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Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) affects the cognitive performance of elderly adults. However, the level of severity is not high enough to be diagnosed with dementia. Previous research reports subtle language impairments in individuals with MCI specifically in domains related to lexical meaning. The present study used both off-line (grammaticality judgment) and on-line (lexical decision) tasks to examine aspects of lexical processing and how they are affected by MCI. 21 healthy older adults and 23 individuals with MCI saw complex pseudo-words that violated various principles of word formation in Slovenian and decided if each letter string was an actual word of their language. The pseudo-words ranged in their degree of violability. A task effect was found, with MCI performance to be similar to that of healthy controls in the off-line task but different in the on-line task. Overall, the MCI group responded slower than the elderly controls. No significant differences were observed in the off-line task, while the on-line task revealed a main effect of Violation type, a main effect of Group and a significant Violation × Group interaction reflecting a difficulty for the MCI group to process pseudo-words in real time. That is, while individuals with MCI seem to preserve morphological rule knowledge, they experience additional difficulties while processing complex pseudo-words. This was attributed to an executive dysfunction associated with MCI that delays the recognition of ungrammatical formations.

Numerous studies have identified and explored the factors that affect order information processing in verbal working memory (WM), whereas little is known about order maintenance in visual WM. To gain better insight into the possible mechanisms of representing order in visual WM, we assessed the extent of serial position and item distance effects on visual WM. 20 students performed a visual WM task. They were asked to encode and maintain either the identity or temporal order of four visual stimuli. The results revealed recency and distance effects congruent with previous studies of verbal WM, however, no primacy effect in accuracy results was detected. Distance was revealed to be closely intertwined with recency, making it difficult to estimate their separate effects on order recognition. These results suggest that order coding in visual WM involves the use of a magnitude of codes similar to those employed in number processing and verbal WM.

ObjectivesAlthough previous studies have suggested that bipolar disorder symptoms could result from increased impulsivity and vulnerability of the Behavioural Activation System (BAS), the association of the Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS) with the disorder remains unclear.AimsGiven that motivational systems, especially BAS, and impulsivity are closely intertwined, we aimed to assess the associations between BIS and BAS and impulsivity among healthy volunteers and remitted bipolar outpatients.Methods70 euthymic bipolar outpatients and 70 healthy controls were self assessed with the BIS/BAS Scale and the Barratt Impulsivity Scale.ResultsOur data revealed elevated BIS and BAS sensitivity (Figure 1a) as well as impulsivity (Figure 1b) in the group of bipolar outpatients. Both motivational systems seem to be unrelated to the trait impulsivity.ConclusionsOur results indicate that BIS/BAS sensitivity and impulsivity represent a distinct trait. Furthermore, elevated BIS and BAS sensitivity and impulsivity in the euthymic phase of the disorder could represent an indicator of relatively stable personal traits which persist throughout all phases of the illness, thus signifying a vulnerability factor that could be relevant in the early diagnostic picture of affective disorders.

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