Selective attention requires the ability to focus on relevant information and to ignore irrelevant information. The ability to inhibit irrelevant information has been proposed to be the main source ...of age-related cognitive change (e.g.,
Hasher & Zacks, 1988
). Although age-related distraction by irrelevant information has been extensively demonstrated in the visual modality, studies involving auditory and cross-modal paradigms have revealed a mixed pattern of results. A comparative evaluation of these paradigms according to sensory modality suggests a twofold trend: Age-related distraction is more likely (a) in unimodal than in cross-modal paradigms and (b) when irrelevant information is presented in the visual modality, rather than in the auditory modality. This distinct pattern of age-related changes in selective attention may be linked to the reliance of the visual and auditory modalities on different filtering mechanisms. Distractors presented through the auditory modality can be filtered at both central and peripheral neurocognitive levels. In contrast, distractors presented through the visual modality are primarily suppressed at more central levels of processing, which may be more vulnerable to aging. We propose the hypothesis that age-related distractibility is modality dependent, a notion that might need to be incorporated in current theories of cognitive aging. Ultimately, this might lead to a more accurate account for the mixed pattern of impaired and preserved selective attention found in advancing age.
Productive failure is an instructional approach that requires learners to struggle as they attempt to generate solutions to problems before, rather than after, receiving direct instruction on a ...targeted concept. Studies demonstrate that productive failure prepares students for later learning of new, related knowledge. Our study explored the effectiveness of productive failure as an instructional intervention in health professions education with respect to (a) acquisition and application of a novel concept, and (b) learners’ preparation for future learning of new, related content. Forty year-one students enrolled in the Doctor of Pharmacy program at the University of Toronto were randomly assigned to a productive failure (i.e. attempt to generate solutions before receiving instruction) or direct instruction only learning condition. After a practice phase, participants completed a series of tests designed to measure knowledge acquisition, knowledge application, and preparation for future learning (new learning is required for successful problem solving). As expected, no difference in performance was seen between participants on the acquisition and application tests. However, participants in the productive failure condition outperformed those in the direct instruction condition on the preparation for future learning test. These results emphasize the role of struggle in learning and support the theory that engaging students in solving problems that are beyond their abilities can be a productive exercise in failure. The results suggest that productive failure assists learners in acquiring the conceptual knowledge needed to facilitate learning in the future.
We investigated the effects of age on proactive and reactive cognitive control in a large population sample of 809 individuals, ranging in age between 5 and 97 years. For that purpose, we used an ...anticue paradigm, which required a consistent remapping of cue location and response hand: Left-sided cues required right-hand responses and vice versa. After a random preparation interval of 100-850 ms, these anticues were followed by a target stimulus, which prompted a response with the index or middle finger of 1 of 2 hands. A neutral control condition involved uninformative cues, indicating all 4 possible response locations. The primary outcome measure was the difference between neutral and anticue reaction time (RT). Negative values indicated RT costs of the anticue, relative to the neutral condition, reflecting reactive cognitive control. Positive values indicated RT benefits, reflecting proactive cognitive control. Results were twofold. First, the switch from RT costs to benefits took place at longer preparation intervals in the youngest and oldest age groups than in the intermediate age groups. Second, irrespective of preparation interval, anticue performance followed an inverted U-shaped trajectory as a function of age, with a relatively steep improvement during childhood and adolescence, relative stability between 26 and 60 years, and a slightly accelerating decline into old age. Both patterns of results suggest an age-related transition from a primarily reactive, to a primarily proactive mode of cognitive control in early life and back again from a primarily proactive, to a primarily reactive mode of control in later life.
Abstract
Background
An important strategy to support the professional development of mentors in health professions education is to encourage critical reflection on what they do, why they do it, and ...how they do it. Not only the ‘how’ of mentoring should be covered, but also the implicit knowledge and beliefs fundamental to the mentoring practice (a mentor’s personal interpretative framework). This study analyzed the extent to which mentors perceive a difference between how they actually mentor and how they prefer to mentor.
Methods
The MERIT (MEntor Reflection InstrumenT) survey (distributed in 2020,
N
= 228), was used to ask mentors about the how, what, and why of their mentoring in two response modes: (1) regarding their actual mentoring practice and (2) regarding their preferred mentoring practice. With an analysis of covariance, it was explored whether potential discrepancies between these responses were influenced by experience, profession of the mentor, and curriculum-bound assessment requirements.
Results
The averaged total MERIT score and averaged scores for the subscales ‘Supporting Personal Development’ and ‘Monitoring Performance’ were significantly higher for preferred than for actual mentoring. In addition, mentors’ experience interacted significantly with these scores, such that the difference between actual and preferred scores became smaller with more years of experience.
Conclusions
Mentors can reflect on their actual and preferred approach to mentoring. This analysis and the potential discrepancy between actual and preferred mentoring can serve as input for individual professional development trajectories.
PURPOSEHow mentors shape their mentoring is strongly influenced by their personal beliefs about the goals and purpose of mentoring, the possible activities associated with it, who decides on the ...focus of the mentoring relationship, and the strategies mentors choose to enact these beliefs in practice. In accordance with the personal interpretative framework, the authors operationalized mentors’ beliefs as professional self-understanding (the what) and subjective educational theory (the how) of teaching and sought to identify different mentoring positions.
METHODUsing a qualitative approach, the authors conducted semistructured interviews between December 2017 and January 2018 with 18 undergraduate mentors from Maastricht University in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The aim of the interviews was to reconstruct their personal interpretative framework. Before building a general pattern of explanation in a cross-case analysis, the authors performed a within-case analysis of the data, analyzing individual mentors.
RESULTSThis approach resulted in the identification and description of 4 mentoring positionsthe (1) facilitator (service providing and responsive), (2) coach (development supporting and responsive), (3) monitor (signaling and collaborative), and (4) exemplar (service providing or development supporting and directive). Each position represents a coherent pattern of normative beliefs about oneself as a mentor (professional self-understanding) and how to enact these beliefs in practice (subjective educational theory).
CONCLUSIONSAwareness of their mentoring position can help mentors understand why they act the way they do in certain situations and how this behavior affects their mentees’ learning and development. It can also help mentors identify personal learning needs and, consequently, provide opportunities for faculty development.
Essential to the professional development of mentors is making explicit and critically challenging the knowledge and beliefs underpinning their mentoring practice. This paper reports on the ...development of a survey instrument called MERIT, MEntor Reflection InstrumenT, which was designed to support mentors' systematic reflection on the how, what and why of their practice.
In 2019, a twenty-item survey instrument was developed and piloted. Initial validation data (N = 228) were collected by distributing the survey through the authors' network. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted and internal consistency reliability coefficients were calculated.
The Principal Axis EFA with Direct Oblimin rotation (Delta = 0) resulted in four factors: 1) supporting personal development, 2) modelling professional development, 3) fostering autonomy, and 4) monitoring performance. The four factors explained 43% of the total variance of item scores. The Cronbach's alphas for the subscale scores were between .42 and .75.
The MERIT can help mentors reflect on their beliefs and professional knowhow. These reflections can serve as input for the faculty development initiatives mentors undertake, which may ultimately improve their knowledge and skills as a mentor.
Abstract Aging is associated with cognitive and sensory decline. While several studies have indicated greater cognitive decline among older adults with hearing loss, the extent to which age-related ...differences in cognitive processing may have been overestimated due to group differences in sensory processing has remained unclear. We addressed this question by comparing younger adults, older adults with good hearing, and older adults with poor hearing in several cognitive domains: working memory, selective attention, processing speed, inhibitory control, and abstract reasoning. Furthermore, we examined whether sensory-related cognitive decline depends on cognitive demands and on the sensory modality used for assessment. Our results revealed that age-related cognitive deficits in most cognitive domains varied as a function of hearing loss, being more pronounced in older adults with poor hearing. Furthermore, sensory-related cognitive decline was observed across different levels of cognitive demands and independent of the sensory modality used for cognitive assessment, suggesting a generalized effect of age-related hearing loss on cognitive functioning. As most cognitive aging studies have not taken sensory acuity into account, age-related cognitive decline may have been overestimated.
Age-related deficits in selective attention have been demonstrated to depend on the sensory modality through which targets and distractors are presented. Some of these investigations suggest a ...specific impairment of cross-modal auditory selective attention. For the first time, this study is taking on a whole brain approach while including a passive perception baseline, to investigate the neural underpinnings of selective attention across age groups, and taking the sensory modality of relevant and irrelevant (i.e., distracting) stimuli into account. Sixteen younger (mean age = 23.3 years) and 14 older (mean age = 65.3 years), healthy participants performed a series of delayed match-to-sample tasks, in which participants had to selectively attend to visual stimuli, selectively attend to auditory stimuli, or passively view and hear both types of stimuli, while undergoing 3T fMRI. The imaging analyses showed that areas recruited by cross-modal visual and auditory selective attention in both age groups included parts of the dorsal attention and frontoparietal control networks (i.e., intraparietal sulcus, insula, fusiform gyrus, anterior cingulate, and inferior frontal cortex). Most importantly, activation throughout the brain did not differ across age groups, suggesting intact brain function during cross-modal selective attention in older adults. Moreover, stronger brain activation during cross-modal visual versus cross-modal auditory selective attention was found in both age groups, which is consistent with earlier accounts of visual dominance. In conclusion, these results do not support the hypothesized age-related deficit of cross-modal auditory selective attention. Instead, they suggest that the underlying neural correlates of cross-modal selective attention are similar in younger and older adults.
Background
University students often exhibit high levels of sedentary behavior that is negatively associated with cognition and mood. On the other hand, light‐intensity physical activity (LIPA) may ...improve cognitive performance and mood. Therefore, this study investigated the acute effect of LIPA breaks during prolonged sitting on attention, executive functioning, and mood.
Methods
A randomized crossover design was used in this study. In total, 21 healthy adults (15 women, age = 24 ± 3 years, BMI = 23 ± 2 kg/m2) completed three prolonged sitting conditions: (1) without a demanding cognitive task (SIT), (2) with a demanding cognitive task (COGN), and (3) with every 25 min sitting interrupted by a 5‐minute walk (INTERRUPT). Attention, executive function (response inhibition, task shifting, and working memory updating), and mood were assessed before and after each condition.
Results
Linear mixed models analyses showed that prolonged sitting frequently interrupted by LIPA (INTERRUPT) or with cognitively demanding activities (COGN) significantly improved task shifting compared to SIT. However, INTERRUPT did not significantly improve task shifting compared with COGN. No significant acute effects on attention, response inhibition, working memory updating, or mood were found.
Conclusions
Frequent LIPA breaks or cognitively demanding activities have a selective, acute positive impact on one aspect of cognitive performance compared to idle sitting. No evidence was found that LIPA breaks have an acute improvement in attention, executive function, and mood compared to sitting with cognitive loading. To further investigate the effect of PA on cognitive performance, it is necessary to consider cognitive loading and control for the cognitive activity during sitting in the experimental design.
Abstract
Background
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is a core skill in emergency medicine (EM), however, there is a lack of objective competency measures. Eye-tracking technology is a potentially ...useful assessment tool, as gaze patterns can reliably discriminate between experts and novices across medical specialties. We aim to determine if gaze metrics change in an independent and predictable manner during ultrasound training.
Methods
A convenience sample of first-year residents from a single academic emergency department was recruited. Participants interpreted 16 ultrasound videos of the focused assessment with sonography for trauma (FAST) scan while their gaze patterns were recorded using a commercially available eye-tracking device. The intervention group then completed an introductory ultrasound course whereas the control group received no additional education. The gaze assessment was subsequently repeated. The primary outcome was total gaze duration on the area of interest (AOI). Secondary outcomes included time to fixation, mean duration of first fixation and mean number of fixations on the AOI.
Results
10 EM residents in the intervention group and 10 non-EM residents in the control group completed the study. After training, there was an 8.8 s increase in the total gaze time on the AOI in the intervention group compared to a 4.0 s decrease in the control group (
p
= .03). EM residents were also 3.8 s quicker to fixate on the AOI whereas the control group became 2.5 s slower (
p
= .04). There were no significant interactions on the number of fixations (0.43 vs. 0.18,
p
= .65) or duration of first fixation on the AOI (0.02 s vs. 0.06 s,
p
= .63).
Conclusions
There are significant and quantifiable changes in gaze metrics, which occur with incremental learning after an ultrasound course. Further research is needed to validate the serial use of eye-tracking technology in following a learner’s progress toward competency in point-of-care ultrasound image interpretation.
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