1,720,967 research outputs found
Shaping Preferences Through Memory: Aged-Related Mechanisms in Dissonance Reduction
Full text linkPreference change is a robust phenomenon observed in internally guided decision-making situations.
Choice-induced preference change, in particular, occurs when individuals revise their preferences to align
with their choices, reducing cognitive dissonance—a psychological state of discomfort arising from
conflicting cognitions. Episodic memory has been suggested to play a role in this process, by helping recall
choice-relevant information that reinforces post-choice preferences. However, age-related declines in
memory may weaken this mechanism, leading to diminished preference adjustments in older adults.
This study explored the relationship between episodic memory and choice-induced preference change in
young and older adults. A sample of 33 healthy subjects aged 20-75 years underwent an adapted free-choice
paradigm that included a recognition memory test for the choice made. Our results showed that younger
participants exhibited significant preference changes in both overall and remembered choices, whereas
older participants showed no such adjustments.
These findings suggest that episodic memory supports choice-induced preference change in younger adults.
In contrast, other mechanisms susceptible to aging may underlie dissonance reduction in older adults such
as executive functions and/or emotional-affective factors
Recurrent missense variant in the nuclear export signal of FMR1 associated with FXS-like phenotype including intellectual disability, ASD, facial abnormalities
No full textFragile X syndrome (FXS; MIM 300624) is an X-linked genetic disorder characterized by physical abnormalities associated with intellectual disability and a wide spectrum of neurological and psychiatric impairments. FXS occurs more frequently in males, 1 in 5000 males and 1 in 8000 females accounting for 1-2% of overall intellectual disability (ID). In more than 99% of patients, FXS results from expansions of a CGG triplet repeat (>200 in male) of the FMR1 gene. In the last years an increasing number, albeit still limited, of FXS subjects carrying FMR1 mutations including deletions, splicing errors, missense, and nonsense variants was reported. Nevertheless, the studies concerning the functional consequences of mutations in the FMR1 gene are rare so far and, therefore, we do not have sufficient knowledge regarding the genotype/phenotype correlation. We report a child carrying a hemizygous missense FMR1 (NM_002024.5:c.1325G > A p.Arg442Gln) variant, maternally inherited, associated with facial abnormalities, developmental delay, and social and communication deficits assessed with formal neuropsychological tests. The study contributes to highlighting the clinical differences between the CGG triplet repeat dependent phenotype and FMR1variant dependent phenotype and it also confirms the pathogenicity of the variant being reported for the second time in the literature
Boosting Phonological Fluency Following Leftward Prismatic Adaptation: A New Neuromodulation Protocol for Neurological Deficits?
Full text linkPrism adaptation (PA) has been recently shown to modulate a brain frontal-parieto-temporal network,
with an increase of excitation of this network in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the side of prismatic
deviation. This effect raises the hypothesis that left prismatic adaptation, modulating the excitability of
frontal areas of the left hemisphere could modulate subjects’ performance on linguistic tasks that map
on those areas.
To test this hypothesis, sixty-one healthy subjects participated in experiments in which leftward, rightward
or no-PA were applied before the execution of a phonological fluency task, i.e. a task with the strict left
hemispheric lateralization and mapping onto frontal areas.
Leftward-PA significantly increased the number of words produced compared with the pre-PA (p = .0017),
R-PA (p=.00013) and no-PA (p=.0005) sessions. In contrast, rightward-PA did not significantly modulate
phonological fluency compared with the pre-PA (p = .92) and no-PA (p = .99) sessions.
The effect of leftward PA on phonological fluency correlated with the magnitude of spatial aftereffect, i.e.
the spatial bias towards the side of space opposite to prismatic deviation following prisms removal (r =
.51; p = .04).
The present findings document for the first time modulation of a language ability following prismatic
adaptation. The results could have a huge clinical impact on neurological populations, opening new
strategies of intervention for language and executive dysfunctions
The role of posterior parietal cortices on prismatic adaptation effects on the representation of time intervals
No full textPrevious studies provided evidence of an ascending left-to-right spatial representation of time durations by using a technique affecting high levels of spatial cognition, i.e. prismatic adaptation (PA). Indeed, PA that induced a leftward aftereffect distorted time representation toward an underestimation, while PA that induced a rightward aftereffect distorted time representation toward an overestimation. The present study advances previous findings on the effects of PA on time by investigating the neural basis subtending these effects. We focused on the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) since it is involved in the PA procedure and also in the formulation of the spatial representation of time. We conducted two experiments where right-handed healthy adults were submitted to a time task, before and after PA, that could induce a leftward or rightward aftereffect. Repetitive TMS (rTMS) was used to inhibit the left or right PPC before PA administration. In a first experiment the time task consisted of reproducing an half duration (time bisection task) by pressing a key and the participants responded and adapted to prisms with their right hand. In a second experiment the time task consisted of reproducing a whole duration (time reproduction task) by pressing a key and the participants responded and adapted to prisms with their left hand. We found an abolition of the effects of PA on time when rTMS was delivered on the left and not on the right PPC, regardless of the task and moreover, when the participants responded and adapted with the right hand and also with the left hand. This result suggests a direct involvement of the left PPC in the interactive process, between spatial modulations induced by PA and the spatial representation of time, that does not depend on motor processes. This study provides useful results for future investigations on the neural mechanisms subtending the effects of PA on spatial representations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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