A new study shows that older men with restless legs syndrome may be more likely to have erectile dysfunction. The results were published in the Jan. 1 issue of the journal Sleep.The study involved 23,119 men who were health professionals. They had an average age of 69 years.Results show that men who reported having RLS symptoms 15 times or more per month were 78 percent more likely to have erectile dysfunction. They had a “poor or very poor” ability to have and maintain an erection for sexual intercourse.About four percent of participants had RLS. Fifty-three percent of men with RLS reported having erectile dysfunction.The authors suggested that the two disorders may share common mechanisms. They suspect that both disorders may involve low levels of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a...

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Lycopene has a chemopreventive effect against prostate cancer, but can it also arrest progression? Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases (Source: Medscape Urology Headlines)

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A widely-available anti-inflammatory prescription drug can reduce the risk of a common skin cancer in humans, as per a researcher at Stanford's School of Medicine. Eventhough oral administration of the drug, celecoxib, is linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke in some people, it's possible that topical application could have a safer, protective effect for people prone to developing the cancers, called basal cell carcinomas, the researcher believes........ (Source: Medicineworld.org: New Article Alert)

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As per a newly released study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM), postmenopausal HIV-infected women have a high prevalence of low bone mineral density and high bone turnover placing them at high risk for future bone fractures........ (Source: Medicineworld.org: New Article Alert)

As per a newly released study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM), fat mass is important in increasing bone size and thickness, but this effect may be stronger in girls than boys. Lean mass is one of the strongest determinants of bone mass throughout life. Until now, it has been unclear whether fat mass and lean mass differ in how they influence bone development in boys and girls. Findings from prior studies have been inconsistent regarding whether fat mass has a positive or negative impact on bone development. This newly released study shows that fat mass is a strong stimulus for the accrual of cortical bone mass (hard outer layer of bone) in girls........ (Source: Medicineworld.org: New Article Alert)

As the US population becomes increasingly obese while smoking rates continue to decline, obesity has become an equal, if not greater, contributor to the burden of disease and shortening of healthy life compared to smoking. In an article reported in the February 2010 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, scientists from Columbia University and The City College of New York calculate that the Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) lost due to obesity is now equal to, if not greater than, those lost due to smoking, both modifiable risk factors........ (Source: Medicineworld.org: New Article Alert)

Eating fruit, such as pomegranates, that contain anti-aromatase phytochemicals reduces the occurence rate of hormone-dependent breast cancer, as per results of a study reported in the recent issue of Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Pomegranate is enriched in a series of compounds known as ellagitannins that, as shown in this study, appear to be responsible for the anti-proliferative effect of the pomegranate........ (Source: Medicineworld.org: New Article Alert)

This study represents the first example of the benefits of employing a cooperative nanosystem to fight cancer," said Michael Sailor, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and the primary author of a paper describing the results, which is being published in a forthcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An early online version of the paper appeared last week........ (Source: Medicineworld.org: New Article Alert)

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The fertility doctor who Nadya Suleman claimed helped her conceive her brood of 14 has been formally accused of negligence and violation of professional guidelines by the California Medical Board. (Source: WBZ-TV - Breaking News, Weather and Sports for Boston, Worcester and New Hampshire)

This study investigates whether the use of a spacing strategy absolutely improves final performance, even when the learner had chosen, metacognitively, to mass. After making judgments of learning, adult and child participants chose to mass or space their study of word pairs. However, 1/3 of their choices were dishonored. That is, they were forced to mass after having chosen to space and forced to space after having chosen to mass. Results showed that the spacing effect obtained for both adults and children when choices were honored. However, using a spacing strategy when it was in disagreement with the participant’s own choice, or forced, did not enhance performance for the adults (Experiment 1). And although performance was enhanced for the children (beyond massing strategies), it was n...

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Reports an error in the article “Thematic relations affect similarity via commonalities,” by Sabrina Golonka and Zachary Estes (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 1454–1464). The error terms reported in Table 2 (p. 1458) were mislabeled as standard deviations; they are actually standard errors. (The abstract of the original article appeared in record 2009-19590-006). Thematic relations are an important source of perceived similarity. For instance, the rowing theme of boats and oars increases their perceived similarity. The mechanism of this effect, however, has not been specified previously. The authors investigated whether thematic relations affect similarity by increasing commonalities or by decreasing differences. In Experiment...

Metacognition research has focused on the degree to which nonhuman primates share humans’ capacity to monitor their cognitive processes. Convincing evidence now exists that monkeys can engage in metacognitive monitoring. By contrast, few studies have explored metacognitive control in monkeys, and the available evidence of metacognitive control supports multiple explanations. The current study addresses this situation by exploring the capacity of human participants and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to adjust their study behavior in a perceptual categorization task. The study found that humans and monkeys increased their study for high-difficulty categories, suggesting that both share the capacity to exert metacognitive control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved...

The present study tested the dual-component model of working memory capacity (WMC) by examining estimates of primary memory and secondary memory from an immediate free recall task. Participants completed multiple measures of WMC and general intellectual ability as well as multiple trials of an immediate free recall task. It was demonstrated that there are 2 sources of variance (primary memory and secondary memory) in immediate free recall and that, further, these 2 sources of variance accounted for independent variation in WMC. Together, these results are consistent with a dual-component model of WMC reflecting individual differences in maintenance in primary memory and in retrieval from secondary memory. Theoretical implications for working memory and dual-component models of free recall ...

Numerous learning studies have shown that if the period of time devoted to studying information (e.g., casa-house) includes at least 1 test (casa-?), performance on a final test is improved—a finding known as the testing effect. In most of these studies, however, the final test is identical to the initial test. If the final test requires a novel demonstration of learning (i.e., transfer), prior studies suggest that a greater degree of transfer reduces the size of the testing effect. The authors tested this conjecture. In 2 experiments, 4th- or 5th-grade students learned to assign regions or cities to map locations and returned 1 day later for 2 kinds of final tests. One final test required exactly the same task seen during the learning session, and the other final test consisted of novel...

One of the most influential findings in the study of recognition memory is that receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are asymmetric about the negative diagonal. This result has led to the rejection of the equal-variance signal detection model of recognition memory and has provided motivation for more complex models, such as the unequal-variance signal detection and dual-process models. Here, the authors test the possibility that previous demonstrations of ROC asymmetry do not reflect mnemonic process but rather reflect distortions due to averaging data over items. Application of a hierarchical unequal-variance signal detection model reveals that asymmetries are in fact a real phenomenon and do not reflect distortions from averaging data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, al...

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Discrimination and recognition are often poorer for other-race than own-race faces. These other-race effects (OREs) have traditionally been attributed to reduced perceptual expertise, resulting from more limited experience, with other-race faces. However, recent findings suggest that sociocognitive factors, such as reduced motivation to individuate other-race faces, may also contribute. If the sociocognitive hypothesis is correct, then it should be possible to alter discrimination and memory performance for identical faces by altering their perceived race. We made identical ambiguous-race morphed faces look either Asian or Caucasian by presenting them in Caucasian or Asian face contexts, respectively. However, this perceived-race manipulation had no effect on either discrimination (Experim...

When people read narratives, they often need to update their situation models as the described events change. Previous research has shown little to no increases in reading times for spatial shifts but consistent increases for temporal shifts. On this basis, researchers have suggested that spatial updating does not regularly occur, whereas temporal updating does. The current study looked more deeply into this reading time pattern for spatial updating. If the prior interpretation is correct, then the absence of a reading time increase reflects a failure to update the situation model. Two experiments evaluated this claim by assessing whether other indicators of updating, namely memory probes, converge on a similar interpretation as that derived from the reading time data. Our results showed t...

Numbers are thought to be represented in space along a mental left–right oriented number line. Number magnitude has also been associated with the size of grip aperture, which might suggest a connection between number magnitude and intensity. The present experiment aimed to confirm this possibility more directly by using force as a response parameter. Participants judged parity of a single digit by executing a weak or forceful key press. Response selection was faster when small digits required a weak response and large digits required a forceful response than when this mapping was reversed. These findings indicate an effect of number magnitude on the initiation of response intensity. There was no evidence for such an effect on response execution because the actually applied response force...

To examine the processes that support prospective remembering, previous research has often examined whether the presence of a prospective memory task slows overall responding on an ongoing task. Although slowed task performance suggests that monitoring is present, this method does not clearly establish whether monitoring is functionally related to prospective memory performance. According to the multiprocess theory (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000), monitoring should be necessary to prospective memory performance with nonfocal cues but not with focal cues. To test this hypothesis, we varied monitoring by presenting items that were related (or unrelated) to the prospective memory task proximal to target events. Notably, whereas monitoring proximal to target events led to a large increase in nonfo...

We report a large-scale experiment that instantiated all possible combinations of those 3 component processes. Results show that the 3 components make independent contributions to updating performance. We additionally present structural equation models that link WMU task performance and working memory capacity (WMC) measures. These feature the methodological advancement of estimating interindividual covariation and experimental effects on mean updating measures simultaneously. The modeling results imply that WMC is a strong predictor of WMU skills in general, although some component processes—in particular, substitution skills—were independent of WMC. Hence, the reported predictive power of WMU measures may rely largely on common WM functions also measured in typical WMC tasks, althoug...

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