per se. In Experiment 2 (n = 20), we increased competition by manipulating set size (three versus five stimuli), whilst maintaining a constrained array exposure duration of 150 ms. Here, for the five-stimulus set size (i.e. maximal competition) only threat superiority emerged. These findings demonstrate attentional prioritisation for storage in VSTM for emotional faces. We argue that task demands modulated the availability of processing resources and consequently the relative magnitude of the emotional/threat superiority effect, with only threatening stimuli prioritised for storage in VSTM under more demanding processing conditions. Our results are discussed in light of models and theories of visual selection, and not only combine the two strands of research (i.e. visual selection and emotion), but highlight a critical factor in the processing of emotional stimuli is availability of processing resources, which is further constrained by task demands