Daniel C. Krawczyk

Editorial: Improving financial decisions

Some individuals who sustain traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) continue to experience significant cognitive impairments chronically (months to years post injury). Many tests of executive function are insensitive to these executive function impairments, as such impairments may only appear during complex daily life conditions. Daily life often requires us to divide our attention and focus on abstract goals. In the current study, we compare the effects of two 1-month electronic cognitive rehabilitation programs for individuals with chronic TBI. The active program (Expedition: Strategic Advantage) focuses on improving goal-directed executive functions including working memory, planning, long-term memory, and inhibitory control by challenging participants to accomplish life-like cognitive simulations. The challenge level of the simulations increases in accordance with participant achievement. The control intervention (Expedition: Informational Advantage) is identical to the active program; however, the cognitive demand level is capped, preventing participants from advancing beyond a set level. We will evaluate these interventions with a military veteran TBI population. One hundred individuals will be enrolled in this double-blinded clinical trial (all participants and testers are blinded to condition). Each individual will be randomly assigned to one of two interventions. The primary anticipated outcomes are improvement of daily life cognitive function skills and daily life functions. These are measured by a daily life performance task, which tests cognitive skills, and a survey that evaluates daily life functions. Secondary outcomes are also predicted to include improvements in working memory, attention, planning, and inhibitory control as measured by a neuropsychological test battery. Lastly, neuroimaging measures will be used to evaluate changes in brain networks supporting cognition pre and post intervention. We will test whether electronically delivered cognitive rehabilitation aimed at improving daily life functional skills will provide cognitive and daily life functional improvements for individuals in the chronic phase of TBI recovery (greater than 3 months post injury). We aim to better understand the cognitive processes involved in recovery and the characteristics of individuals most likely to benefit. This study will also address the potential to observe generalizability or to transfer from a software-based cognitive training tool toward daily life improvement. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03704116 . Retrospectively registered on 12 Oct 2018.

Background: Some individuals who sustain traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) continue to experience significant cognitive impairments chronically (months-to-years post-injury). Many tests of executive function are insensitive to these executive function impairments, as such impairments may only appear during complex daily life conditions. Daily life often requires us to divide our attention and focus on abstract goals. In the current study, we compare the effects of two one-month electronic cognitive rehabilitation programs for individuals with chronic TBI. The active program (Expedition: Strategic Advantage) focuses on improving goal-directed executive functions including working memory, planning, long-term memory, and inhibitory control by challenging participants to accomplish life-like cognitive simulations. The challenge level of the simulations increase in accordance with participant achievement. The control intervention (Expedition: Informational Advantage) is identical to the active; however, the cognitive demand level is capped preventing participants from advancing beyond a set level. We will evaluate these interventions with a military veteran TBI population. Methods: One hundred individuals will be enrolled in this double-blinded clinical trial (all participants and testers are blinded to condition). Each individual will be randomly assigned to one of two interventions. The primary anticipated outcomes are improvement of daily life cognitive function skills and daily life functions. These are measured by a daily life performance task, which tests cognitive skills, and a survey that evaluates daily life functions. Secondary outcomes are also predicted to include improvements in working memory, attention, planning, and inhibitory control as measured by a neuropsychological test battery. Lastly, neuroimaging measures will be used to evaluate changes in brain networks supporting cognition pre-intervention and post-intervention. Discussion: We will test whether electronically delivered cognitive rehabilitation aimed at improving daily life functional skills will provide cognitive and daily life functional improvements for individuals in the chronic phase of TBI recovery (greater than three months post-injury). We aim to better understand the cognitive processes involved in recovery and the characteristics of individuals most likely to benefit. This study will also address the potential to observe generalizability, or transfer, from a software-based cognitive training tool toward daily life improvement. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03704116 (retrospectively registered) https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03704116?term=tbi+krawczyk&rank=1 Keywords: Cognitive rehabilitation, traumatic brain injury, executive functions, daily life functions, memory, attention, planning. Support: Joint Warfighter Program; U. S. Dept. of Defense W81XWH-16-1-0053

The use of analogy is an important component of human cognition. The type of analogy we produce and communicate depends heavily on a number of factors, such as the setting, the level of domain expertise present, and the speaker’s goal or intent. In this observational study, we recorded economics experts during scientific discussion and examined the categorical distance and structural depth of the analogies they produced. We also sought to characterize the purpose of the analogies that were generated. Our results supported previous conclusions about the infrequency of superficial similarity in subject-generated analogs, but also showed that distance and depth characteristics were more evenly balanced than in previous observational studies. This finding was likely due to the nature of the goals of the participants, as well as the broader nature of their expertise. An analysis of analogical purpose indicated that the generation of concrete source examples of more general target concepts was most prevalent. We also noted frequent instances of analogies intended to form visual images of source concepts. Other common purposes for analogies were the addition of colorful speech, inclusion (i.e., subsumption) of a target into a source concept, or differentiation between source and target concepts. We found no association between depth and either of the other two characteristics, but our findings suggest a relationship between purpose and distance; i.e., that visual imagery typically entailed an outside-domain source whereas exemplification was most frequently accomplished using within-domain analogies. Overall, we observed a rich and diverse set of spontaneously produced analogical comparisons. The high degree of expertise within the observed group along with the richly comparative nature of the economics discipline likely contributed to this analogical abundance.

Relational reasoning ability relies upon by both cognitive and social factors. We compared analogical reasoning performance in healthy controls (HC) to performance in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and individuals with schizophrenia (SZ). The experimental task required participants to find correspondences between drawings of scenes. Participants were asked to infer which item within one scene best matched a relational item within the second scene. We varied relational complexity, presence of distraction, and type of objects in the analogies (living or non-living items). We hypothesized that the cognitive differences present in SZ would reduce relational inferences relative to ASD and HC. We also hypothesized that both SZ and ASD would show lower performance on living item problems relative to HC due to lower social function scores. Overall accuracy was higher for HC relative to SZ, consistent with prior research. Across groups, higher relational complexity reduced analogical responding, as did the presence of non-living items. Separate group analyses revealed that the ASD group was less accurate at making relational inferences in problems that involved mainly non-living items and when distractors were present. The SZ group showed differences in problem type similar to the ASD group. Additionally, we found significant correlations between social cognitive ability and analogical reasoning, particularly for the SZ group. These results indicate that differences in cognitive and social abilities impact the ability to infer analogical correspondences along with numbers of relational elements and types of objects present in the problems.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to evaluate the neural basis of framing effects. We tested the reflexive and reflective systems model of social cognition as it relates to framing. We also examined the relationships among frame susceptibility, intelligence and personality measures. Participants evaluated whether personal attributes applied to themselves from multiple perspectives and in positive and negative frames. Participants rated whether each statement was descriptive or not and endorsed positive frames more than negative frames. Individual differences on frame decisions enabled us to form high and low frame susceptibility groups. Endorsement of frame-consistent attributes was associated with personality factors, cognitive reflection and intelligence. Reflexive brain regions were associated with positive frames while reflective areas were associated with negative frames. Region of Interest analyses showed that frame-inconsistent responses were associated with increased activation within reflective cognitive control regions including the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), dorsomedial PFC and left ventrolateral PFC. Frame-consistent responses were associated with increased activation in the right orbitofrontal cortex. These results demonstrate that individual differences in frame susceptibility influence personal attribute evaluations. Overall, this study clarifies the neural correlates of the reflective and reflexive systems of social cognition as applied to decisions about social attributions.