Intact Semantic Priming of Critical Lures in Alzheimer's Disease: Implications for False Memory

OBJECTIVES: The present study examines the question of the activation of the critical lure (CL) in Alzheimer\u27s patients with a Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM)-like task. More precisely, older adults and Alzheimer\u27s patients performed a lexical decision task in which they were asked to categorize strings of letters as words or nonwords. Contrary to the DRM paradigm in which the activation of the CL is inferred from its production at recall, such a lexical decision task does not require the joint use of intentional recovery strategies and source-monitoring processes that are known to be particularly impaired in Alzheimer\u27s patients. The performance at the lexical decision therefore reflects the activation of the CL without contamination from such strategic processes. METHOD: Twenty-nine older adults and 25 Alzheimer\u27s patients performed a lexical decision task with DRM lists intermixed with neutral words and nonwords. RESULTS: Analysis indicated that older adults as well as Alzheimer\u27s patients showed shorter lexical decision latencies for CLs than for other types of words. DISCUSSION: Contrary to the existing literature, our results suggest that the activation of the CL is preserved in Alzheimer\u27s patients at mild to moderate stages of the disease

Valence, arousal, and imagery ratings for 835 French attributes by young, middle-aged, and older adults: The French Emotional Evaluation List (FEEL)

Introduction and objective Attributes are used by young, middle-aged, and older adults to describe persons in everyday life. The current study asks whether attributes are perceived similarly by different age groups: for example, some attributes could be perceived as more positive or more negative in old age than in young adulthood. Method To address this question, we investigated age-related differences in emotional evaluations of French adjectives. Young, middle-aged, and older adults judged 835 French adjectives on valence, arousal, and imagery. Results Age groups agreed highly on the relative rank order but showed mean differences for a substantial number of attributes, especially for arousal and imagery ratings. Associations between dimensions differed as well between age groups: valence and arousal were negatively correlated and this correlation was stronger in older than in younger age groups. Conclusion The present study provided new evidence that the perception of emotionally toned material is affected by age. Several explanations to these age-related differences are discussed

Age-relevance of person characteristics: Persons' beliefs about developmental change across the lifespan

The authors investigated normative beliefs about personality development. Young, middle-aged, and older adults indicated the age-relevance of 835 French adjectives by specifying person characteristics as typical for any age decade from 0 to 99 years. With this paradigm, the authors determined age-relevance (How typical is a characteristic for a given age decade?). Most characteristics were ascribed to young adulthood. The pattern differed across the lifespan, however, for positive and negative person characteristics as well as for physical, cognitive, and personal/expressive characteristics. Whereas the total number of ascribed positive characteristics peaked in young adulthood and declined thereafter, the number of ascribed negative person characteristics peaked during adolescence, remained fairly low during middle adulthood, and increased slightly in old age (70+ years). As a consequence, the most positive profile was ascribed to young olds (60 to 69 years), whereas the most negative personality profiles were ascribed to the oldest age groups (70+ years) and to adolescence (10 to 19 years). The negative profiles are primarily due to more negative physical characteristics ascribed to older adults and more negative cognitive characteristics ascribed to adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved). (journal abstract

Empathy for Pain from Adolescence through Adulthood: An Event-Related Brain Potential Study

Affective and cognitive empathy are traditionally differentiated, the affective component being concerned with resonating with another\u27s emotional state, whereas the cognitive component reflects regulation of the resulting distress and understanding of another\u27s mental states (see Decety and Jackson, 2004 for a review). Adolescence is a critical period for the development of cognitive control processes necessary to regulate affective processes: it is only in young adulthood that these control processes achieve maturity (Steinberg, 2005). Thus, one should expect adolescents to show greater automatic empathy than young adults. The present study aimed at exploring the neural correlates of affective (automatic) and cognitive empathy for pain from adolescence to young adulthood. With this aim, Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 32 participants (aged 11-39) in a task designed to dissociate these components. ERPs results showed an early automatic fronto-central response to pain (that was not modulated by task demand) and a late parietal response to painful stimuli modulated by attention to pain cues. Adolescents exhibited earlier automatic responses to painful situations than young adults did and showed greater activity in the late cognitive component even when viewing neutral stimuli. Results are discussed in the context of the development of regulatory abilities during adolescence.

Valence, arousal and word associations

This study aimed at testing the relative effects of valence and arousal on the generation of unusual first associates in response to non-emotional inducers. To examine this question, four specific moods varying along both the valence and the arousal dimensions were induced: happiness (positive mood, high arousal), serenity (positive mood, low arousal), anger (negative mood, high arousal) and sadness (negative mood, low arousal). The results indicate that the uniqueness of word-associations is influenced by arousal levels rather than by the valence of mood. No matter what the valence, high-arousing moods enhanced the production of unusual associates in contrast to low-arousing moods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]Copyright of Cognition & Emotion is the property of Psychology Press (UK) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder\u27s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.

Assessing dispositional empathy in adults: A French validation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI).

The goal of this study was to validate a French version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a self-report questionnaire comprised of four subscales assessing affective (empathic concern and personal distress) and cognitive (fantasy and perspective taking) components of empathy. To accomplish this, 322 adults (18 to 89 years) completed the French version of the IRI (F-IRI). A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the four-factor structure of the original IRI. The F-IRI showed good scale score reliability, test-retest reliability, and convergent validity, tested with the French version of the Empathy Quotient. These findings confirmed the reliability and validity of the F-IRI and suggest that the F-IRI is a useful instrument to measure self-reported empathy. In addition, we observed sex and age differences consistent with findings in the literature. Women reported higher scores in empathic concern and fantasy than men. Older adults reported less personal distress and less fantasy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Droplets sliding on fibres

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe