فصلنامه تازه های علوم شناختی
سال چهاردهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 54، تابستان 1391)

Facial expressionis one of the most interactive non-verbal communication means in human relationships. Since Charles Darwin, six basic facial emotional expressions have been identified in empirical research, which is believed to be similar in different cultures and communities. They are happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise. Several studies have shown impairment in recognizing facial emotional expressions in mental disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder patients. The hypothesis of this study was: there is a significant difference in facial emotional expressions recognition between people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and their normal peer group. The research was a kind of cross sectional and the data-collection instrument was a computerized version of the facial emotional expressions test developed by Ekman and Friesen (1976). The total population of the study was 60,comprised of 30 men and 30 women in two groups of control and test. The COD patients were diagnosed by psychiatrists or clinical psychologists. The data were analyzed by MANOVA and in case there was a significant difference, Bonferronipost hoc test was taken. As a result, with P≤ 0.05, nosignificant difference was found between the two groups and the hypothesis of the study was rejected. The study shows that; there is no statistically significant difference in recognizing facial emotional expressions between obsessive-compulsive-disorder patients and their normal peers.

Where as tendency toward making bridges between neuroscience and education has increased among scientists and educators, the purpose of this study is to investigate challenges and hopes for connecting the two fields. The nature of the research is philosophical critique in which possibilities and difficulties of the connection between the two domains are investigated. Findings show that the interdisciplinary field of educational neuroscience provokes philosophical problems like mind- brain relationship, free will, and the descriptive / prescriptive role of science. Education, however, cannot be explained by the function of the brain alone, but is a field that inevitably takes multiple approaches. In this view, educationists acquire knowledge and skills from diverse scientific domains and synthesize them to develop defendable theories. In this way, neuroscience can be one of the multiple approaches which are used to justify and support educational thoughts.

Emotions play an important role in human life. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is the reflection of brain activity and is widely used in clinical diagnoses and biomedical researches. This paper proposes an emotion recognition system based on EEG signals. The visual-induction-based acquisition protocol has been designed for acquiring the EEG signals under three emotional states (calm-neutral, positive-excited and negative-excited) for participants. After preprocessing the signals, higher order spectra (HOS) are employed to extract the many features required for classifying human emotions. In this paper, for the first time, two values are used, such as bispectrum and bicoherence, in order to evaluate the EEG changes in the excited state. In this work, we used genetic algorithm and support vector machines (SVM) for classifying the emotions. The results show that, most EEG signal variations correlated with beta frequency band. Hence, with selected HOS-based features, we achieve average accuracy of 52% for three Categories. The results confirm the possibility of using HOS-based features in assessing human emotions from EEG signals. In comparison to other works, they did not show any significant difference in accuracy.HOSis auseful method in representation of emotional states of thebrain.

Cochlear implant (CI) and aural rehabilitation result in speech and cognition skills development of children with hearing impairment. The aim of this study was to investigate effect of aural rehabilitation on speech and cognition development in children using cochlear implant. In this longitudinal study, parents of 15 hearing impaired children (m.a. 45.27 mo) who received CI in AmirAlam CI center between August 2010 and January 2011 were asked by Newsha developmental scale. Assessments were performed before CI operation and then again every 2 months for a period of 8 months after implantation. Developmental age of children in each of speech and cognition skills was determined. Then Pretest Developmental Rate, Intervention Efficiency Index and Proportional Change Index were calculated. A significant difference was observed among Pretest Developmental Rate in the pre intervention and 4 follow up assessments in each of speech and cognition skills (P<0/0001). There had not been a significant difference among the 4 follow up assessments of Intervention Efficiency Index in speech skill (P=0/210). There was a significant difference among the 4 follow up assessments of Intervention Efficiency Index in cognition skill (P<0/0001). There had been also a significant difference among the 4 follow up assessments of Proportional Change Index in each of speech and cognition skills (P<0/0001). Aural rehabilitation can facilitate speech and cognition development of children with CI which in turn makes possible achievement of age-appropriate developmental levels.

Present research aims to show the mediating role of emotional creativity in the relationship between attachment styles and mental health. A sample comprising of 324 students (155 females and 169 males) was selected from among Shiraz University students through multistage cluster sampling method. The statistical instruments were Adult Attachment Inventory (AAI), Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ28). According to Baron and Kenny's (1986) steps, using statistical method of hierarchical regression, hypothetical paths were examined. The main findings are the following: (a) as direct predictors: secure attachment positively, and ambivalent attachment negatively can predict mental health; (b) the emotional creativity and its dimensions play a mediating role in the relationship between attachment styles and mental health; and, (c) avoidance attachment was merely an indirect and negative predictor of mental health through the mediating role of emotional creativity, novelty and effectiveness. The model obtained is appropriate for explaining mental health problems.

The aim of this research was to investigate the efficacy of executive functions training (working memory and response inhibition) on academic performances of students with spelling learning disability. The design of this research was experimental. Forty five third-grade elementary students with spelling learning disability were selected through multistage random cluster sampling. The students were randomly assigned into three groups – two experimental groups and one control group – each consisting of 15 students. Experimental group one, received working memory training, and experimental group two received response inhibition training. The instruments used were NEPSY Test, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children- Revised (WISC-R), Checklist for Identifying Students with Spelling Learning Disability, Clinical Interview, and Spelling Academic Performance. Data were analyzed by Analysis of Covariance. Findings indicated that executive functions training on working memory and response inhibition can improve spelling performance of students. The findings showed that executive functions training could be used as an intervention method in improving spelling difficulty among students with spelling learning disability.

This study investigated the effects of emotion induction on moral judgment. Moral judgments of 144 volunteer students, who were randomly divided in four groups, were assessed by personal and impersonal moral dilemmas as pretest. Then, each group was emotionally induced by one of four 4-minute emotional films (sad, horror, disgusting, or neutral). In the next step, moral judgments of the participants were again assessed by matched dilemmas as posttest. The ANOVA with two within and one between- subjects did not demonstrate significant differences between the four groups in their reaction times to moral judgment. However, the differences between RTs to personal and impersonal dilemmas, apart from emotion induction, were significant (P<0/05). Also RTs and the type of responses to personal and impersonal dilemmas were significantly different before emotion induction relative to posttest. These findings indicate that there are no significant differences between emotional inductions on moral judgments. It seems that emotions per se influence moral judgment and this effect is related to the type of moral judgment.

The current study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of an audiovisual training program on changing the ability of divided and selective attentions and their reaction time in car drivers with crash history. In this quasi-experimental study, 64 car drivers each with more than one at-fault crashes were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. All the drivers had more than two years of driving experiences. Then, concentrated and diffuse attentions were measured by selective and divided attentions and Stroop tests. The functions of attention in the experimental group following three weeks and five training sessions were re-strengthened. One and two weeks after training, both groups were re-assessed. Data were analyzed using covariance and repeated measures. Analysis of the data showed that the experimental group had significant differences in the rate of correct responses congruent and incongruent Stroop test (P ≤ 0/001) and the correct answer in the concentrated and dispersed (P ≤ 0/001) and also consistent in the amount of reaction time (P ≤ 0/001) and inconsistent (P ≤ 0/02) and focused attention of P ≤ 0/04) and dispersed (P ≤ 0/01) where compared with control regarding. According to the findings it could be concluded the program, improved the ability of divided and selective attentions and their reaction time. However, re-strengthening of attention is not a background reason for improving the driving ability and reducing risk of car crash. This study need to be confirmed by long-term studies with follow-up.