Early psychosocial adversities exist at many levels, including caregiving-related, extrafamilial, and sociodemographic, which despite their high interrelatedness may have unique impacts on development. In this paper, we focus on caregiving-related early adversities (crEAs) and parse the heterogeneity of crEAs via data reduction techniques that identify experiential cooccurrences. Using network science, we characterized crEA cooccurrences to represent the comorbidity of crEA experiences across a sample of school-age children (n = 258; 6–12 years old) with a history of crEAs. crEA dimensions (variable level) and crEA subtypes (subject level) were identified using parallel factor analysis/principal component analysis and graph-based Louvain community detection. Bagging enhancement with cross-validation provided estimates of robustness. These data-driven dimensions/subtypes showed evidence of stability, transcended traditional sociolegally defined groups, were more homogenous than sociolegally defined groups, and reduced statistical correlations with sociodemographic factors. Finally, random forests showed both unique and common predictive importance of the crEA dimensions/subtypes for childhood mental health symptoms and academic skills. These data-driven outcomes provide additional tools and recommendations for crEA data reduction to inform precision medicine efforts in this area.

Objectives: Research has shown that analyzing intrusion errors generated on verbal learning and memory measures is helpful for distinguishing between the memory disorders associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurological disorders, including Huntington’s disease (HD). Moreover, preliminary evidence suggests that certain clinical populations may be prone to exhibit different types of intrusion errors. Methods: We examined the prevalence of two new California Verbal Learning Test-3 (CVLT-3) intrusion subtypes – across-trial novel intrusions and across/within trial repeated intrusions – in individuals with AD or HD. We hypothesized that the encoding/storage impairment associated with medial-temporal involvement in AD would result in a greater number of novel intrusions on the delayed recall trials of the CVLT-3, whereas the executive dysfunction associated with subcortical-frontal involvement in HD would result in a greater number of repeated intrusions across trials. Results: The AD group generated significantly more across-trial novel intrusions than across/within trial repeated intrusions on the delayed cued-recall trials, whereas the HD group showed the opposite pattern on the delayed free-recall trials. Conclusions: These new intrusion subtypes, combined with traditional memory analyses (e.g., recall versus recognition performance), promise to enhance our ability to distinguish between the memory disorders associated with primarily medial-temporal versus subcortical-frontal involvement.

Objectives: The third edition of the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT-3) includes a new index termed List A versus Novel/Unrelated recognition discriminability (RD) on the Yes/No Recognition trial. Whereas the Total RD index incorporates false positive (FP) errors associated with all distractors (including List B and semantically related items), the new List A versus Novel/Unrelated RD index incorporates only FP errors associated with novel, semantically unrelated distractors. Thus, in minimizing levels of source and semantic interference, the List A versus Novel/Unrelated RD index may yield purer assessments of yes/no recognition memory independent of vulnerability to source memory difficulties or semantic confusion, both of which are often seen in individuals with primarily frontal-system dysfunction (e.g., early Huntington’s disease [HD]). Methods: We compared the performance of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and HD in mild and moderate stages of dementia on CVLT-3 indices of Total RD and List A versus Novel/Unrelated RD. Results: Although AD and HD subgroups exhibited deficits on both RD indices relative to healthy comparison groups, those with HD generally outperformed those with AD, and group differences were more robust on List A versus Novel/Unrelated RD than on Total RD. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the clinical utility of the new CVLT-3 List A versus Novel/Unrelated RD index, which (a) maximally assesses yes/no recognition memory independent of source and semantic interference; and (b) provides a greater differentiation between individuals whose memory disorder is primarily at the encoding/storage level (e.g., as in AD) versus at the retrieval level (e.g., as in early HD). (JINS, 2018, 24, 833–841)

The Fernbank interglacial site, on the west side of Cayuga Lake, New York, has been recently subjected to more detailed study. To a lengthened mollusc list are added ostracodes, insects, fish, pollen, and plant macrofossils. Of these, plants are well preserved and diverse, whereas other groups are poorly preserved and incomplete. Nevertheless, all support the interglacial assignment (Sangamon), which is further supported by minimum age radiocarbon dates (>50,000 14C yr BP) and a TL date of 81 ± 11 ka. In the plant record near the top of the sequence, abundant tree charcoal indicates forest fires. Like the Toronto interglacial record, the plants show a declining July mean temperature from 24 to 18°C (according to transfer functions) through the sequence, from mixed deciduous forest to boreal forest.

Prospective memory (PM) is dependent on executive processes known to be impaired in Huntington's disease (HD); however, no study to the authors’ knowledge has investigated PM in this group. We examined performance-based, semi-naturalistic, and self-reported PM in 20 individuals diagnosed with mild–moderate HD and 20 demographically similar controls. Relative to controls, HD participants demonstrated significantly lower scores in time-based PM, event-based PM (at a trend level), and the semi-naturalistic PM trial, all of which were marked by omission errors. HD participants demonstrated comparable recognition memory for the PM intentions relative to controls. HD and control participants also showed comparable scores in self-reported PM complaints. The results suggest that HD is associated with deficits in the strategic aspects of PM. HD-associated PM deficits also are evident in real-world situations, which may relate to an apparent meta-memory deficit for PM functioning as indicated by HD participants’ overestimation of their PM performance on self-report. (JINS, 2014, 20, 1–8)

Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets these criteria: Grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: Communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species, and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process.

In my Response to the target article, “Natural Language and Natural Selection,” co-authored by Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom (BBS 13(4):769), the journal printed the following sentence, “Rather, different mutations are stored independently in different lineages, and recombination brings them together to form vast numbers of new combinations, in people, in their descendents,” in error. The sentence should have read: “Rather, different mutations are stored independently in different lineages, and recombination brings them together to form vast numbers of new combinations, in parallel, in their descendents.”

The current study examined temporal order memory in preclinical Huntington’s disease (pre-HD). Participants were separated into less than 5 years (pre-HD near) and more than 5 years (pre-HD far) from estimated age of clinical diagnosis. Participants completed a temporal order memory task on a computerized radial eight-arm maze. On the study phase of each trial, participants viewed a random sequence of circles appearing one at a time at the end of each arm. On the choice phase, participants viewed two circles at the end of the study phase arms and chose the circle occurring earliest in the sequence. The task involved manipulations of the temporal lag, defined as the number of arms occurring in the sample phase sequence between the two choice phase arms. Research suggests that there is more interference for temporally proximal stimuli relative to temporally distal stimuli. There were no significant differences between the pre-HD far group and controls on the temporal order memory task. The pre-HD near group demonstrated significant impairments relative to the other groups on closer temporal lags, but were normal on the furthest temporal lag. Therefore, temporal order memory declines with increased temporal interference in pre-HD close to estimated diagnosis of HD. (JINS, 2009, 15, 662–670.)

May and June were busy months in Europe for technology assessors. Following the International Society meeting in Rotterdam, many people went on to the quality assurance meeting at WHO in Copenhagen and the International Hospital Federation Congress in Helsinki. “Modern Technology—How Much and for Whom,” was one of the main themes of the congress; with an attendance of about 400 there was an opportunity to get the ideas about technology assessment across to a large group of health care managers and professionals. For those of us who spoke it was also a chance to meet members of the Finnish Society for Technology Assessment. This may be the only national society for health technology assessment, and with 70 members, it is clearly going to be influential.