With the aim of ascertaining if child-to-parent offenders have impairments in the executive functions and psychological maladjustment, and to quantify the potential harm and epidemiology, a field study was designed. As for this, 76 juvenile offenders sentenced for child-to-parent violence were assessed in executive functions and psychological adjustment. The results showed valid responses for 75 juveniles and that data were not generally biased in line with defensiveness or malingering. In psychological adjustment, the results revealed a significantly higher maladjustment among offenders (...) on all the basic clinical scales with 23% more symptoms of hysteria than the normative population, 37% more of depressive symptoms, 44% more of hypochondriac symptoms, 68% more of psychopathic deviation symptoms, 46% more of paranoid symptoms, 26% more of psychasthenic symptoms, 24% more symptoms of schizophrenia, 17% more symptoms of hypomania, and 13% more symptoms of social introversion. Epidemiologically, the prevalence rates of clinical deterioration were significantly greater than expected in hypochondria, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviation, paranoia, psychasthenia, and schizophrenia. As for the cognitive functions, the offenders exhibited impairments estimated at 62.0% in word reading, 47.9% in color naming, 45.8% in color-word, and 11.9% in interference and a significantly higher prevalence of caseness than expected in word reading, color naming, and color-word. The implications of the results for intervention are discussed. (shrink)

Executive functions represent higher order top-down mechanisms regulating information processing. While suboptimal EF have been studied in various patient groups, their impact on successful behavior is still not well described. Previously, it has been suggested that design fluency —a test including several simultaneous EF components mainly related to fluency, cognitive flexibility, and creativity—predicts successful behavior in a quickly changing environment where fast and dynamic adaptions are required, such as ball sports. We hypothesized that similar behaviors are of importance in the (...) selection process of elite police force applicants. To test this hypothesis, we compared elite police force applicants with a control group of police officer trainees. Although both groups were better than the norm, the elite police force applicants had a significantly better performance in DF total correct when adjusting for sex and age [F = 18.98, p < 0.001]. To understand how this capacity was altered by stress and tiredness, we re-tested the elite police force applicants several days during an extreme field assessment lasting 10 days. The results suggested that there was a lower than expected improvement in DF total correct and a decline in the DF3-subtest that includes a larger component of cognitive flexibility than the other subtests. Although there was a positive correlation between the baseline session and the re-test in DF3 [r = 0.49, p = 0.001], the applicants having the highest scores in the baseline test also displayed the largest percentage decline in the re-test [r = −0.46, p = 0.003]. In conclusion, our result suggests that higher order EF that include cognitive flexibility and creativity are of importance in the application for becoming an elite police officer but relatively compromised in a stressful situation. Moreover, as the decline is different between the individuals, the results suggest that applicants should be tested during baseline conditions and during stressful conditions to describe their cognitive capacity fully. (shrink)

Maintaining systems of military plans is critical for military effectiveness, but is also challenging. Plans will become obsolete as the world diverges from the assumptions on which they rest. If too many ad hoc changes are made to intermeshed plans, the ensemble may no longer lead to well-synchronized and coordinated operations, resulting in the system of plans becoming itself incoherent. We describe in what follows an Adaptive Planning process that we are developing on behalf of the Air Force Research Laboratory (...) (Rome) with the goal of addressing problems of these sorts through cyclical collaborative plan review and maintenance. The interactions of world state, blue force status and associated plans are too complex for manual adaptive processes, and computer-aided plan review and maintenance is thus indispensable. We argue that appropriate semantic technology can 1) provide richer representation of plan-related data and semantics, 2) allow for flexible, non-disruptive, agile, scalable, and coordinated changes in plans, and 3) support more intelligent analytical querying of plan-related data. (shrink)

Background: Clinical and experimental findings have suggested that insomnia is associated with altered emotion processing, such as facial emotion recognition and impairments in executive functions. However, the results still appear non-consensual and have recently been presented by a few number of studies. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether patients with Insomnia disorder will present alterations in recognition of facial emotions and that such alterations will be related to Executive Functions and that Insomnia Disorder patients will (...) exhibit a lower Executive Functions performance when compared to normal controls individuals. Method: A total of 11 individuals diagnosed with insomnia disorder and 15 control participants took part in the present cross-sectional study. They completed questionnaires covering socio-demographic data, a sleep and mood evaluation, and a cognitive assessment. Moreover, they underwent a computerized Facial Emotional Recognition test, consisting of facial emotion labeling and facial emotion matching. Results: Individuals with insomnia presented a lower recognition of facial expressions of fear and sadness in comparison to control volunteers. Perceptual Organization Index was found to be statistically significant lower in the insomnia group compared to the control group. There was a statistically significant association between facial recognition emotional and cognitive processes of in executive functions performance, especially in processes related to the inhibitory control, planning capacity, problem solving and cognitive flexibility in insomnia group. Conclusions: Insomnia disorder impairs the facial emotion recognition of the fear and sadness. Insomniacs with impairment in the facial emotion recognition had impaired performance of executive functions. There is a negative impact on processes related to cognitive-emotional capacity than on processes related to social-emotional recognition. Keywords: insomnia, facial emotional recognition, sleep deprivation, cognition, executive functions. (shrink)

Governing boards utilize executive compensation contracts in an attempt to align executive actions with corporate goals. The objective is to ensure that executive performance provides value to the organization in terms of successful outcomes. A key performance criteria typically specified in CEO compensation contracts is earnings targets. However, using earnings as a performance evaluation may be problematic because some firms exhibit robust and sustained earnings over time (high earnings persistence), and other firms, such as high growth oriented firms, exhibit (...) weak or sometimes negative earnings over time (low earnings persistence). Our study reveals that the effect of high earnings persistence results in firms that focus more heavily on cash compensation (salary and bonus) rather than on equity compensation (stock options, etc.) to compensate executive performance. Additionally, for firms characterized by low earnings persistence, our study indicates that cash flows from operations act as a supplementary performance measure to accounting earnings, and become increasingly important as a means to justify executive cash compensation. (shrink)

Knowing the factors that executives deem critical to governance change can improve our understanding of how such changes come about and can help us evaluate those changes. Interviews with business and finance executives at 11 colleges reveal the importance to governance change of chief executive and board member leadership and interactions, as well as executive communication style. Costs are clear constraints to action, particularly since benefits are not quantified and are difficult to describe. Efforts to discuss governance with (...) internal stakeholders require persistence to overcome narrow, individualized concerns. Communication about governance to external stakeholders is rare and represents a missed opportunity for stakeholder feedback and the development of trust. Executives appear willing to adopt governance forms without considering the idiosyncrasies of their institutional field, limiting the working definition of governance and its potential. For corporations and not‐for‐profit enterprises these findings hold implications for the context in which leadership is exercised and the shape of governance structures. They also pose a fundamental ethical dilemma for leaders to address. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a new insight on the virtue of modesty. It argues that modesty is best understood as an executive virtue with the moderate evaluative attitude at its center. The main goals are to describe the main features of this evaluative attitude and to distinguish it from other features that are only contingently associated with modesty. Then some distinctive features of modesty as an executive virtue are suggested and defended. Next, some of existing accounts are critically examined. (...) Finally, this paper ends with the claim that modesty as a virtue does not depend on possession of excellent qualities. (shrink)

According to international longitudinal studies, the quality of preschool education is of great importance for children’s further development. The modern research’s greatest interest in the field of studying the quality of preschool education is precisely the assessment of the relationship between the teacher and children as well as the teaching quality in kindergarten groups. In this regard, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) seems to be the one of the most relevant for the educational environment quality evaluation. The CLASS (...) methodology (which includes emotional support, classroom organization, and instrumental support) is based on the cultural-historical approach, which shows the interaction between students and adults as the main mechanism for child’s development. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between different aspects of the classroom organization quality in kindergarten groups and executive functions components (such as cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, and working memory) in 5–6-year-old children. The quality of classroom interaction was measured by the CLASS. The study used the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) method to assess cognitive flexibility and the NEPSY-II subtests “Inhibition” to assess inhibitory control and “Memory for Designs” and “Sentences Repetition” to assess visuo-spatial and verbal working memory, respectively. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Psychology at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The study involved 26 kindergarten groups in Moscow. While conducting the research, extreme groups were identified (5 with low quality and 10 with high-quality levels of classroom interaction). Then, three kindergarten groups with low level (65 children) and three groups with high level (68 children) of interaction within classroom were selected and compared. The results revealed that children from groups with low level of classroom interaction have higher results in cognitive flexibility tasks when compared with children from groups with high level of interaction. Also, children from groups with high-quality classroom interaction demonstrated higher results in visuo-spatial working memory tasks and inhibitory control tasks as contrasted with children from low-quality groups. These findings attest to the importance of classroom interaction quality for the executive functions development in the preschool age. (shrink)

IntroductionDue to the actual limitation of training conditions, the freestyle skiing aerials winter training term is short. Training tasks such as adaptability training and developing new skills are needed in summer training. When facing different training environments, freestyle skiing aerial athletes’ executive control over their abilities could be affected, which can affect their performance. Therefore, we want to research the effect of training conditions on executive control in freestyle skiing aerials athletes and its neural mechanism.Materials and methodsThirty-two freestyle skiing aerials (...) athletes were recruited. We evaluated their executive control and used fNIRS to measure oxygenated hemoglobin concentration changes in the prefrontal cortex during a rapid event-related design go/nogo task with different training condition-activated materials.ResultsAthletes’ behavior control in the summer condition has a lower accuracy than it is in the control condition. Athletes’ behavior control in the summer and winter training conditions had a longer reaction time than that in the control condition. The activation of the bilateral dlPFC and orbitofrontal cortex had a significant main effect across training conditions when freestyle skiing aerial athletes completed executive control tasks. The activation of athletes’ bilateral vlPFC and left dlPFC had an interaction between training conditions and behavioral control.ConclusionDifferent training conditions can lead to freestyle skiing aerial athletes executive control ability to drop, players in different training conditions show less activation on both sides of the vlPFC and orbitofrontal. The bilateral vlPFC and left dlPFC have an integrated effect on behavior inhibition across training conditions. (shrink)

Three years ago Robert Saltonstall, Jr., Associate Vice President for Operations at Harvard University, faced an increasingly common problem in business and institutions today when he severed 68 long-service, wage employees to solve a problem of low productivity in a particular trade group. He did this using relatively conventional and creative techniques. But now three years later, he asked Nona Lyons of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who is researching the ethical dimensions of executives' decisions, to assist him (...) in evaluating how these employees felt about the process. The employees' loyalty in spite of everything has caused Saltonstall to rethink the ethics of both his decision and its execution. In this article Saltonstall asks and answers many of the questions executives face when challenged to handle work reduction decisions in a more ethical way. And Lyons assists him with commentary on some of the current research on moral decision-making which will help executives to understand why they find some of their decisions to be moral dilemmas. The article challenges executives to think about reorganization decisions in a participative way and suggests seven central issues executives should consider before commencing a participative approach. The article reaches no specific conclusion, but introduces some new ways to think about lay-off decisions and their ethical implications for those affected. (shrink)

Are new democracies with divided government and volatile parties politically ill fated? The literature suggests so, but cases of emergent democracies such as Taiwan and Brazil that face both conditions defy the prediction. This paper explains why: party volatility follows from pursuing distinct executive and legislature agendas under divided government; the political ambition that underlies these conditions sustains democratic and even political performance. We evaluate the argument through government spending in Taiwan. The results corroborate our expectations: they show more parties (...) composing the legislature as government spending favors an executive agenda and neglects a legislative welfare-spending agenda. The findings make three contributions to the literature: first, they reveal a political divide between executive and legislature rather than ideological parties to undercut concerns regarding performance. Second, they demonstrate that the strategic use of government spending to institutionalize party development along an executive agenda fuels party fragmentation. Third, they show that legislators split, switch, or create alternative routes to office in reaction to strategic spending to underscore that ambition underlies party volatility and divided government. (shrink)

BackgroundAdults with ADHD exhibit a neuropsychological profile that may present deficits in many cognitive domains, particularly attention and executive functions. However, some authors do not consider executive disfunction as an important part of the clinical profile of the syndrome; this could be related to the use of inappropriate neuropsychological tests, probably not adapted and not sufficiently ecological. Moreover, new data are required on specific correlation of attentive-executive symptoms with socio-demographic factors. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the (...) neuropsychological performance of a group of adults with ADHD, also evaluating the influence of gender, age and education level.MethodsWe retrospectively collected health-related personal data of 40 adult ADHD patients, clinically diagnosed and evaluated via a battery of 4 neuropsychological tests and 1 self-administered questionnaire. Gender, age and years of education differences were assessed.ResultsAttention and EFs deficits have been highlighted mainly on the d2-R and 5-point neuropsychological tests, which therefore seem to be more sensitive in measuring the attention-executive dysfunction in an adult ADHD population, than TAP Go/No-go and ROCFT. ADHD patients also manifested subjective behavioral impulsivity disorders on BIS-11. There were no statistically significant gender differences in cognitive performance. On the contrary, younger patients performed worse on subscales TAP Go/No-go errors and 5-points number of drawings, while participants with a higher education level performed better on subscales d2-R speed of execution and d2-R errors. This supports a reduction in the number of errors and the execution time as a function of older age and a higher level of education. Finally, patients with higher education also self-reported greater impulsivity in planning.ConclusionOur preliminary findings suggest that adult ADHD is not a lifelong stable disorder, but it may change over time. Moreover, attention-executive deficits may be influenced and partially counterbalanced by experience and a higher level of education. This could underlie the development of specific psycho-behavioral and cognitive compensatory strategies. The use of self-administered questionnaires is therefore recommended to highlight attentional and executive difficulties that may not result in neuropsychological tests. (shrink)

The present study sought to clarify the impact of executive and social functioning on challenging behavior and the downstream influence of challenging behavior on quality of life and functioning in a large transdiagnostic sample. Understanding these relationships is crucial for developing and designing tailored intervention strategies. In a cross-sectional study, parent informants of 2,004 children completed measures of executive and social functioning, challenging behavior, child and family quality of life, and reported on functional impacts of challenging behavior. Using structural (path) (...) modeling, analyses evaluated the associations between executive and social functioning, including emotion regulation and risk avoidance, with overall and specific types of challenging behavior. Structural models also examined the influence of challenging behavior on child and family quality of life, including measures of the immediate and extended environment, and functional impacts on the parent/child as well as interactions with the medical/legal systems. Finally, mediational models explored the direct and indirect effects of executive and social functioning on quality of life and impact measures via challenging behavior. Results indicated that executive functioning accounts for substantial variance (R2 = 0.47) in challenging behavior. In turn, challenging behavior accounts for substantial variance in child and family quality of life (R2 = 0.36) and parent/child impacts (R2 = 0.31). Exploratory mediational models identified direct effects from executive and social functioning measures on quality of life and functional impacts and indirect effects for executive functioning via challenging behavior. These findings support the development of new intervention strategies and suggest the need to measure executive functioning when assessing and tailoring the treatment of challenging behavior in clinical practice. (shrink)

The development of executive functions is recognizably correlated to culture, contextual and social factors. However, studies considering all the basic EF are still scarce in Brazil, most notably in the Northeast region, which is known for its social inequality and economic gap. This study aimed to analyze the developmental trajectories and structure of four EF, namely inhibition, flexibility, working memory and planning. In addition, the potential effects of socioeconomic status and gender were examined. The sample included 230 Brazilian children between (...) 7-12 years old, homogeneously distributed by age, gender and type of school. The EF were assessed through the Brazilian version of the Child Executive Functions Battery. A global effect of age was found for most of the EF measures evaluated. Gender effect was mostly non-significant, except for 4 of the 12 tasks. There was a significant SES effect on 8 tasks, all in favor of private school children. Exploratory factorial and correlation analysis showed a 4-factor EF structure, corroborating the theoretical distribution considered in the CEF-B. A developmental progression is evident in the results for all of the EF measures evaluated. While gender had little influence on EF, SES seems to significantly impact the development of EF. As normative data are still lacking in Northeast Brazil, this study may help to understand EF development trajectories and provide tools for neuropsychological evaluation. (shrink)

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in children and adolescents. People who have this disorder are characterized by presenting difficulties in the processes of sustained attention, being very active, and having poor control of their impulses. Despite the high prevalence of this disorder and the existence of various tests used for its diagnosis, few data are available regarding the usefulness and diagnostic validity of these tools. Given the difficulties that these subjects present in executive functions, (...) the aim of this study was to evaluate whether the Neuropsychological Assessment of Executive Functions battery for Children allows to establish specific profiles of executive performance for people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The sample was made up of 197 participants of both sexes, aged between 6 and 12 years age. A nonexperimental design was followed, using a comparative descriptive study method. The results indicated that the scales of phonological fluency, color path, rings, and interference are the most associated with the diagnosis of ADHD, providing data on inhibition, mental flexibility, sustained and selective attention, planning, verbal fluency, and working memory, among others. The practical implication of these results is in line with providing support in the clinical diagnosis that is carried out in children’s mental health units. In addition, the ENFEN tool can be valued as a suitable psychometric instrument in the psychoeducational field, helping professionals in a school environment to be more aware of the areas of cognitive development in which a student diagnosed with ADHD will have more difficulties and, in doing so, providing more adjusted and effective psychopedagogical measures when it comes to supporting students in their adaptation to the school environment. (shrink)

This paper employs theory of normal organizational wrongdoing and investigates the joint effects of management tone and the slippery slope on financial reporting misbehavior. In Study 1, we investigate assumptions about the effects of sliding down the slippery slope and tone at the top on financial executives’ decisions to misreport earnings. Results of Study 1 indicate that executives are willing to engage in misreporting behavior when there is a positive tone set by the Chief Financial Officer, regardless of (...) the presence or absence of a slippery slope. A negative tone set by the CFO does not facilitate the transition from minor indiscretions to financial misreporting. In Study 2, we find that auditors evaluating executives’ decisions under the same conditions as those in Study 1 do not react to the slippery slope condition, but auditors assess higher risks of fraud when the CFO sets a negative tone. Overall, our results indicate that many assumptions about the slippery slope and tone at the top should be questioned. We provide evidence that pro-organizational behaviors and incrementalism yield new insights into the causes of ethical failures, financial misreporting behavior, and failures of corporate governance mechanisms. (shrink)

Public engagement is increasingly advocated and applied in the development and implementation of technological innovations. However, initiatives so far are rarely considered effective. There is a need for more methodological rigor and insight into conducive conditions. The authors developed an evaluative framework and assessed accordingly the effectiveness of a project of the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in which the application of interactive policy making was piloted in medical biotechnology, among others, to increase the legitimacy and quality of (...) the policy agenda. Relevant societal actors, including citizens, were actively involved in an open-exchange, action and reflection process, integrating relevant knowledge. Although the project was overall evaluated as effective, some difficulties were faced. These were mostly related to the novel roles public engagement requires of principal actors. The article concludes that more research is needed on the position of the executing team and on overcoming tensions existing between different governance modes. (shrink)

A number of convergent recent findings with adults have been interpreted as evidence of the existence of two distinct systems for mindreading that draw on separate conceptual resources: one that is fast, automatic, and inflexible; and one that is slower, controlled, and flexible. The present article argues that these findings admit of a more parsimonious explanation. This is that there is a single set of concepts made available by a mindreading system that operates automatically where it can, but which frequently (...) needs to function together with domain-specific executive procedures as well as domain-general resources. This view, too, can be described as a two-systems account. But in this case one of the systems encompasses the other, and the conceptual resources available to each are the same. (shrink)

Students with learning disabilities (LDs) suffer from executive function deficits and impaired prospective memory (PM). Yet the specificity of deficits associated with different types of LDs is still unclear. The object of the present research was to compare subgroups of students with different forms of LDs (<25th percentile) on executive function and PM. Students with a mathematics disability (MD,n= 30), reading disability (RD,n= 27), both (RDMD,n= 27), or neither (typically developing, TD,n= 30) were evaluated on a set of executive functioning (...) tasks (e.g., updating, inhibition, and shifting) and on PM. The results showed that students with MDs and RDMDs suffered from PM deficits. Among the subtypes of LDs, the deficit is different. The students with RDMDs showed a wide range of defects in PM, shifting, inhibition, and updating. In comparison, students with MDs experienced deficits in PM and shifting, while students with RDs experienced a deficit only in updating. For the RD group, the RDMD group and the TD group, updating, and shifting significantly predicted PM. For the MD group, only shifting significantly predicted PM performance, but PM deficits were not completely confined to shifting deficits. (shrink)

The executives of listed firms play an important role in the fulfillment of corporate social responsibility. Based on behavioral consistency theory, this study examines the association of CSR performance among multiple firms for the same executive served at different times. By tracking the movement of executives across Chinese listed firms over the period 2010–2019, we find that there is a significantly positive association between the predecessor and the successor firm’s CSR performance for the same executive, implying that an (...) individual’s value and preference for CSR maintain consistency within a certain period of time. We also find that a longer employment gap and lower internal control effectiveness will damage the association of CSR performance between the predecessor and the successor firm. Our results are robust to testing in subsamples and controlling the endogeneity problems. Our conclusion provides a new perspective to understand the influence mechanism of CSR performance in the context of inter-firm executive mobility and provides empirical evidence for listed firms to improve their decision-making in hiring and evaluating executives. (shrink)

Objective tests of olfaction are widely available to aid in the assessment of olfaction. Their clearest role is in the characterization of olfactory changes, either reported by or suspected in a patient. There is a rapidly growing literature concerned with the association of olfactory changes with certain neuropsychiatric conditions and the use of olfactory testing to supplement conventional assessments in clinical and research practice is evolving. Neural pathways important for olfactory processing overlap extensively with pathways important for cognitive functioning, and (...) especially those important for executive functioning, many of which are concentrated in the frontal lobes. Previous work has identified associations between performance on certain olfactory tests and executive functioning and behavioral measures. More recently, similar associations have also been identified in non-clinical samples, raising new questions as to the utility of olfactory test scores as proxy measures for non-olfactory phenomena. In this systemic review, we sought to identify studies, both clinical and non-clinical, that investigated the associations of olfaction with performance on tasks sensitive to frontal lobe functioning. Our search criteria led to the identification of 70 studies published in English. We examined in detail and tabulated the data from these studies, highlighted each study's key findings, and critically evaluated these studies. We use the results of this review to reflect on some of the current and future challenges concerning the use of olfactory testing in clinical neuropsychiatric practice and research and speculate on the potential benefits of administering phonemic fluency in combination with olfactory testing to enhance its predictive value. (shrink)

Background: There are few standardized measures available to assess executive function in a naturalistic setting for children. The Children’s Cooking Task is a complex test that has been specifically developed to assess EF in a standardized open-ended environment. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, sensitivity and specificity, and also convergent and divergent validity of the Norwegian version of CCT among children with pediatric Acquired Brain Injury and healthy controls.Methods: The present study has (...) a cross-sectional design, based on baseline data derived from a multicenter RCT. Seventy-five children with pABI from two university hospitals with parent-reported executive dysfunction and minimum of 12 months since injury/completed cancer therapy, as well as 59 HCs aged 10–17 years, were assessed with CCT using total errors as the main outcome measure. The pABI group completed tests assessing EF on the impairment level within the ICF framework, and on the participation level. In addition, they completed tests of intellectual ability, processing speed, attention, learning, and memory. Finally, overall functional outcome was evaluated for the children with pABI.Results: Acceptable internal consistency and good inter-rater reliability were found for the CCT. Children with pABI performed significantly worse on the CCT than the HCs. The CCT identified group membership, but the sensitivity and specificity were overall classified as poor. Convergent validity was demonstrated by associations between the CCT and performance-based tests assessing inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory, as well as teacher-reported executive dysfunction. Divergent validity was supported by the lack of association with performance-based measures of learning and memory, attention, and verbal intellectual ability. However, there was a moderate association between the CCT and performance-based tests of processing speed. Lastly, better performance on the CCT was associated with a better functional outcome.Conclusion: Our study with a relatively large sample of children with pABI and HC’s demonstrated good psychometric properties of the CCT. CCT performance was associated with the overall level of disability and function, suggesting that CCT is related to the level of activity in everyday life and participation in society. Hence, our study suggests that the CCT has the potential to advance the assessment of EF by providing a valid analysis of real-world performance. Nevertheless, further research is needed on larger samples, focusing on predictors of task performance, and evaluating the ability of CCT to detect improvement in EF over time. The patterns of error and problem-solving strategies evaluated by the CCT could be used to inform neuropsychological rehabilitation treatmentand represent a more valid outcome measure of rehabilitation interventions. (shrink)

In the last five years, a number of U.S. companies have either moved their locus of incorporation to countries with more favorable tax laws, or announced such moves. Given this trend toward “inversions”, and the polemics that have accompanied it, we offer two ways in which the ethics of such a move can be evaluated. We provide multinational executives with two applications of ethics to inversion: Kant’s deontological theory and the consequentialist perspective of utilitarianism.

This paper conducts an evaluative study on the rehabilitation of limb motor function by using a microsensor information flow gain algorithm and investigates the surface electromyography signals of the upper limb during rehabilitation training. The surface EMG signals contain a large amount of limb movement information. By analysing and processing the surface EMG signals, we can grasp the human muscle movement state and identify the human upper limb movement intention. The EMG signals were processed by the trap and filter combination (...) denoising method and wavelet denoising method, respectively, the signal-to-noise ratio was used to evaluate the noise reduction effect, and finally, the wavelet denoising method with a better noise reduction effect was selected to process all the EMG signals. After the noise is removed, the signal is extracted in the time domain and frequency domain, and the root mean square, absolute mean, median frequency in the time domain, and average power frequency in the frequency domain are selected and input to the classifier for pattern recognition. The support vector machine is used to classify the myoelectric signals and optimize the parameters in the support vector machine using the grid search method and particle swarm optimization algorithm and classify the test samples using the trained support vector machine. Compared with the classification results of the grid search optimized support vector machine, the optimized vector machine has a 7% higher recognition rate, reaching 85%. The action recognition classification method of myoelectric signals is combined with an upper limb rehabilitation training platform to verify the feasibility of using myoelectric signals for rehabilitation training. After the classifier recognizes the upper limb movements, the upper computer sends movement commands to the controller to make the rehabilitation platform move according to the recognition results, and finally, the movement execution accuracy of the rehabilitation platform reaches 80% on average. (shrink)

U.S. approaches to oversight of research and technological products have developed over time in an effort to ensure safety to humans, animals, and the environment and to control use in a social context. In modern times, regulatory and oversight tools have evolved to include diverse approaches such as performance standards, tradable allowances, consultations between government and industry, and pre-market safety and efficacy reviews. The decision whether to impose an oversight system, the oversight elements, the level of oversight, the choice of (...) approach, and its execution can profoundly affect technological development, individual and collective interests, and public confidence in technological products. Oversight is conducted by a range of institutions with various capabilities, cultures, and motives. Avenues for disputing oversight decisions are also important, and some argue that the U.S. operates in an adversarial regulatory culture in which Congress, the media, and stakeholders regularly contest the decisions of federal agencies. (shrink)

The present research was designed to investigate the absolute and relative levels of ethical convictions of executive search consultants, or "headhunters", in regard of their search practices. Executive search consultants were defined as trained specialists who helped client organizations identify and evaluate the suitability of job candidates for top, senior, and middle-level management and executive positions. Despite frequent reports of unethical search practices in the media, results based on a sample of 184 headhunters and non-headhunter executives showed that headhunters (...) were inclined to adhere stringently to a selected set of ethical values, both in absolute terms and in comparison with the expectations of non-headhunter executives. The differences had implications not only for the integrity and continued existence of the headhunting profession, but also for the ethical development of new executive search consultants. Future research directions were suggested. (shrink)

Cognitive agents form beliefs representing the world, evaluate the world as represented, form plans for making the world more to their liking, and perform actions executing the plans. Then the cycle repeats. This is the doxastic-conative loop, diagrammed in figure one.1 Both human beings and the autonomous rational agents envisaged in AI are cognitive agents in this sense. The cognition of a cognitive agent can be subdivided into two parts. Epistemic cognition is that kind of cognition responsible for producing and (...) maintaining beliefs. Practical cognition evaluates the world, adopts plans, and initiates action. There is a massive literature both in philosophy and artificial intelligence concerning various aspects of epistemic cognition, and large parts of it are well understood. Practical cognition is less well understood. We can usefully divide practical cognition into five parts: (1) the evaluation of the world as represented by the agent’s beliefs, (2) the adoption of goals for changing it, (3) the construction of plans for achieving goals, (4) the adoption of plans, and (5) the execution of plans. There is a substantial literature in AI concerning the construction and execution of plans, and I will say nothing further about those topics here. This paper will focus on the evaluative aspects of practical cognition. Evaluation plays an essential role in both goal selection and plan adoption. My concern here is the investigation of evaluation as a cognitive enterprise performed by cognitive agents. I am interested both in how it is performed in human beings and how it might be performed in artificial rational agents. (shrink)

Se realizó un modelo de investigación cuantitativo y cualitativo, de formación y desarrollo de recursos humanos con el objetivo de diseñar y aplicar una estrategia para mejorar los resultados en el desempeño de los cuadros de la Dirección Provincial de Salud en Camagüey. La investigación se efectuó entre marzo del 2011 a marzo del 2012.El universo y muestra estuvo conformado por los 39 cuadros de la Dirección Provincial de Salud en Camagüey. Se utilizaron métodos teóricos, empíricos y estadísticos. Se diseñaron (...) acciones en el orden didáctico teórico, práctico e integrado, donde se partió de las necesidades individuales y colectivas y de los resultados de la aplicación de encuestas, entrevista, entrevistas a informantes claves, revisión documental de las evaluaciones y planes de desarrollo individual. Luego de la implementación de la estrategia se constataron cambios positivos en el trabajo de los cuadros objeto de estudio, así como un mejor desempeño y resultados en los controles internos y externos. Se realizó la validación de la estrategia utilizando el criterio de expertos y la validación en la práctica. A quantitave and qualitative investigative model of formation and development of human resources was performed with the objective of designing and applying a strategy to improve the results of the human resources in the performance of the executives at the Provincial Health Direction in Camaguey. This investigation took place from March 2011 to March 2012. The universe and the sample included the 39 executives of the Provincial Health Direction in Camaguey. Theoretical, empirical and statistic methods were used. Different actions in the didactic theoretic, practical and integrative levels were designed taking into consideration the individual and groupal needs as well as the results of the interviews, and surveys to key informants, documental revisión of the evaluations and plans of the individual development. After implementation of the strategy positive changes in the work of the executives in the study as well as better performance and results in the internal and external controls. Validation of the strategy according to the expert criterium and functional validation by the results of the strategy applied to the executives in the study were performed. (shrink)

This book explores the intersection of evaluation studies and care ethics in contemporary Western societies. In all societies and institutions, large and small, we find forces that can strengthen or destroy their fabric. One new regulation, law, or policy can impact the lives of many who find themselves in precarious positions. Think, for example, about health care reform and migrant policies in various Western countries and their effects on the everyday lives of millions of people. Policies, programs, and those (...) who execute them can threaten the daily routines of our lives, and we can respond by withdrawing or freezing, doing nothing and thinking it will pass. Or we can respond with resistance, anger, and sometimes much worse, like the shootings in several American cities. (shrink)

Motor learning can be defined as a process that leads to relatively permanent changes in motor behavior through repeated interactions with the environment. Different strategies can be adopted to achieve motor learning: movements can be overtly practiced leading to an amelioration of motor performance; alternatively, covert strategies (e.g., action observation) can promote neuroplastic changes in the motor system even in the absence of real movement execution. However, whether a training regularly alternating action observation and execution (i.e., Action Observation Training, AOT) (...) may surpass the pure motor practice (MP) and observational learning (OL) remains to be established. To address this issue, we enrolled 54 subjects requiring them to learn tying nautical knots via one out of three types of training (AOT, MP, OL) with the scope to investigate which element mostly contributes to motor learning. We evaluated the overall improvement of each group, along with the predictive role that neuropsychological indexes exert on each treatment outcome. The AOT group exhibited the highest performance improvement (42%), indicating that the regular alternation between observation and execution biases participants toward a better performance. The reiteration of this sequence provides an incremental, adjunct value that super-adds onto the efficacy of motor practice or observational learning in isolation (42% > 25% + 10%, i.e., OL + MP). These findings extend the use of the AOT from clinical and rehabilitative contexts to daily routines requiring the learning and perfectioning of new motor skills such as sports training, music, and occupational activities requiring fine motor control. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so, no issue in medical ethics or bioethics law has raised more concerns about federal intervention in the practice of medicine, about judicial attempts to craft health policy, or about the wisdom of public mandates directing specific health care initiatives than the issue of physician-assisted suicide. State voter referenda, lower and federal court cases, proposed legislation in both houses of Congress, and orders and determinations from agencies within the executive branch of two administrations are representative (...) of the kinds of actions taken in the last ten years implicating medical care at the end of life. Whether the intent was to codify into law physician-assisted suicide, to deny a constitutional right of assisted suicide, or to make “easier” physicians' efforts to alleviate intractable suffering at the risk of hastening death, or to prohibit physician aid in dying altogether, the impact on the patient-doctor relationship and on our understanding of what constitutes dignified and humane care at the end of life is undeniable. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so, no issue in medical ethics or bioethics law has raised more concerns about federal intervention in the practice of medicine, about judicial attempts to craft health policy, or about the wisdom of public mandates directing specific health care initiatives than the issue of physician-assisted suicide. State voter referenda, lower and federal court cases, proposed legislation in both houses of Congress, and orders and determinations from agencies within the executive branch of two administrations are representative (...) of the kinds of actions taken in the last ten years implicating medical care at the end of life. Whether the intent was to codify into law physician-assisted suicide, to deny a constitutional right of assisted suicide, or to make “easier” physicians' efforts to alleviate intractable suffering at the risk of hastening death, or to prohibit physician aid in dying altogether, the impact on the patient-doctor relationship and on our understanding of what constitutes dignified and humane care at the end of life is undeniable. (shrink)

Background : An enhancement in recall of simple instructions is found when actions are performed in comparison to when they are verbally presented – the subject-performed task effect. This enhancement has also been found with older adults. However, the reason why older adults, known to present a deficit in episodic memory, have a better performance for this type of information remains unclear. In this article, we explored this effect by comparing the performance on the SPT task with the performance on (...) other tasks, in order to understand the underlying mechanisms that may explain this effect. Objective : We hypothesized that both young and older adult groups should show higher recall in SPT compared with the verbal learning condition, and that the differences between age groups should be lower in the SPT condition. We aimed to explore the correlations between these tasks and known neuropsychological tests, and we also measured source memory for the encoding condition. Design : A mixed design was used with 30 healthy older adults, comparing their performance with 30 healthy younger adults. Each participant was asked to perform 16 simple instructions and to only read the other 16 instructions. The test phase included a free recall task. Participants were also tested with a set of neuropsychological measures. Results : The SPT effect was found for both age groups; but even for SPT materials, group differences in recall persisted. Source memory was found to be preserved for the two groups. Simple correlations suggested differences in correlates of SPT performance between the two groups. However, when controlling for age, the SPT and VT tasks correlate with each other, and a measure of episodic memory correlated moderately with both SPT and VT performance. Conclusions : A strong effect of SPT was observed for all but one, which still displayed the expected aging deficit. The correlations and source memory data suggest that the SPT and VT are possibly related in respect to their underlying processes, and SPT, instead of being an isolated process, is in connection with both the episodic memory and executive function processes. Under these circumstances, the SPT seems to contribute to an enhancement of the episodic memory trace, presumably from the multimodality it provides, without involving a separated set of cognitive mechanisms. Future research using more pure measures of other cognitive processes that could be related to SPT is necessary. Keywords : aging; subject performed task; memory for actions; episodic memory Responsible Editor: Mathieu Hainselin, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France. (shrink)

The process of assessing executive functions through behavioral observation scales is still under theoretical and empirical construction. This article reports on the analysis of the factorial structure of the EOCL-1 scale that assesses executive functions, as proposed by the theory developed by Luria, which has not been previously considered in this type of evaluation. In this scale, the executive functions taken into account are error correction, internal behavioral and cognition regulatory language, limbic system conscious regulation, decision making, future consideration (...) of consequences of actions, goal-directed behavior, inhibitory control of automatic responses, creation of new behavioral repertoires, and cognitive–behavioral activity verification. A variety of validity and reliability analyses were carried out, with the following results: an adequate internal consistency level of executive functions between α = 0.70 and α = 0.83, significant convergent validity with a scale that assesses frontal deficits between r = −0.07 and r = 0.28, and the scale’s construct validity that proposes a model with an executive central factor comparative fit index = 0.93, root mean square error of approximation = 0.04, standardized root mean square residual = 0.04, and x2 = 789.29, p = 0.001. The findings are discussed based on previous literature reports and in terms of the benefits of using a scale to assess the proposed executive functions. (shrink)

Multiple cortical areas of the human brain motor system interact coherently in the low frequency range (< 0.1 Hz), even in the absence of explicit tasks. Following stroke, cortical interactions are functionally disturbed. How these interactions are affected and how the functional organization is regained from rehabilitative treatments as people begin to recover motor behaviors has not been systematically studied. We recorded the intrinsic functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals from 30 participants: 17 young healthy controls and 13 aged stroke (...) survivors. Stroke participants underwent mental practice (MP) or both mental practice and physical therapy (MP + PT) within 14-51 days following stroke. We investigated the network activity of five core areas in the motor-execution network, consisting of the left primary motor area (LM1), the right primary motor area (RM1), the left pre-motor cortex (LPMC), the right pre-motor cortex (RPMC) and the supplementary motor area (SMA). We discovered that (i) the network activity dominated in the frequency range 0.06 Hz – 0.08 Hz for all the regions, and for both able-bodied and stroke participants (ii) the causal information flow between the regions: LM1 and SMA, RPMC and SMA, RPMC and LM1, SMA and RM1, SMA and LPMC, was reduced significantly for stroke survivors (iii) the flow did not increase significantly after MP alone and (iv) the flow among the regions during MP+PT increased significantly. We also found that sensation and motor scores were significantly higher and correlated with directed functional connectivity measures when the stroke-survivors underwent MP+PT but not MP alone. The findings provide evidence that a combination of mental practice and physical therapy can be an effective means of treatment for stroke survivors to recover or regain the strength of motor behaviors, and that the spectra of causal information flow can be used as a reliable biomarker for evaluating rehabilitation in stroke survivors. (shrink)

The executive board of the Academy for Ethics in Medicine and two AEM working groups formulated standards and recommendations for clinical ethics consultation in 2010, 2011, and 2013. These guidelines comply with the international standards like those set by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. There is no empirical data available yet that could indicate whether these standards and recommendations have been implemented in German hospitals. This desideratum is addressed in the present study. We contacted 1.858 German hospitals between (...) September 2013 and January 2014. A follow-up survey was conducted between October 2014 and January 2015. The data of the initial survey and the follow-up survey were merged and evaluated. The statements of the participants were compared with the standards and recommendations. The standards of the AEM concerning the tasks of clinical ethics consultation are employed by a majority of participants of the study. Almost all of these participants document their consultation activities by means of protocols or entries in the patient file. There are deviations from the recommendations of the AEM working groups regarding the drafting of statutes, activity reports, and financial support. The activities of clinical ethics consultation predominantly comply with the standards of the AEM and recommendations for the documentation. The recommendations for evaluation should be improved in practice. This applies particularly for activity reports in order to evaluate the activities. Internal evaluation could take place accordingly. (shrink)

This paper draws on work in the sciences of the mind to cast doubt on some assumptions that have often been made in the study of self-control. Contra a long, Aristotelian tradition, recent evidence suggests that highly self-controlled individuals do not have a trait very similar to continence: they experience relatively few desires that conflict with their evaluative judgments and are not especially good at directly and effortfully inhibiting such desires. Similarly, several recent studies have failed to support the view (...) that self-control capacities are constituted, at least in part, by excellent inhibitory executive function ability. I propose an alternative “indirect harmony” hypothesis about trait self-control. According to this hypothesis, if there is a character trait of being highly self-controlled, it consists in motivational harmony within the mind that is brought about through the effective use of indirect resistance strategies that prevent occurrent motivational conflict from emerging in the first place. If this hypothesis is correct, high trait self-control in actual humans does not fit neatly into the traditional categories of either continence or temperance. I conclude by drawing out several implications this hypothesis has for future research on trait self-control and its relation to executive functions. (shrink)

Background: Physical exercises can affect executive function both acutely and chronically, with different mechanisms for each moment. Currently, only a few reviews have elaborated on the premise that different types of exercises have different mechanisms for improving executive function. Therefore, the primary purpose of our systematic review was to analyze the effects of acute and chronic exercises on executive function in children and adolescents.Objective: We identified acute and chronic exercise studies and randomized controlled trials of executive function in children and (...) adolescents that reported overall effect, heterogeneity, and publication bias of acute and chronic exercises on executive function.Methods: We searched for RCTs of exercise interventions in children and adolescents from databases including PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, and Wanfang, from January 1 2009 to December 31 2019. We performed methodological quality evaluations on the included literature using the Physiotherapy Evidence Database Scale and graded evidence with a meta-analysis using Stata 12.0 software.Results: In total, 36 RCTs were included ; the overall results of the meta-analysis indicated that acute exercises significantly improved working memory = −0.72; 95% confidence interval −0.89 to −0.56; p < 0.001), inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, whereas chronic exercises significantly improved working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility.Conclusion: Acute and chronic exercises can effectively improve the executive function of children and adolescents. The effects on inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility are considered as small effect sizes, while the effects on working memory are considered as moderate effect size. Limited by the quantity and quality of the included studies, the above conclusions need to be verified with more high-quality studies. (shrink)

It is unclear whether the decline in executive function and perceptual-motor function found in older adults with mild cognitive impairment is the result of a normal aging process or due to MCI. This study aimed to determine age-related and MCI-related cognitive impairments of the EF and PMF. The EF and PMF were investigated across four groups of 240 participants, 60 in each group, including early adult, middle adult, older adult, and older adult with probable MCI. The EF, working memory, inhibition, (...) and cognitive flexibility were evaluated using digit span backward tasks, the Stroop color-word test, and the modified switching verbal fluency test, respectively. The PMF, visual perception, visuoconstructional reasoning, and perceptual-motor coordination were evaluated using the clock reading test, stick design test, and stick catching test, respectively. Group differences were found for all subdomains of EF and PMF, except for perceptual-motor coordination, indicating that this subdomain could be maintained in older adults and was not affected by MCI. For the age difference, working memory, cognitive flexibility, visual perception, and visuoconstructional reasoning remained stable across middle adults and started to decline in older adults, while cognitive inhibition began to decrease in middle adults and it further declined in older adults. To control the confounding effect of education level, the results showed that only cognitive flexibility was further decreased in older adults with probable MCI compared to those without MCI. In conclusion, cognitive inhibition decreased earlier in middle adults, whereas EF and PMF started to decline in older adults. Cognitive flexibility was the only MCI-sensitive cognitive function. (shrink)

We previously showed that the illusory sense of ownership and agency over a moving body in immersive virtual reality can trigger subjective and physiological reactions on the real subject’s body and, therefore, an acute improvement of cognitive functions after a single session of high-intensity intermittent exercise performed exclusively by one’s own virtual body, similar to what happens when we actually do physical activity. As well as confirming previous results, here, we aimed at finding in the elderly an increased improvement after (...) a longer virtual training with similar characteristics. Forty-two healthy older subjects completed a parallel-group randomized controlled trial including an adapted version of the virtual training previously used: while sitting, participants observed the virtual body in a first-person perspective or a third-person perspective performing 20 min of virtual high-intensity intermittent exercise. This was repeated twice a week for 6 weeks. During the vHIE, we measured the heart rate and administered questionnaires to evaluate illusory body ownership and agency. Before the beginning of the intervention, immediately after the first session of vHIE, and at the end of the entire intervention, we evaluated the cognitive performance at the Stroop task with online recording of the hemodynamic activity over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. While we confirm previous results regarding the virtual illusion and its physiological effects, we did not find significant cognitive or neural improvement immediately after the first vHIE session. As a novelty, in the 1PP group only, we detected a significant decrease in the response time of the Stroop task in the post-intervention assessment compared to its baseline; coherently, we found an increased activation on left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex after the entire intervention. While the current results strengthen the impact of the virtual full-body illusion and its physiological consequences on the elderly as well, they might have stronger and more established body representations. Perhaps, a longer and increased exposure to those illusions is necessary to initiate the cascade of events that culminates to an improved cognitive performance. (shrink)

IntroductionEspecially in the chronic phase, individuals with traumatic brain injury may still have impairments at the discourse level, even if these remain undetected by conventional aphasia tests. As a consequence, IwTBI may be impaired in conversational behavior and disadvantaged in their socio-communicative participation. Even though handling discourse is thought to be a basic requirement for participation and quality of life, only a handful of test procedures assessing discourse disorders have been developed so far. The MAKRO Screening is a recently developed (...) screening tool designed to assess discourse impairments. The test construction is based on psycholinguistic frameworks and the concept of macro-rules, which refer to cognitive functions responsible for organizing and reducing complex information in discourse.AimThe aim of our study was to investigate discourse processing in IwTBI in different tasks and to assess problems in communicative participation in the post-acute and chronic phase. In this context, we also aimed to analyze the influence of the severity of the initial impairment and the verbal executive abilities on the discourse performance. Additionally, the impact of macrolinguistic discourse impairments and verbal fluency on perceived communicative participation was targeted in our analysis.MethodsData from 23 IwTBI and 23 healthy control subjects have been analyzed. They completed two subtests of the MAKRO screening: Text production and Inferences. Discourse performance was examined in relation to measures of semantic fluency and verbal task-switching. Socio-communicative problems were evaluated with the German version of the La Trobe Communication Questionnaire.ResultsIwTBI showed lower test results than the control group in the two subtests of the MAKRO-Screening. Difficulties in picture-based narrative text production also indicated greater perceived difficulties in communicative participation. We also found that the subject’s performance on the MAKRO-Screening subtests can partly be explained by underlying dysexecutive symptoms and the severity of their injury. The preliminary results of our study show that cognitive-linguistic symptoms in IwTBI are also evident in the chronic phase. These can be detected with procedures referring to the discourse level, such as the MAKRO-Screening. The assessment of discourse performance should be an integral part in the rehabilitation of IwTBI in order to detect cognitive-linguistic communication disorders and to evaluate their impact on socio-communicative participation. (shrink)

Correcting the relationship between tonic and burst firing modes in dopamine neurons may help normalise stimulus-reinforcement gradients and contingent behaviour in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children. But appropriate evaluations of stimuli for developing adaptive plans and controlling impulsivity will not occur without moderating the gain-like functions of serotonin. The “dynamic theory” correctly highlights the need to account for variability in ADHD. The dysmaturation of pre-executive information processing is proposed as an explanation. At the core of the article by Sagvolden and colleagues (...) there is a set of data that throws light on an aspect of the ADHD phenomenon. But one asks if the authors are a measure too brave to generalise so broadly from the unusually steep reinforcement gradients reported for the human condition and an animal model to the syndrome as a whole. (shrink)

Previous research has demonstrated that regular exercise modulates motor cortical plasticity and cognitive function, but the influence of short-term high-intensity interval training remains unclear. In the present study, the effect of short-term HIIT on neuroplasticity and executive function was assessed in 32 sedentary females. Half of the participants undertook 2 weeks of HIIT. Paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to measure motor cortical plasticity via short intracortical inhibition and intracortical facilitation. We further adapted the Stroop task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (...) to evaluate executive function in the participants. The results indicated that, compared with the control group, the HIIT group exhibited decreased ICF. In the Stroop task, the HIIT group displayed greater activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left orbitofrontal cortex even though no significant difference in task performance was observed. These findings indicate that short-term HIIT may modulate motor cortical plasticity and executive function at the neural level. (shrink)