ADVANCES IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Year:2012 | Volume:13 | Issue:4 (52)|Papers Count:14

Objective: Body parts constitute embodiment which is in and by itself an integral part of human cognition. The present research provides a qualitative and quantitative analysis of body parts in Persian and English. The aim is two-fold: on the one hand, it provides a statistical analysis of how body parts act in the two languages, and, on the other hand, it presents a cultural cognitive inquiry into their similarities and differences.Method: The research is corpus-based accompanied by chi-square statistical analysis within cognitive metaphorizing. The corpora comprise two Persian and two English dictionaries of proverbs and adages. The body parts are also limited to the ones in the 'head' domain.Results: Findings indicate that body part metaphors are fundamental in semantic extension, substantiating their target domains in both languages. However, the extensions in the two languages are both different in their types and in the linguistic mechanisms realizing them. The verbal element was found to be the most instrumental tool in the language of metaphorizing in both.Conclusion: Although body parts constitute a universal mechanism for semiosis, they act differently both in the types that signify and in the mechanisms realizing them between languages.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate cognitive functions (attention, working memory and executive functions) in patients with methamphetamine-induced psychosis (MIP) in comparison with a healthy control group.Method: This was a cross sectional study of 30 patients with MIP and 30 normal and demographically matched subjects. The selection of both samples was performed through purposeful sampling. Stroop Test, Wisconsin Cards Sorting and Wechsler Memory Scale were used to assess the subjects.Results: Patients with MIP showed more deficits in attention, working memory and executive functions than the control group.Furthermore, patients with MIP showed an improvement in attention and working memory in the second assessment. Executive functioning also improved to some extent.Conclusion: Patients with MIP have more cognitive dysfunctions than non-psychotic methamphetamine users. According to the findings of the post test, abstinence and treatment with antipsychotics can, at least in the short term, improve cognitive functioning in patients with MIP.

Objective: Self is known as a special structure in the field of information processing and one of the phenomena considered in this field is a type of memory bias called self-reference effect. This study aims to investigate the self-reference and other-reference effects in processing positive and negative traits.Method: A sample of about 150 female students of Tehran University participated in this study. Subjects were divided into three groups randomly. Two groups in the first stage by implementing the memory span task received positive or negative feedbacks and one group was regarded as the control group. After running self-reference and other-reference tasks, a recognition task was conducted for traits encoded previously in self-reference and other-reference.Results: Data analyzed by three-factor-variance analysis method indicated that positive traits more than negative ones and self-reference traits more than other-reference traits were encoded and recognized with higher speed than the feedback effect observed only in the group received positive feedback. This group had higher speed than control group in encoding.Conclusion: It seems that processing information related to the self as well as processing the negative and positive information were influenced by self-concept and motivational goals, and played an important role in recording, storing and retrieving the information.

Objective: Several factors have been shown to affect perceived durations. In the present study, we verified the hypothesis that emotional states induced by Persian words influence error in time perception.Method: Sixty-three volunteer undergraduate female students of the University of Tabriz participated in the experiment. By means of a computerized test, a set of emotional Persian words rated for valence and arousal (using Self-Assessment Manikin-SAM) were projected to all participants for 2, 5 and 8 seconds. Two-factor ANOVA with repeated measures, one-way ANOVA, paired and independent t-tests were used to analyze data.Results: A significant main effect of Emotion, and Duration was found. Emotion and Duration interaction effect was also significant. Emotional words (especially negative ones) assessed to be shorter than neutral ones (under-estimation error). Shorter perceived duration was greater for 2 second standard duration.Conclusion: These findings indicate an effect of emotion on time perception. The results are interpreted in the framework of the attentional time perception and arousal time perception models.

Objective: Temporal resolution refers to the shortest time spent for analyzing a sound stimulus.In the present study, temporal resolution ability was compared between young, normal Persian language monolingual and Turkish-Persian bilingual adults.Method: In this descriptive-analytical study, subjects were 22 Persian–language monolinguals (10 boys, 12 girls) and 29 Turkish-Persian bilinguals (13 boys, 16 girls) with ages ranging from 18 to 25 years old. Temporal resolution ability was assessed by gap detection test in four 10-dB steps and analyzed based on language/s, sex and age factors.Results: Gap detection thresholds (GDTs) of both groups were improved by increasing stimulus level, and a significant difference was shown between mean GDTs of the two studied groups in 10 and 20 dB (<0.05). In all cases, age and sex did not influence the test results.Conclusion: It seems that Turkish-Persian bilingual listeners have lower temporal resolution ability in comparison with Persian–language monolinguals.

Objective: The aim of present investigation was: 1) to study lateralized negative priming effect (NP) in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), other anxiety disorders (OAD) and normal subjects, and, 2) to compare NP effect in subgroups of OCD.Method: In this study, the NP task was applied in order to measure cognitive inhibition in subgroups of OCD patients (N=35), in comparison with OAD patients (N=35) and normal subjects (N=35).Results: The results of the NP effect compared among the groups showed that there was a significant difference amongst the OCD and OAD patients compared to the normal group, in both the Left and Right NP effects. But, the difference between patient groups was not significant. The second result of this research indicated no significant difference among subtypes of OCD, including patients with washing and checking compulsions and obsessive thoughts, regarding to performing NP effect.Conclusion: There was a cognitive inhibition deficit in OCD and OAD patients in comparison to normal individuals, but there was no lateralized NP in patient groups. Also, all OCD patients in washing, checking and obsessive thoughts had deficiency in inhibiting of irrelevant data.

Objective: A computational cognitive architecture for simulating the effect of trait anxiety on working memory.Method: The research used Big Five theory of personality as its psychological basis. It simulated the effect of trait anxiety on working memory. The study proposes a model of personality based on fuzzy theory and the effect of trait anxiety on retrieval threshold is modeled based on up-to-date psychological references and comments of experts. The extended personality model is embedded in ACT-R cognitive architecture to make it capable of making decisions and processing information based on personality factor.Results: The model is able of simulating human behavior at an acceptable level with respect to being compared with experimental data and psychological papers.Conclusion: Anxiety is one of the most important personality traits that affect human behavior, specially working memory. Accordingly, embedding this factor in computational cognitive models can improve their precision.