Clockwise rotation of perspective view improves spatial recognition of complex environments in aging.

Deciphering the human spatial cognition system involves the development of simple tasks to assess how our brain works with shapes and forms. Prior studies in the mental rotation field disclosed a clockwise rotation bias on how basic stimuli are perceived and processed. However, there is a lack of a substantial scientific background for complex stimuli and how factors like sex or aging could influence them. Regarding the latter point, it is well known that our spatial skills tend to decline as we grow older. Hence, the hippocampal system is especially sensitive to aging. These neural changes underlie difficulties for the elderly in landmark orientation or mental rotation tasks. Thus, our study aimed to check whether the effect of clockwise and anticlockwise rotations in the spatial recognition of complex environments could be modulated by aging. To do so, 40 young adults and 40 old adults performed the ASMRT, a virtual spatial memory recognition test. Results showed that young adults outperformed old adults in all difficulty conditions (i.e., encoding one or three boxes positions). In addition, old adults were affected more than young adults by rotation direction, showing better performance in clockwise rotations. In conclusion, our study provides evidence that aging is particularly affected by the direction of rotation. We suggest that clockwise bias could be linked with the cognitive decline associated with aging. Future studies could address this with brain imaging measures.

Comparison of the Predictive Capacity of the Erotophobia-Erotophilia and the Attitudes Toward Sexual Behaviors in the Sexual Experience of Young Adults.

The prediction of sexual behaviors in emerging adult population is important because the number of sexually active individuals is high, and many young adults engage in sexually risky behaviors. Attitudes are an effective way to predict behaviors. The attitude-behavior relation is stronger when both attitude and behavior are measured at equivalent levels of specificity. The aim of this study was to provide empirical support of the Attitudes toward Sexual Behaviors Scale (ASBS) predictive capacity for the sexual experience (number of different sexual behaviors performed) as well as to compare it with the Sexual Opinion Survey (SOS; erotophobia-erotophilia dimension) predictive capacity. Participants were 632 heterosexual young adults (57.8% were women) of Spanish nationality aged 18 to 30 years, selected by incidental and snowball sampling. Sociodemographic questions, the ASBS, the SOS, and a checklist about sexual experience were administered online. When the age and sex variables were controlled, the ASBS predictive capacity for the sexual experience was found to be greater than the SOS predictive capacity in both young men and women. These results might be explained by the higher correspondence in the sexual experience measure (specific sexual behaviors) with the ASBS than with the SOS.