In the context of global change the possible loss of biodiversity has been identified as a major concern. Biodiversity could be seriously threatened as a direct consequence of changes in availability of food, changing thermal conditions, and loss and fragmentation of habitat. Considering the magnitude of global change, an understanding of the mechanisms involved in coping with a changing enviro...

Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) solve various cognitive tasks and acquire and use English speech in ways that often resemble those of very young children. Given that the psittacine brain is organized very differently from that of mammals, these results have intriguing implications for the study and evolution of vocal learning, communication, and cognition. For 25 years, I have taught Grey pa...

We analyze the impact of cognitive skills on two specific examples of consumer financial decisions where suboptimal behavior is well defined: first, the use of a credit card for a transaction after making a balance transfer on the account, and second, cases where individuals are penalized for inaccurate estimation of the value of one’s home on home equity loan or line of credit application. We ...

We present a novel approach to user authentication in which biometric data related to human cognitive processes, in particular visual search, working memory and priming effect on automatic processing, are captured and used to identify users. Our proposed system uses a carefully designed Cognitive Task (CT) that is presented to the user as a game, in order to capture a “cognitive signature” of t...

In most of the situations, usability evaluations of software interfaces are done by usability experts. Using such professionals needs a certain dimension in business. So, in a lot of small and medium scaled company's, software developers are compelled to learn to manage usability factors. This is not much simpler than training usability engineers on how to create a software application. As a re...

Over the last decade, there has been a marked increase in the number of studies on attitude and decision research which use the factorial survey (FS) design. The FS integrates experimental setups into a survey: respondents react to hypothetical descriptions (vignettes) while the values of each attribute (dimension) of these descriptions systematically vary in order to estimate their impact on r...

Introduction The hippocampus plays an important role in cognitive abilities which often decline with advancing age. Methods In a longitudinal study of community-dwelling adults, we investigated whether there were coupled changes in hippocampal structure and verbal memory, working memory, and processing speed between the ages of 73 (N = 655) and 76 years (N = 469). Hippocampal structure was in...

A quarter-century after Peter Salovey and John Mayer introduced the concept of emotional intelligence (EI; Salovey and Mayer, 1990), it remains an important and growing research area. EI is usually analyzed from the perspective of the ability model or mixed models. The ability model focuses on an individual's mental abilities to apply information provided by emotions for the improvement of cogn...

Connectivity among demes in a metapopulation depends on both the landscape’s and the focal organism’s properties (including its mobility and cognitive abilities). Using individual-based simulations, we contrast the consequences of three different cognitive strategies on several measures of metapopulation connectivity. Model animals search suitable habitat patches while dispersing through a mode...

OBJECTIVE To examine associations between complexity of main lifetime occupation and cognitive performance in later life. METHODS Occupational complexity ratings for data, people, and things were collected from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles for 1,066 individuals (men = 534, women = 532) in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936. IQ data were available from mean age 11 years. Cognitive ability ...