Absolute and relative temporal order memory for performed activities following stroke.

Reconstructing the temporal order of events is a crucial part of episodic memory. The temporal dimension, however, is often discarded in clinical settings, and measurements of true temporal aspects of episodic memory are scarce. The present study assessed temporal memory in stroke patients and in age- and education-matched healthy controls. Both groups underwent a standardized neuropsychological examination. We asked participants afterwards to reconstruct the order of tests they had performed, measured in absolute temporal order (event placed on correct moment in sequence) and relative temporal order (event placed correctly relative to directly preceding and following events). The aim of the study was to examine how serial-position curve effects (measuring absolute temporal order anchored in exact time) and how relative temporal order memory (anchored to other events) may differ in a group of cerebral stroke patients. Another aim was to link temporal order memory deficits with established neuropsychological measures of cognitive functioning. Although item identification was comparable in both groups, absolute temporal order memory was impaired in patients: A total of 43% of the patients lacked the expected primacy and recency effects (serial position effect). In addition, relative temporal order memory was affected in this group as well, F(1, 70) = 4.08, p < .05; 25% of the patients were impaired in reconstructing the relative temporal order (p = .019, Fisher's Exact Test). Both absolute and relative temporal order memory performance related to the domains of executive functioning and memory. Our results suggest that it is important to test both absolute and relative temporal order memory, especially because these types of memory depend on different anchors, either on time or on adjacent events.

Insight in cognition: self-awareness of performance across cognitive domains.

Loss of cognitive functions, as apparent through self-awareness, is considered an important indicator of cognitive deficits and is therefore commonly used in clinical practice. However, little is known about self-awareness of cognitive performance, including its accuracy, its basis, and whether people can distinguish their performance across different cognitive domains. In the present study, 20 university students (M (age) = 21.7 ± 2.2 years, 9 males) and 20 middle-aged participants (M (age) = 52.8 ± 3.9 years, 10 males) gave estimations of their performances on executive functioning, memory, attention, and visuoperception before and after confrontation with their capacities. A repeated-measures analysis of variance with age group as a between-subjects factor was performed on the calculated estimation errors, before and after neuropsychological testing. Overall, the estimation errors were significantly higher before than after experience with test performance, ps < .01, partial η²s = .17. An overall effect of domain (four levels), ps < .001, partial η²s = .22 was found. These results suggest that self-awareness is domain-specific, and although it is adaptive to the experience of mental effort, it is most dependent on preexisting beliefs about one's own cognitive abilities.

Do you know what I mean? Laypeople and experts' concepts of cognition.

Patients' cognitive complaints and subsequent performance on neuropsychological tests often fail to relate. This could, in part, be caused by a Babylonic incongruence between laypeople's and experts' use of cognition words or "jargon." The present study examined the concurrency of experts and laypeople for 18 neuropsychological tests in the cognitive domains "language," "memory," "attention/concentration," "perception," and "thinking" (executive functioning). This was done by correlating the classifications of the laypeople and experts for individual tests and within each domain. A high domain concurrency was found, indicated by domain correlations of the classifications between laypeople and experts ranging from r(s)=.79 to .92, with exception of the domain "attention" (r(s)=.32). Importantly, with respect to the classification of each individual test in a cognitive domain, large variations in correlations were found, ranging from r(s)=.30 up to r(s)=1.0. These results indicate that there is agreement between the concepts laypeople use and the theory-based concepts of the experts. Our study also offers valuable insight for the clinical practice: tests with a high correlation should be used to aid the clarity of communication in the clinical practice, for instance when giving feedback on performance.