نشریه عصب روانشناسی
سال پنجم شماره 4 (پیاپی 19، زمستان 1398)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the cognitive-remediation therapy program on the neuropsychological skills profile of preschool hearing loss children in Isfahan city.

The present research was a semi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test design, and control group. The participants were 28 preschool hearing loss of children aged 5-6 years old. Subjects were selected by a convenient sampling method from the rehabilitation center of Ava mother-child. They were divided into experimental and control groups, each group consisting of 14 children. The experimental group received of cognitive-remediation therapy program in 10 sessions (40 minutes per session), while the control group did not. Data gathering tools were Raven progressive matrices test and neuropsychological Conner's questionnaire. Data were collected before and after the training sessions. Data were analyzed using MANCOVA.  

The results revealed that cognitive-remediation therapy had a significant effect on neuropsychological skills and all subscales (attention problems, sensory-motor function, language function, memory and learning, executive functions and cognitive processing) in the experimental group (P<0.001).

Cognitive-remediation therapy improved the neuropsychological skills profile of preschool hearing loss children. In fact, this program improves neuropsychological skills through cognitive activities.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of working memory educational program on enhancing Phonological working memory and phonemic awareness performance of dyslexic students. This study was Quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test. The statistical population was all the primary school students of 2 and 3 greads, with dyslexia who went to learning disorders centers in Tehran, 30 of them using convenience sampling and were assigned by random in experimental and control groups. The assessment tools included Working Memory Test Battery for Children (Gathercole & Pickering, 2001) and Phonological Awareness Test (Soleimani & Dastjerdi-Kazemi,  2010). The experimental group experienced the working memory educational program in 16 sessions, 30 to 35minutes. The obtained data were analyzed statistically by using of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Results showed significant differences between experimental and control group in both dependent variables at post-test. The results showed that training of working memory educational program improved Phonological working memory and phonemic awareness performance of dyslexic students.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate The Effectiveness of Brain Cognitive Rehabilitation on Information Processing Speed (IPS) and psychological refractory period (PRP) in Children with Specific Learning Disorders.

This study is a semiexperimental research with pre-test and post-test design with control group. 24 children with specific learning disorder in Ahwaz city participated in this study. Participants were randomly divided into experimental and control groups after the pre-test phase (recording scores of IPS and PRP). The experimental group underwent brain cognitive training for 8 sessions in 4 weeks. After the intervention sessions, were performed the IPS and PRP test. Data analysis was performed using a covariance analysis test, at a significant level of p <0.05.

The results showed that there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the IPS (p = 0.010) and PRP (p = 0.001) and the experimental group performs better than the control group.

Overall, it can be concluded that the intervention of eight sessions of brain cognitive rehabilitation approach has a positive effect on IPS and PRP in children with specific learning disorder.

Thinking as one of the cognitive functions has always been of interest to researchers. With a distinction between divergent and convergent cognitive processes, Guilford has made a huge impact on experimental research on creative thinking. Alpha frequency band in the range of 12-8 Hz is associated with cognitive functions such as creativity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the increase and decrease of alpha power changes (event-related synchronization and de-synchronization) in two different types of divergent and convergent thinking.

The sample of this study consists of 38 postgraduate students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (19 males, 19 females) who were selected by available and voluntary sampling method. The brain waves were recorded using a 19-channel instrument while performing divergent  and convergent thinking tasks, and alpha power changes were analyzed using MATLAB software.

activity of alpha waves is in the position of divergent thinking from the anterior regions to the posterior regions with synchronization, while in the convergent thinking position we have seen the reduction in the power of the alpha band in the posterior regions compared to the anterior regions of the brain.

The activity of alpha waves is significantly associated with divergent thinking tasks, which increased activity in the posterior regions of the brain with increased activity, in contrast to tasks related to convergent thinking, indicated decreased activity from the anterior regions to the posterior regions.

The purpose of the present study was to comprison the effectiveness of the compensatory and remediatory cognitive training aiming at enhancement of the executive functions in normal adolescents. The design of this study was a Quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and control group. The sample of this study was 31 students between 14 to 15 year old high school students who were studying at the 10th grade in (2018) in Tehran. Students were selected and randomly assigned into three groups (10 students in compensation and control person group and 11 person in remediation group). The first training group received a compensatory training for 6 weeks in 10 sessions and remediation training group performed 6 weeks training at the same time. Persian Paper and Pencil Cognitive Assessment Package (PCAP) was used to collect data. The results of analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) showed that the two experimental groups had significant changes compared with the control group. Also, the two interventions of compensation and remediation showed significant differences in comparison with each other. That is, the compensation method has been more effective in promoting/ enhancement the executive functions (e.g. working memory, flexibility, & inhibitory control). The findings of the current study have been presented to improve the level of cognitive functions needed by adolescents.

Aim  The purpose of this study was to investigate the pattern of brain waves in paranormal beliefs using EEG in severe and mild groups. A convenient sample of 64 university students (18 females) were recruited for the experiment. they were divided into groups with severe and mildly paranormal beliefs using the Supernatural Beliefs Scale (Belkmore,1994). EEG of participants in both groups was recorded at rest. The result of MANOVA showed a significant difference between mild paranormal and paranormal beliefs in Delta (sig = 0.01) and Theta (sig = 0.03) waves, and alpha wave (sig = 0.08) in the meaningful boundary. Based on these findings, it can be said that the pattern of brain waves in paranormal beliefs is different.

The aim of this study was to investigate the interactive effect of working memory and task duration on time perception.

The research method was quasi-experimental. The population of this research was school students, university students and personnel of organizations of Kerman city in 2018 and among them, 300 persons were selected by available sampling method. The time reproduction task of Shahabifar and Movahedinia (2016) was used for obtaining data. Data were analyzed by paired samples t-test and two factor analysis of variance with repeated measures.

The results showed that the main effect of working memory and task duration and interactive effect of these variables on time perception was significant (p<0.01). Working memory and increase of the task duration affect time perception respectively in the form of decreasing and increasing the amount of time reproduction error.

Time perception decays significantly with increasing length of time intervals and working memory load.

Emotional effects on human time perception are generally attributed to arousal and valence of stimuli. Recent evidence suggests that perception of emotional facial expression induces temporal distortions. Based on the internal clock model, it is assumed that emotional arousal speeds up or slows down the pace maker, while valence influences the attentional processes of the switch element. The aim of our study was to investigate the contribution of each dimension and disentangle their role in facial emotion time distortion.

20 female students performed a temporal bisection task using emotional facial expressions as stimuli which were selected based on PAD model.

Behavioral results revealed that high arousal pleasant stimuli (happy faces) resulted in significantly smaller bisection point, while there was no significant difference between bisection points of angry and neutral faces. The results of study were interpreted in light of SET theory and dual-stages processing of attention.

Different Aspects of Facial Emotional affect on the Perception of Time