Performance of aging consumers in an e-commerce product choice task: The role of working memory and decision strategies.

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in research on aging and the decision-making behavior of older consumers. The subject of this article is multi-attribute decisions made using product comparison, a widely used functionality of many e-commerce stores. Studies on cognitive aging have established a negative relationship between age and accuracy in multi-attribute choice tasks; however, works in informatics (Human-Computer Interaction, UX research) have not accounted for how individual user differences affect the optimality of users' product comparison decisions.

Investigating the Impact of Guided Imagery on Stress, Brain Functions, and Attention: A Randomized Trial.

The aim of this study was to investigate the potential impact of guided imagery (GI) on attentional control and cognitive performance and to explore the relationship between guided imagery, stress reduction, alpha brainwave activity, and attentional control using common cognitive performance tests. Executive function was assessed through the use of attentional control tests, including the anti-saccade, Stroop, and Go/No-go tasks. Participants underwent a guided imagery session while their brainwave activity was measured, followed by attentional control tests.

Effects of Depressed Mood on Syllogistic Reasoning: The Buffering Role of High Working Memory Span.

Previous research provided consistent evidence for the existence of the unique cognitive limitation in depressed mood: the impairment of the construction of mental models. In the current research, we applied the classical paradigm using categorical syllogisms to examine the relationship between depressed mood and integrative reasoning, aiming at gathering research evidence on the moderating role of the operation span of working memory. Specifically, we examine the hypothesis that high working memory capacity is a buffering variable and acts as a protective factor preventing the negative impact of depressed mood on syllogistic reasoning.

Chronic Stereotype Threat Is Associated With Mathematical Achievement on Representative Sample of Secondary Schoolgirls: The Role of Gender Identification, Working Memory, and Intellectual Helplessness.

Stereotype threat affects performance in many different groups across many different domains. Despite a large body of experimental research on situational stereotype threat, little attention has been paid to the consequences of repeated experience of stereotype threat. Using structural equation modeling on data from a representative sample of girls from secondary schools, the current research examined the relations of chronic stereotype threat with mathematical achievement, and effectiveness of working memory functions.

Age-related within-task adaptations in sequential decision making: Considering cognitive and motivational factors.

Many decisions require sequentially searching through the available alternatives. In these tasks, older adults have been shown to perform worse than younger adults, but the reasons why age differences occur are still unclear. In the present research, we tackle this question by investigating which strategies older and younger adults adopt and how these strategies relate to individual differences in cognitive (mental speed, working memory capacity) and motivational (need for cognitive closure) variables.

Age As Moderator of Emotional Stroop Task Performance in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Emotional Stroop task (EST) has been extensively used to investigate attentional processes in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Even though aging significantly changes the dynamics of emotion-cognition interactions, very little is known about its role in shaping EST performance in PTSD patients. In the present study we tested a uniquely large sample of motor vehicle accident victims.

Effects of Age and Initial Risk Perception on Balloon Analog Risk Task: The Mediating Role of Processing Speed and Need for Cognitive Closure.

According to the dual-process theoretical perspective adopted in the presented research, the efficiency of deliberative processes in decision making declines with age, but experiential processes are relatively well-preserved. The age-related differences in deliberative and experiential processes in risky decision-making were examined in this research by applying the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART). We analyzed the influence of age on risk acceptance and decision-making performance in two age groups of female participants (younger adults, n = 81; older adults, n = 76), with additional experimental manipulation of initial risk perception.

Frontal EEG alpha band asymmetry as a predictor of reasoning deficiency in depressed people.

Cognitive deficits in depression are mostly apparent in executive functions, especially when integration of information and reasoning is required. In parallel, there are also numerous studies pointing to the frontal alpha band asymmetry as a psychophysiological marker of depression. In this study, we explored the role of frontal alpha asymmetry as a potential factor explaining the cognitive problems accompanying depression.

Mental model construction, not just memory, is a central component of cognitive change in psychotherapy.

We challenge the idea that a cognitive perspective on therapeutic change concerns only memory processes. We argue that inclusion of impairments in more generative cognitive processes is necessary for complete understanding of cases such as depression. In such cases what is identified in the target article as an "integrative memory structure" is crucially supported by processes of mental model construction.

The influence of aging on outgroup stereotypes: the mediating role of cognitive and motivational facets of deficient flexibility.

Unlabelled: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The current study was designed to examine previously reported findings about age-related changes in drawing stereotypic inferences; specifically, that older adults are more likely than younger adults to stereotype outgroup members. The study replicates previous research and extends it by exploring the cognitive and motivational facets of deficient flexibility underlying this effect and comparing stereotypes towards ingroup and outgroup members.

Methods: In the experiment, younger and older adults read stories that allowed for stereotypic inferences.

The importance of adult life-span perspective in explaining variations in political ideology.

As a comment on Hibbing et al.'s paper, we discuss the evolution of political and social views from more liberal to more conservative over the span of adulthood. We show that Hibbing et al.

Reconnecting cognition in the lab and cognition in real life: The role of compensatory social and motivational factors in explaining how cognition ages in the wild.

The papers in this Special Issue compellingly show that older adults' everyday cognitive life is governed not by the decline in elementary cognitive processes as measured in the lab, but by a multitude of compensatory mechanisms, most of which are of the social/motivational variety. Much of this compensatory behavior can be elicited with no or only little experimental prodding, underscoring the self-organizing or self-initiated nature of this type of behavior, even in advanced old age. We suggest that the study of compensation and the orchestration of cognitive, social, and motivational compensatory mechanisms in effective and healthy aging provides a meaningful challenge to traditional ways of examining developmental changes in cognitive performance.

A role for the right prefrontal and bilateral parietal cortex in four-term transitive reasoning: an fMRI study with abstract linear syllogism tasks.

Previous imaging studies have identified many brain regions activated during reasoning, but there are differences among the findings concerning specific regions engaged in reasoning and the contribution of language areas. Also, little is known about the relation between task complexity and neural activation during reasoning. The present fMRI study investigated brain activity during complex four-term transitive reasoning with abstract material (determinate or partially indeterminate) and compared the resulting images to those obtained during a memorization task.

Positive effects of subclinical depression in prospective memory and ongoing tasks in young and old adults.

Results reported in the literature show that depression can have either negative or neutral effects on prospective memory (PM). The goal of the present study was to broaden the analysis of depression-related effects on PM, with regard to the possibility that subclinical depression may have positive influence on PM. A total of 120 participants from four groups (young/old, subclinically depressed/non-depressed) completed event- and time-based PM tasks embedded in the linear orders task or stories task, respectively.

Similar rivastigmine pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in Japanese and white healthy participants following the application of novel rivastigmine patch.

The pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of rivastigmine were compared in Japanese and white healthy participants who were given ascending single doses of the novel rivastigmine transdermal patch. Rivastigmine patch strengths were 4.6 mg/24 h (5 cm2, 9 mg rivastigmine loaded dose), 9.

Steady-state pharmacokinetics of rivastigmine in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease not affected by co-administration of memantine: an open-label, crossover, single-centre study.

Background And Objective: It has been shown that combining memantine and a cholinesterase inhibitor, which each affect different neurotransmitter systems, may offer further improvements in efficacy over either treatment alone in patients with Alzheimer's disease. The present study was conducted to determine if memantine has any effects on the steady-state pharmacokinetics of rivastigmine in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.

Methods: Rivastigmine-treated Alzheimer's disease patients who had been maintained on a fixed regimen of twice-daily rivastigmine for >or=2 months were eligible to enter the study.

Similar bioavailability of dexmethylphenidate extended (bimodal) release, dexmethyl-phenidate immediate release and racemic methylphenidate extended (bimodal) release formulations in man.

Objective: The d-isomer of methylphenidate (d-MPH) is the pharmacologically active part of the racemic mixture of methylphenidate (d,l-MPH), which has been used for decades in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A modified release formulation with bimodal release for the pure d-enantiomer (Focalin XR) has been developed to enable a fast onset of action and a sustained activity for once-daily administration. It was intended to achieve a bimodal concentration-time profile as observed after administration of two immediate release Focalin tablets.

Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the novel daily rivastigmine transdermal patch compared with twice-daily capsules in Alzheimer's disease patients.

A transdermal patch has been developed for the cholinesterase inhibitor rivastigmine. This study investigated the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of rivastigmine and NAP226-90, and compared drug exposure between patch and capsule administrations. This was an open-label, parallel-group study in Alzheimer's disease patients randomized to receive either capsule (1.

Pharmacokinetics of a rivastigmine transdermal patch formulation in healthy volunteers: relative effects of body site application.

A patch formulation of rivastigmine, an inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase, is under development. The current objective was to evaluate the pharmacokinetic profile and patch adhesiveness following application at the upper back, chest, abdomen, thigh, and upper arm. In a single-dose, open-label, crossover study with 40 (42.

Dose-proportional pharmacokinetics of d-threo-methylphenidate after a repeated-action release dosage form.

A bimodal extended-release formulation of d-methylphenidate (d-MPH) has been developed to enable fast onset of action and once-daily administration in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The authors studied the dose proportionality of extended-release d-MPH pharmacokinetics. Twenty-five healthy adult volunteers received 5, 10, 20, 30, and 40 mg d-MPH in a crossover study with 7 days between doses.

Effects of subclinical depression and aging on generative reasoning about linear orders: same or different processing limitations?

The performance of older adults and depressed people on linear order reasoning is hypothesized to be best explained by different theoretical models. Whereas depressed younger adults are found to be impaired in generative inference making, older adults are well capable of making such inferences but exhibit problems with working memory (Experiments 1 and 2). Restriction of the available study time impairs reasoning by nondepressed control participants and.

Absorption of rivastigmine from different regions of the gastrointestinal tract in humans.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the rate and extent of absorption and metabolism of rivastigmine (Exelon), ENA 713) after site-specific delivery of the drug in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract using a naso-intestinal intubation technique. Healthy adult subjects (n = 7) received, on four separate occasions, a 3-mg dose of a rivastigmine solution (2 mg/mL) orally and via a naso-intestinal tube to three GI sites (jejunum, ileum, and ascending colon). On each of the 3 treatment days for regional GI dosing, the tube was progressed to each of the three GI sites, which was determined by a radiographical technique prior to dosing.