Although this pilot investigation has limitations, the results suggest the presence of apraxia should be considered when planning oral healthcare strategies. Further research with larger samples is encouraged to confirm these relationships.

No abstract

We investigated emotional design features that may influence multimedia learning with a self-generated learning (SGL) activity, namely answering elaborative interrogations. We assumed that a positive emotional design would be associated with a higher motivation to accomplish the additional SGL activity. Moreover, an interaction was expected: Learners learning with a positive emotional design should profit from learning with elaborative interrogations whereas learners learning with a negative emotional design would not profit from this strategy to the same extent but would rather benefit through reading. Since no negative emotional design existed yet, we additionally took the challenge to construct one. In a preliminary study, the emotional design features were pre-tested for their influence on emotional state and according to evaluation results, emotional design features were modified for the final versions. For the main study, German students (N = 228) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions that resulted from a 3 × 2 Design with emotional design (intended-positive vs. intended-neutral vs. intended-negative) and SGL activity (elaborative interrogations vs. no elaborative interrogations). Contrary to expectations, the intended-negative design worked not out as intended, but was rather comparable with the positive emotional design with respect to learners’ emotional states. Learner motivation was higher when learning with the intended-negative emotional than the neutral design. The quality of the elaborated answers and learner motivation correlated positively with the performance of all learning outcome scores. For transfer questions which addressed the elaborated concepts, an interaction can be reported: learners learning with the positive emotional design benefitted from learning by reading compared to answering the elaborative interrogations. Regarding transfer questions whose concepts were explicitly described in the instructional material, it was better to learn with the intended-negative emotional than the neutral design. According to results of mediation analyses, the influence of motivation on learning outcomes could mostly be explained by the influence of motivation on answering the elaborative interrogations. Implications for creating emotional design as well as its effect on learning are discussed.

Self‐generated learning (SGL) activities are characterized as an active learning strategy that functions as a support for deeper comprehension. However, the question arises which factors could be essential to fully exploit the effectiveness of SGL activities. One possible factor may be the emotional state of learners during learning. Because different emotional states are associated with different styles of information processing, in turn, they may support learning with SGL activities. Consequently, this study addresses learning with a type of SGL activities, answering elaborative interrogations, and the impact of learners' emotional states. German students (N = 123) were assigned to one of four conditions, resulting from a 2 × 2 design with instructional material (elaborative interrogations vs. no elaborative interrogations) and emotional state (positive vs. negative) as independent variables. Results showed that learners learning with elaborative interrogations experienced the instructional material as more difficult than without elaborative interrogations. Learning with them led to a better transfer learning outcome of concepts that had to be generated by interrogations (not for concepts that were already readable in the text) and had no effect for retention. Unexpectedly, neither an influence of the learners' emotional state nor an interaction of both independent variables could be shown.

Background/Aims: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a frequent syndrome in the older population, which involves an increased risk to develop Alzheimer's disease (AD). The latter can be modified by the cognitive reserve, which can be operationalized by the length of school education. MCI can be differentiated into four subtypes according to the cognitive domains involved: amnestic MCI, multiple-domain amnestic MCI, non-amnestic MCI and multiple-domain non-amnestic MCI. While neurocognitive deficits are a constituent of the diagnosis of these subtypes, the question of how they refer to the cognitive reserve still needs to be clarified. Methods: We examined neuropsychological deficits in healthy controls, patients with MCI and patients with mild AD (n = 485) derived from a memory clinic. To reduce the number of neuropsychological variables, a factor analysis with varimax rotation was calculated. In a second step, diagnostic groups including MCI subtypes were compared with respect to their clinical and neuropsychological characteristics including cognitive reserve. Results: Most MCI patients showed the amnestic multiple-domain subtype followed by the pure amnestic subtype, while the non-amnestic subtypes were rare. The amnestic subtype displayed a significantly higher level of cognitive reserve and higher MMSE scores than the amnestic multiple-domain subtype, which was in most cases characterized by additional psychomotor and executive deficits. Conclusions: These findings confirm earlier reports revealing that the amnestic multiple-domain subtype is the most frequent one and indicating that a high cognitive reserve may primarily prevent psychomotor and executive deficits in MCI.