Karen A. Kemtes

Hemispheric Contributions to Nonverbal Abstract Reasoning and Problem Solving

Hemispheric involvement in reasoning abilities has been debated for some time, and it remains unclear whether the right hemispheres involvement in problem solving is modality specific or dependent on the type of spatial reasoning required. In the current study, 2 types of nonverbal reasoning abilities were examined, spatial reasoning and proportional reasoning, in 109 patients with cerebrovascular disease that was confined to either the right or the left hemisphere or was diffuse in nature. Results indicated that no lateralizing effects were present based on type of spatial reasoning. Findings are consistent with the suggestion that higher order cognitive processes involved in nonverbal abstraction and problem solving are not strongly lateralized to the right hemisphere but rather are more generally distributed throughout the cortex.

Social skills of older people: Conversations in same‐ and mixed‐age dyads

Previous research has indicated a relation between lack of social skills and loneliness in young adults. This framework was extended to study older adults’ social skills in two experiments examining conversational interactions among older, young, and mixed‐age dyads. The conversations were coded for social skill using partner attention statements as the measure of social skill. Partner attention statements includes partner references, questions, and topic continuations. The Beck Depression Inventory, the UCLA Loneliness Scale, and a measure of social anxiety were administered to study the relation of these psychosocial variables to young and older adults’ social skills. In neither study was depression or social anxiety related to self‐reported loneliness for either young or older adults. Furthermore, loneliness was not related to young or older adults’ social skill as measured by partner attention. However, social anxiety was related to social skill during intergenerational conversations: Both young and o...