Hasil untuk "Consciousness. Cognition"

Daniele Gatti, Davide Crepaldi, Serena Lecce et al.

Word recognition is a complex cognitive process that has been often investigated via lexical decision task (LDT). LDT can indeed provide insight into how individuals access and process linguistic information, and how (and if) specific word- and/or individual-level characteristics affect participants’ behavior. Here, we aimed to provide a systematic investigation of the interaction between individual-level reading skills and word-level factors (e.g., frequency, length). Participants were asked to perform a LDT and complete neuropsychological tests assessing their reading-related skills. By using completely data-driven approaches, participants’ performance in the LDT was predicted by word- and individual-level predictors, and the best-fitting model was selected. The best-fitting model dropped all the interactions among deeper-level predictors (e.g., density of the semantic neighborhood) and reading-related skills. The interactions involving word length or word frequency indicated that more expert readers are less sensitive to this kind of factors. These results underscore the importance of considering both lexical properties and individual reading proficiency when investigating the cognitive mechanisms underlying word recognition.

Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, Kate Marrison

Within Holocaust studies, there has been an increasingly uncritical acceptance that by engaging with social media, Holocaust memory has shifted from the ‘era of the witness’ to the ‘era of the user’ (Hogervorst 2020). This paper starts by problematising this proposition. This claim to a paradigmatic shift implies that (1) the user somehow replaces the witness as an authority of memory, which neglects the wealth of digital recordings of witnesses now circulating in digital spaces and (2) agency online is solely human-centric, a position that ignores the complex negotiations between corporations, individuals, and computational logics that shape our digital experiences. This article proposes instead that we take a posthumanist approach to understanding Holocaust memory on, and with, social media. Adapting Barad's (2007) work on entanglement to memory studies, we analyse two case studies on TikTok: the #WeRemember campaign and the docuseries How To: Never Forget to demonstrate: (1) the usefulness of reading Holocaust memory on social media through the lens of entanglement which offers a methodology that accounts for the complex network of human and non-human actants involved in the production of this phenomenon which are simultaneously being shaped by it. (2) That professional memory institutions and organisations are increasingly acknowledging the use of social media for the sake of Holocaust memory. Nevertheless, we observe that in practice the significance of technical actancy is still undervalued in this context.

Damian Koevoet, Marnix Naber, Christoph Strauch et al.

Not only is visual attention shifted to objects in the external world, attention can also be directed to objects in memory. We have recently shown that pupil size indexes how strongly items are attended externally, which was reflected in more precise encoding into visual working memory. Using a retro-cuing paradigm, we here replicated this finding by showing that stronger pupil constrictions during encoding were reflective of the depth of encoding. Importantly, we extend this previous work by showing that pupil size also revealed the intensity of internal attention toward content stored in visual working memory. Specifically, pupil dilation during the prioritization of one among multiple internally stored representations predicted the precision of the prioritized item. Furthermore, the dynamics of the pupillary responses revealed that the intensity of internal and external attention independently determined the precision of internalized visual representations. Our results show that both internal and external attention are not all-or-none processes, but should rather be thought of as continuous resources that can be deployed at varying intensities. The employed pupillometric approach allows to unravel the intricate interplay between internal and external attention and their effects on visual working memory.

Mandeep K. Dhami, Ian K. Belton, Peter De Werd et al.

Abstract We empirically examined the effectiveness of how the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) technique structures task information to help reduce confirmation bias (Study 1) and the portrayal of intelligence analysts as suffering from such bias (Study 2). Study 1 (N = 161) showed that individuals presented with hypotheses in rows and evidence items in columns were significantly less likely to demonstrate confirmation bias, whereas those presented with the ACH-style matrix (with hypotheses in columns and evidence items in rows) or a paragraph of text (listing the evidence for each hypothesis) were not less likely to demonstrate bias. The ACH-style matrix also did not confer any benefits regarding increasing sensitivity to evidence credibility. Study 2 showed that the majority of 62 Dutch military analysts did not suffer from confirmation bias and were sensitive to evidence credibility. Finally, neither judgmental coherence nor cognitive reflection differentiated between better or worse performers in the hypotheses evaluation tasks.

Lindsay A. Santacroce, Benjamin J. Tamber-Rosenau

Abstract Crises such as natural disasters or pandemics negatively impact the mental health of the affected community, increasing rates of depression, anxiety, or stress. It has been proposed that this stems in part from crisis-related stimuli triggering negative reactions that interrupt daily life. Given the frequency and prominence of crisis events, it is crucial to understand when crisis-related stimuli involuntarily capture attention and trigger increased stress and distraction from obligations. The emotional attentional blink (EAB) paradigm—in which emotional distractors hinder report of subsequent targets in streams of rapidly displayed stimuli—allows examination of such attentional capture in a rapidly changing dynamic environment. EABs are typically observed with generally disturbing stimuli, but stimuli related to personal traumas yield similar or greater effects, indicating strong attentional capture by stimuli related to individual trauma history. The current study investigated whether a similar comparable or increased crisis-related EAB exists within a community affected by large-scale crisis. Specifically, effects of conventional emotional distractors and distractors related to recent crises were compared using EABs in university students without a mental health diagnosis. Experiment 1 used images related to Hurricane Harvey, evaluating a crisis 4 years prior to data collection. Experiment 2 used words related to the COVID pandemic, evaluating an ongoing crisis at the time of data collection. In both experiments, the conventional EAB distractors yielded strong EABs, while the crisis-related distractors yielded absent or weak EABs in the same participants. This suggests that crisis-related stimuli do not have special potency for capturing attention in the general university student population. More generally, crises affecting communities do not necessarily yield widespread, strong reactivity to crisis-related stimuli.

Julio César Arboleda

There is scientific evidence that compassion can be trained through meditation. The brain is a malleable organ. And if we go to a gym to train our body, why wouldn’t we also train our spirit? Bregman, Rutger.   We are all within the pluriverse, understood as a world of worlds, a series of ever-changing interweavings of humans and non-humans, which result from the incessant movement of Earth’s vital forces and processes. (…) No living being exists independently on earth. (…) The point is that one of these worlds has claimed the right to be “the world” and attempts to eliminate or reduce to its own terms the richness of the different worlds that make up socio-natural life. Arturo Escobar   Sentipensar, a popular, ancestral expression, reveals our deep connection with nature, a way of appreciating and embracing existence and life as a complex intermingled of humans and non-humans; a life aesthetic whereby humans grow as we think with both mind and heart, feeling-thinking existence, the earth, life, what unites us and makes us part of this. The sentipensante (feeling-thinking) consciousness represents an urgent task for social institutions, therein education, especially if it promotes such potential to mature as a constructive comprehending consciousness by which understandings are used with a sense of life, connect us with our being, and allow “the profound inclination of man towards good” to emerge within us[1]. Sentipensar is a necessary step towards constructive understanding, as empathy is to compassion: this latter feeling not only connects us with the other (human) or the other (non-human), but also moves us to welcome, to attend to, and care for it.   Strengthening the union of thought and feeling as interconnected and interdependent functions is a constructive process, substantive for enhancing life, a trigger for presence, that is, for an active consciousness of life, making it possible to feel oneself and know oneself inhabiting the here and now. The more the value and individual and relational development of those are ignored, the formation of multiple thoughts (logical, creative, innovative, design, comprehensive, among others), as well as the promotion of feelings, values and attitudes that enhance existence , education decenters itself from life, from its being, from its primary functions, from its sacred meaning. The function of educating is assumed by promoting the development of full consciousness, cognitive, comprehensive, meditative, contemplative, bodily, and other, and of processes that articulate rational and non-rational, cognitive and affective equipment. Hence the importance of the development and connection between thought and feeling, of experiencing the event of feeling-thinking and thinking-feeling. For there are situations in life where thinking alone is not enough, and where we cannot give ourselves over to the impulse of feelings and emotions; events in which sentipensar must operate. Likewise, there are others in which it is more enriching to just contemplate, meditate, and observe. In any case, surrendering to self-absorbed thought will have coexistent consequences, as will the predominance of emotions and feelings. Leading oneself involves the disposition and capacity to connect thought and feeling, and to gain experience in controlling or allowing these psychic functions. Such an attitude broadens understandings and enables evolution from simpler understandings such as cognition to more complex ones like critical, intersubjective, and constructive understanding, and from sovereignty or self-domination, to a binding, other-focused, empathetic, and compassionate sovereignty with the other and the non-human, with integrated life. As we have expressed in other spaces, thought represents a mental potential through which we elaborate representations, operations, and strategies to proceed in a better way in the activities and situations posed by existence and life. It is necessary to develop plural thinking: creative, lateral, logical, investigative, linguistic, mathematical, among others. Likewise, intelligence, a potential that, depending on how we harness it, allows us to tackle an event with greater speed, skill, and precision; it is desirable, in the same way, to develop multiple intelligences. On this topic, someone can be very intelligent but possess low thought potential, and viceversa. Braided together, such mental functions constitute a powerful complex for personal, social and planetary life; For example, mathematics can be more useful or powerful when mathematical intelligence is developed with plural, not just logical, thinking. Likewise, when thought constitutes the driving force of linguistic or other intelligence. In any case, sentipensancia is always wealth, at least personal, even if a process assumed in everyday life is insufficient or abortive; there should be no defeat, failure or frustration, since the experience of feeling, which includes living step by step in this way, is already a manifestation of presence.   On the other hand, feeling represents a state (of sadness, joy, pain, anguish, etc.) or affection that can be produced when experiencing an emotion. As is known, emotions are physical or psychological reactions to a stimulus that can mark us, for example, experiencing feelings of sadness or defeat due to a loss: these can be moderated in part by the intervention of thought and intelligence. To sense or perceive something through the senses constitutes an elevated experience if it is processed cognitively, better yet using thought, particularly comprehensive thought; likewise, if social sensitivity is developed, accompanying feeling with thought, understanding, and action to confront the pain caused by aggression to life, exclusion, selfishness, mistreatment, inequalities, and injustices. Interrelating rational and non-rational psychic functions could translate into better opportunities to live and cultivate life. The consciousness and attitude of sentipensar are evolutionary potentials that move us to weave life. Without these, we remain at the mercy of multidimensional exclusion, that is, of the dominion of the ego, and we make of the affective, attitudinal, and intellectual endowments (therein understanding, innovation, creativity, among others), a further tribute for particular interests that are common or of intertwined life. Such forces would awaken the good wolf that human beings could carry within, the best instead of the worst or the life-unweaving of each one. They can translate into social and planetary sensitivity: a sentient intellectuality does not seem to be forged outside the marriage of sentipensar, outside the interrelated use of thought – including analytical, critical, design, and creative --, and dispositions and feelings. Sentipensar innovation is not the same as that based on thought or the mere desire to innovate; innovation for consumption conflicts with innovation for life, as the latter requires planetary sensitivity, sentipensamiento, presence, strengths where thought involves feeling and emotion, and viceversa. Sentithinking enhances relevant processes in existence such as comprehensive consciousness, particularly cognitive, intersubjective, critical and edifying understandings. The comprehensive phenomenon requires intellectual processes around the event or issue being addressed, as well as prior understandings and intrinsic motivation, feeling the desire to know and process the knowledge or event to be clarified, as well as scenarios for the use of these acquisitions.  The comprehensive force, in any form or mode of understanding, is associated with the sentipensante synapse. It could be said that the degree of understanding is directly proportional to the degree of sentipensancia: the enacting understanding of edifying styles of life requires a sentipensancia that provokes actions that weave shared existence. Let's see.   Cognitive understanding, seen as the nexus of rational and non-rational strengths to elucidate a statement, concept, or phenomenon, presupposes the intervention of mental operations such as reasoning, analysis, synthesis, among others, and intelligence skills to accompany these, as well as others of an affective order, including emotions, feelings, and dispositions. To feel, deconstruct, and contextualize, to live experiences of appropriation, generation, application, and use, are processes inherent to understanding. Nobody comprehends something if they do not process it cognitively and affectively, if they do not refine comprehensive insights through experience, but rather involves, or better, combines rational and non-rational functions such as thinking, feeling, and acting. Thus, understanding a text involves the use of cognitive and discursive operations and strategies, coherence and cohesion that summon thought, intelligence, affectivity, the action or experience of use, application, and refinement of understandings reached. Because every understanding enacts, as will be shown later.   Intersubjective understanding is more than an intellectual phenomenon, it is not possible without thought and feeling or visceral impulse that moves us to build, to care for the other, for the human world. To cultivate the other and cultivate life, it is not enough to think and want to do well; one must feel the other as part of life, and be driven by edifying feelings, by the desire to welcome, to assume the other as a dignified coexistent, in need of me; this is the law of integrated existence, for in evolution we all need each other, so focusing on personal benefit is a way of gnawing at and unraveling life. The critical comprehender is equally a sentipensante (feeling-thinker). They think feelingly, feel thoughtfully, care for the other as a valid, indeed worthy, adversary; they respect the (multi)ontology (particular ways of being and doing), interests, reasons, values, and singularities of the other, of the opponent; It makes criticism an evolutionary, edifying device, where logical thinking operations are as important as feelings, attitudes and values, both knowledge and its contextualization and edifying use, projector of lights, generator of new paths, of good lives. It is desirable for the critic to evolve in understanding, to gain the category of a constructive comprehender. The comprehender who builds (the critical subject who evolves) connects thoughts and feelings, intelligence and emotion, putting their potentials at the service of the other and the non-human world. The sentipensante that builds regularly expresses themselves through critique, understanding, and in the different ways in which it relates to society and nature. Feeling and thinking can become edifying, comprehensive strengths. Herein lies a significant challenge for education.   As can be seen, feeling-thinking is an gift that sheds greater light on our presence in existence, making our participation in and throughout life more dynamic. In educational matters, it favors not only dispositions and learning of knowledge but also the development of full consciousness, therein comprehensive consciousness, above all the performances of understanding through which it enacts, embodies, puts into act, in situation the comprehensive acquisitions, whether these are of cognitive, critical, intersubjective, or constructive order. Understanding is an enactive phenomenon, deepening as the cognitive, affective, attitudinal, and operational performances it requires become more complex. These latter affirm the immediate relationship between understanding and enaction. Understanding enacts, contextualizes, and activates the subject of understanding; it requires the activity and experience of the comprehender, the activation of their cognitive appropriations, and it is in this situated use of what is clarified that the act of understanding gains clear lucidity, where the meanings and senses conferred by understanding are expanded.   If it is a concept like educating, this is understood by educating, assuming such a function, or knowing oneself educated. Friendship is understood by being a friend of oneself, of the other and of the other. Something is not understood outside of operation, encapsulated in cognition or thought, isolated in decontextualized knowledge, knowledge or phenomena. Understanding is a cognitive and experiential, sentient and experiential process. It is an unfinished process, a tension between cognition and experience, of contextualization and experiencing of conscious gains. The understanding of the other is the muscle of the understander's actions in favor of the other: his willingness and generosity to recognize, open up, and attend to the other, the different, the similar. Intersubjective understanding is not only a cognitive process but above all a social one, eminently operational: it is not only about understanding the other, recognizing their difference and uniqueness: it is above all being willing to live with the other, respecting them, taking their hand to walk together. Life is not understood stuck in cognitive and even intersubjective understanding: understanding is an event, and it can represent an edifying event. To do this, it is not enough to understand a concept or issue by expanding its clarification through reflection, operations and cognitive and thinking strategies, and through actions of contextualization and use of these; Nor is it enough to understand the other, participate in their inclusion, welcome them, care for them and for themselves; The evolution of intertwined life also requires the understanding (read, recognition, care and cultivation) of the other, both the human (the other) and the non-human (the other), of that which together with the human being constitutes life, configures the inseparable bond, the interconnection and interdependence (of coexistence) in life, in the vital complex[2]. For understanding to bring life, to be edifying, to enact worlds for better living with the other, the previous understandings that history gives us, cognitive-conceptual appropriation or cognitive understanding, self-understanding and the disposition to act in coherence with these understandings.   The understanding of life as a whole must be the meaning of all understanding, both cognitive and intersubjective. For this,, cognitive understanding must advance towards human understanding and an interconnected world, that is, it must evolve as edifying understanding. In this direction, the role of the school today represents a failed act as long as it immerses itself in teaching and learning while neglecting the function of educating, of intervening in the formation of integrated or biophysical life consciousness, of personal, social, planetary life, of a pluriverse or world where many worlds fit. It is necessary for it to assume its being, to generate scenarios for weaving life, for example through “pedagogical birthing” by which teachers and students (re)emerge as educators and learners.   Developing processes to grow in understanding, compassionate, ethical consciousness is an edifying way of birth, it involves going beyond intellectual and affective appropriation, as well as intersubjective understanding. It is necessary to promote in schools the development of comprehensive consciousness that enacts in a constructive key, making the comprehender a citizen of life, who feels-thinks and acts life with their understandings; who puts at the service of human and non-human life their endowments, who constructively uses in their existence their comprehensive achievements associated with cultural knowledge, be it biology, technology, mathematics, language, among others, and in general their acquisitions in life experience. Through this path, teachers and students would be evolutionary protagonists, weavers of personal, social, and cosmic life, transitioning as beings for life, genuine educators and learners. To enact understanding in any of its forms or degrees, it must signify (be) openness, self-transcendence, going beyond knowing, cognition, or intellectual appropriation of a matter; it must contextualize the appropriations. Intersubjective understanding is a human endeavor, not just an intellectual acknowledgment; it is also factual, involving actions for human life, caring for the other; likewise, understanding the non-human requires actions of cultivation through which human stature is achieved by actions of joining, for humanity and life. Constructive understanding would be one of the greatest achievements to reach in any comprehensive endeavor, better yet, in the task of educating: that the comprehensive process enacts worlds of life, involves the comprehender as a feeling-thinking being, with sentient and active consciousness, for and for sacred life, a leading actor in the civilizational transition that walks with, and not at the expense of the other, the non-human, the intertwined life. A commitment to make existence an art, the art of living and coexisting in the interrelated complex of humans and non-humans.   To fulfill its substantive function, education must be feeling-thinking, it must cultivate tools for meditating and feeling-thinking; and if possible, constructive-comprehensive, it must enhance strengths to elucidate and project enlightenment onto existence and integrated life. Feeling-thinking the knowledge and wisdom distilled in the universes, territories, worldviews, philosophies, and multicultures that populate the pluriversal life, education will reorient its direction to contribute to human and cosmic evolution. Hence Arturo Escobar’s call for the reader to feel-think with the territories, cultures, and knowledge of their peoples —with their ontologies—, rather than with the decontextualized knowledge underlying notions of “development,” “growth,” and even “economy”. A different education, feeling-thinking, or if you prefer, constructive-comprehensive, becomes more urgent today as the interrelated crises of climate, food, energy, and poverty sharpen, unleashed by human misunderstanding, by the dominance of a single, civilizational model of the world that ignores and seeks to assimilate other worlds, other universes, other ways of being, existing, and living — the extractivist and consumerist model, of folly, ambition, of individual interest over the common good. An education where the formation of full consciousness is paramount, allowing us to feel-think, understand, feel, and care for intertwined life, to transition towards another civilizational model, to be artisans and leading actors of a pluriversal ontological design aimed at “creating the technological, social, and ecological conditions in which multiple worlds and knowledges, including humans and non-humans, can flourish in mutually enriching ways”.   An education for edifying, comprehensive thought becomes imperative in times when human intelligence employs design thinking, among others, to produce artificial intelligence, artifacts that, if not produced, used, and received with a feeling-thinking mentality, attitude, and sentiment, will contribute to the deterioration of personal, social, and cosmic life. Generating, applying, and using artificial intelligence without feeling-thinking, without the guidance of a thought that acts life as could the potential of constructive-comprehensive thought, is characteristic of a society with a cosmic minority, which does not take care of the planetary home. It is about projecting scenarios for reorientation and transition that allow us to move from an education for the Self, the ego, for the market and individual interests, to a heartful education, which promotes the connected use of reason and heart, of thought and feeling, an education for the Other and the non-human, for the care of human and non-human life. To feel-think, understand, and care for integrated life. To inhabit, with constructive presence, our common home.   Julio César Arboleda[3] direccion@redipe.org   [1] Bregman, R. (2021). Dignos de ser humanos: una nueva perspectiva histórica de la humanidad. Anagrama, Barcelona, pag 445. [2] Regarding the acting nature of understanding, Arendt (2002, Understanding and politics: the difficulties of understanding. Philosophy Magazine, No. 26, pages 17-30) seems to be more radical in that she states that to understand totalitarianism it is necessary to confront it: “We cannot postpone our fight against totalitarianism until we have “understood” it, because we will not, and we cannot hope to understand it definitively, until it has been defeated.” Antagonizing totalitarianism would involve embodying such understandings in experience, accompanying its conceptual appropriation with concrete actions, which includes recognizing its origins and structures, as well as the scenarios through which it transits, such as education and the media, technologies for example. which assumes indoctrination as a strategy to fight against understanding. [3] Julio César Arboleda, Director Red Iberoamericana de Pedagogía, direccion@redipe.org https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1572-5384 Profesor investigador de la Universidad de San Buenaventura. Grupos de Investigación: 1) “Pedagogía, formación y conciencia” (PFC), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; 2) Redipe: Epistemología, pedagogía y filosofía; 3)  Educación y desarrollo humano, USB.  

Maxence Mercier, Todd Lubart

Video games play a big part in many individuals’ lives, children and adults alike. A large body of research has investigated both the potential negative and positive effects of video games. This paper examines whether playing video games is positively related to creativity, with a focus on adults' creativity in the workplace. Furthermore, it was posited that this link could be explained through the mediating effect of Psychological Capital (PsyCap). Using a cross-sectional design (N = 370), the results show a full mediation of the link between the frequency of playing video games and creativity, through optimism: playing video games is positively associated with higher optimism, which in turn is associated with more creativity in the workplace.

R. Kiernan, J. Mueller, J. Langston et al.

Hashir Ali Awan, Mufaddal Najmuddin Diwan, Alifiya Aamir et al.

The second year of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic has seen the need to identify and assess the long-term consequences of a SARS-CoV-2 infection on an individual’s overall wellbeing, including adequate cognitive functioning. ‘Cognitive COVID’ is an informal term coined to interchangeably refer to acute changes in cognition during COVID-19 and/or cognitive sequelae with various deficits following the infection. These may manifest as altered levels of consciousness, encephalopathy-like symptoms, delirium, and loss of various memory domains. Dysexecutive syndrome is a peculiar manifestation of ‘Cognitive COVID’ as well. In the previous major outbreaks of viruses like SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and Influenza. There have been attempts to understand the underlying mechanisms describing the causality of similar symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection. This review, therefore, is attempting to highlight the current understanding of the various direct and indirect mechanisms, focusing on the role of neurotropism of SARS-CoV-2, the general pro-inflammatory state, and the pandemic-associated psychosocial stressors in the causality of ‘Cognitive COVID.’ Neurotropism is associated with various mechanisms including retrograde neuronal transmission via olfactory pathway, a general hematogenous spread, and the virus using immune cells as vectors. The high amounts of inflammation caused by COVID-19, compounded with potential intubation, are associated with a deleterious effect on the cognition as well. Finally, the pandemic’s unique psychosocial impact has raised alarm due to its possible effect on cognition. Furthermore, with surfacing reports of post-COVID-vaccination cognitive impairments after vaccines containing mRNA encoding for spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2, we hypothesize their causality and ways to mitigate the risk. The potential impact on the quality of life of an individual and the fact that even a minor proportion of COVID-19 cases developing cognitive impairment could be a significant burden on already overwhelmed healthcare systems across the world make it vital to gather further evidence regarding the prevalence, presentation, correlations, and causality of these events and reevaluate our approach to accommodate early identification, management, and rehabilitation of patients exhibiting cognitive symptoms.

Dylan Ludwig

C. Hayhurst, A. Marra, A. Marra et al.

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Objectives: Delirium, a heterogenous syndrome, is associated with worse long-term cognition after critical illness. We sought to determine if duration of motoric subtypes of delirium are associated with worse cognition. Design: Secondary analysis of prospective multicenter cohort study. Setting: Academic, community, and Veteran Affairs hospitals. Patients: Five-hundred eighty-two survivors of respiratory failure or shock. Interventions: We assessed delirium and level of consciousness using the Confusion Assessment Method-ICU and Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale daily during hospitalization. We defined a day with hypoactive delirium as a day with positive Confusion Assessment Method-ICU and corresponding Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale score less than or equal to 0 and a day with hyperactive delirium as a day with positive Confusion Assessment Method-ICU and corresponding Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale score greater than 0. At 3 and 12 months, we assessed global cognition with the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neurologic Status and executive function with the Trail Making Test Part B. We used multivariable regression to examine the associations between days of hypoactive and hyperactive delirium with cognition outcomes. We allowed for interaction between days of hypoactive and hyperactive delirium and adjusted for baseline and in-hospital covariates. Measurements and Results: Hypoactive delirium was more common and persistent than hyperactive delirium (71% vs 17%; median 3 vs 1 d). Longer duration of hypoactive delirium was associated with worse global cognition at 3 (–5.13 [–8.75 to –1.51]; p = 0.03) but not 12 (–5.76 [–9.99 to –1.53]; p = 0.08) months and with worse executive functioning at 3 (–3.61 [–7.48 to 0.26]; p = 0.03) and 12 (–6.22 [–10.12 to –2.33]; p = 0.004) months; these associations were not modified by hyperactive delirium. Hyperactive delirium was not associated with global cognition or executive function in this cohort. Conclusions: Longer duration of hypoactive delirium was independently associated with worse long-term cognition. Assessing motoric subtypes of delirium in the ICU might aid in prognosis and intervention allocation. Future studies should consider delineating motoric subtypes of delirium.

Etzel Cardeña

Annotated bibliography.

Andrew Oberg

Religious or spiritual experiences (RSE) are often difficult to fully express even if one might be able to describe particular aspects of them. Yet the influences that such carry in a person’s mode of being can be vast, and they are clearly a fundamental part of the human condition (whether accepted, denied, or dismissed, their occurrence appears universal). How then might these RSE—and the corresponding grounding implications—be better explained? This paper seeks to elucidate the problematic via an applied investigation of a self-theoretical framework which is composed of three interlaced “sets”: (1) Self-defining traits, (2) Self-directing traits, and (3) Self-evaluating traits. We will suggest that these elements (with consciousness and bodily presence) form a core self that is a separable facet from those of personal identity and whole person; and this finding will in turn require a brief look at consciousness and a two-tiered mental model. Taking the self-view into a phenomenological hermeneutical examination will illuminate the position at which RSE might reside within an individual’s cognition, and thence to exploring the pre-thought (the functionally pre-aware) foundations involved. Finally, some considerations will be given for how an understanding of the foregoing structure (if it be found valid) might contribute towards the purposive shifting of that self-basis from out of and towards which RSE are situated in a lifeworld.

L. Malafouris

We live and we think inside a world of things made and found. Still, psychological science has shown little interest in understanding the exact nature of the relation between cognition and material culture. As a result, the diachronic influence and transformative potential of things in human mental life remains little understood. Most psychologists would see things as external and passive: the lifeless objects of human consciousness, perception, and memory. On the contrary, my main argument in this article is that things matter to human psychology and should be taken seriously. Although things usually pass unnoticed, they are anything but trivial. Things have a special place in human cognitive life and evolution. We think “with” and “through” things, not simply “about” things. In that sense, things occupy the middle space in between what are usually referred to as mind and matter. Material-engagement theory provides a way to describe and study that middle space where brain, body, and culture are conflated.

Vera E. Newman, Hannah F. Yee, Adrian R. Walker et al.

Abstract People often need to update representations of information upon discovering them to be incorrect, a process that can be interrupted by competing cognitive demands. Because anxiety and stress can impair cognitive performance, we tested whether looming threat can similarly interfere with the process of updating representations of a statement’s truthfulness. On each trial, participants saw a face paired with a personality descriptor. Each pairing was followed by a signal indicating whether the pairing was “true”, or “false” (a negation of the truth of the statement), and this signal could be followed by a warning of imminent electric shock (i.e., the looming threat). As predicted, threat of shock left memory for “true” pairings intact, while impairing people’s ability to label negated pairings as untrue. Contrary to our predictions, the pattern of errors for pairings that were negated under threat suggested that these mistakes were at least partly attributable to participants forgetting that they saw the negated information at all (rather than being driven by miscategorization of the pairings as true). Consistent with this, linear ballistic accumulator modelling suggested that this impaired recognition stemmed from weaker memory traces rather than decisional processes. We suggest that arousal due to looming threat may interfere with executive processes important for resolving competition between mutually suppressive tags of whether representations in memory are “true” or “false”.

Louise Kremer, Cornelis G. van Reenen, Bas Engel et al.

Arvid Guterstam, Malin Björnsdotter, Malin Björnsdotter et al.

Azita Chehri, Moona Nourozi, Soudabeh Eskandari et al.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index in the elderly population. Material and Methods: A methodological study was conducted as a confirmatory factor analysis. Totally, 598 elderly people were selected through cluster sampling. In addition to analyzing the three-factor structure of PSQI, internal consistency reliability, structural validity, and its concurrent validity were examined. The structural credibility of PSQI was examined using other similar tools such as Sleep Health, Epworth Sleepiness, Insomnia Severity, Global Sleep Assessment, and Berlin indices. Finally, the concurrent criterion validity of PSQI was evaluated through multivariable regression analysis and all statistical analyzes were performed using SPSS and AMOS software. Results: The reliability of the test according to Cronbach’s alpha was 0.81. Confirmatory factor analysis indicators supported goodness of fit of the structural equation model. The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the ratio of χ2 / DF was 2.66 for the three-factor structure of PSQI and the goodness of fit indices of model were acceptable for this structural model (RMSEA=0.053, CFI=0.98, TLI=0.96, NFI=0.97, GFI=0.99). In addition, the internal consistency of the PSQI was 0.81 and the scales correlation score ranged from 0.48 to 0.71. Conclusion: The results indicated that Persian version of Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index had the required validity and reliability for the elderly population of Iran and it can be used as a useful tool by other studies.

Santos J. Franco, U. Müller

R. Cavallazzi, M. Saad, P. Marik

Delirium is characterized by a disturbance of consciousness with accompanying change in cognition. Delirium typically manifests as a constellation of symptoms with an acute onset and a fluctuating course. Delirium is extremely common in the intensive care unit (ICU) especially amongst mechanically ventilated patients. Three subtypes have been recognized: hyperactive, hypoactive, and mixed. Delirium is frequently undiagnosed unless specific diagnostic instruments are used. The CAM-ICU is the most widely studied and validated diagnostic instrument. However, the accuracy of this tool may be less than ideal without adequate training of the providers applying it. The presence of delirium has important prognostic implications; in mechanically ventilated patients it is associated with a 2.5-fold increase in short-term mortality and a 3.2-fold increase in 6-month mortality. Nonpharmacological approaches, such as physical and occupational therapy, decrease the duration of delirium and should be encouraged. Pharmacological treatment for delirium traditionally includes haloperidol; however, more data for haloperidol are needed given the paucity of placebo-controlled trials testing its efficacy to treat delirium in the ICU. Second-generation antipsychotics have emerged as an alternative for the treatment of delirium, and they may have a better safety profile. Dexmedetomidine may prove to be a valuable adjunctive agent for patients with delirium in the ICU.