Memory conformity for high-confidence recognition of faces.

Memory judgments made by an individual may be affected by the memory judgments made by another individual, a phenomenon named memory conformity. It is unclear, however, whether memory conformity affects the well demonstrated positive relationship between accuracy and confidence, and more importantly, whether it affects the accuracy of high-confidence memory judgments. Here, we investigated these possibilities in three experiments wherein participants performed recognition followed by confidence judgments of studied and novel faces, after being exposed to the recognition responses of a fictional participant whose responses could be valid or invalid (74% and 26% of the responses, respectively). In all three experiments, accuracy for high confidence "old" and "new" responses was affected by the responses of the fictitious participant, with invalid responses producing consistent decreases in high confidence accuracy. In addition, confidence-accuracy characteristics (CAC) analysis revealed that invalid responses were particularly impactful on the assignment of confidence for faces judged as "new," a pattern that sheds light on prior findings regarding the effects of cueing on mean confidence. Thus, further than demonstrating that the exposition to the memory judgments of another person affects high confidence recognition, we show that such exposition produces distinct effects on the assignment of confidence for "new" versus "old" memory judgments.

Perceiving utilitarian gradients: Heart rate variability and self-regulatory effort in the moral dilemma task.

It is not yet clear which response behavior requires self-regulatory effort in the moral dilemma task. Previous research has proposed that utilitarian responses require cognitive control, but subsequent studies have found inconsistencies with the empirical predictions of that hypothesis. In this paper, we treat participants' sensitivity to utilitarian gradients as a measure of performance. We confronted participants (N = 82) with a set of five dilemmas evoking a gradient of mean utilitarian responses in a 4-point scale and collected data on heart rate variability and utilitarian responses. We found positive correlations between tonic and phasic HRV and sensitivity to the utilitarian gradient in the high tonic group, but not in the low tonic group. Moreover, the low tonic group misplaced a scenario with a selfish incentive at the high end of the gradient. Results suggest that performance is represented by sensitivity correlated with HRV and accompanied with a reasonable placement of individual scenarios within the gradient.

Physical Exercise Training Improves Judgment and Problem-Solving and Modulates Serum Biomarkers in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by progressive impairment of memory, with an etiology involving oxidative stress and inflammation. Exercise training is a safe, efficacious, and economic approach to manage neurodegenerative diseases. In AD, the biomarkers of oxidative damage to lipids, proteins, and DNA are elevated. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate whether exercise is effective in patients with AD by assessing the serum biomarkers associated with the redox status, neurotrophin levels, and inflammatory system. This nonrandomized clinical study (n = 15) involved 22 training sessions performed twice a week (60 min/session) in patients diagnosed with AD. The cognitive and self-awareness tests were performed 48 h before and after the physical training session. In patients with AD, physical training significantly improved the judgment and problem-solving domains of the memory score; however, general mental health, memory, orientation, and home/hobby domains were improved slightly, and the neurotrophin levels remained unaltered. Significantly, the markers of protein integrity also increased following exercise. Furthermore, catalase activity and ROS levels decreased, nitrite levels increased, and interleukin-4 level increased following physical training in patients with AD. Although proinflammatory cytokines remained unaltered, the levels of neuron-specific enolase, a marker of neuronal damage, decreased following exercise training in these patients. In conclusion, physical exercise training could be a safe and effective method for blocking the AD progression and improving the antioxidant capacity and anti-inflammatory system, whereas certain assessed biomarkers could be utilized to monitor AD therapy.

Is there a bias in spatial maze judgment bias tests? Individual differences in subjects' novelty response can affect test results.

Judgment bias tests have become an important tool in the assessment of animals' affective states. Subjects are first trained to discriminate between two cues associated with a positive and a less-positive outcome. After successful training, they are confronted with an ambiguous cue, and responses are used for judgment bias assessment. In spatial settings, ambiguous cue presentation is typically linked with novelty, i.e. to yet unexplored areas or areas to which the animal has a low degree of habituation. We hypothesized that in such settings, responses to ambiguity might be biased by the animals' perception of novelty. We conducted judgment bias tests in mound-building mice phenotyped for their exploration tendency. After subjects had learned to distinguish between the positively and less-positively rewarded arms of a maze, a new ambiguous middle-arm was introduced. During the first test trial, more exploratory, less neophobic individuals displayed higher bidirectional locomotion in the ambiguous arm, indicating intensive exploration. Although this resulted in longer latencies to the reward in more exploratory animals, we conclude that this did not reflect a 'more pessimistic judgment of ambiguity'. Indeed, during the following two trials, with increasing habituation to the ambiguous arm, the direction of the association was inversed compared to the first trial, as more exploratory individuals showed relatively shorter approach latencies. We suggest that in spatial test settings associating the ambiguous cue to novel areas, results can be confounded by subjects' personality-dependent motivational conflict between exploration and reaching the reward. Findings obtained under such conditions should be interpreted with care.

Persistence of repeated self-reported illusion of control as a product of action and outcome association in productive and preventive scenarios.

Individuals interpret themselves as causal agents when executing an action to achieve an outcome, even when action and outcome are independent. How can illusion of control be managed? Once established, does it decay? This study aimed to analyze the effects of valence, probability of the outcome [p(O)] and probability of the actions performed by the participant [p(A)], on the magnitude of judgments of control and corresponding associative measures (including Rescorla-Wagner's, Probabilistic Contrast, and Cheng's Power Probabilistic Contrast models). A traffic light was presented on a computer screen to 81 participants who tried to control the green or red lights by pressing the spacebar, after instructions describing a productive or a preventive scenario. There were 4 blocks of 50 trials under all of 4 different p(O)s in random order (0.10, 0.30, 0.70, and 0.90). Judgments were assessed in a bidimensional scale. The 2 × 4 × 4 mixed experimental design was analyzed through General Linear Models, including factor group (between-subject valence), and block and p(O) (within subjects). There was a small effect of group and a large and direct effect of p(O) on judgments. Illusion was reported by 66% of the sample and was positive in the productive group. The oscillation of p(O) produced stronger illusions; decreasing p(O)s produced nil or negative illusions. Only Rescorla-Wagner's could model causality properly. The reasons why p(A) and the other models could not generate significant results are discussed. The results help to comprehend the importance of keeping moderate illusions in productive and preventive scenarios.

Explicit and implicit monitoring in neurodegeneration and stroke.

Monitoring is a complex multidimensional neurocognitive phenomenon. Patients with fronto-insular stroke (FIS), behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) show a lack of self-awareness, insight, and self-monitoring, which translate into anosognosia and daily behavioural impairments. Notably, they also present damage in key monitoring areas. While neuroscientific research on this domain has accrued in recent years, no previous study has compared monitoring performance across these brain diseases and none has applied a multiple lesion model approach combined with neuroimaging analysis. Here, we evaluated explicit and implicit monitoring in patients with focal stoke (FIS) and two types of dementia (bvFTD and AD) presenting damage in key monitoring areas. Participants performed a visual perception task and provided two types of report: confidence (explicit judgment of trust about their performance) and wagering (implicit reports which consisted in betting on their accuracy in the perceptual task). Then, damaged areas were analyzed via structural MRI to identify associations with potential behavioral deficits. In AD, inadequate confidence judgments were accompanied by poor wagering performance, demonstrating explicit and implicit monitoring impairments. By contrast, disorders of implicit monitoring in FIS and bvFTD patients occurred in the context of accurate confidence reports, suggesting a reduced ability to turn self-knowledge into appropriate wagering conducts. MRI analysis showed that ventromedial compromise was related to overconfidence, whereas fronto-temporo-insular damage was associated with excessive wagering. Therefore, joint assessment of explicit and implicit monitoring could favor a better differentiation of neurological profiles (frontal damage vs AD) and eventually contribute to delineating clinical interventions.

Influence of Parkinson's Disease on Judging Stair Step Height: Exploratory Study.

This study investigated the effects of Parkinson's Disease (PD) on the perceptive judgment of stair step height using both exteroceptive visual and exproprioceptive judgments. We invited 14 individuals with PD and 14 neurologically healthy older adults (OA) to perform perceptual judgment tasks for first step stairway heights of 11 and 20 cm. Initially, participants performed first the exteroceptive visual judgment and then the exproprioceptive judgment in five randomized trials for each stair height. An analysis of variance for the exteroceptive visual judgment revealed no main effects or interaction between PD versus OA groups and height. However, the analysis of variance for exproprioceptive judgment revealed a significant interaction between group and height ( F1,26 = 9.519; p = .005; Pη2 = .268) such that both groups made more errors in exproprioceptive judgment at a height of 11 cm. The OA group made more errors in exproprioceptive judgment for the 20-cm step when compared with the PD group ( p = .016) but the PD group underestimated the step height. We conclude that PD influences exproprioceptive perception of step height and that steps with smaller (vs. larger) heights induce greater exproprioceptive error.

Introspection during short-term memory scanning.

The literature in metacognition has argued for many years that introspective access to our own mental content is restricted to the cognitive states associated with the response to a task, such as the level of confidence in a decision or the estimation of the response time; however, the cognitive processes that underlie such states were deemed inaccessible to participants' consciousness. Here, we ask whether participants could introspectively distinguish the cognitive processes that underlie two short-term memory tasks. For this purpose, we asked participants, on a trial-by-trial basis, to report the number of items that they mentally scanned during their short-term memory retrieval, which we have named "subjective number of scanned items." The subjective number of scanned items index was evaluated, in Experiment 1, immediately after a judgment of recency task and, in Experiment 2, after an item recognition task. Finally, in Experiment 3, both tasks were randomly mixed. The results showed that participants' introspection successfully accessed the complexity of the decisional processes.

Additional intraoral radiographs may change the judgment regarding the final position of orthodontic mini-implants.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess if additional vertical bitewing (VBW) and/or occlusal (OC) radiographs may change initial judgment based only on periapical radiograph (PAR) about the final position of orthodontic mini-implants (OMI). METHODS: Subjective and objective analyses were performed. Radiographic images of 26 OMI were divided into four groups: PAR, PAR+VBW, PAR+OC and ALL (PAR+VBW+OC). For subjective analysis, five observers were asked to assess if the position of OMI was favorable to its success, using questionnaires with a four-point scale for responses: 1= definitely not favorable, 2= probably not favorable, 3= probably favorable, or 4= definitely favorable. Each group containing sets of images was presented to them in four different viewing sessions. Objective evaluation compared horizontal distances between OMI tip and the root nearest to the device in PAR and VBW. RESULTS: Most of observers (3 out of 5) changed their initial judgment based on PAR about OMI position when additional radiographs were analyzed. Differences between groups (i.e. PAR vs. PAR+VBW; PAR vs. PAR+OC; and, PARvs.ALL) were statistically significant for these observers. For those that changed their judgment about OMI position, confidence level could significantly increase, decrease or even be maintained, not indicating a pattern. There was no agreement for distances between OMI tip and the root nearest to the device in PAR and VBW. CONCLUSION: Considering the limitations of the study, it is concluded that additional radiographic images may change the judgement about OMI final position without necessarily increasing the degree of certainty of such judgment.

Additional intraoral radiographs may change the judgment regarding the final position of orthodontic mini-implants

ABSTRACT Objective: This study aimed to assess if additional vertical bitewing (VBW) and/or occlusal (OC) radiographs may change initial judgment based only on periapical radiograph (PAR) about the final position of orthodontic mini-implants (OMI). Methods: Subjective and objective analyses were performed. Radiographic images of 26 OMI were divided into four groups: PAR, PAR+VBW, PAR+OC and ALL (PAR+VBW+OC). For subjective analysis, five observers were asked to assess if the position of OMI was favorable to its success, using questionnaires with a four-point scale for responses: 1= definitely not favorable, 2= probably not favorable, 3= probably favorable, or 4= definitely favorable. Each group containing sets of images was presented to them in four different viewing sessions. Objective evaluation compared horizontal distances between OMI tip and the root nearest to the device in PAR and VBW. Results: Most of observers (3 out of 5) changed their initial judgment based on PAR about OMI position when additional radiographs were analyzed. Differences between groups (i.e. PAR vs. PAR+VBW; PAR vs. PAR+OC; and, PARvs.ALL) were statistically significant for these observers. For those that changed their judgment about OMI position, confidence level could significantly increase, decrease or even be maintained, not indicating a pattern. There was no agreement for distances between OMI tip and the root nearest to the device in PAR and VBW. Conclusion: Considering the limitations of the study, it is concluded that additional radiographic images may change the judgement about OMI final position without necessarily increasing the degree of certainty of such judgment.

RESUMO Objetivo: avaliar se a adição de radiografias interproximais verticais (IV) e/ou oclusais (OC) pode alterar o julgamento inicial sobre a posição final dos mini-implantes ortodônticos (MI) baseado somente na radiografia periapical (PA). Métodos: foram realizadas análises subjetivas e objetivas. Imagens radiográficas de 26 regiões contendo MI foram divididas em quatro grupos: PA, PA+IV, PA+OC e TODAS (PA+IV+OC). Na análise subjetiva, cinco observadores foram convidados a avaliar se a posição do MI era favorável para o seu sucesso, utilizando questionários com uma escala de quatro pontos para respostas: 1 = definitivamente não favorável; 2 = provavelmente não favorável; 3 = provavelmente favorável; ou 4 = definitivamente favorável. Cada grupo contendo conjuntos de imagens foi apresentado aos observadores em quatro sessões diferentes. Adicionalmente, uma avaliação objetiva comparou as distâncias horizontais entre a ponta do MI e a raiz dentária mais próxima ao dispositivo na PA e IV. Resultados: a maioria dos observadores (3 de 5) mudou seu julgamento inicial sobre a posição do MI baseado na PA quando radiografias adicionais foram analisadas. Diferenças entre os grupos (ou seja, PA vs PA+IV; PA vs PA+OC; e PAvsTODAS) foram estatisticamente significativas para esses observadores. Para aqueles que mudaram seu julgamento sobre a posição do MI, o nível de confiança das respostas aumentou, diminuiu ou foi mantido, não indicando um padrão. Houve diferença estatisticamente significante entre as distâncias da ponta do MI para a raiz mais próxima ao dispositivo na PA e IV. Conclusão: considerando-se as limitações desse estudo, concluiu-se que imagens radiográficas adicionais podem alterar o julgamento sobre a posição final de MI sem, necessariamente, aumentar o grau de certeza de tal julgamento.

Proprioceptive-Visual Integration and Embodied Cognition: A Developmental Perspective.

The present study addressed whether a spatial matching task relying on inter-sensory judgments might be influenced by the transition between egocentric and decentered mode of thinking. Thirty-six children aged 5, 7, or 9 years performed a paramedian correspondence task with conditions requiring inter-sensory integration (visual-proprioceptive) and a problem-solving task. The visual information was given through a mirror that perturbed the sensory judgments in the paramedian correspondence task. The results did not corroborate the hypotheses; nevertheless, the increasing importance of proprioception in the perceptual judgments for older children suggests that although younger children may be body centered (egocentric mode of thinking), older children seemed more able to use body to mediate their perceptual judgments.

Individual consistency in the accuracy and distribution of confidence judgments.

We examine which aspects of the confidence distributions - its shape, its bias toward higher or lower values, and its ability to distinguish correct from erred trials - are idiosyncratic of the who (individual specificity), the when (variability across days) and the what (task specificity). Measuring confidence across different sessions of four different perceptual tasks we show that: (1) Confidence distributions are virtually identical when measured in different days for the same subject and the same task, constituting a subjective fingerprint, (2) The capacity of confidence reports to distinguish correct from incorrect responses is only modestly (but significantly) correlated when compared across tasks, (3) Confidence distributions are very similar for tasks that involve different sensory modalities but have similar structure, (4) Confidence accuracy is independent of the mean and width of the confidence distribution, (5) The mean of the confidence distribution (an individual's confidence bias) constitutes the most efficient indicator to infer a subject's identity from confidence reports and (6) Confidence bias measured in simple perceptual decisions correlates with an individual's optimism bias measured with standard questionnaire.

Does Trapping Influence Decision-Making under Ambiguity in White-Lipped Peccary (Tayassu pecari)?

The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) is an endangered species whose bold anti-predator behaviour in comparison to related species may increase its vulnerability to hunting and predation. We used a judgement bias test to investigate whether captive peccaries that had recently experienced a trapping event made more 'pessimistic' decisions under ambiguity. If so, this would indicate (i) that the procedure may induce a negative affective state and hence have welfare implications, and (ii) that the species is able to adopt a cautious response style despite its bold phenotype. Eight individuals were trained to 'go' to a baited food bowl when a positive auditory cue (whistle; CS+) was given and to 'no-go' when a negative cue (horn A; CS-) was sounded to avoid a loud sound and empty food bowl. An 'ambiguous' auditory cue (bell; CSA) was presented to probe decision-making under ambiguity. Individuals were subjected to three tests in the order: T1 (control-no trap), T2 (24h after-trap procedure), and T3 (control-no trap). In each test, each animal was exposed to 10 judgement bias trials of each of the three cue types: CS+,CS-,CSA. We recorded whether animals reached the food bowl within 60s ('go' response) and their response speed (m/s). The animals varied in their responses to the CSA cue depending on test type. In all tests, animals made more 'go' responses to CS+ than CSA. During control tests (T1 and T3), the peccaries showed higher proportions of 'go' responses to CSA than to CS-. In T2, however, the animals showed similar proportions of 'go' responses to CSA and CS-, treating the ambiguous cue similarly to the negative cue. There were differences in their response speed according to cue type: peccaries were faster to respond to CS+ than to CS- and CSA. Trapping thus appeared to cause a 'pessimistic' judgement bias in peccaries, which may reflect a negative affective state with implications for the welfare and management of captive individuals, and also function to increase caution and survival chances following such an event in the wild environment.

Visual Causality Judgments Correlate with the Phase of Alpha Oscillations.

The detection of causality is essential for our understanding of whether distinct events relate. A central requirement for the sensation of causality is temporal contiguity: As the interval between events increases, causality ratings decrease; for intervals longer than approximately 100 msec, the events start to appear independent. It has been suggested that this effect might be due to perception relying on discrete processing. According to this view, two events may be judged as sequential or simultaneous depending on their temporal relationship within a discrete neuronal process. To assess if alpha oscillations underlie this discrete neuronal process, we investigated how these oscillations modulate the judgment of causality. We used the classic launching effect with concurrent recording of EEG signal. In each trial, a disk moved horizontally toward a second disk at the center of the screen and stopped when they touched each other. After a delay that varied between 0 and 400 msec after contact, the right disk began to move. Participants were instructed to judge whether or not they had a feeling that the first disk caused the movement of the second disk. We found that frontocentral alpha phase significantly biased causality estimates. Moreover, we found that alpha phase was concentrated around different angles for trials in which participants judged events as causally related versus not causally related. We conclude that alpha phase plays a key role in biasing causality judgments.

Proprioceptive body illusions modulate the visual perception of reaching distance.

The neurobiology of reaching has been extensively studied in human and non-human primates. However, the mechanisms that allow a subject to decide-without engaging in explicit action-whether an object is reachable are not fully understood. Some studies conclude that decisions near the reach limit depend on motor simulations of the reaching movement. Others have shown that the body schema plays a role in explicit and implicit distance estimation, especially after motor practice with a tool. In this study we evaluate the causal role of multisensory body representations in the perception of reachable space. We reasoned that if body schema is used to estimate reach, an illusion of the finger size induced by proprioceptive stimulation should propagate to the perception of reaching distances. To test this hypothesis we induced a proprioceptive illusion of extension or shrinkage of the right index finger while participants judged a series of LEDs as reachable or non-reachable without actual movement. Our results show that reach distance estimation depends on the illusory perceived size of the finger: illusory elongation produced a shift of reaching distance away from the body whereas illusory shrinkage produced the opposite effect. Combining these results with previous findings, we suggest that deciding if a target is reachable requires an integration of body inputs in high order multisensory parietal areas that engage in movement simulations through connections with frontal premotor areas.

Quality of life of coronary artery disease patients after the implementation of planning strategies for medication adherence / Qualidade de vida de coronariopatas após implementação de estratégias de planejamento para adesão medicamentosa / Calidad de vida de pacientes con enfermedad coronaria después de implementación de estrategias de planificación para adherencia a medicamentos

OBJECTIVE: to compare the general and specific health-related quality of life (HRQoL) between the Intervention (IG) and Control (CG) groups of coronary artery disease patients after the implementation of Action Planning and Coping Planning strategies for medication adherence and to verify the relationship between adherence and HRQoL. METHOD: this was a controlled and randomized study. RESULTS: the sample (n=115) was randomized into two groups, IG (n=59) and CG (n=56). Measures of medication adherence and general and specific HRQoL were obtained in the baseline and after two months of monitoring. CONCLUSION: the findings showed that the combination of intervention strategies - Action Planning and Coping Planning for medication adherence did not affect the HRQoL of coronary artery disease patients in outpatient monitoring. .

OBJETIVO: comparar a qualidade de vida relacionada à saúde - geral e específica - de pacientes coronariopatas entre os grupos Intervenção e Controle, após a implementação das estratégias de Planejamento de Ação e de Enfrentamento de Obstáculos para adesão medicamentosa e verificar a relação entre adesão e qualidade de vida, relacionada à saúde. MÉTODO: trata-se de estudo controlado e randomizado. RESULTADOS: a amostra (n=115) foi aleatorizada nos grupos Intervenção (n=59) e Controle (n=56). Foram obtidas medidas de adesão medicamentosa e de qualidade de vida relacionada à saúde geral e específica, na fase inicial do estudo e após dois meses de seguimento. CONCLUSÃO: os achados evidenciaram que a combinação de estratégias de intervenção - Planejamento de Ação e de Enfrentamento de Obstáculos para adesão medicamentosa não influenciou a qualidade de vida relacionada à saúde de pacientes coronariopatas em seguimento ambulatorial. .

OBJETIVO: comparar la calidad de vida relacionada a la salud (CVRS) - general y específica de pacientes con enfermedad coronaria entre los grupos Intervención y Control después de la implementación de las estrategias de Planificación de Acción y de Enfrentamiento de Obstáculos para adherencia a medicamentos y verificar la relación entre adherencia y CVRS. MÉTODO: se trata de estudio controlado y aleatorio. RESULTADOS: la muestra (n=115) fue del tipo aleatorio en los grupos GI (n=59) y GC (n=56). Fueron obtenidas medidas de adherencia a medicamentos y de CVRS general y específica, en la fase inicial del estudio y después de dos meses de seguimiento. CONCLUSIÓN: los hallazgos evidenciaron que la combinación de estrategias de intervención - Planificación de Acción y de Enfrentamiento de Obstáculos para adherencia a medicamentos no influenció la CVRS de pacientes con enfermedad coronaria en seguimiento en ambulatorio. .

Neural correlates of perceived confidence in a partial report paradigm.

Confidence judgments are often severely distorted: People may feel underconfident when responding correctly or, conversely, overconfident in erred responses. Our aim here was to identify the timing of brain processes that lead to variations in objective performance and subjective judgments of confidence. We capitalized on the Partial Report Paradigm [Sperling, G. The information available in brief visual presentations. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 74, 1, 1960], which allowed us to separate experimentally the moment of encoding of information from that of its retrieval [Zylberberg, A., Dehaene, S., Mindlin, G. B., & Sigman, M. Neurophysiological bases of exponential sensory decay and top-down memory retrieval: A model. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 3, 2009]. We observed that the level of subjective confidence is indexed by two very specific evoked potentials at latencies of about 400 and 600 msec during the retrieval stage and by a stationary measure of intensity of the alpha band during the encoding period. When factoring out the effect of confidence, objective performance shows a weak effect during the encoding and retrieval periods. These results have relevant implications for theories of decision-making and confidence, suggesting that confidence is not constructed online as evidence is accumulated toward a decision. Instead, confidence attributions are more consistent with a retrospective mechanism that monitors the entire decision process.

The thematic hierarchy in sentence comprehension: A study on the interaction between verb class and word order in Spanish.

Linking is the theory that captures the mapping of the semantic roles of lexical arguments to the syntactic functions of the phrases that realize them. At the sentence level, linking allows us to understand "who did what to whom" in an event. In Spanish, linking has been shown to interact with word order, verb class, and case marking. The current study aims to provide the first piece of experimental evidence about the interplay between word order and verb type in Spanish. We achieve this by adopting role and reference grammar and the extended argument dependency model. Two different types of clauses were examined in a self-paced reading task: clauses with object-experiencer psychological verbs and activity verbs. These types of verbs differ in the way that their syntactic and semantic structures are linked, and thus they provide interesting evidence on how information that belongs to the syntax-semantics interface might influence the predictive and integrative processes of sentence comprehension with alternative word orders. Results indicate that in Spanish, comprehension and processing speed is enhanced when the order of the constituents in the sentence mirrors their ranking on a semantic hierarchy that encodes a verb's lexical semantics. Moreover, results show that during online comprehension, predictive mechanisms based on argument hierarchization are used rapidly to inform the processing system. Our findings corroborate already existing cross-linguistic evidence on the issue and are briefly discussed in the light of other sentence-processing models.

Memory consolidation for duration.

Humans and animals encode and store in memory elapsed intervals as evidenced through their temporal expectancies. However, there are very few experimental studies on long-term memory of duration. The aim of this original study was to examine the consolidation process for duration and its effect on time judgement. In our study, memory of duration was tested in humans with a temporal generalization task. Consolidation was assessed by means of a 15-min nontemporal interference task introduced at different delays after the initial learning of a 4-s standard duration. The results showed that (a) when tested 24 hours after the learning phase, memory of the 4-s duration was disrupted (less precision and lengthening effect) if the interference task was introduced 30-45 min after learning; (b) no disruption was observed when memory was tested immediately after the interference task; and (c) there was a temporal gradient of the disruptive interference effect within the first hour after learning. Overall, these results fulfil the key criteria for the inference of a synaptic/cellular consolidation process and thus demonstrate that, as is the case for other memories, memory of duration undergoes a consolidation process that lasts at least one hour.

Depressive symptoms, self-esteem, HIV symptom management self-efficacy and self-compassion in people living with HIV.

The aims of this study were to examine differences in self-schemas between persons living with HIV/AIDS with and without depressive symptoms, and the degree to which these self-schemas predict depressive symptoms in this population. Self-schemas are beliefs about oneself and include self-esteem, HIV symptom management self-efficacy, and self-compassion. Beck's cognitive theory of depression guided the analysis of data from a sample of 1766 PLHIV from the USA and Puerto Rico. Sixty-five percent of the sample reported depressive symptoms. These symptoms were significantly (p ≤ 0.05), negatively correlated with age (r = -0.154), education (r = -0.106), work status (r = -0.132), income adequacy (r = -0.204, self-esteem (r = -0.617), HIV symptom self-efficacy (r = - 0.408), and self-kindness (r = - 0.284); they were significantly, positively correlated with gender (female/transgender) (r = 0.061), white or Hispanic race/ethnicity (r = 0.047) and self-judgment (r = 0.600). Fifty-one percent of the variance (F = 177.530 (df = 1524); p < 0.001) in depressive symptoms was predicted by the combination of age, education, work status, income adequacy, self-esteem, HIV symptom self-efficacy, and self-judgment. The strongest predictor of depressive symptoms was self-judgment. Results lend support to Beck's theory that those with negative self-schemas are more vulnerable to depression and suggest that clinicians should evaluate PLHIV for negative self-schemas. Tailored interventions for the treatment of depressive symptoms in PLHIV should be tested and future studies should evaluate whether alterations in negative self-schemas are the mechanism of action of these interventions and establish causality in the treatment of depressive symptoms in PLHIV.