The Effects of Mindfulness Interventions on Fibromyalgia in Adults aged 65 and Older: A Window to Effective Therapy.

Pain usually receives insufficient attention by individuals due to the misconception that pain is a natural consequence of aging. For persons aged 65 and older, a disease requiring further research is fibromyalgia, characterized by chronic pain without clear pathology. Mind-body therapies like mindfulness are beneficial for this population as they affect psychological and biological aspects of pain.

The effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the subjective well-being of the Israeli population-monitored phase by phase.

The paper examined the effect of the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 on the cognitive and affective components of subjective well-being (SWB) over time in Israel. Just before the first verified patient, we ran a survey of the general population that included questions concerning both components of SWB, self-rated health, income satisfaction, and other socio-demographic aspects. The same survey among different respondents from the same population during the lockdown period when no exit strategy had been conveyed, and for the third time when the exit strategy was publicized and began to be implemented.

The effects of training on tactile enumeration.

Subitizing is a fast and accurate process of enumerating small quantities. Whether subitizing carried out in the tactile modality is under debate. We previously found a moderately increasing RT slope from one to four stimuli and a large decrease in RT for five stimuli when using one hand.

Social priming of hemispatial neglect affects spatial coding: Evidence from the Simon task.

In the Simon effect (SE), choice reactions are fast if the location of the stimulus and the response correspond when stimulus location is task-irrelevant; therefore, the SE reflects the automatic processing of space. Priming of social concepts was found to affect automatic processing in the Stroop effect. We investigated whether spatial coding measured by the SE can be affected by the observer's mental state.

Training and transfer in aging - is pathway overlap really necessary?

Voelker et al. (this issue) discuss how training improves task speed. They suggest two constraints when exploring how training changes cognition through transfer: (1) a link between improved connectivity and response speed and (2) the transfer task should use pathways altered by training.

Social priming improves cognitive control in elderly adults--evidence from the Simon task.

We examined whether social priming of cognitive states affects the inhibitory process in elderly adults, as aging is related to deficits in inhibitory control. Forty-eight elderly adults and 45 young adults were assigned to three groups and performed a cognitive control task (Simon task), which was followed by 3 different manipulations of social priming (i.e.

Simon in action: the effect of spatial congruency on grasping trajectories.

The Simon effect, one of the well-known stimulus-response compatibility effects, is usually explained as an expression of a conflict that occurs at the response selection stage. Here, we extended previous findings to provide evidence for post-response selection expression of the Simon effect. Following a presentation of a visual stimulus, participants grasped one of two objects that differed slightly in size.

Cross-cultural effects on the assumed light source direction: evidence from English and Hebrew readers.

When judging the 3D shape of a shaded image, observers generally assume that the light source is placed above and to the left. This leftward bias has been attributed to experiential factors shaped by the observers' handedness or hemispheric dominance. Others have found that experiential factors can rapidly modify the direction of the assumed light source, suggesting a role for learning in shaping perceptual expectations.

In touch with the Simon effect.

Cognitive control has been extensively studied using the auditory and visual modalities. In the current study, a tactile version of the Simon task was created in order to test control mechanisms in a modality that was less studied, to provide comparative and new information. A significant Simon effect--reaction time gap between congruent (i.

Think the thought, walk the walk - social priming reduces the Stroop effect.

In the Stroop task, participants name the color of the ink that a color word is written in and ignore the meaning of the word. Naming the color of an incongruent color word (e.g.

Stop being neutral: Simon takes control!

The Simon task is one of the well known tasks that recruit cognitive control. The Simon effect, the reaction time (RT) difference between congruent and incongruent stimuli, has been commonly discussed as interference based. Nevertheless, in recent years some studies have referred to the facilitation component of the task.