Measurement of Centre of Pressure Using the Wii Balance Board in Older Adults with Simulated Visual Impairment

Postural stability is a complex skill dependent upon the coordination of motor, sensory and cognitive systems. The purpose of this project was therefore to explore how older adults’ balance performance is impacted by increased cognitive load, hearing loss, and simulated vision loss. Twenty-eight older adults between the ages of 50 and 93 years (M = 73.86, SD = 10.43) were tested. Participants underwent standard sensory acuity and cognitive functioning tests. The balance trials varied as a function of cognitive load and visual challenge resulting in five conditions: (1) eyes closed, (2) normal vision clear goggles (NV) (3) simulated low vision (20/80) goggles (LV) (4) LV and math task, (5) NV and math task. Postural stability was assessed with three key center of pressure parameters: total path length (TPL), anterior-posterior amplitude (APA) and medial-lateral amplitude (MLA). A mixed-model ANOVA using hearing acuity as a covariate revealed significant effects of complexity in sway amplitude: (APA: p < .017; MLA: p < .020), while TPL approached significance (p < .074). T-tests revealed significant (p < .05) decreases in balance performance across all 3 centre of pressure parameters when comparing single task NV to dual-task NV, NV vs. eyes closed and single task NV vs. LV dual-task. There were significant positive correlations between hearing acuity and balance (MLA) under single task NV (r = .491) and LV conditions (r = .497). Results suggest the attentional demands from increased cognitive load and sensory loss lead to decreases in older adults’ single- and dual-task balance performance.

Conditions in Which Math Anxiety Decrements Performance on Working Memory Capacity Measures

Experiencing math anxiety comes with cognitive costs. The purpose of this study was to test the conditions under which math anxiety decrements working memory capacity. Half the sample of female undergraduate participants received a warning that the study would involve a difficult math task. All participants then completed two working memory assessments, one math-related task and one non-math-related task. Math anxiety was assessed with a short Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale. Results suggest that math-anxious individuals given a warning performed worse than both those without the warning and non-math-anxious individuals. The decrements from math anxiety appeared to specifically harm performance on tasks that overtly involve math as it seems that people struggle most when they plan to struggle. This could provide insight for anxiety treatment in educational and clinical settings.

Examining Academic Coping Strategies Among Black American Students in Terms of Math Resilency

Failure is the most commonly assumed outcome for Black American students studying math, which does not leave much room for understanding how Black American students do succeed in mathematics. Despite this assumption, many Black American students are resilient and able to have positive academic math outcomes. Studies suggest that mathematics literacy in Black American students is linked to identity construction at the intersection of their racial identity and math identity. Using Spencer’s PVEST model as a theoretical framework, the current study examines the need for an inclusive framework that observes and accounts for the many factors that influence students’ educational math outcomes. The current study observes academic coping skills as predictors for math computation outcomes. A group of 146 predominantly Black American students were recruited from an HBCU and completed an in-person computerized easy and hard math task with a word task as the control. The math task measured reaction time and accuracy. Participants also completed a survey with subscales from Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales, Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11, and subscales from the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory. Results revealed that none of the predicted coping strategies were able to predict the outcome on the math task. Data exploration was performed and found that comprehension was able to significantly predict impulsivity and academic efficacy, and planning was able to significantly predict impulsivity and academic efficacy.

Differential brain activity as a function of social evaluative stress in early adolescence: Brain function and salivary cortisol

Understanding individual differences in neural responses to stressful environments is an important avenue of research throughout development. These differences may be especially critical during adolescence, which is characterized by opportunities for healthy development and increased susceptibility to the development of psychopathology. While the neural correlates of the psychosocial stress response have been investigated in adults, these links have not been explored during development. Using a new task, the Minnesota Imaging Stress Test in Children (MISTiC), differences in activation are found in fusiform gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex when comparing a stressful math task to a nonstressful math task. The MISTiC task successfully elicits cortisol responses in a similar proportion of adolescents as in behavioral studies while collecting brain imaging data. Cortisol responders and nonresponders did not differ in their perceived stress level or behavioral performance during the task despite differences in neuroendocrine function. Future research will be able to leverage the MISTiC task for many purposes, including probing associations between individual differences in stress responses with environmental conditions, personality differences, and the development of psychopathology.

Comparative Statistical Analysis of Pre-Existing Non-Symbolic Cognitive Math Models as a Predictor of Math Acuity in Children

Approximate Number System (ANS) acuity has been the underlying basis of mathematical magnitude measure in developing children. The early number learning in a child by means of numerosity representation is said to be best estimated by an ANS based model. ANS models are majorly specific to cases where numbers are represented by non-digits and are therefore non-symbolic (dot representations). Prior research also suggests that ANS acuity models could be used to give an estimate of an accuracy of a child in a non-symbolic math task. Common measures of ANS acuity are based on weber fraction based accuracy performance and some others are based on numerical distance effect and reaction time. However though, very few studies have amalgamated reaction time and weber fraction models and compared them at an individualistic level using actual data collected over participants. In this research study, we effectively try to understand how factors like weber fraction, ratio, magnitude of numbers might affect the performance of a participant in a non-symbolic number comparison task. We also seek for any sort established relationship between numerical distance and reaction time and how that might be a predictor of good/bad performance. We carry out statistical analysis on both of these models (individually and combined) using data obtained from an online math task and thereby deduce which model could be a better predictor of a child’s math acuity.

MIS – A new scoring method for the operation span task that accounts for Math, remembered Items and Sequence.

The operation span task is a well-validated measure of the executive component of working memory. Previous scoring systems of this task focus predominantly on the span part of the task, while the distractor – math task – serves as an exclusion criterion for test assessment only. Here, we propose a new Math-Item-Sequence (MIS) system to score performance on the Ospan based on both the span and math part. This new system provides three main improvements: 1) it eliminates the need to introduce arbitrary exclusion thresholds based on performance on the distractor task; 2) it takes into account remembered letters, and their relative position in the sequence separately; 3) it considers performance on the math task in the scoring of the Ospan task as a downweighing factor. In 6 independent samples we show that MIS score correlates highly with previously recommended scoring methods, suggesting that it measures the same underlying concepts. We also show that internal consistency of MIS is very good and comparable to or higher than the previous methods. We argue that MIS could be used in all samples, but might be of particular interest for small samples, where exclusions of participants are especially costly.