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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the functioning of a non-sanction “soft” gender quota policy structure (a simple recommendation), using the case of Spain. In the first part of the paper, the authors have reported the dismal improvement regarding the increase of female percentage presence in the companies’ boards of members.

The authors provide a detailed sectorial analysis and a classification of board members by type (executive, proprietary, independent and other external). In the second part, the authors exploit the fact that since 2013, the stock-listed companies are legally obliged to respond to a series of questions on gender diversity issues in their annual reports. Using this requirement, the authors perform an analysis using text processing techniques. The authors find that “self-plagiarism” is common in the responses – i.e. they copy responses from previous years – as well as “plagiarism” – i.e. they copy responses from other companies in previous years.

The insufficient progress in respect to the goals of the Law of Equality of 2007 (enacted by Spanish authorities) and the lack of interest that can be inferred from the companies’ responses included in their annual reports lead the authors to consider the necessity of changing the law on the corporate policies gender quotas in Spain.

It is the first study that realizes this type of analysis for Spain.

This descriptive correlational study describes behavior control by executive function (EF) and explores the relationship among age at seizure onset, duration of epilepsy, seizure frequency, number of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), family income, the caregiver's education, home environment and behavior control by EF in preschool children with epilepsy.

The purposive sample was 69 caregivers of preschool children with epilepsy. Data were collected in two medical centers in Bangkok from June 2019 to February 2020. The research instruments constituted: (1) a sociodemographic and medical information form for children with epilepsy and the caregiver; (2) early childhood-home observation for the measurement of the environment (EC-HOME) inventory and (3) the behavior rating inventory of executive function-preschool version® (BRIEF-P). The data were analyzed using Pearson's product-moment correlation and Spearman's Rho correlation.

Most of the participants had quite high scores on home environment (mean = 44.35) and mildly elevated levels of EF deficit (mean = 61.04). The duration of epilepsy and the number of AEDs were positively correlated with behavior control by EF. Family income was negatively associated with behavior control by EF. However, age at seizure onset, seizure frequency, the caregiver's education and home environment had no association with behavior control by EF.

Preschool children with epilepsy have poor behavioral control by EF. Consequently, healthcare providers should promote interventions in children to control seizures and to decrease the factors that impact the development of EF.

Corruption and dishonesty in the political and bureaucratic realms have impeded the ability of local governments to provide services and social justice in Nepali society. In light of this, the purpose of this research is to answer the key research question: what are the possibilities and limitations of local government in implementing constitutionally guaranteed rights in order to transform local communities?

This study gathered qualitative data from 14 local governments in seven provinces. A total of 56 in-depth interviews were held with elected representatives, political parties, and government officials at both the national and local levels. Both open-ended and open-structured questionnaires were employed for the interviews.

The results indicate that capacity is a major constraint for local governments, which should be addressed to achieve successful local governance, inclusive citizen engagement, and strong technical, administrative and fiscal capabilities. Lack of local autonomy, political conflict and social class differences, external engagement, and conservative hierarchic government bureaucracy are major hurdles to growing capacity.

This paper analyses the capacity of newly restructured local governments through qualitative approach. It attempts to understand to what extent the Nepali local governments are capable in delivering the services at the local level as closest unit of the citizens.

Cognitive computing is part of AI and cognitive applications consists of cognitive services, which are building blocks of the cognitive systems. These applications mimic the human brain functions, for example, recognize the speaker, sense the tone of the text. On this paper, we present the similarities of these with human cognitive functions. We establish a framework which gathers cognitive functions into nine intentional processes from the substructures of the human brain. The framework, underpins human cognitive functions, and categorizes cognitive computing functions into the functional hierarchy, through which we present the functional similarities between cognitive service and human cognitive functions to illustrate what kind of functions are cognitive in the computing. The results from the comparison of the functional hierarchy of cognitive functions are consistent with cognitive computing literature. Thus, the functional hierarchy allows us to find the type of cognition and reach the comparability between the applications.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct systematic reviews on Indonesian papers, to examine the most recent evidence of the efficacy of the combination of cognitive training and physical exercise, and to make recommendations in order to improve prevention, care and treatment services in elderly patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

The databases of Cochrane, Medline, NIH (US National Library Medicine), ProQuest, EbscoHost, Clinical Key, EMBASE, Medical Librarian (TWE) in Ovid, Science Direct, Scopus, The Lancet Global Health, PubMed, Emerald, Indonesian National Library, Google Scholar, Google Indonesia, and Garuda Portal were systematically searched using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines to obtain empirical papers published between June 1976 and January 2018.

Out of the 3,293 articles collected, 10 were included in this analysis. The result of this combined meta-analysis compares the combination therapy group (cognitive therapy and physical exercise) with a control group. It shows that the control group was likely to experience MCI 1.65 times more often than the combination therapy group. According to the result acquired from the synthesized meta-analysis, the control group experienced MCI 1.65 times higher than the combination therapy. The finding is proven to be statistically significant (95% CI= 1.42–1.93).

The research considers only English and Indonesian articles.

It is important to explore the most effective training characteristics in a special combined intervention differentiated by the duration, frequency, intervention, type and combination mode. There is a need for further investigation that focuses on the physiological mechanisms underlying the positive effects, by inserting a more comprehensive neuro-imaging measurement to assess specifically the domain that benefits in terms of cognitive functions and molecular markers. Finally, exploratory studies are definitely required, which will specifically examine maintenance and treatment effects as well as derive theoretical explanations related to the interventions and predictors.

A combination of cognitive training and physical exercise intervention may improve the global health or cognitive functions.

A combination of cognitive training and physical exercise has been found to improve prevention, care and treatment services in elderly patients with MCI. There is an increase in value in comparison to the study of Karssemeijer, which considered five Indonesian articles.

This paper aims to investigate the decision-making on new ventures of eight directors or managers of Brazilian accelerators, aiming to understand if the Einstellung effect – mental rigidity – operates during the judgment of new ventures to accelerate.

Through a quasi-experiment design, the study was conducted with directors or managers of Brazilian accelerators, who were separately interviewed and responded to a psychological test, previously consented, as well as to a simulated decision-making questionnaire.

The selection process, with the criteria for decision-making, functions as a “template” for the recognition of potentially successful companies and is, indeed, subject to various cognitive biases, among which, the Einstellung effect, characteristic of mental rigidity.

The main contribution of the present study is to identify the cognitive mechanisms, which can negatively affect the evaluation of innovative projects and propose ways that can counteract or mitigate them.

The psychological approach to decision-making, usually studied in chess game context or problem-solving, was applied to a relatively unexplored field that is startups to accelerate. Its originality remains at the interdisciplinary approach, combining knowledge from psychology, decision-making and entrepreneurship.

This study aims to evaluate a human rights-informed dementia prevention program promoting better health and social care among older adults. In this study, the authors examined whether a dual-task training would improve cognition in healthy older adults.

Individuals attending the systematic health education program for older adults based in Japan were recruited for study inclusion, and divided into a dual-task training group (TG) and a control group (CG). The TG underwent 90 min of a weekly dual-task training for 12 weeks. Severity of dementia was measured using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) test. Brain function was assessed using a go/no-go task paradigm, during which cerebral blood flow was additionally measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy to quantify oxyhemoglobin (oxy-Hb).

MMSE total score, number of errors in the go/no-go tasks and oxy-Hb values showed significant improvements in the TG.

Owing to the small number of participants allocated to the CG, the results must be interpreted with caution. Replication and further validation based on large-scale, randomized-controlled trials is warranted.

This study highlights potential benefits of incorporating an early prevention training for dementia into a human rights-friendly health education program.

This study suggests a potential means to reduce costs of social security and health care by introducing a human rights-informed dementia prevention program.

The results suggest that dual-task training may improve cognitive function in healthy older adults, thereby contributing to better health and improvement of social health care, based on a human rights-informed health education program for the prevention of dementia.

Cognitive dysfunctions are a common clinical feature of schizophrenia and represent important indicators of outcome among patients who are affected. Therefore, a randomized, controlled, monocentric, single-blind trial was carried out to compare two different rehabilitation strategies adopted for the restoration and recovery of cognitive functioning of residential patients with schizophrenia. A sample of 110 residential patients were selected and, during the experimental period, a group of 55 patients was treated with sets of domain-specific exercises (SRT+CRT), whereas an equal control group was treated with sets of non-domain-specific exercises (SRT+PBO) belonging to the Cogpack® software. The effects on the scores (between T0 and T1) of the variables treatment and time and of the interaction time X treatment were analyzed: for the total BACS, the main effect of the between-factors variable treatment is statistically significant (F=201.562 P=0.000), as well as the effect of the within-factors variable “time” (F=496.68 P=0.000).The interaction of these two factors is also statistically significant (F=299.594 P=0.000). The addition of cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) to a standard treatment of metacognitive training (MCT) resulted in a significant improvement in global neurocognitive functioning and has reported positive effects with regard to the strengthening of verbal and working memory, selective and sustained attention at T1. A relevant result is the statistically significance of “time X treatment” for all the tests administered: we can assume that the domain-specific cognitive training amplifies the effects of SRT, as the primary and secondary goals of the present study were achieved.

The assessment of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in childhood has two essential aspects: the identification of the risk (under 30 months of age) and the definition of a diagnosis that takes into account its core areas as well as further non-specific aspects. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach that considers the combination of clinical evaluation with the use of tools that analyse the various levels of the child’s functioning as fundamental.

The comprehensive assessment at the Institute of Ortofonologia in Rome provides the ADOS-2 and the Leiter-R for the evaluation of the symptomatology, the severity level, the non-verbal cognitive functioning and the fluid reasoning; the TCE and the UOI are used to identify, respectively, the child’s emotional skills and the ability to understand the intentions of others, as precursors of the theory of mind. Within this assessment, the Brief-P, the Short Sensory Profile and the RBS are also included for the evaluation of executive functions, sensory pattern and of restricted and repetitive behaviours, as observed by parents.

How to define a reliable development profile, which allows to plan a specific intervention calibrated on the potential of the child and on his development trajectory, is described. Two clinical cases are also presented.

The entire process is aimed both at a detailed assessment of the child’s functioning and at identifying a specific therapeutic project and predictive factors for achieving an optimal outcome.

Based on the agency and resource dependence theories, this study aims to investigate whether nomination committee (NC) characteristics could serve as key attributes for reducing environmental, social and governance (ESG) disputes and whether NC composition affects the appointment of ESG-friendly directors to the board.

This study focuses on a sample of 30 global systemically important banks from 2015 to 2021. The authors estimate panel data models with fixed effects, clustering heteroskedastic standard errors at the bank level to account for the serial correlation of the dependent variables for each bank.

Banks’ exposure to ESG controversies can be reduced when NC members have specific skills, in particular when at least one member of this committee also belongs to the sustainability committee and is a foreign director. Moreover, banks’ ESG disputes decrease when the NC members are younger, while the share of independent NC members has a negative impact. Finally, a positive influence of NC composition and its members’ features as well as the appointment of ESG-friendly directors on the board is found.

The findings are particularly useful during periods such as the current one, when there is growing attention to both banks’ corporate governance, the subcommittees’ role and functioning and social and environmental issues. This study shows that the NC is important in reducing the likelihood of banks incurring ESG disputes and in appointing more ESG-friendly directors. NC effective functioning and its members’ qualities serve as a key attribute for fulfilling objective assessment and improving board effectiveness.