Metacognitive Performance on Memory and Visuospatial Tasks in Functional Cognitive Disorder

Functional Cognitive Disorder (FCD) is a common diagnosis at the memory clinic. FCD is characterised by significant self-reported cognitive symptoms in the absence of external evidence of cognitive dysfunction. A potential explanation for this is a deficit in metacognition, the process by which we internally judge our own abilities. Here we investigated differences in accuracy, confidence, and metacognition between people with FCD (N = 20), neurodegenerative mild cognitive impairment (nMCI; N = 14), and healthy controls (N = 23). The groups were assessed on forced choice memory and perceptual tasks, with trial by trial confidence ratings. FCD and nMCI participants showed lower accuracy on the memory task (means FCD 63.65%, nMCI 63.96%, HC 71.22%), with a significant difference between the FCD and HC groups after controlling for age and sex. There were no between-group differences in memory task confidence (means FCD 3.19, nMCI 3.59, HC 3.71). The FCD group showed greater confidence when longer time was allowed on the memory task. No between group differences in perceptual task accuracy (means FCD 63.97%, nMCI 64.50%, FCD 65.86%) or confidence (means FCD 3.71, nMCI 3.43, HC 3.88) were found. No differences in metacognitive efficacy emerged between the groups, either on the memory or perceptual task (Memory Meta-d’/d’:FCD 0.63, nMCI 0.94 HC 0.85; Perceptual Meta-d’,d’: FCD 0.50, nMCI 0.51, HC 0.72). Participants showed greater metacognitive efficacy on the memory task compared to the perceptual task. The difficulties experienced by people with FCD do not appear to be due to metacognitive deficits. Their performance was similar to people with nMCI over aspects of the memory tasks, which suggests that the primary issue may lie with memory encoding or retrieval, rather than with their judgement of performance accuracy.

Approach direction and accuracy, but not response times, show spatial-numerical association in chicks

Chicks trained to identify a target item in a sagittally-oriented series of identical items show a higher accuracy for the target on the left, rather than that on the right, at test when the series was rotated by 90°. Such bias seems to be due to a right hemispheric dominance in visuospatial tasks. Up to now, the bias was highlighted by looking at accuracy, the measure mostly used in non-human studies to detect spatial numerical association, SNA. In the present study, processing by each hemisphere was assessed by scoring three variables: accuracy, response times and direction of approach. Domestic chicks were tested under monocular vision conditions, as in the avian brain input to each eye is mostly processed by the contralateral hemisphere. Four-day-old chicks learnt to peck at the 4th element in a sagittal series of 10 identical elements. At test, when facing a series oriented fronto-parallel, birds confined their responses to the visible hemifield, with high accuracy for the 4th element. The first element in the series was also highly selected, suggesting an anchoring strategy to start the proto-counting at one end of the series. In the left monocular condition, chicks approached the series starting from the left, and in the right monocular condition, they started from the right. Both hemispheres appear to exploit the same strategy, scanning the series from the most lateral element in the clear hemifield. Remarkably, there was no effect in the response times: equal latency was scored for correct or incorrect and for left vs. right responses. Overall, these data indicate that the measures implying a direction of choice, accuracy and direction of approach, and not velocity, i.e., response times, can highlight SNA in this paradigm. We discuss the relevance of the selected measures to unveil SNA.

Spatial Learning in a Virtual Environment: The Role of Self-Efficacy Feedback and Individual Visuospatial Factors

We examined the roles self-efficacy plays in environmental learning in terms of self-efficacy feedback and task-specific (navigation-based) self-efficacy. We manipulated self-efficacy using positive and neutral feedback to investigate the relationship between receiving positive feedback and environmental learning performance and subsequent recall. A total of 231 participants were administered visuospatial tasks, where 117 received positive feedback, and 114 received neutral feedback. Then, we tested environmental learning using route retracing, pointing, and map-completion tasks. Before each environmental task, participants evaluated their task-specific self-efficacy. A series of spatial self-reported preferences were gathered as well. Mediation models showed that receiving positive feedback after a visuospatial task influences environmental recall performance through the mediation of task-specific self-efficacy. Moreover, after accounting for experimental manipulation and gender, we found that task-specific self-efficacy, sense of direction, and visuospatial abilities influence spatial-recall task performance, even with some differences as a function of the specific recall tasks considered. Overall, our findings suggest that among individual characteristics, task-specific self-efficacy can sustain environmental learning. Furthermore, giving positive feedback can improve spatial self-efficacy before conducting spatial-recall tasks.

Dissociable Effects of Social and Non-Social Autistic Traits on Figure Disembedding and Mental Rotation in Women and Men

Recent data revealed dissociations between social and non-social domains both in autism and neurotypical population. In the present study, we investigated whether specific visuospatial abilities, as mental rotation and figure disembedding, are differently related to social and non-social autistic traits, also considering sex differences in dealing with visuospatial tasks. University students (N = 426) completed the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), mental rotation of two-dimensional figures and figure disembedding tasks. A two-factor model of AQ was used to differentiate social and non-social autistic traits. Mental rotation was affected by a significant interaction between sex, social and non-social traits. This implies that, when non-social traits were above the mean (+ 1 SD), no sex differences in mental rotation were found, whereas, below this value, sex differences depended on the social traits, with men outperforming women at middle-to-high social traits, and with a comparable performance, or even with women outperforming men, at lower social traits. Instead, only a small positive correlation between figure disembedding and social traits was observed in the overall sample. These results are interpreted using the hyper-systemizing framework of autism and contribute to the debate on individual differences in the cognitive style of autistic people and neurotypical people with autistic traits.

Perceptual Load and Sex-Specific Personality Traits

The impact of sex-specific personality traits has often been investigated for visuospatial tasks such as mental rotation, but less is known about the influence of personality traits on visual search. We investigated whether the Big Five personality traits Extroversion (E), Openness (O), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Neuroticism (N) and the Autism Quotient (AQ) influence visual search in a sample of N = 65 men and women. In three experiments, we varied stimulus complexity and predictability. As expected, latencies were longer when the target was absent. Pop-out search was faster than conjunction search. A large number of distracters slowed down reaction times (RTs). When stimulus complexity was not predictable in Experiment 3, this reduced search accuracy by about half. As could be predicted based on previous research on long RT tails, conjunction search in target absent trials revealed the impact of personality traits. The RT effect in visual search of the accelerating “less social” AQ score was specific to men, while the effects of the “more social” decelerating Big Five Inventory factors agreeableness and conscientiousness were specific to women. Thus, sex-specific personality traits could explain decision-making thresholds, while visual stimulus complexity yielded an impact of the classic personality traits neuroticism and extroversion.

Role of testosterone: cortisol ratio in age- and sex-specific cortico-hippocampal development and cognitive performance

Testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) are steroid hormones that have been argued to play opposing roles in shaping physical and behavioral development in humans. While there is evidence linking T and C to different memory processes during adulthood, it remains unclear how the relative levels of T and C (TC ratio) may influence brain and behavioral development, whether they are influenced by sex of the child, and whether or not they occur as a result of stable changes in brain structure (organizational changes), as opposed to transient changes in brain function (activational changes). As such, we tested for associations among TC ratio, cortico-hippocampal structure, and standardized tests of executive, verbal, and visuo-spatial function in a longitudinal sample of typically developing 4–22-year-old children and adolescents. We found greater TC ratios to be associated with greater coordinated growth (i.e. covariance) between the hippocampus and cortical thickness in several areas primarily devoted to visual function. In addition, there was an age-related association between TC ratio and parieto-hippocampal covariance, as well as a sex-specific association between TC ratio and prefrontal-hippocampal covariance. Differences in brain structure related to TC ratio were in turn associated with lower verbal/executive function, as well as greater attention in tests of visuo-spatial abilities. These results support the notion that TC ratio may shift the balance between top-down (cortex to hippocampus) and bottom-up (hippocampus to cortex) processes, impairing more complex, cortical-based tasks and optimizing visuospatial tasks relying primarily on the hippocampus.

Frequency of Recent Binge Drinking Is Associated With Sex-Specific Cognitive Deficits: Evidence for Condition-Dependent Trait Expression in Humans

Evolutionary theory suggests that commonly found sex differences are largest in healthy populations and smaller in populations that have been exposed to stressors. We tested this idea in the context of men’s typical advantage (vs. women) in visuospatial abilities (e.g., mental rotation) and women’s typical advantage (vs. men) in social-cognitive (e.g., facial-expression decoding) abilities, as related to frequent binge drinking. Four hundred nineteen undergraduates classified as frequent or infrequent binge drinkers were assessed in these domains. Trial-level multilevel models were used to test a priori Sex × Group (binge drinking) interactions for visuospatial and social-cognitive tasks. Among infrequent binge drinkers, men’s typical advantage in visuospatial abilities and women’s typical advantage in social-cognitive abilities was confirmed. Among frequent binge drinkers, men’s advantage was reduced for one visuospatial task (Δ d = 0.29) and eliminated for another (Δ d = 0.75), and women’s advantage on the social-cognitive task was eliminated (Δ d = 0.12). Males who frequently engaged in extreme binges had exaggerated deficits on one of the visuospatial tasks, as did their female counterparts on the social-cognitive task. The results suggest sex-specific vulnerabilities associated with recent, frequent binge drinking, and support an evolutionary approach to the study of these vulnerabilities.

Children with weakness in grammar understanding have weakness in visuospatial abilities

Objectives Weakness in grammar understanding is key feature of children with specific language impairments (SLI). The goal of this research was to check out the hypothesis that children with weakness in grammar understanding have also weakness in visuospatial abilities. Methods The children were assessed with the task 'Comprehension of grammatical structures' from Luria's neuropsychological assessment for children. Experimental group included 27 children with weakness in grammar understanding. The control group included 27 children with typical grammar understanding. The children from experimental and control group were matched for IQ, gender and age. To assess the visuospatial abilities in children we used two tasks from Luria's neuropsychological assessment battery (Constructional Praxis and Head Test) as well as the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure test. Results One-way ANOVAs by group revealed significant differences (p ≤ 0,05) between the groups for scores in all visuospatial tasks. It can be assumed that children with weakness in grammar understanding have also weakness in visuospatial functions. We also revealed significant differences (p ≤ 0,05) between the groups for number of spatial errors in the Rey-Osterieth Complex Figure test. Conclusions This study suggests that children with weakness in grammar understanding have also weakness in visuospatial abilities. Received results provided insight into cognitive and language mechanisms in typically developing children and the underlying nature of SLI, helping to elucidate the nature of impaired mechanism in children with weakness in grammar understanding. Key messages Children with weakness in grammar understanding have weakness in visuospatial abilities. It is possible that children with specific language impairments have deficit in nonverbal abilities.

Labor division in joint tasks: Humans maximize use of their individual attentional capacities

In daily life, humans frequently perform visuospatial tasks together (e.g., visual search) and distribute the labour in such tasks. Previous research has shown that humans prefer a left and right labour division in a joint multiple object tracking (MOT) task. Yet, findings from studies investigating individuals' tracking ability suggest attentional capacities may be more maximally used with a top and bottom labour division. We investigated whether co-actors' labour division preference is influenced by how they are seated (neighbouring vs. opposite of each other) or how the MOT task is displayed (portrait vs. landscape). We find that pairs attain a higher performance using a top and bottom labour division and preferred this labour division compared to a left and right division. This preference was unaffected by the seating arrangement. For the landscape display, however, we find that participants no longer attain a higher performance for the top and bottom labour division and accordingly participants' preference for this labour division was greatly reduced as well. Overall, we propose that co-actors are sensitive to changes within their environment which allows them to choose a labour division that maximizes use of their individual attentional capacities.