Intellect is not that expensive: differential association of cultural and socio-economic factors with crystallized intelligence in a sample of Italian adolescents

Cognitive Reserve Potential: Capturing Cognitive Resilience Capability in Adolescence

Cognitive reserve (CR) represents the adaptive response of the cognitive system responsible for preserving normal functioning in the face of brain damage. Experiential factors such as education, occupation, and leisure activities influence the development of CR. Theoretically, such factors build up from childhood and across adulthood. Thus, appropriate tools to define and measure CR as early as adolescence are essential to understand its developmental processes. To this aim, we introduce the construct of "Cognitive Reserve Potential" (CRP) and its corresponding index of experiential factors tailored to youth. We investigated prototypical youth exposures potentially associated with the lifelong development of CR (e.g., sport practice, musical experiences, cultural activities, and relationships with peers and family). Principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis identified and replicated the CRP factor structure on two independent samples of Italian students: N = 585 (295 F) and N = 351 (201 F), ages 11 to 20. CRP was associated mainly with family socio-cultural status (i.e., socioeconomic status [SES], Home Possessions, and Books at Home). Results confirmed the strength of the factorial model and warranted the proposal of the CRP-questionnaire as an innovative tool for understanding CR evolutionary dynamics.

Estimation of cognitive reserve and its impact on cognitive performance in older adults

OBJECTIVES

Cognitive reserve provides evidence in the search for answers regarding the role that lifestyle has in the protection of cognition in old age. Through a structural equations model, different things were analyzed: the relative weight of education, occupational complexity, free time activities and the intelligence quotient in cognitive reserve; and its impact on three cognitive domains: memory, language and executive functions.

DESIGN

A trail analysis was executed, using structural equations procedure.

PARTICIPANTS

167 older participants (mean = 76.74 years, standard deviation = 6.8 years).

MEASUREMENTS

Participants were assessed with: Sociodemographic Questionnaire, Occupational Activity Agency Questionnaire, Social Participation Questionnaire and Neuropsychological Evaluation Battery for: memory, language and executive functions.

RESULTS

The cognitive reserve factor is well represented by the measures included, with values ​​between .43 and .86, and shows a direct effect on language (β = .52, p < .001), executive functions (β = .77, p <.001), and memory (β = .36, p = .003).

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, lifestyle factors, such as education, occupational complexity, leisure time activities and intelligence quotient have an impact on the conformation of cognitive reserve and performance in some psychological processes.

Earlier smartphone acquisition negatively impacts language proficiency, but only for heavy media users. Results from a longitudinal quasi-experimental study

There is a growing debate about the proper age at which teens should be given permission to own a personal smartphone. While experts in different disciplines provide parents and educators with conflicting guidelines, the age of first smartphone acquisition is constantly decreasing and there is still limited evidence on the impact of anticipating the age of access on learning outcomes. Drawing on two-wave longitudinal data collected on a sample of 1672 students in 2013 (at grade 5) and 2016 (at grade 8), this study evaluates whether obtaining the first personal smartphone at 10 or 11 years old, during the transition to lower secondary school (early owning), affected their language proficiency trends compared to receiving it from the age of 12 onwards (late owning). Results indicate an overall null effect of smartphone early owning on adolescents' language proficiency trajectories, while a negative effect is found on those who were already heavy screen media users before receiving the device.

Testing the validity of a self-report scale, author recognition test, and book counting as measures of lifetime exposure to print fiction

We report a study testing the validity of the three most commonly used indicators of lifetime exposure to print fiction, namely a self-report scale, an author recognition test (ART), and book counting, in a sample of older adults (N=306; Mage = 59.29 years, SDage = 7.01). Convergent validity of the self-report scale and book counting was assessed through correlations with the fiction sub-score of the ART; divergent validity of these two indicators was examined via correlations with the non-fiction sub-score of that ART. We also assessed criterion-related validity by testing the degree to which each of the three indicators predicted participants' performance in a vocabulary test. The self-report scale and book counting were significantly more positively associated with the ART fiction sub-score than the ART non-fiction sub-score. Regression analyses, controlling for gender and non-fiction exposure, revealed that the ART fiction sub-score had the highest explanatory power among all indicators under investigation for predicting vocabulary test performance. The present results suggest that only ARTs may have satisfactory levels of both construct and criterion-related validity. Recommendations for the assessment of fiction exposure and future directions are discussed.

This is the way: Network perspective on targets for spatial ability development programmes

BACKGROUND

Spatial ability (SA) was shown to be important for success in different fields, including STEM. Recent research suggested that SA is a unitary construct, rather than a set of related skills. However, it is not clear how individual differences in different facets of SA emerge, and how they relate to variance in general cognitive ability.

AIMS

The aim of the present study was threefold: 1) to examine the structure of SA testing nine theoretical models; 2) to explore the relation between 16 different facets of SA with general cognitive ability; and 3) to identify central facet(s) within the network of SA - with most links and/or strongest links to other facets.

SAMPLE

The study participants were 958 university students from Russia.

METHODS

The study used a comprehensive battery of 16 SA tests and a verbal ability measure.

RESULTS

Results supported previous research, suggesting moderate overlap between all SA facets. Factor analysis suggested several potential structures, with similar fit indices for five different theoretically driven models, including split into small- and large scale; partially independent manipulation, visualization and navigation facets. Confirmatory factor analysis, mediation and network analyses showed spatial ability being largely independent from verbal ability. In addition, network analysis showed that navigation according to directions is in the centre of the network, potentially linking all SA facets.

CONCLUSION

The results have potential implications for identifying the best targets for SA interventions. The next step in research is conducting experimental studies to evaluate effectiveness of interventions targeting navigation in comparison with other facets of SA.

Predicting verbal reasoning from virtual community membership in a sample of Russian young adults

Predicting personality traits from social networking site profiles can help to assess individual differences in verbal reasoning without using long questionnaires. Inspired by earlier studies, which investigated whether abstract-thinking ability are predictable by social networking sites data, we used supervised machine learning to predict verbal-reasoning ability based on a proposed set of features extracted from virtual community membership. A large sample (N = 3,646) of Russian young adults aged 18-22 years approved access to the data from their social networking accounts and completed an online test on verbal reasoning. We experimented with binary classification machine-learning models for verbal-reasoning prediction. Prediction performance was tested on isolated control subsamples for men and women. The results of prediction on AUC-ROC metrics for control subsamples over 0.7 indicated reasonably good performance on predicting verbal-reasoning level. We also investigated the contribution of virtual community's genres to verbal reasoning level prediction for male and female participants. Theoretical interpretations of results stemming from both Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and behavioural genomics are discussed, including the implication that virtual communities make up a non-shared environment that can cause variance in verbal reasoning. We intend to conduct studies to explore the implications of the results further.