Bundle of summaries on articles about Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Originally written by Henriet Rozeboom and Sanne de Jager.
This course will start with a short review of different models within safety science. Let us first examine the history of thinking about the causes of accidents and how they happen.
A long time ago people used to think that accidents were caused by gods and other spirits. Their
..... read moreAccidents in certain areas can be catastrophic. Think about accidents in nuclear power generation or air transport. Between the forties and the eighties, this became a main concern of the human factors specialists.
After the eighties, several scientists started investigating the reliability of the medical
..... read moreThere are two approaches when it comes to the human error problem. They differ in their opinion on causation and error management.
The person approach is very similar to what has earlier been called the ‘sharp end’. It focuses on the unsafe acts, errors and procedural violations by people
..... read moreAccording to complexity theory, performance is the result of complex interactions and relationships. It is seen as an emergent property. The performance can however not overlap with was stakeholders like to see in accident investigations. They prefer to blame individuals when their system fails. It is this narrow-minded and easy way of thinking that is being criticized
..... read morePeople with frontal lobe damage seem to have serious problems controlling their behavior and have problems functioning on a daily basis. They seem to have impairments on several complex frontal lobe tasks. Executive functions (or frontal lobe tasks) are general-purpose control mechanisms that modulate the operation of various cognitive sub-processes and thereby
..... read moreDopamine plays a role in cognitive processes, including working memory. Working memory refers to the active maintenance and manipulation of information over a short interval of time. It has often been associated with the prefrontal cortex.
Research suggests an inverted U-shaped relationship between dopamine and working memory capacity. Both low and high levels of dopamine
..... read moreGenetic variability related to the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene (Val158 Met polymorphism) has received increasing attention as a possible modulator of cognitive control functions. Dopamine (DA) plays a key role in the regulation of executive functions in the prefrontal cortex. Val/Val homozygous individuals are assumed to be associated with low tonic DA levels in
..... read moreAn important aspect of cognitive control and cognitive flexibility is the ability to stop an ongoing action. This ability is driven by interactions between the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia. Some say that dopamine plays a crucial role in response inhibition. However, it might be that the beneficial effects of dopaminergic stimulants on
..... read moreAmphetamine (AMP) and other psychostimulants are among the most effective psychotropic medications. Although it has been well known that there are dose- and behavior-dependent differential effects of psycho- stimulants, there is also considerable evidence that the response to these drugs varies across individuals, even to fixed doses. These variable effects have been difficult to
..... read moreAmino-acid tyrosine (TYR) levels peak between 1 and 2 h after consumption and can remain significantly elevated up to 8 hours. Once it has passed the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and is taken up by the appropriate brain cells, TYR is converted into L-DOPA. L-DOPA is converted into DA, resulting
..... read moreTyrosine is an amino acid. It is also the precursor of two important neurotransmitters, namely norepinephrine and dopamine. Taking in more tyrosine stimulates the release of norepinephrine and dopamine. Previous research has focused primarily on the role of tyrosine as a counteract of conditions that cause a depletion of norepinephrine and dopamine. One of these
..... read moreTryptophan is prescribed as an antidepressant in some countries. Studies have shown a reappearance of depressive symptoms after acute tryptophan depletion and a mood-lowering effect in healthy, non-depressed participants. However, there is research that indicates that it might just work as an adjunct to other antidepressant treatments, and not as a primary treatment.
There is
..... read moreResearch indicates that serotonin plays an important role in prosocial behavior and is negatively correlated to antisocial behavior. Prosocial behavior can be reduced by lowering serotonin levels through tryptophan depletion and increased by tryptophan supplementation. This research investigates whether or not tryptophan promotes charitable donating.
The results confirm this hypothesis.
Fluid intelligence refers to the ability to reason, and to solve new problems independently of previously attained knowledge. A few facts you should know about fluid intelligence:
It allows us to adapt our thinking to a new cognitive problem
It is one of the most important factors in learning
The widely held belief that commercially available computerized brain-training programs improve general cognitive function in the wider population lacks empirical support.
The central question is not whether performance on cognitive tests can be improved by training, but rather, whether those benefits transfer to other untrained tasks or lead to any general improvement in the level
..... read morePlaying videogames can influence perceptual and motor skills. This happens because when a person is exposed to a different visual environment, the visual system automatically adapts. There is a lot of scientific research supporting this claim. However, perceptual learning tends to be specific to the trained task. Generalization to another task is hardly ever found.
..... read morePlaying videogames can have a positive effect on cognitive skills and abilities. Previous research has already shown that players of videogames are better in visually tracking multiple moving objects and are better at visual search tasks. In the games the players need to think about what to do in complex situations, they need to act
..... read moreScientific research indicates that playing videogames can improve cognitive performance on tasks other than those specific to the game. While comparing gamers and non-gamers though, a few things have to be kept in mind. It might be that gamers are good in games, not because of experience, but because of previous abilities. Because they possess these
..... read moreIn older adults we see a decline in various cognitive abilities, especially in executive control functions. Research has indicated decline in processing speed, episodic memory, working memory, spatial orientation, reasoning and dual task processing. Cognitive training can slow down or reverse these declines. However, some have questioned whether or not the
..... read moreEven though people can improve their skills through training, specificity is still a problem. Learnt skills by training often do not transfer to other skills. Methods for overcoming this problem can be divided in two categories, namely direct pharmaceutical manipulations and training-induced learning. In this article, videogames are reviewed as a form of training-induced learning.
..... read moreHumans have a big capacity to learn new skills. Skill learning is a change, usually an improvement, in perceptual, cognitive, or motor performance. This has to be the result of training, and persist for several weeks or months (as to distinguish it from effects related to adaptation or other short-lived effects). With the right training, humans can
..... read moreCognitive control refers to a set of neural processes which allow us to interact with our complex environment in a goal-directed manner. Sometimes humans push their cognitive control to a limit, for instance when they are multitasking. In the current society, people are required to multitask more and more. But when people get older,
..... read moreCauses can never be seen, it is only an inference. A causal explanation is always a matter of interpretation of events. Every event has a cause, there is no such thing as an uncaused event. However, there are events for which we can’t think of a cause. First people look for a probably cause inside the causal
..... read moreFalse accusations of sexual abuse during custody cases are not rare. With regards to allegations of sexual child abuse, the most important issue is determining the value of the testimony of the child as a witness. Investigating alleged abuse should be done by following these three steps. First of all, the psychologist should point
..... read moreBy interviewing many different individuals information can be gathered for intelligence purposes. Not all these individuals want to cooperate though, think of suspects and prisoners. But information can also be gathered from other individuals. While getting information, investigators need to be aware of memory distortion and interrogation influences. Also they need to be able to detect deception.
..... read moreHumans are excellent learners and through training they can acquire new skills and alter existing behaviors. However, research shows that learning that emerges through training often does not transfer to other contexts and tasks. Researchers then started focusing on which conditions were necessary to stimulate general learning. These trainings are usually more complex and more similar
..... read moreOlder people get into car accidents more often. Research has exposed several risk factors for the increased accidents among older drivers, such as age, being male, bad vision, decreased processing speed, decline in physical abilities, and dementia-related cognitive impairments. Cognitive training can improve the cognitive abilities of older adults and prevent accidents.
Research has
..... read moreOne method for improving cognitive performance is through computerized cognitive training. In this chapter the researchers use a classic example of mid-level skilled occupational task (in this case, bookkeeping) to explore the effectiveness of a cognitive training program on work-related task performance. With effectiveness they mean the speed and accuracy of work-related task productivity.
Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies find robust declines in abilities such as encoding new memories of episodes or facts, working memory and information processing speed. By contrast, short-term memory, autobiographical memory, semantic knowledge and emotional processing remain relatively stable.
Life-long declines. Processing speed, working memory and episodic memory showed linear life-long
..... read moreUnderstanding which factors influence cognitive functioning has implications for health and policies. Usually, the experiments can only have a few people. But to actually be able to say something about the entire population, it is necessary to recruit a large number of participants across a wide range of demographic backgrounds.
Lumosity is a
..... read moreBecause of developments in the literature on ageing, the classic distinction between generalized and process-specific cognitive changes with old age has changed into a distinction between the frontal lobe hypothesis and more differentiated views of neurocognitive ageing.
There is a very heterogeneous pattern of age effects. The cognitive changes that are caused by old age vary in
..... read moreGeneral slowing and its consequences for conclusions regarding age sensitivity of specific processes. It has long been known that reaction times of older adults can be well described by a linear transformation of reaction times of younger adults. The effect is called general slowing and is identifiable as the
..... read moreThere are more and more older people in today’s societies. Elderly people suffer from cognitive decline. It is beneficial for governments and businesses to prevent this, because cognitive decline will cause costs and risks. Brain plasticity and the role it plays in brain adaptation to ageing is influenced by comorbidities, environmental factors, personality traits, and genetic
..... read moreThere are more and more older people, and less and less younger people. This causes many challenges in the public and private sectors. Human factors and ergonomics is a very good field to help solve these age-related problems in safety, mobility and well-being.
One of the main goals of design should be to enhance
..... read moreMany countries are dealing with population ageing. Older people have a higher chance of getting into a car accident. Older people often have difficulty turning across opposing traffic, driving at night, road-hazard detection and seeing and reading signs. However, driving cessation is not an acceptable solution for several reasons. It places a burden on family and
..... read moreThere is an ongoing debate about whether or not intelligence equals learning efficiency. The questions is if people with higher intelligence benefit more from training. There are two competing sides in this debate.
This approach looks at the increase in adult age differences after mnemonic training, such as instructions and practice.
..... read moreResearch has shown that positive affect influences cognitive processing by increasing cognitive flexibility, by increasing the number of cognitive elements available for association, and by defocusing attention so to increase the breadth of those elements treated as relevant to the problem.
The underlying mechanisms are however poorly understood. Some say that the neurotransmitter dopamine may play
..... read moreResearch has always found gender differences in spatial cognition. But nobody has really investigated if there might be gender differences in the basic capacities that support spatial cognition. For instance, there might be a gender difference in attentional processes, of which a lot of research has indicated that it is related to spatial cognition.
Recently,
..... read moreRecent insights have led to the hypothesis that probiotic supplementation may act as an adjuvant strategy to ameliorate or prevent depression and therefore may be used therapeutically to modify stress responses and symptoms of anxiety and depression. A reduction in anxious and depressive behavior after feeding probiotics has
..... read moreBrain dopamine (DA) is well known to play an important role in cognitive control processes, including working memory. This refers to the processes of stabilization and flexibility. The PFC contains a large number of DA receptors and is highly sensitive to its dopaminergic environment. However, the precise role of DA in cognition
..... read more
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