Perspective judgment across adulthood: Evidence from bilinguals.

Judging the perspective of others often requires ignoring one's own accessible knowledge. Aging increases reliance on the most available knowledge and may decrease the adjustment of this knowledge to adopt another perspective. Using a dominant language also decreases control demands, while using a nondominant language promotes deliberation. We examined whether aging and language dominance shape the way in which individuals judge someone else's interpretation of ambiguous messages. Russian-Hebrew bilinguals (N = 237, ages 19-80) read 20 ambiguous messages and judged how a recipient would interpret them. Half of the texts contained information that suggested that the message was sincere, and half of the texts contained information that implied that the message was sarcastic. This information was available only to the participant and should not have affected the recipient's interpretation. An egocentric bias emerged in both languages since participants could not ignore their own knowledge when judging the recipient's perspective. Aging was associated with a greater bias, but the results were similar in both languages. A second study included 60 younger (ages 18-39) and 62 older (ages 60-80) Israeli-born participants, who performed the same task as well as a flanker task (i.e., judging the direction of a central arrow flanked by congruent and incongruent distractors). Age interacted with the egocentric bias, but there was no correlation between the flanker effect and perspective judgment. Thus, decreased inhibition, as measured by the flanker task, cannot account for the egocentric bias. We suggest that the findings reflect difficulty in overriding highly accessible information, especially in older age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Do All Switches Cost the Same? Reliability of Language Switching and Mixing Costs.

The current study examined the reliability and consistency of switching and mixing costs in the language and the color-shape tasks in three pre-existing data sets, to assess whether they are equally well suited for the study of individual differences. Specifically, we considered if the language task is as reliable as the color-shape task - an important question given the wide use of language switching tasks but little information available to address this question. Switching costs had low to moderate reliability and internal consistency, and these were similar for the language and the color-shape tasks. Mixing costs were more reliable in the language task than in the color-shape task when tested twice on the same day and trended in the same direction when tested a week apart. In addition, mixing costs were larger and more consistent than switching costs in all data sets and they were also were more reliable than switching costs in the language task when tested on the same day. These results reveal the language task to be as good as the color-shape task for measuring switching and mixing ability. Low variability of switching costs may decrease their reliability and consistency, in turn interfering with the chance of detecting cross task correlations. We advocate for exploring procedures to increase the variability of switching costs, which might increase reliability and consistency of these measures, and improve the ability to determine if bilingual language use relies on cognitive mechanisms that overlap with those underlying nonlinguistic multi-tasking.

More evidence that a switch is not (always) a switch: Binning bilinguals reveals dissociations between task and language switching.

The current study examined the cognitive mechanisms underlying task and language switching by comparing them with each other, and with flanker task performance, at multiple points of the response time distribution. Ninety-eight Spanish-English bilinguals completed cued language and color-shape switching tasks, and 2 versions of a nonlinguistic flanker task. Bilinguals responded more quickly and exhibited smaller mixing costs in the language task, but surprisingly exhibited larger switching costs than in the color-shape task. This language-task disadvantage was especially apparent in slower reaction times (RTs), because switching costs increased significantly through the slowest end of the RT distribution only in the language task (but not in the color-shape task). Although the flanker task resembled the language task to a greater extent than the color-shape task in some measures (e.g., flanker effects were largest in the slowest RT bins, like language switching costs), in other measures the 2 switching tasks resembled each other and the flanker task stood out as different (i.e., trial sequence effects and correlations between tasks in various cost measures). These results reveal that different measures of switching costs even in tasks with very similar designs, vary in the extent to which they measure switching ability, both between tasks, and even between different trials within the same task. Distributional analysis of RTs across tasks suggests that slow responses, particularly when switching between non-naturally competing responses, might not measure switching ability at all, and raises the possibility that smaller switching costs can even reflect reduced ability to juggle tasks in some cases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

What's left for balanced bilinguals? Language proficiency and item familiarity affect left-hemisphere specialization in metaphor processing.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize the hemispheric processing of metaphors in bilinguals compared with monolinguals and to determine the role of language proficiency in hemispheric lateralization. METHOD: Fifty-seven English-dominant Spanish-English bilinguals and 57 English speaking monolinguals participated in a divided visual field study. The two groups performed a semantic judgment task with metaphorical, literal, and unrelated word pairs presented either to the right visual field/left hemisphere or to the left visual field/right hemisphere. RESULTS: Bilinguals processed metaphors more slowly and less accurately than monolinguals in both visual field presentations but there was no difference between the groups in the symmetry of processing-both groups showed a left hemisphere advantage. In bilinguals, the efficiency of processing within the left, but not the right, hemisphere was predicted by language dominance scores (i.e., English minus Spanish picture naming scores). Additionally, in all participants, the left hemisphere was more sensitive than the right hemisphere to metaphor familiarity; the latter in turn was sensitive to metaphor familiarity only in balanced bilinguals (not in unbalanced bilinguals and monolinguals). CONCLUSION: These results suggest that even though bilinguals are less efficient, they rely on the same underlying cognitive mechanisms as monolinguals in linguistic processing of metaphors. Moreover, whereas the right hemisphere is coarsely affected by language proficiency, the left hemisphere, and metaphor processing therein, is more sensitive to small variations in linguistic experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Attenuated hemispheric asymmetry in metaphor processing among adults with ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize the hemispheric processing of metaphors in adults with ADHD compared to controls. METHOD: We investigated the hemispheric processing of metaphors in 24 adult participants diagnosed with ADHD and 24 control participants. The hemispheric processing was examined using a divided visual field paradigm, in which different kinds of metaphors as well as literal word pairs and unrelated word pairs were presented either to the right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH) or to the left visual field/right hemisphere (LVF/RH). RESULTS: Control participants processed metaphors more efficiently when presented in the LVF/RH than when presented in the RVF/LH, whereas participants with ADHD demonstrated attenuated asymmetry of hemispheric processing. Furthermore, asymmetry of hemispheric processing, together with sustained attention, contributed significantly to the prediction of self-report of ADHD symptoms. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that the hemispheric processing of adults with ADHD is less lateralized than the hemispheric processing of control participants. Moreover, the diminished lateralization of metaphor processing along with deficient sustained attention may reflect distinct cognitive mechanisms underlying ADHD and as such our results support multiple pathway models of ADHD. (PsycINFO Database Record

Semantic conflicts are resolved differently by adults with and without ADHD.

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common neurobehavioral disorder characterized by various behavioral and cognitive difficulties. Previous studies indicated that children with ADHD have language difficulties, including difficulties in metaphor understanding but the relation between metaphor processing and specific cognitive functions needs further investigation. In the current study we examined how adults with and without ADHD resolve semantic conflicts between a metaphorical prime and a metaphorical or literal target sentence. Twenty-six adults with ADHD and 24 age-matched control participants underwent a thorough evaluation of neuropsychological skills, as well as assessment of various aspects of attention. Results suggested that people with ADHD were less efficient than controls in resolving conflicts between metaphorical and literal meanings of sentence pairs. In addition they showed deficient sustained attention and executive attention. Moreover, the ability to resolve semantic conflicts was related to semantic fluency in the ADHD group, but to executive attention in the control group. These findings emphasize the various specific difficulties of adults with ADHD and shed light on the different role of attention in the resolution of semantic conflicts among ADHD individuals as compared to controls.

Short-term follow-up of children at risk: comparison of the quality of life of children removed from home and children remaining at home.

OBJECTIVE: To follow up the well-being of children at risk after a decision on their removal was made. METHOD: Social workers assessed the quality of life (QOL) of three groups of children (n = 92): children they had decided to keep at home, children whom they had removed to alternative care, and children who remained at home despite the decision to remove them. This is a prospective study, in which assessments were made at two points of time: first when the workers began to consider whether or not to remove the child, and again 6 months later. RESULTS: The findings show that even though the QOL of the children in the three groups was similarly low at the first measure, it differed in the second. The QOL of the children who were removed from home had improved, that of the children who remained at home in accord with the workers' decisions remained roughly the same, and that of the children for whom the decision to remove was not implemented declined. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that children at risk may fare better in terms of QOL in alternative placement than at home, and highlight the high price paid by children for whom a decision to remove them from home is not implemented. Further research, however, is required, taking into consideration the interventions and services that the children and their families received in the different settings.

Why social workers do not implement decisions to remove children at risk from home.

OBJECTIVES: The study explores why social workers do not always implement their decisions to remove children at risk from their homes. METHOD: Social workers in Israel filled out questionnaires for 96 children at risk at two points of time: when they began to consider whether or not to remove the child, they completed questionnaires tapping their own, the parents', and the children's features. Six months later, they reported their decision, whether or not they had carried it out, and if not, why not. RESULTS: Some 21% of the workers' decisions were not implemented, almost all of them decisions to remove. The main reasons given were the objections of the parents and/or the child. Decisions were implemented for all the children whose mothers were alcohol or drug addicts. Implementation was lower for older children, children who were uncooperative with the social worker, and for children whose parents were uncooperative. It was also lower among experienced workers than novices. CONCLUSIONS: Further study is required to examine the generalizability of these findings to other countries, to understand better the reasons for the non-implementation, and to follow-up on the consequences of the non-implementation.

Searching for the right word: performance on four word-retrieval tasks across childhood.

Word retrieval was assessed in 207 normally developing Hebrew-speaking children aged 8-17 through four tasks: picture naming, phonemic fluency, semantic fluency, and homophone meaning generation (HMGT). Scores on all tests correlated positively and significantly with participant age. Yet, age effects and the correlation between age and test scores were weakest for the naming test and strongest for the HMGT. We discuss the nature of the word search involved in each task and suggest that the more executive demands required by a test the steeper the slope of performance increase on this test.

How does the homophone meaning generation test associate with the phonemic and semantic fluency tests? A quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The current study examines whether the Homophone Meaning Generation Test (HMGT; Warrington, 2000) is correlated with the phonemic and/or the semantic fluency tests and compares its association with the number of switches and clusters and the mean cluster size of these two tasks. One hundred healthy Hebrew speakers (18-35 years of age; mean = 24.9) generated meanings for 24 homophones and provided words beginning in three different letters, as well as words belonging to three semantic categories. Results show that the HMGT score correlated significantly and similarly with the total score of both the phonemic and the semantic fluency tests. There was a significant correlation between the HMGT and the number of phonemic switches and clusters, but not between the HMGT and the mean phonemic cluster size. The HMGT correlated with the number of semantic switches and clusters, as well as with the mean semantic cluster size. The findings suggest that the relationship between these tests is mediated by a shared executive component, attesting to the HMGT's utility in tapping into mechanisms of shifting and mental flexibility.