Computed tomography guided electromagnetic navigation system in percutaneous laser ablation for treating primary lung cancer: a case report.

Background: The majority of patients of lung cancer have already lost the chance of surgery at the time of diagnosis. Percutaneous local thermal ablation is a precise minimally invasive technique and a viable alternative to surgical treatment. Compared with radiofrequency ablation and microwave ablation, percutaneous laser ablation for the treatment of lung tumors is less commonly used and reported, especially for primary lung cancer. Case presentation: A 63-year-old male patient with mixed pulmonary nodules selected computed tomography-guided electromagnetic navigation system for percutaneous biopsy and laser ablation therapy. The puncture point was determined through Computed tomography scanning, along with the placement of the electromagnetic navigation system locators. After rapid on-site evaluation and pathological examination of the puncture tissue specimen, the diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma was confirmed. A 980-nanometer wavelength semiconductor laser fiber was inserted into the appropriate position guided by the electromagnetic navigation system. Subsequently, a power of 7 watt was applied to ablate the tumor for 30 seconds, then pause for 60 seconds before repeating the procedure. Positron emission tomography-Computed tomography examination was performed 1 month after operation, suggesting complete response of the tumor. Conclusion: Here, we present a case of percutaneous laser ablation treatment for primary lung cancer guided by computed tomography-electromagnetic navigation system. As a more precise, shorter duration, impedance-independent, safe and effective minimally invasive thermal ablation method, it is expected to gain wider application and become a novel alternative for surgical treatment.

Personality Traits and Family SES Moderate the Relationship between Media Multitasking and Reasoning Performance.

The prevalence of media multitasking has raised concerns regarding its potential impact on cognitive abilities. Despite increasing attention given to this topic, there remains no consensus on how media multitasking is related to cognitive performance. This study aims to shed light on this issue by examining whether and how personality traits and family socioeconomic status (SES) moderate the relationship between media multitasking and reasoning performance. To this end, a large sample of university students (n = 777) completed a battery of measures, including the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, the Media Multitasking Inventory, the Big Five Inventory, the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, the Grit Scale, and the Family SES Questionnaire. Results revealed a negative correlation between media multitasking and reasoning performance. However, this relationship was substantially moderated by conscientiousness, extraversion, openness, and family SES. Specifically, media multitasking was more detrimental to reasoning performance among individuals with lower levels of conscientiousness, extraversion, openness, and family SES, whereas it was less detrimental to counterparts with higher levels of these personality traits and family SES. The proposed moderation model, for the first time, not only offers novel insights into the theoretical accounts regarding how media multitasking relates to cognitive abilities, but also identifies the protective factors that may buffer the negative impacts of media multitasking.

A Clinical Study on Video Bronchoscopy-guided Coblation for Benign Central Airway Stenosis.

Background: Benign central airway stenosis poses a significant challenge to respiratory and thoracic surgeons due to the high recurrence rate associated with current treatment methods, causing severe breathing difficulties and potentially life-threatening complications. This article aims to investigate the therapeutic efficacy and prospects of using coblation in the management of benign central airway stenosis in adults. Moreover, the pathogenesis of benign central airway stenosis was deeply explored to provide better guidance for future clinical treatments. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study examined patients with benign central airway stenosis who were treated at The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University from 2017 to 2020. In addition, a comparative analysis of whole-genome sequencing was conducted between the aforementioned patient group and healthy populations to investigate the underlying etiology of this stenotic condition. Results: The present study encompassed 32 patients who underwent 43 treatments in total between 2017 and 2020. All patients exhibited alleviation of airway stenosis and an improvement in clinical symptoms following surgery, without any significant surgical or postoperative complications. Whole-genome analysis revealed significant changes in gene expression in the airway mucosa of patients with benign airway stenosis in comparison to healthy populations. A total of 91 differentially expressed genes were identified, among which 44 upregulated genes displayed characteristics of promoting inflammatory responses. Conclusion: Coblation demonstrates promise as an efficacious treatment modality for adults suffering from benign central airway stenosis, and its widespread application in clinical settings is anticipated. The direct pathogenesis of benign central airway stenosis involves airway lumen narrowing and obstruction resulting from excessive inflammation and proliferative granulation.

Neural correlates of intelligence: ERP Components of temporary storage predict fluid intelligence over and above those of executive functions.

Previous research has revealed that individuals with different levels of intelligence exhibit distinct patterns of event-related potentials (ERPs) related to executive functions and temporary storage. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the relative contributions of these ERPs in predicting individual differences in fluid intelligence. This study aims to examine the extent to which ERPs associated with executive functions and temporary storage can predict individual differences in fluid intelligence. Special attention is given to determining whether electrophysiological activities of temporary storage can predict fluid intelligence after accounting for executive functions, and vice versa. Both executive attention and temporary storage were measured by two experimental tasks, while electroencephalographic data were collected simultaneously. Fluid intelligence was assessed by two established tests. To address previous inconsistencies due to small sample sizes, a relatively large sample of young adults (N = 136) was recruited. The results revealed that participants with lower fluid intelligence displayed larger P3 amplitudes in the executive functions and temporary storage tasks compared to those with higher fluid intelligence. Additionally, the amplitudes of frontal and parietal P3s elicited by both executive functions and temporary storage significantly predicted fluid intelligence. Interestingly, the frontal and parietal P3s associated with temporary storage predicted fluid intelligence beyond the contributions of executive functions, supporting the storage account of individual differences in fluid intelligence. This study provides an original and fresh understanding of how executive functions and temporary storage contribute to fluid intelligence, offering new insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying intelligence.

Shifting as an executive function separate from updating and inhibition in old age: Behavioral and genetic evidence.

This study aimed to examine the organization of executive functions (EFs), specifically working memory updating, prepotent response inhibition, and mental-set shifting in old age, with a particular focus on determining whether the shifting function was behaviorally and genetically separated from the other functions. A total of 248 healthy older Chinese individuals participated, and multiple measures of executive functions were collected. Additionally, measures of fluid intelligence were included to explore the varying relationships between the three executive functions and this higher-order cognitive ability. Furthermore, genetic data were gathered and analyzed to investigate the associations between EFs and six candidate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) mapped to dopaminergic, serotonergic, or glutamatergic genes. The results indicated that both the three-factor model and the two-factor model, which combined updating and inhibition, demonstrated a good fit. Furthermore, shifting was found to be behaviorally separated from the other two functions, and the correlation between shifting and fluid intelligence was smaller compared to the correlations between updating and inhibition with fluid intelligence. Moreover, the DRD2 SNPs showed significant associations with shifting, rather than with updating and inhibition. These findings provide evidence that shifting is distinct and separate from updating and inhibition, highlighting the diversity of EFs among older adults.

Impacts of university lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic on college students' academic achievement and critical thinking: A longitudinal study.

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in widespread university lockdown. However, impacts of the university lockdown on the learning and academic development of university students have not been thoroughly investigated. The current study examined college students' changes of learning outcomes during the COVID-19 lockdown period and clarified what might explain individual differences in students' learning outcomes after they had learned from home for a whole semester when universities were physically closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were derived from a longitudinal study examining the development of college students including students' academic achievement and critical thinking (including both skills and dispositions) before and after the university lockdown. We observed significant decreases in critical thinking skills and dispositions from pre- to post-lockdown. Both perceived academic achievement and critical thinking exhibited greater variability after the lockdown. In addition, students' readiness for online learning, especially their self-management skills, consistently predicted post-lockdown learning outcomes after controlling for pre-lockdown outcomes and family socioeconomic status (SES). Those who have assumed more responsibilities at home, or who were more vulnerable to emotional distress during the pandemic, performed less well in post-lockdown learning outcomes. These findings call for better management of student learning and development when major changes are required in higher education practices for responding to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis as well as other potential situations.

How Do Critical Thinking Ability and Critical Thinking Disposition Relate to the Mental Health of University Students?

Theories of psychotherapy suggest that human mental problems associate with deficiencies in critical thinking. However, it currently remains unclear whether both critical thinking skill and critical thinking disposition relate to individual differences in mental health. This study explored whether and how the critical thinking ability and critical thinking disposition of university students associate with individual differences in mental health in considering impulsivity that has been revealed to be closely related to both critical thinking and mental health. Regression and structural equation modeling analyses based on a Chinese university student sample (N = 314, 198 females, M age = 18.65) revealed that critical thinking skill and disposition explained a unique variance of mental health after controlling for impulsivity. Furthermore, the relationship between critical thinking and mental health was mediated by motor impulsivity (acting on the spur of the moment) and non-planning impulsivity (making decisions without careful forethought). These findings provide a preliminary account of how human critical thinking associate with mental health. Practically, developing mental health promotion programs for university students is suggested to pay special attention to cultivating their critical thinking dispositions and enhancing their control over impulsive behavior.

How Executive Processes Explain the Overlap between Working Memory Capacity and Fluid Intelligence: A Test of Process Overlap Theory.

Working memory capacity (WMC) and fluid intelligence (Gf) are highly correlated, but what accounts for this relationship remains elusive. Process-overlap theory (POT) proposes that the positive manifold is mainly caused by the overlap of domain-general executive processes which are involved in a battery of mental tests. Thus, executive processes are proposed to explain the relationship between WMC and Gf. The current study aims to (1) achieve a relatively purified representation of the core executive processes including shifting and inhibition by a novel approach combining experimental manipulations and fixed-links modeling, and (2) to explore whether these executive processes account for the overlap between WMC and Gf. To these ends, we reanalyzed data of 215 university students who completed measures of WMC, Gf, and executive processes. Results showed that the model with a common factor, as well as shifting and inhibition factors, provided the best fit to the data of the executive function (EF) task. These components explained around 88% of the variance shared by WMC and Gf. However, it was the common EF factor, rather than inhibition and shifting, that played a major part in explaining the common variance. These results do not support POT as underlying the relationship between WMC and Gf.

Speed Effect Analysis Using the CFA Framework.

The paper outlines a method for investigating the speed effect due to a time limit in testing. It is assumed that the time limit enables latent processing speed to influence responses by causing omissions in the case of insufficient speed. Because of processing speed as additional latent source, the customary confirmatory factor model is enlarged by a second latent variable representing latent processing speed. For distinguishing this effect from other method effects, the factor loadings are fixed according to the cumulative normal distribution. With the second latent variable added, confirmatory factor analysis of reasoning data (N=518) including omissions because of a time limit yielded good model fit and discriminated the speed effect from other possible effects due to the item difficulty, the homogeneity of an item subset and the item positions. Because of the crucial role of the cumulative normal distribution for fixing the factor loadings a check of the normality assumption is also reported.

Executive Control in Learning: Evidence for the Dissociation of Rule Learning and Associative Learning.

The dual-process account and the propositional account of learning hold opposite views regarding the recruitment of higher-level processes in rule learning and associative learning. Taking an individual differences perspective, the current study focused on the relationship between rule learning and associative learning and investigated to what extent executive control accounts for rule learning and associative learning. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, a sample of 184 university students completed paired associative learning and rule learning tasks, as well as measures of working memory capacity, short-term storage, and executive control. Theory-based bifactor models were used to achieve a purified representation of executive control. The results showed that the latent correlation between associative learning and rule learning was rather small. Executive control showed a substantial relationship with rule learning, whereas no significant link was found with associative learning. In Study 2, a sample of 211 university students completed a three-term contingency learning task and an executive control task. The results replicated the finding that executive control was not significantly related to associative learning. Taken together, these results suggest a dissociation between rule learning and associative learning in terms of their underlying processes, which supports the dual-process account of learning.

On the relationship between executive functions of working memory and components derived from fluid intelligence measures.

The aim of the current study is to provide new insights into the relationship between executive functions and intelligence measures in considering the item-position effect observed in intelligence items. Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) and Horn's LPS reasoning test were used to assess fluid intelligence which served as criterion in investigating the relationship between intelligence and executive functions. A battery of six experimental tasks measured the updating, shifting, and inhibition processes of executive functions. Data were collected from 205 university students. Fluid intelligence showed substantial correlations with the updating and inhibition processes and no correlation with the shifting process without considering the item-position effect. Next, the fixed-link model was applied to APM and LPS data separately to decompose them into an ability component and an item-position component. The results of relating the components to executive functions showed that the updating and shifting processes mainly contributed to the item-position component whereas the inhibition process was mainly associated with the ability component of each fluid intelligence test. These findings suggest that improvements in the efficiency of updating and shifting processes are likely to occur during the course of completing intelligence measures and inhibition is important for intelligence in general.

Individual Differences in Frequency of Inner Speech: Differential Relations with Cognitive and Non-cognitive Factors.

Inner speech plays a crucial role in behavioral regulation and the use of inner speech is very common among adults. However, less is known about individual differences in the frequency of inner speech use and about the underlying processes that may explain why people exhibit individual differences in the frequency of inner speech use. This study was conducted to investigate how individual differences in the frequency of inner speech use are related to cognitive and non-cognitive factors. Four functions of inner speech including self-criticism, self-reinforcement, self-management, and social assessment measured by an adapted version of Brinthaupt's Self-Talk Scale were examined. The cognitive factors that were considered included executive functioning and complex reasoning and the non-cognitive factors consisted of trait anxiety and impulsivity. Data were collected from a large Chinese sample. Results revealed that anxiety and impulsivity were mainly related to the frequency of the affective function of inner speech (self-criticism and self-reinforcement) and executive functions and complex reasoning were mainly related to the frequency of the cognitive, self-regulatory function of inner speech (self-management).

Models for the Detection of Deviations from the Expected Processing Strategy in Completing the Items of Cognitive Measures.

This paper presents confirmatory factor models with fixed factor loadings that enable the identification of deviations from the expected processing strategy. The instructions usually define the expected processing strategy to a considerable degree. Simplification is a deviation from instructions that is likely to occur in complex cognitive measures. Since simplification impairs the validity of the measure, its identification is important. Models representing simplicity and instruction-based processing strategies were considered in investigating the data of 345 participants obtained by a working memory measure in order to find out whether and how the use of these strategies influences model-data fit. As expected, the consideration of simplicity strategies improved the model-data fit achieved for the instruction-based strategy.

The Prediction of Students' Academic Performance With Fluid Intelligence in Giving Special Consideration to the Contribution of Learning.

The present study provides a new account of how fluid intelligence influences academic performance. In this account a complex learning component of fluid intelligence tests is proposed to play a major role in predicting academic performance. A sample of 2, 277 secondary school students completed two reasoning tests that were assumed to represent fluid intelligence and standardized math and verbal tests assessing academic performance. The fluid intelligence data were decomposed into a learning component that was associated with the position effect of intelligence items and a constant component that was independent of the position effect. Results showed that the learning component contributed significantly more to the prediction of math and verbal performance than the constant component. The link from the learning component to math performance was especially strong. These results indicated that fluid intelligence, which has so far been considered as homogeneous, could be decomposed in such a way that the resulting components showed different properties and contributed differently to the prediction of academic performance. Furthermore, the results were in line with the expectation that learning was a predictor of performance in school.

The contribution of temporary storage and executive processes to category learning.

Three distinctly different working memory processes, temporary storage, mental shifting and inhibition, were proposed to account for individual differences in category learning. A sample of 213 participants completed a classic category learning task and two working memory tasks that were experimentally manipulated for tapping specific working memory processes. Fixed-links models were used to decompose data of the category learning task into two independent components representing basic performance and improvement in performance in category learning. Processes of working memory were also represented by fixed-links models. In a next step the three working memory processes were linked to components of category learning. Results from modeling analyses indicated that temporary storage had a significant effect on basic performance and shifting had a moderate effect on improvement in performance. In contrast, inhibition showed no effect on any component of the category learning task. These results suggest that temporary storage and the shifting process play different roles in the course of acquiring new categories.

Depression among Migrant and Left-Behind Children in China in Relation to the Quality of Parent-Child and Teacher-Child Relationships.

The objective of this study was to examine rates of depression among migrant children (MC) and left-behind children (LBC) as compared to non-left-behind children (NLBC) and also to examine the relationship between depression among these children and the quality of their parent-child and teacher-child relationships. This study collected data from a large sample of 3,759 children aged from 8 to 17 years, including 824 who had been left behind by one parent (LBCO), 423 who had been left behind by both parents (LBCB), 568 MC and 1944 NLBC. Children's Depression Inventory-Short Form was used to measure child depression. Parent-Child Relationship Scale (PCRS) and Teacher-Child Relationship Scale (TCRS) were used to measure the quality of parent-child and teacher-child relationships, respectively. The results showed that the prevalence of depression was 10.5% among NLBC, 13.1% among LBCO, 16.1% among LBCB, and 20.1% among MC. Depression was related to parent-child relationship quality and teacher-child relationship quality. Negative parent-child relationship was more relevant to depression than negative teacher-child relationship among LBCB, while negative teacher-child relationship was the most correlated with depression among MC.

Developmental differences in the structure of executive function in middle childhood and adolescence.

Although it has been argued that the structure of executive function (EF) may change developmentally, there is little empirical research to examine this view in middle childhood and adolescence. The main objective of this study was to examine developmental changes in the component structure of EF in a large sample (N = 457) of 7-15 year olds. Participants completed batteries of tasks that measured three components of EF: updating working memory (UWM), inhibition, and shifting. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test five alternative models in 7-9 year olds, 10-12 year olds, and 13-15 year olds. The results of CFA showed that a single-factor EF model best explained EF performance in 7-9-year-old and 10-12-year-old groups, namely unitary EF, though this single factor explained different amounts of variance at these two ages. In contrast, a three-factor model that included UWM, inhibition, and shifting best accounted for the data from 13-15 year olds, namely diverse EF. In sum, during middle childhood, putative measures of UWM, inhibition, and shifting may rely on similar underlying cognitive processes. Importantly, our findings suggest that developmental dissociations in these three EF components do not emerge until children transition into adolescence. These findings provided empirical evidence for the development of EF structure which progressed from unity to diversity during middle childhood and adolescence.

Process-based account for the effects of perceptual attention and executive attention on fluid intelligence: an integrative approach.

Perceptual attention and executive attention represent two higher-order types of attention and associate with distinctly different ways of information processing. It is hypothesized that these two types of attention implicate different cognitive processes, which are assumed to account for the differential effects of perceptual attention and executive attention on fluid intelligence. Specifically, an encoding process is assumed to be crucial in completing the tasks of perceptual attention while two executive processes, updating and shifting, are stimulated in completing the tasks of executive attention. The proposed hypothesis was tested by means of an integrative approach combining experimental manipulations and psychometric modeling. In a sample of 210 participants the encoding process has proven indispensable in completing the tasks of perceptual attention, and this process accounted for a considerable part of fluid intelligence that was assessed by two figural reasoning tests. In contrast, the two executive processes, updating and shifting, turned out to be necessary in performance according to the tasks of executive attention and these processes accounted for a larger part of the variance in fluid intelligence than that of the processes underlying perceptual attention.