Refine
Document Type
- Article (10)
- Working Paper (2)
- Conference Proceeding (1)
Language
- English (13)
Has Fulltext
- yes (13)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (13)
Keywords
- Cognition (13) (remove)
Institute
- Medizin (5)
- Center for Financial Studies (CFS) (2)
- Psychologie (2)
- Sportwissenschaften (2)
- Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung (DIPF) (1)
- House of Finance (HoF) (1)
- Informatik (1)
- MPI für empirische Ästhetik (1)
- Neuere Philologien (1)
- Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE) (1)
Editorial
(2013)
The aim of this two-part special issue of The International Journal of Literary Linguistics is to probe the implications of the cognitive turn in literary linguistics that has gone hand in hand with the field’s growing appreciation of pragmatics at the end of the twentieth century (as illustrated e.g. by MacMahon, Mey, Verdonk and Weber). The view, increasingly shared by literary linguists, that literature is a communicative endeavour between text (author) and reader has resulted in a heightened interest in the cognitive abilities that ultimately make this communication possible. Yet the ease with which the buzzword ‘cognition’ sometimes is applied to explain these abilities and processes (which are often only assumed to exist rather than substantiated with empirical evidence) seems to be at odds not least with the fact that the cognitive sciences are far from a uniform field yielding fixed and finite results. Indeed, whether or not all language phenomena are underpinned by innate cognitive rules is an issue that remains a bone of contention amongst scholars, as does the nature of these cognitive rules themselves. Even a cognitive grammarian like Ronald Langacker warns against jumping to premature conclusions about the natural foundations of language (14) and avoids making such claims in his own work. ...
Using life-history survey data from eleven European countries, we investigate whether childhood conditions, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health problems influence portfolio choice and risk attitudes later in life. After controlling for the corresponding conditions in adulthood, we find that superior cognitive skills in childhood (especially mathematical abilities) are positively associated with stock and mutual fund ownership. Childhood socioeconomic status, as indicated by the number of rooms and by having at least some books in the house during childhood, is also positively associated with the ownership of stocks, mutual funds and individual retirement accounts, as well as with the willingness to take financial risks. On the other hand, less risky assets like bonds are not affected by early childhood conditions. We find only weak effects of childhood health problems on portfolio choice in adulthood. Finally, favorable childhood conditions affect the transition in and out of risky asset ownership, both by making divesting less likely and by facilitating investing (i.e., transitioning from non-ownership to ownership).
Highlights
• A big dataset reveals age-related alterations in EEG biomarkers and cognition.
• Prominent decline of individual alpha peak frequency primarily in temporal lobes.
• A positive association between individual alpha peak frequency and working memory.
• Absence of age-related alpha power decline when controlling for 1/f decay of the PSD.
• Alpha power is negatively associated with the speed of processing in elderly sample.
Abstract
While many structural and biochemical changes in the brain have previously been associated with older age, findings concerning functional properties of neuronal networks, as reflected in their electrophysiological signatures, remain rather controversial. These discrepancies might arise due to several reasons, including diverse factors determining general spectral slowing in the alpha frequency range as well as amplitude mixing between the rhythmic and non-rhythmic parameters. We used a large dataset (N = 1703, mean age 70) to comprehensively investigate age-related alterations in multiple EEG biomarkers taking into account rhythmic and non-rhythmic activity and their individual contributions to cognitive performance. While we found strong evidence for an individual alpha peak frequency (IAF) decline in older age, we did not observe a significant relationship between theta power and age while controlling for IAF. Not only did IAF decline with age, but it was also positively associated with interference resolution in a working memory task primarily in the right and left temporal lobes suggesting its functional role in information sampling. Critically, we did not detect a significant relationship between alpha power and age when controlling for the 1/f spectral slope, while the latter one showed age-related alterations. These findings thus suggest that the entanglement of IAF slowing and power in the theta frequency range, as well as 1/f slope and alpha power measures, might explain inconsistencies reported previously in the literature. Finally, despite the absence of age-related alterations, alpha power was negatively associated with the speed of processing in the right frontal lobe while 1/f slope showed no consistent relationship to cognitive performance. Our results thus demonstrate that multiple electrophysiological features, as well as their interplay, should be considered for the comprehensive assessment of association between age, neuronal activity, and cognitive performance.