Americans have a longer digit span but a shorter spatial span than Finns.

Objective: Cross-national studies of test norms show American superiority in digit span (DS) length as compared to European norms. In our study, American and Finnish DS and Spatial span (SS) norms were analyzed to study the hypothesis that the differences in DS reflect a systemic difference in working memory and are not based on linguistic factors.

Method: The mean DS and SS scores from the Wechsler Memory Scale III US ( = 1,250) and Finnish ( = 251) standardizations were compared.

Cognitive profile in functional disorders.

Introduction: Patients with functional disorders (FD) often experience cognitive problems such as forgetfulness and distractibility alongside physical symptoms that cannot be attributed to a known somatic disease.

Method: Test scores of cognitive tests and psychiatric rating scales of 100 outpatients diagnosed with a functional disorder were compared to a control group (n = 300) of patients with other diagnoses and to test norms for the general population.

Results: Out of the 100 patients with functional disorders, 59 reported significant subjective cognitive symptoms.

Age of Acquisition of Personality Terms: Implications for Personality Theory.

Analysis of the age of acquisition (AoA) of personality terms represents a genetic method for the study of the individual personality lexicon and offers a potential alternative to correlational analysis for identifying the fundamental personality descriptors among the thousands of terms that appear in language. In the present study, the relationship between AoA, word frequency, word desirability, and factor loading in the Big Five and Hexaco models of 274 and 408 personality adjectives was analyzed. It was found that young children (2nd graders or younger) acquire personality terms that represent traits at the core of the broad personality factors in the Big Five and Hexaco models slightly earlier than words that represent more peripheral traits.

An examination of factors that may contribute to gender differences in psychomotor processing speed.

Background: For unknown reasons, females outperform males on tests of psychomotor processing speed (PS), such as the Coding and Symbol Search subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.

Method: In the present study, the effects of intelligence, memory, personality, fine motor speed, gross motor dexterity, height, weight, age, sex, and education on psychomotor processing speed were studied in an outpatient sample (n = 130).

Results: Moderate (r > .

European and American WAIS IV norms: Cross-national differences in perceptual reasoning, processing speed and working memory subtest scores.

International comparisons of IQ test norms show differences between nations. In the present study, nonverbal reasoning, processing speed and working memory subtest scores of the US, German, French, Finnish, and Scandinavian (combined Swedish-Norwegian-Danish sample) WAIS IV standardization samples were compared. The European samples had higher scores on the reasoning subtests compared to the American sample, corroborating earlier studies.

No grammatical gender effect on affective ratings: evidence from Italian and German languages.

In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatical gender (feminine vs. masculine) on affective judgments of conceptual representation in Italian and German. In particular, we examined the within- and cross-language grammatical gender effect and its interaction with participants' demographic characteristics (such as, the raters' age and sex) on semantic differential scales (affective ratings of valence, arousal and dominance) in Italian and German speakers.

[Adults with mild mental retardation and intelligence tests].

One of the criteria for mild mental retardation is a total level of less than 70 IQ points measured by an intelligence test. The results of intelligence tests are approximate. There are differences in the norms of test versions, and measurement error must be taken into account in individual testing.

The Big Five Factor Marker Adjectives Are Not Especially Popular Words. Are They Superior Descriptors?

Vocabularies of natural languages evolve over time. Useful words become more popular and useless concepts disappear. In this study, the frequency of the use of 295 English, 100 German, and 114 French personality adjectives in book texts and Twitter messages as qualifiers of the words person, woman, homme, femme, and Person was studied.

Effects of bright light treatment on psychomotor speed in athletes.

Purpose: A recent study suggests that transcranial brain targeted light treatment via ear canals may have physiological effects on brain function studied by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques in humans. We tested the hypothesis that bright light treatment could improve psychomotor speed in professional ice hockey players.

Methods: Psychomotor speed tests with audio and visual warning signals were administered to a Finnish National Ice Hockey League team before and after 24 days of transcranial bright light or sham treatment.