فصلنامه تازه های علوم شناختی
سال بیست و دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 85، بهار 1399)

The purpose of this research was to study the relationship between visual search, some individual characteristics, and violations of vehicle drivers.

In this correlational study, 548 subjects aged 18 to 90 years, were selected by cluster sampling method. We used a questionnaire to assess the rate of driving violations and individual characteristics and CogLab software to measure visual search. Also, hyperactivity disorder in individuals was investigated through the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation, partial correlation and multivariate regression at a significance level of 0.05 and SPSS-20 software.

The results showed that there was no significant relationship between age some accidents and ADHD. There was a negative and significant relationship between age and self-reporting violations. Furthermore, a high index of ADHD positively related to self-reporting violations. In the following the results of correlation among the number of driving violations with visual search showed a negative and significant relationship among most of the variables. The results of linear regression showed that age negatively and number of accidents, ADHD, lack of conjunctive absent (number of distractors=4), and feature absent (number of distractors=64) positively can predict about 28% of driving violations variance.

As age increases, the amount of self-reported violations is reduced. The positive relationship between ADHD and the total number of accidents and self-reported violations indicates an inadequate ability to attention and focus, low control to conditions, and impulsive behaviors that could lead to this relationship. Also, with decreasing age, as well as the increasing people's visual search ability, the rate of self-reported violations increases.

Hearing impairment affects all aspects of an individual's life, while applying cognitive rehabilitation program based on memory has been associated with practical outcomes. The present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation programs based on memory on the behavioral problems and working memory in students with hearing impairment.  

The present research was a semi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test design, and control group. The participants were 26 girl children with hearing impairment from schools in Isfahan city using a convenient sampling method. Subjects were divided into experimental and control groups, each group consisting of 13 children. The experimental group received ten cognitive rehabilitation sessions based on memory, while the control group did not. The instruments were the Child Behavior Checklist (2001) and Working Memory Test Battery for Children (2017). Data were analyzed using MANCOVA.

The results showed that cognitive rehabilitation program based on memory had a significant effect on the behavioral problems and working memory of subjects (P<0.0001).

According to the findings, cognitive rehabilitation program based on memory improved behavioral problems and working memory in students with hearing impairment. So, this program can be used to improve behavioral problems and working memory of these students and planning for providing a cognitive rehabilitation program based on memory for them is of particular importance.

Reduced specificity of memories is one of the significant cognitive processes in depression. This study aimed to examine the impact of autobiographical memory specificity training on depression and co-rumination in depressed female students of Isfahan University in 2018.

The research was semi-experimental and designed using the pre-test and post-test for both experimental and control groups with a two-month follow-up period. Twenty depressed female students were selected as purposive sampling, and they were randomly assigned to two groups of experimental and control. The research tools were the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and Co-Rumination Questionnaire (CQ). The experimental group underwent autobiographical memory specificity training for five sessions per week, and the control group received no intervention. The data were analyzed using analysis of covariance.

 According to the results of the research, the autobiographical Memory Specificity Training led to improved depression in the experimental group in the post-test (P>0.05) and follow-up (P<0.05). Consequently, the results showed that the autobiographical memory specificity training had no significant effect on the experimental group's co-rumination scores in the post-test and follow-up.

Generally, it can be concluded that autobiographical Memory Specificity Training is an effective way to reduce depression. Due to the ease and a low number of sessions, this training can be used along with other treatments to reduce the vulnerability to depression.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is considered as a chronic mental disorder accompanied by emotion dysregulation, dysfunctional interpersonal relationships, and self-injury. Despite a wealth of research on the neurocognitive process in BPD, there is no studies provide evidence for associations between BPD, RS, ARS, attention bias, and working memory (WM) functions. The present study aimed to investigate relationships between emotional WM operations, attention bias, rejection sensitivity, rumination, and BPD symptomatology; and compare BPD individuals with and without NSSI on these mentioned variables.

A sample of 39 participants with BPD + NSSI, 47 with BPD - NSSI, and 46 healthy participants were selected. The research tools included the Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (RSQ), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), Anger Rumination Scale (ARS). All participants performed an emotional two-back task, and the dot-probe task.

The more significant levels of borderline pathology, anger rumination, and rejection sensitivity were related to slower discarding angry and pain stimuli from WM and a higher level of attention bias to anger and pain. The obtained results revealed that people with BPD symptoms with and without NSSI show attention bias to anger and pain stimuli and are notably slower at discarding angry and pain stimuli from WM. BPD patients with NSSI were also slower at entering happy stimuli into WM compared to the other groups.

This study’s findings could point to a deficit in AB and WM operations to anger and pain cues that can help clinicians and researchers, make interventions for improving these cognitive dysfunctions in people with BPD with and without NSSI.

People with post-traumatic stress disorder suffer from different cognitive and emotional problems. Meta analyses studies in investigating PTSD cognitive functions has been revealed that working memory and speed processing are two vital components which can explain PTSD’s cognitive dysfunctions. In this study working memory capacity and speed processing investigated via an emotional working memory capacity task.

a total number of 50 participants (20 PTSD, 15 Non-PTSD, 15 healthy control) from road traffic accident recruited via social media advertisements. All participants screened based on SCID and then invited for the working memory and speed processing assessment session. In this study, IES-R, HSCL and emotional working memory capacity task has been used.

Mixed ANOVA repeated measure has shown that, speed processing in the PTSD group is significantly lower than Non-PTSD group. Also person correlation has revealed that in the PTSD group reaction time in correct response trials with trauma related distractors has a negative correlation with avoidance and hyperarousal symptoms and also there is a significant negative correlation between reaction time in correct responses in trials with white noise distractor and intrusion related symptoms in PTSD group.

it seems that exposing with vague distractors (white noise) can due to more intrusion, and less cognitive efficacy and it need more investigation in the future studies.

Brain derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) is one of the most abundant neurotrophic factors in the adult brain associated with synaptic plasticity, learning, memory and reinforcement of cognitive processes. The advent of val66met polymorphism in codon 66 of BDNF gene, disrupt the secretion of this protein. So, the purpose of the study is investigation of the effect of brain-derived neurotrophic factor single nucleotide polymorphism on memory score and memory quotient.

One hundred students from University of Kashan, Iran (mean age 21/60 ± 2/20) were randomly selected. After extraction of Genomic DNA, implementation of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) by forward primer 5-ACTCTGGAGAGCGTGAAT-3 and reverse primer 5-ATACTGTCACACACGCTG-3, analyzing PCR by 1.5 percent Electrophoresis Gel, and in the end sequencing by ABI PRISM 7000 Sequencing Analyzer, 46 participants were identified without val66met polymorphism while 54 participants were affected by the polymorphism (met-carrier). We used from Wechsler memory test to assess memory score and memory quotient of participants. Also, we used from SPSS software and Shapirovilc and multivariate analysis of variance tests to survey normality of distribution of data and test the research hypothesis.

Results showed people without the polymorphism were significantly better than met-carriers in memory score and memory quotient (P<0.001). The study of Wechsler's subscales showed that this superiority was more affected by logical memory subscales and associative learning.

In general, the results represent the effect of val66met polymorphism on memory and memory quotient, so that the existence of this polymorphism in some people may weaken their ability in compression with people without polymorphism, due to disruption of BDNF secretion.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD as a neurodevelopmental disorder includes three subtypes predominantly inattentive (ADHD-I), predominantly impulsive/hyperactive (ADHD-H), and predominantly combined (ADHD-C) that has formed a heterogeneity disorder due to differences in pathology and syndrome. The aim of this study was to evaluate the EEG characteristics of ADHD subtypes.  

Subjects included 61 boys (7-12 years old, normal intelligence) with ADHD (ADHD-I, N= 25; ADHD-H, N=14 and ADHD-C, N=22) and 43 typically developing children (TDC). The groups were matched for IQ- and age. Children were investigated regarding Child Behavior Checklist and brain electrical activity during eyes closed resting state (i.e. EEG power in delta (1-4 Hz), Theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz) and Beta (12-30Hz) frequency bands. Statistical analysis included a 2x2 factorial design by additive model.  

Theta / beta ratio was higher in all ADHD subtypes, especially the ADHD-I subtypes, compared to normal children. In addition, in the ADHD-I subtypes, theta activity was higher and beta activity was lower. No significant difference was found between the groups in delta and alpha activity.

According to this results, EEG markers can better distinguish the ADHD-I subtype, which can be explained within the framework of the maturational lag model of the central nervous system.

Speech is the most effective way to exchange information. In a speech, the voice of a speaker carries additional information other than the words and grammar content of the speech, i.e., age, gender, emotional state, etc. Many studies have been conducted with various approaches to emotional content of speech. These studies show that emotion content in speech has a dynamic nature. The dynamics of speech makes it difficult to extract the emotion hidden in a speech. This study evaluates the implicit emotion in a message through emotional speech processing by applying the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient(MFCC) and Short-Time Fourier Transform(STFT) features.

The input data is the Berlin Emotional Speech Database consisting of seven emotional states, anger, boredom, disgust, anxiety/fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral version. MATLAB software is used to input audio files of the database. Next, the MFCC and STFT features are extracted. Feature vectors for each method is calculated based on seven statistical values, i.e. minimum, maximum, mean, standard deviation, median, skewness, and kurtosis. Then, they are used as an input to an Artificial Neural Network. Finally, the recognition of emotional states is done by training functions based on different algorithms.

The results show that the average and accuracy of emotional states recognized by using STFT features are better and more robust than MFCC features. Also, emotional states of anger and sadness have higher rate of recognition among the other emotions.

STFT features showed to be better than MFCC features to extract implicit emotion in speech.

Every Human being always tried to define death in order to reach a solution to live, maybe forever. He always faced with such questions: what is death? When we can say somebody died? We have two main approaches in medicine to define death: Cardiopulmonary death which means the irreversible cessation of cardiopulmonary system (heart and lungs) and brain death which means the irreversible cessation of brain functions. The second approach promoted by the way of using ventilators which could revive brain death Patients. So brain functions became the most important criterion to define death. Now the question is: if the irreversible cessation of cognitive activities in brain is the criterion to define death or the irreversible cessation of cardiopulmonary system? And if we choose the first, which property or function can be the criterion to define cognitive activity? In this essay we conclude that the irreversible cessation of cognitive activities in brain is the criterion to define death and we try to reason that awareness is the right criterion to define cognitive activity.

One of the metaphors that has gained a lot of attention is “Time is Space”. This Metaphor is based on a theory that we perceive an abstract concept like time through a concrete concept like space and conceptualize it in our mind and language. Consequently, this research attempts to examine space-time mapping in Persian based on conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Johnson & Lakaoff in order to find out temporal frames of reference and their sources in Persian.

As a result, six tasks were designed for 154 male and female students ranging from 18 to 54 years of age at Islamic Azad University of Khorramshahr and Abadan Medical University.

Samples’ Percentage and frequency of occurrence illustrated that lateral axis from right to left adopted from Persian writing direction; sagittal axis back to front adopted from walking direction, looking direction, linguistic metaphors; lateral axis from left to right adopted from mathematics writing direction are the main sources of adoption of abstract temporal concepts in Persian. In addition, absolute frame of reference was the major frame of reference in all tasks. Intrinsic and relative frames of references were also used by the participants.

This research implied that the adopted frame of reference and the type of sagittal or lateral axes are strongly influenced by type of task, pattern and design of the experiment, the given concepts, language and linguistic metaphors, and cultural artifacts.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of cognitive skill rehabilitation program on improper badge marking of primary school students.

In this research, the society includes elementary students in Khorasan Razavi province in the academic year of 1939-97 and a descriptive research method of semi-experimental type. Using purposeful sampling, firstly, elementary students at the third grade at the Kamil School of Shahmoshhad were studied by a researched logbook in terms of handwriting problems. After identifying students with poorly-labeled badges, 10 of them were randomly selected to receive instruction and trained for 12 sessions (45 minutes) each session lasted one hour The data gathering tool was a review of the research problems of the research line, which was used as a record sheet for behaviors that have a lasting effect. The student's line of problems is examined in this notebook and the teacher identifies and introduces students with line problems through observing and reviewing the student's line and responding to the checklist.

The results showed The program for the reconstruction of perceptual skills had an impact on reducing the problems of primary school students.

In addition to the physical and educational dimensions affecting the reduction of the linguistic problems, it should be noted that other factors such as personality traits of the student should be considered. According to the observations made during the training and evaluation, Education has a significant role, so education should not only focus on one dimension and ignore other dimensions.

Computer programs are important as a tool for rehabilitating and enhancing executive functions in children as an innovative approach. However, there are conflicting results about the effectiveness of these results. The purpose of the present study is to conduct a systematic review of experimental studies.

This research is a systematic review study.  in which all articles published in the period were investigated from April 2011 to the end of March 2012. In order to find articles on the Internet, it was conducted at the internal databases SID, Magiran and other Google Scholar databases, PubMed, with the Persian and English keywords. 145 published articles were retrieved in Persian and English. Finally, reviewed were obtained only 23 related Persian articles because Latin article is lesser in period time.

In most articles, research’s without considering limits have been used the cognitive rehabilitation software without standardization and adaptability of language.  Also, the articles lack of longitudinal such as follow-up our study is focusing on a partial cognitive function. In addition, In addition, the impact of cognitive rehabilitation has been neglected on daily activities and verbal learning.

Computerized rehabilitation as an appropriate treatment for psychological. The computerized cognitive tasks in environmental education can be a good treatment, as well as other psychology interventions, also the approach to have a positive effect on the performance of children. Actually, that more effective is computer cognitive training with direct and individual education and this issue needs develop and design a Persian program.