Cognitive Components Research Articles

Culture and Social Movements: The Example of South Africa in the Post-Apartheid Period

This paper explores the intricate relationship between culture and social movements in post-apartheid South Africa through a critical phenomenological approach. This method focuses on the lived experiences and societal impacts of these movements, revealing how cultural symbols, narratives, religious frameworks, sports, media, and identity have shaped and sustained the struggles for justice and equality. The analysis begins by defining social movements and culture, emphasizing their interplay within the South African context. Using a phenomenological approach developed by Husserl and expanded by Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, this study undertakes steps such as phenomenological reduction, description, essence identification, and structural analysis. These steps are further enriched by combining critical theory with phenomenology, highlighting social, historical, and political dimensions. This approach allows for an in-depth understanding of how culture, encompassing cognitive, emotional, and moral components, influences the formation, strategies, and sustainability of social movements. Key findings illustrate that cultural elements have served as sources of resistance, empowerment, and solidarity, playing an essential role in shaping collective identities and actions. Ultimately, this research provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamic interplay between culture and social movements in South Africa, underscoring the importance of cultural resources in driving social change.

Компетенция построения социального пространства отношений дошкольников в системе обеспечения качества профессиональной подготовки будущих педагогов в вузе

The study aims to determine the content and structure of the competence of constructing a social space of preschoolers’ relationships and, based on this, to identify the features of its formation in the quality assurance system of professional training for future educators in higher education institutions. The article analyzes the problem of the quality of professional training for future educators of preschool educational organizations. The scientific novelty of the study lies in describing and characterizing the competence of constructing a social space of preschoolers’ relationships of future educators, determining its structure and content, identifying the components of the competence, and presenting the features of its formation in the educational process of the university, taking into account the requirements of state educational standards. The formation of this competence is carried out through innovative forms, means, methods, and technologies. As a result of the study, it was found that the competence of constructing a social space of preschoolers’ relationships includes professional and personal qualities of future educators that determine their readiness for future professional activities. The structure of the said readiness is comprised of motivational, cognitive, active, and communicative components. The content of these components is substantiated. Features of competence formation in the quality assurance system of professional training for future educators in higher education institutions have been identified.

Instrument for Evaluation and Training of Decision Making in Dual Tasks in Soccer: Validation and Application

Training in team sports such as soccer requires advanced technical and tactical skills for effective decision-making, particularly when executing a shot. This study validates an innovative instrument, a training platform (TP), designed to measure and enhance decision-making in dual-task scenarios. The TP aims to improve visual–motor reactions in multitask environments that simulate real game conditions. Equipped with an LED panel, main circuitry, ball sensor, and targets, the TP challenges players to kick the ball in response to the illumination of the final LED array on the panel while hitting a designated target. The study evaluated three parameters: reaction time (RT), ball speed (BS) and accuracy. To validate the TP against a gold standard (GS), we conducted correlation analyses. The results exhibited very strong correlations for both RT (r = 0.997) and BS (r = 0.994). The mean differences between TP and GS measurements were 13 ± 15 ms for RT and 0.1 ± 0.5 km/h for BS. Bland–Altman plots revealed trend lines obtained by a simple linear regression of r = −0.507, p = 0.307 for RT and r = 0.134, p = 0.077 for BS. The TP effectively simulates game scenarios, offering advantages such as low-cost components, installation flexibility, test variability, instant feedback, and integration of physical and cognitive components of sports performance.

Empathy, personality, and aggression in male and female adolescents

AbstractThe relationship between empathy and aggression is inconclusive, with substantial evidence revealing moderator effects of factors such as age, sex, and personality. This study examines whether sex differences or sex similarities stem from the relationship between empathy, personality, and aggression. There were 197 adolescents enrolled in secondary education (89 males and 108 females), who completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), and the Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ). Females scored higher than males in empathy factors (fantasy, empathic concern, and personal distress), neuroticism, and in aggression (anger and hostility). Males and females showed similar outcomes in the association between perspective taking and personal distress with anger and hostility. Extraversion and neuroticism failed to explain additional variance in instrumental aggression (physical and verbal). Neuroticism, however, explained a meaningful larger amount of variance in the affective and cognitive components of aggression beyond empathy measures for both males and females, anger (9%) and hostility (15%), respectively. The findings suggest that, regardless of sex, empathy appears important for instrumental aggression (physical, verbal), whereas neuroticism is a robust predictor of affective and cognitive aggression (anger, hostility).

Assessing clinical progression measures in Alzheimer's disease trials: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Assessing treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) relies on reliable tools for measuring AD progression. In this analysis, we evaluate the sensitivity of clinical progression measures in AD within randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with confirmed positive amyloid (Aβ+) status prior to trial enrollment. Excluding trials targeting non-cognitive symptoms, we conducted meta-analyses on progression measures from 25 selected RCTs using R version 4.2.0, along with the metafor and emmeans libraries. The Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ) demonstrated the greatest sensitivity over 12weeks. Other cognitive measures demonstrated lower sensitivity. The integrated Alzheimer's Disease Rating Scale (iADRS) and Clinical Dementia Rating-Sum of Boxes (CDR-SB) seemed more effective than their individual cognitive components. Neuropsychiatric measures were the least sensitive in measuring progression. Functional measures generally outperformed other measure categories. Purely cognitive domain-based measures were suboptimal for tracking early AD progression. Ideally, future measures should incorporate both cognitive and functional components to enhance sensitivity. Concerns remain regarding the limitations of current outcome measures used in AD clinical trials, particularly their sensitivity in the early and preclinical stages of the disease, which hampers their reliability as indicators of AD progression. The Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ) demonstrated the most substantial weighted mean change over 12weeks, followed by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Functional measures outperformed other measure categories. Composite scores of integrated Alzheimer's Disease Rating Scale and Clinical Dementia Rating-Sum of Boxes are more sensitive to change than their individual cognitive components, possibly driven by the functional components of the score. Neuropsychiatric measures analyzed in this study appeared to be the least sensitive in measuring progression.

Introducing the ELPIS scale: a novel tool for measuring emotional empathy toward cancer patients.

Empathy, defined as the ability to understand and share another person's feelings, is crucial in the healthcare setting, particularly for patients with cancer who face significant psychosocial challenges. We aimed to develop a novel tool, the Empathy, Life with Cancer, and Psychosocial Skills (ELPIS) Scale that prioritizes emotional and cognitive components in order to determine the reflection of the negative stigmatization of cancer in societies on individuals, excluding the behavioral and ethical dimensions of empathy. The study was conducted using a quantitative research design with a sample of first- and second-year medical students in Türkiye. An initial pool of 48 items was developed based on an extensive review of the literature and existing empathy scales. Following expert review and pilot testing, the scale was refined to 24 items. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted to establish the scale's factor structure and validate its reliability and validity. The exploratory factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure comprising "emotional empathy," "sympathetic responses," and "realistic approaches," with a total of 20 items after refinement. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the model fit, with the scale demonstrating high internal consistency across all three dimensions. The scale's reliability was further supported by high Cronbach's alpha values. The results suggest that the ELPIS Scale is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring emotional empathy toward cancer patients. It offers a nuanced approach by separately assessing emotional, sympathetic, and realistic components of empathy, making it a valuable tool for both educational and clinical applications. Future research should explore the scale's application in diverse populations and settings, as well as its utility in tracking empathy development over time. In conclusion, the ELPIS Scale, which focuses on the emotional and cognitive components of empathy, a multifaceted construct, fills a critical gap in the measurement of empathy in the context of cancer care and provides a comprehensive tool that can improve both patient care and the education of healthcare providers.

A new way to conceptualize intolerance of uncertainty among adolescents: Embracing the network perspective.

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a pivotal transdiagnostic risk factor in psychopathology, is defined as a dispositional incapacity to withstand uncertainty distress, driving maladaptive cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions to uncertainty. However, the intricate interplay among these components, particularly in adolescents, remains underexplored; yet understanding this interplay is crucial for supporting mental health. To address this gap, we employed a network approach to conceptualize IU in 5672 non-clinical Chinese adolescents (Mage = 14.13 years, SDage = 1.96 years, range = 10-19 years, 46.6% boys), combining graphical Gaussian models (GGM) and directed acyclic graphs (DAG). Our analyses revealed a tripartite network comprising cognitive, behavioural and emotional components. Notably, 'frustration' and 'work with hindrance' emerged as key drivers, while 'catastrophizing belief' served as a critical bridge linking different components. These findings underscore the importance of alleviating uncertainty-induced frustration and enhancing coping skills for behavioural impediments to mitigate adolescent IU. Additionally, therapeutic interventions should prioritize modifying and re-evaluating catastrophizing beliefs related to uncertainty.

Exploring attitudes toward ChatGPT among college students: An empirical analysis of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components using path analysis

The advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as ChatGPT, has significantly impacted various aspects of human life, including higher education. This study explores university students' attitudes toward ChatGPT, focusing on the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of attitudes, on the basis of Mitcham's philosophical framework of attitudes toward technology. A total of 595 university students from six public and private universities in northern Peru participated in an online survey. The results of the structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that the affective component (β = 0.672∗∗∗) and the cognitive component (β = 0.260∗∗) positively influence the behavioral component of students' attitudes when ChatGPT is used. Moreover, the cognitive component (β = 0.931∗∗∗) positively influences the affective component of students' attitudes. However, gender and age did not have significant moderating effects on the relationships between the cognitive and affective components and the behavioral component. The discussion highlights that these findings contribute to understanding the psychological mechanisms underlying the adoption of ChatGPT in educational settings and offer valuable guidance for implementing this technology in teaching and learning processes. In conclusion, this study represents a significant advancement in comprehending attitudes toward generative AI technologies in higher education and opens new avenues for future research in this field.

Humans actively reconfigure neural task states.

The ability to switch between different tasks is a core component of adaptive cognition, but a mechanistic understanding of this capacity has remained elusive. Longstanding questions over whether task switching requires active preparation remain hotly contested, in large part due to the difficulty of inferring preparatory dynamics from behavior or time-locked neuroimaging. We make progress on this debate by quantifying neural task representations using high-dimensional linear dynamical systems fit to human electroencephalographic recordings. We find that these dynamical systems have high predictive accuracy and reveal neural signatures of active preparation that are shared with task-optimized neural networks. These findings inform a classic debate about how we control our cognition, and offer a promising new paradigm for neuroimaging analysis.

The role of action concepts in physical reasoning: insights from late childhood.

A fundamental component of human cognition is the ability to intuitively reason about behaviours of objects and systems in the physical world without resorting to explicit scientific knowledge. This skill was traditionally considered a symbolic process. However, in the last decades, there has been a shift towards ideas of embodiment, suggesting that accessing physical knowledge and predicting physical outcomes is grounded in bodily interactions with the environment. Infants and children, who learn mainly through their embodied experiences, serve as a model to probe the link between reasoning and physical concepts. Here, we tested school-aged children (5- to 15-year-olds) in online reasoning games that involve different physical action concepts such as supporting, launching and clearing. We assessed changes in children's performance and strategies over development and their relationships with the different action concepts. Children reasoned more accurately in problems that involved supporting actions compared to launching or clearing actions. Moreover, when children failed, they were more strategic in subsequent attempts when problems involved support rather than launching or clearing. Children improved with age, but improvements differed across action concepts. Our findings suggest that accessing physical knowledge and predicting physical events are affected by action concepts, and those effects change over development. This article is part of the theme issue 'Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence'.

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN SOCIETY AND AUTHORITY IN THE ERA OF CATHERINE II

The article analyses the interaction between society and government during the reign of Catherine II. Various components of this interaction are considered on the basis of general psychological, socio-psychological and psychological-historical concepts. The authors describe the features of communication between the authorities and various social groups - the nobility, merchants, burgers, peasants, other power structures and social institutions. As part of the description of communication between the authorities and the people, special attention is paid to the nature of feedback and the dependence of consciousness on o cial values, which are understood as a set of ideas and symbols aimed at ensuring internal stability, building an image of power and mobilising human resources. The need-based, emotional, cognitive and communicative components of the interaction between society and government during the reign of Catherine II are shown.

Edge Computing with Deep Learning and Internet of Things for Recognising and Predicting Students Emotions and Mental Health

A person's Mental Health (MH) dramatically influences their complete evolution in life, including their cognitive, emotional, and psychomotor components. A person with good MH is content with life and can be creative, learn new things, and take risks to accomplish more significant objectives. Currently, college students are dealing with MH concerns for various causes, which affect their academic performance and significantly contribute to poor academic results. Therefore, encouraging MH in college students presents a significant problem for educators, parents, teacher educators, and governments. Adolescence is a crucial and delicate time characterized by considerable physical, emotional, social, and religious changes. The physical, social, and psychological facets of an individual's growth are laid out in this period, with mental health as a crucial factor in promoting these gains. Therefore, it becomes crucial for researchers to use Deep Learning (DL) algorithms to study the association between MH and vital psychological characteristics, such as emotional intelligence, personality traits, and intelligence. The personal aspects, namely personality, emotional intelligence, and MH are all related ideas that influence one another. Individuals must have mental well-being and emotional harmony to have a good personality. The current study uses DL techniques to investigate the relationship between college students' MH, emotional intelligence, and personality features. To perform a thorough study on emotion identification and Mental Health Prediction (MHP) among college students, this project investigates the integration of edge computing enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) in the context of intelligent systems. Innovative treatments are urgently needed due to this population's rising prevalence of MH issues. This paper aims to continuously monitor and predict college students' MH using Edge Computing (EC) and IoT technology.

Psychotic Experiences Questionnaire. Part 2

BACKGROUND: On the basis of the concept of psychotic and psychotic-like experiences, delusions and auditory hallucinations presented in Part 1 of this article, the structure of the links between psychotic experiences and social anxiety and its components and psychological parameters is analyzed. A mediator model of the relationship between social anxiety and the phase of psychotic alienation — "experiencing external control" — is discussed. AIM: To investigate the parameters and stages of development of psychotic and psychotic-like experiences registered with the Psychotic Experiences Questionnaire in the context of analyzing the structure of relationships with psychological variables (social anxiety, metacognitive and cognitive phenomena). Тo construct a mediator model of the indirect effect of social anxiety components on the “experience of being controlled externally” mediated by thought suppression (“polar bear effect”). MATERIALS AND METHODS: The sample — 122 respondents, includes non-clinical and two clinical groups — with symptoms of the affective spectrum and with symptoms of the psychotic spectrum. The author's ‘Psychotic Experiences Questionnaire’ was used to assess the severity of psychotic experiences, the scales of which represent the phases of the unfolding of the experiences. Social anxiety and its components (author's “Social Anxiety and Social Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire”), cognitive (“Cognitive Flexibility Questionnaire”, “Behavioural Self-Regulation Style — SSPM 2020” questionnaire) and metacognitive (Thought Suppression Scale, author's “Self-Focused Attention Questionnaire”) strategies were determined. RESULTS: Pearson correlation analysis showed significant ‘direct’ associations of early and moderate psychotic and psychotic-like experiences with social anxiety and its components, metacognitive (self-focused attention and thought suppression) parameters, and ‘inverse’ links with cognitive parameters (cognitive component of conscious self-regulation and cognitive flexibility). Correlations with psychological parameters become insignificant in intense psychotic experiences. Using mediator analysis, the full indirect effects of the social anxiety components influence on the enhancement of “experiencing being controlled externally” as a phase of psychotic experiences maximum intensity were measured (mediator — thought suppression). CONCLUSION: Metacognitive strategies, social anxiety, disturbed self-regulation and flexibility play an important role in the genesis and maintenance of psychotic experiences. Significant correlations of the parameters with psychotic experience are shown, but at the height of alienation the significant correlations weaken. At the height of psychotic experience in the absence of direct effects it is possible to explicate the indirect influence of the predictor — social anxiety on the experience of controllability from the outside, mediated by thought suppression. This article is a continuation of the article by Sagalakova OA, Truevtsev DV, Zhirnova OV. Psychotic Experiences Questionnaire. Part 1. Neurology Bulletin. 2024;56(1):23–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17816/nb623959

Content Evaluation of Pruritus, Skin Pain, and Sleep Disturbance Patient-Reported Outcome Measures in Adolescents and Adults With Moderate-to-Severe Atopic Dermatitis: Qualitative Interviews.

Pruritus, skin pain, and sleep disturbance are a significant burden to individuals with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis (AD) and negatively impact quality of life. Fit-for-purpose patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) that assess AD-related pruritus, skin pain, and sleep disturbance are important for evaluating the effectiveness of new AD treatments. To evaluate content validity of five AD-related PROMs in adolescents and adults with moderate-to-severe AD (the Worst Pruritus Numeric Rating Scale [NRS], the AD Skin Pain NRS; the Sleep Disturbance NRS, the skin pain-specific Patient Global Impression of Change [PGIC], and the skin pain-specific Patient Global Impression of Severity [PGIS]) and to assess patient-reported experience with pruritus, skin pain, and sleep disturbance. A qualitative study in adolescents (aged 12-17 years) and adults with moderate-to-severe AD was conducted in two consecutive stages. In each stage, two iterative rounds of individual interviews were conducted by experienced interviewers. All interviews included concept elicitation and cognitive debriefing components. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. A total of 27 adults and 20 adolescents with moderate-to-severe AD participated in the initial content evaluation (Stage 1) of the Worst Pruritus NRS [1.0] and AD Skin Pain NRS [1.0] (n = 26; 16 adults, 10 adolescents) and in the subsequent content evaluation (Stage 2) of the revised Worst Pruritus NRS [1.1], revised AD Skin Pain NRS [1.1], Sleep Disturbance NRS, skin pain-specific PGIC, and skin pain-specific PGIS (n = 21; 11 adults, 10 adolescents). Results were generally aligned and consistent for both adult and adolescent participants. Additionally, we found that sleep disturbance is relevant and important for evaluation in adults and adolescents with moderate-to-severe AD (Stage 2), while also providing further confirmation of this for pruritus and skin pain (Stages 1 and 2). Our findings support the content validity of the revised Worst Pruritus NRS [1.1], revised AD Skin Pain NRS [1.1], Sleep Disturbance NRS, skin pain-specific PGIC, and skin pain-specific PGIS in individuals aged ≥12 years with moderate-to-severe AD. Furthermore, the findings support sleep disturbance, skin pain, and pruritus as being relevant and important features for both adolescents and adults with moderate-to-severe AD.

Neural and Computational Mechanisms of Motivation and Decision-making.

Motivation is often thought to enhance adaptive decision-making by biasing actions toward rewards and away from punishment. Emerging evidence, however, points to a more nuanced view whereby motivation can both enhance and impair different aspects of decision-making. Model-based approaches have gained prominence over the past decade for developing more precise mechanistic explanations for how incentives impact goal-directed behavior. In this Special Focus, we highlight three studies that demonstrate how computational frameworks help decompose decision processes into constituent cognitive components, as well as formalize when and how motivational factors (e.g., monetary rewards) influence specific cognitive processes, decision-making strategies, and self-report measures. Finally, I conclude with a provocative suggestion based on recent advances in the field: that organisms do not merely seek to maximize the expected value of extrinsic incentives. Instead, they may be optimizing decision-making to achieve a desired internal state (e.g., homeostasis, effort, affect). Future investigation into such internal processes will be a fruitful endeavor for unlocking the cognitive, computational, and neural mechanisms of motivated decision-making.

Understanding Psychological Well-being and Resilience among College Nursing Students

Psychological well-being is defined as enhancing positive states and reducing negative states (Ryff, 1989; Ryff & Keyes, 1995). According to Ryff (1989), psychological well-being encompasses an individual's quality of life to other social units. It is characterized by two prominent varieties. The first refers to the extent to which people experience positive emotions and feelings of happiness. Sometimes this aspect of psychological well-being is referred to as subjective well-being (Diener, 2000). This type of psychological well-being is “Hedonic”, which is normally used to refer to the subjective feelings of happiness (Robertson & Cooper, 1999). It comprises two components, an affective component (high positive affect and low negative affect) and a cognitive component (satisfaction with life) (Robertson & Cooper, 1999). It is proposed that an individual experiences happiness when positive affect and satisfaction with life are both high (Carruthers & Hood, 2004).

Similarity-driven adversarial testing of neural networks

Although Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are among the most important algorithms of computer vision and the artificial intelligence-based systems, they are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Such attacks can cause dangerous consequences in real-life deployments. Consequently, testing of the artificial intelligence-based systems from their perspective is crucial to reliably support human prediction and decision-making through computation techniques under varying conditions. While proposing new effective attacks is important for neural network testing, it is also crucial to design effective strategies that can be used to choose target labels for these attacks. That is why, in this paper we propose a novel similarity-driven adversarial testing methodology for target label choosing. Our motivation is that CNNs, similarly to humans, tend to make mistakes mostly among categories they perceive similar. Thus, the effort to make models predict a particular class is not equal for all classes. Motivated by this, we propose to use the most and least similar labels to the ground truth according to different similarity measures to choose the target label for an adversarial attack. They can be treated as best- and worst-case scenarios in practical and transparent testing methodologies. As similarity is one of the key components of human cognition and categorization, the approach presents a shift towards a more human-centered security testing of deep neural networks. The obtained numerical results show the superiority of the proposed methods to the existing strategies in the targeted and the non-targeted testing setups.

Stress and Women Physicians: Effects on Infertility and Family Planning

Burnout is an occupational stress phenomenon with physical, cognitive and emotional components. Women physicians encounter distinctive factors that contribute to occupational stress and burnout. The physiological underpinnings of burnout and its connection to fertility have been studied primarily through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Among women physicians, both individual and organizational factors related to burnout can result in delays in family planning and infertility. Women physicians considering family planning express concerns about being negatively perceived and the effect on career advancement. Women physicians are more likely to require assisted reproductive technologies and experience complications during pregnancy. An emphasis on early education of reproductive options and use of evidence based psychological interventions during the treatment of infertility can reduce stress and improve outcomes. [ Psychiatr Ann . 2024;54(10):e277–e281.]

Perceived social risk of the next major pandemic: antibiotic resistance / Percepción social de riesgo de la próxima gran pandemia: resistencia a los antibióticos

Although there is abundant literature on this new pandemic in biological terms, studies on the associated risk or its perception are very scarce and recent, and show great variability (geography, actors involved…). In addition, studies conducted on the general population are practically non-existent. In order to overcome these challenges, it would be necessary to integrate social perception into studies of antibiotic resistance risk. To evaluate the social perception of risk, a methodology based on the psychometric paradigm was used, applying Slovic’s abbreviated scale to a representative sample. Findings show that the general public considers the risk of acquiring antibiotic resistance to be low or high depending on the characteristics analysed. The factor structure reflects the existence of five factors that explain 60.5% of its variance, the first two corresponding to the classical factors found in the literature: affective and cognitive components of risk perception. One of the most salient conclusions is the difference found in the risk profile between laypeople and experts.

A computational approach to selective attention in embodied approaches to cognitive archaeology.

This article proposes a novel computational approach to embodied approaches in cognitive archaeology called computational cognitive archaeology (CCA). We argue that cognitive archaeology, understood as the study of the human mind based on archaeological findings such as artefacts and material remains excavated and interpreted in the present, can benefit from the integration of novel methods in computational neuroscience interested in modelling the way the brain, the body and the environment are coupled and parameterized to allow for adaptive behaviour. We discuss the kind of tasks that CCA may engage in with a narrative example of how one can model the cumulative cultural evolution of the material and cognitive components of technologies, focusing on the case of knapping technology. This article thus provides a novel theoretical framework to formalize research in cognitive archaeology using recent developments in computational neuroscience.