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Metacognition plays a pivotal role in human development. The ability to realize that we do not know something, or meta-ignorance, emerges after approximately five years of age. We aimed at identifying the brain systems that underlie the developmental emergence of this ability in a preschool sample.
Twenty-four children aged between five and six years answered questions under three conditions of a meta-ignorance task twice. In the critical partial knowledge condition, an experimenter first showed two toys to a child, then announced that she would place one of them in a box behind a screen, out of sight from the child. The experimenter then asked the child whether or not she knew which toy was in the box.
Children who answered correctly both times to the metacognitive question in the partial knowledge condition (n=9) showed greater cortical thickness in a cluster within left medial orbitofrontal cortex than children who did not (n=15). Further, seed-based functional connectivity analyses of the brain during resting state revealed that this region is functionally connected to the medial orbitofrontal gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus and precuneus, and mid- and inferior temporal gyri.
This finding suggests that the default mode network, critically through its prefrontal regions, supports introspective processing. It leads to the emergence of metacognitive monitoring allowing children to explicitly report their own ignorance.
Precise slow oscillation-spindle coupling promotes memory consolidation in younger and older adults
(2018)
Memory consolidation during sleep relies on the precisely timed interaction of rhythmic neural events. Here, we investigate differences in slow oscillations (SO) and sleep spindles (SP) and their coupling across the adult human lifespan and ask whether observed alterations relate to the ability to retain associative memories across sleep. We demonstrate that the fine-tuned SO–SP coupling that is present in younger adults diffuses with advanced age and shifts both in time and frequency. Crucially, we show that the tight precision of SO–SP coupling promotes memory consolidation in younger and older adults, and that brain integrity in source regions for the generation of SOs and SPs reinforces this beneficial SO–SP coupling in old age. Our results reveal age-related differences in SO–SP coupling in healthy elderly individuals. Furthermore, they broaden our understanding of the conditions and the functional significance of SO–SP coupling across the entire adult lifespan.
The outstanding speed of language comprehension necessitates a highly efficient implementation of cognitive-linguistic processes. The domain-general theory of Predictive Coding suggests that our brain solves this problem by continuously forming linguistic predictions about expected upcoming input. The neurophysiological implementation of these predictive linguistic processes, however, is not yet understood. Here, we use EEG (human participants, both sexes) to investigate the existence and nature of online-generated, category-level semantic representations during sentence processing. We conducted two experiments in which some nouns – embedded in a predictive spoken sentence context – were unexpectedly delayed by 1 second. Target nouns were either abstract/concrete (Experiment 1) or animate/inanimate (Experiment 2). We hypothesized that if neural prediction error signals following (temporary) omissions carry specific information about the stimulus, the semantic category of the upcoming target word is encoded in brain activity prior to its presentation. Using time-generalized multivariate pattern analysis, we demonstrate significant decoding of word category from silent periods directly preceding the target word, in both experiments. This provides direct evidence for predictive coding during sentence processing, i.e., that information about a word can be encoded in brain activity before it is perceived. While the same semantic contrast could also be decoded from EEG activity elicited by isolated words (Experiment 1), the identified neural patterns did not generalize to pre-stimulus delay period activity in sentences. Our results not only indicate that the brain processes language predictively, but also demonstrate the nature and sentence-specificity of category-level semantic predictions preactivated during sentence comprehension.
The article reports three simulation studies conducted to find out whether the effect of a time limit for testing impairs model fit in investigations of structural validity, whether the representation of the assumed source of the effect prevents impairment of model fit and whether it is possible to identify and discriminate this method effect from another method effect. Omissions due to the time limit for testing were not considered as missing data but as information on the participants’ processing speed. In simulated data the presence of a time-limit effect impaired comparative fit index and nonnormed fit index whereas normed chi-square, root mean square error of approximation, and standardized root mean square residual indicated good model fit. The explicit consideration of the effect due to the time limit by an additional component of the model improved model fit. Effect-specific assumptions included in the model of measurement enabled the discrimination of the effect due to the time limit from another possible method effect.
Background: The year 2016 has marked the highest number of displaced people worldwide on record. A large number of these refugees are women, yet little is known about their specific situation and the hurdles they have to face during their journey. Herein, we investigated whether sociodemographic characteristics and traumatic experiences in the home country and during the flight affected the quality of life of refugee women arriving in Germany in 2015–2016.
Methods: Six hundred sixty-three women from six countries (Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, and Eritrea) living in shared reception facilities in five distinct German regions were interviewed by native speakers using a structured questionnaire. Sociodemographic data and information about reasons for fleeing, traumatic experiences, symptoms, quality of life, and expectations towards their future were elicited. All information was stored in a central database in Berlin. Descriptive analyses, correlations, and multivariate analyses were performed.
Results: The most frequent reasons cited for fleeing were war, terror, and threat to one’s life or the life of a family member. Eighty-seven percent of women resorted to smugglers to make the journey to Europe, and this significantly correlated to residence in a war zone (odds ratio (OR) = 2.5, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.4–4.6, p = 0.003) and homelessness prior to fleeing (OR = 2.1, 95% CI = 1–4.3, p = 0.04). Overall the described quality of life by the women was moderate (overall mean = 3.23, range of 1–5) and slightly worse than that of European populations (overall mean = 3.68, p < 0.0001). The main reasons correlating with lower quality of life were older age, having had a near-death experience, having been attacked by a family member, and absence of health care in case of illness.
Conclusions: Refugee women experience multiple traumatic experiences before and/or during their journey, some of which are gender-specific. These experiences affect the quality of life in their current country of residence and might impact their integration. We encourage the early investigation of these traumatic experiences to rapidly identify women at higher risk and to improve health care for somatic and mental illness.
Professionalization of service-learning in higher education – an academic development approach
(2018)
In an attempt to professionalize service-learning in higher education, teachers and their teaching skills are considered a determining factor and require particular attention. To promote the teaching skills necessary for service-learning courses, an academic development approach addressing these specific requirements has been implemented at Goethe University Frankfurt as part of the academic development program for teaching staff. This article presents the particularities of this approach and illustrates one of its central elements, i.e., the concept of a workshop on planning service-learning courses. Both practical and research implications are discussed.
Cognitive modeling studies in adults have established that visual working memory (WM) capacity depends on the representational precision, as well as its variability from moment to moment. By contrast, visuospatial WM performance in children has been typically indexed by response accuracy—a binary measure that provides less information about precision with which items are stored. Here, we aimed at identifying whether and how children’s WM performance depends on the spatial precision and its variability over time in real-world contexts. Using smartphones, 110 Grade 3 and Grade 4 students performed a spatial WM updating task three times a day in school and at home for four weeks. Measures of spatial precision (i.e., Euclidean distance between presented and reported location) were used for hierarchical modeling to estimate variability of spatial precision across different time scales. Results demonstrated considerable within-person variability in spatial precision across items within trials, from trial to trial and from occasion to occasion within days and from day to day. In particular, item-to-item variability was systematically increased with memory load and lowered with higher grade. Further, children with higher precision variability across items scored lower in measures of fluid intelligence. These findings emphasize the important role of transient changes in spatial precision for the development of WM.
How does social class affect people’s goals in social interactions? A rank-based perspective suggests actors from higher social classes (compared to lower social classes) have more agentic and less communal goals when interacting with same class or unspecified others. Focusing on targets’ social class, an identity-based perspective suggests the reverse: Actors should more strongly endorse communal (agentic) goals toward illegitimately lower class (higher class) compared to illegitimately higher class (lower class) targets, regardless of actors’ own social class. Three preregistered experiments (N = 2,023) manipulated actor’s social class and the nature of the target (illegitimately higher/lower class, same class, unspecified) and measured participants’ goals in imagined interactions using the Circumplex Scales of Intergroup Goals. The identity-based perspective received strong support: Across studies, actors expressed stronger agentic (communal) goals toward higher class (lower class) targets. The rank-based perspective received limited support, with relatively low-class (vs. relatively high-class) actors expressing stronger communal goals toward same-class targets.
Die Erfahrung, "…dass alles auch ganz anders sein könnte" ist die wohl wichtigste Erfahrung in Bildungsprozessen. Die Entdeckung von Möglichkeiten, Perspektivwechseln und transformatorischen Selbst-Bildungsprozessen ist zentral für eine gelungene kulturelle Bildungssituation. (Birgit Mandel, 2005).
Die Hessischen Schülerakademien zur Förderung besonders engagierter und begabter junger Menschen wurden bewusst als ein Unterfangen des Forschenden Lernens gegründet und fühlen sich diesem Leitgedanken im Kontext kultureller Bildung verpflichtet. Dieser Satz klingt zunächst einmal gut und zeitgemäß. Doch was steckt genau dahinter?
White matter microstructural changes and episodic memory disturbances in late-onset bipolar disorder
(2018)
Background: Bipolar disorder (BD) has been associated with distributed network disruption, but little is known on how different clinical subtypes, particularly those with an earlier and later onset of disease, are related to connectivity changes in white matter (WM) tracts.
Methods: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and volumetric measures were carried out in early-onset bipolar patients [(EOD) (n = 16)], late-onset bipolar disorder [(LOD)(n = 14)] and healthy controls (n = 32). We also computed ROI analysis of gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) volumes using the regions with significant group differences in the DTI parameters. Cognitive and behavior measurements were analyzed between groups.
Results: Lower fraction of anisotropy (FA) in the right hemisphere comprising anterior thalamic radiation, fornix, posterior cingulate, internal capsule, splenium of corpus callosum was observed in the LOD in comparison with EOD; additionally, lower FA was also found in the LOD in comparison with healthy controls, mostly in the right hemisphere and comprising fibers of the splenium of the corpus callosum, cingulum, superior frontal gyrus and posterior thalamic radiation; LOD also showed worse episodic memory performance than EOD; no statistical significant differences between mood symptoms, WM and GM volumes were found between BD groups.
Conclusion: Even after correcting for age differences, LOD was associated with more extensive WM microstructural changes and worse episodic memory performance than EOD; these findings suggest that changes in the WM fiber integrity may be associated with a later presentation of BD, possibly due to mechanisms other than neuroprogression. However, these findings deserve replication in larger, prospective, studies.