Is recitation an effective tool for adult learners?

The effects of recitation on subsequent recall were examined in 4 experiments modeled after those of Gates (1917). Participants underwent a study phase, a recitation phase, and a test phase. During the recitation phase participants were to attempt to recall the previously studied material and then to restudy it when they could not recall any new information. They were encouraged to switch between recalling and restudying. The proportion of the total acquisition time that was spent in recitation was varied. Unlike the classic findings reported by Gates (1917) in schoolchildren, there was no consistent evidence that recitation enhanced learning in these adult learners.     

Is coherent motion an appropriate test for magnocellular sensitivity?

The suggestion that coherent motion may serve as a test of magnocellular sensitivity is problematic. However, the nature of the problems depends on how the "magnocellular system" is defined. If this term is limited to subcortical entities, the problems are that subcortical neurons are not directionally selective, and that their receptive fields are too small to account for the spatial summation of coherent motion. If "magnocellular system" is defined to include cortical entities, such as area MT, one is faced with the fact that this definition itself is problematic as well as the problem that area MT is known to receive parvocellular and koniocellular inputs.     

Is one item an adequate measure of cognitive learning?

While the "leaning loss" scale is a valid means of estimating cognitive learning, the test is valid only when used as designed-with two items.     

Is the number of trials a primary determinant of conditioned responding?

Acquisition of conditioned responding is thought to be determined by the number of pairings of a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US). However, it is possible that acquisition is primarily determined not by the number of trials but rather by quantities that often correlate with the number of trials, such as cumulative intertrial interval (ITI) and the number of sessions. Four experiments examined whether the number of trials has an effect on acquisition of conditioned responding, once cumulative ITI and number of sessions are equated. Results of the experiments with rats and mice favor the hypothesis that over an eightfold range, variation in number of CS-US pairings has little effect. It is suggested that learning curves might more accurately be plotted across cumulative ITI or number of sessions, and not across number of trials. Results pose a challenge to trial-centered accounts of conditioning, as demonstrated by simulations of the Rescorla-Wagner model, a simplified version of Wagner's standard operating procedure model (SOP), and Stout & Miller's sometimes competing retrieval model (SOCR). A time-centered account, rate estimation theory (RET), predicts the main finding but has trouble with other aspects of the learning process more easily accommodated by trial-centered models.     

Is EBM an Appropriate Model for Research into the Effectiveness of Psychotherapy?

Topoi - EBM, and the hierarchy of evidence it prescribes, is a controversial model when it comes to research into the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic treatments. This is due in part to the...     

Is optimal vision required for the successful execution of an interceptive task?

The importance of optimal visual function in demanding interceptive tasks is far from established. The aim of the study was to determine whether induced myopic blur and hence sub-optimal visual function would give rise to a detrimental effect on performance in the execution of an interceptive task. The batting performance of grade level cricket players was assessed facing a bowling machine whilst wearing contact lenses of four different refractive conditions (plano (nil), +1.00, +2.00 and +3.00D over-refraction), inducing increasing amounts of myopic blur. Performance for each condition was assessed based both on the shot quality against each delivery judged by a qualified cricket coach blind to each condition, along with an evaluation of the quality of ball-bat contact for each delivery. No significant change was found in batting performance with the introduction of +1.00 and +2.00D of induced myopic blur. A +3.00D over-correction was required before any significant decrease in batting performance was detected, demonstrating that batters needed to be essentially legally blind (as simulated through the use of the +3.00D over-refraction) before there was any significant measurable decrement in batting performance. We concluded that optimal visual correction is not necessarily required for optimal performance in a demanding interceptive task, and that the human perceptual-motor system is capable of compensating for marked alterations in input.     

Is there coherence among the cognitive components of gender acquisition?

This study examined the relationships among five measures that assess various cognitive components of the child's acquisition of gender. At around 2 years of age, children were given a task assessing their ability to accurately label as a boy or a girl some head-and-shoulders pictures of boys and girls. At 4 years of age, these children were given tasks measuring (1) the degree to which they found gender a salient parameter of categorization, (2) the amount of gender-related knowledge they could display (SERLI-SRD), (3) the degree to which their preferences were gender-typed (SERLI-SRP) and (4) the accuracy of their memory for gender-typed information. There was no consistent pattern of relationship among the children's scores on these five tools for measuring gender acquisition. Our findings suggest that gender is a multidimensional construct in children's development, and thus these results challenge the undimensional manner in which gender is repeatedly addressed in developmental theory and research.This research was funded in part by a federal biomedical research grant (No. 2507RR07080) awarded to the first author from the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon, and by Grant No. RO1HD175751 from the National Institute of Child Development awarded to the third author.We wish to thank Margo Lane, Rachel Robertson, Jacqui Oucalt, Laura Baker, Dale Roberts, and the teachers, parents, and assistants of the Child Research Laboratory at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, for their invaluable contribution to this research.     

Neonaticide: an appropriate application for therapeutic jurisprudence?

Might therapeutic jurisprudence, a perspective that attempts to study interaction between the legal and mental health disciplines, be brought to bear effectively with respect to neonaticide, the murder of a newborn infant in the first 24 hours of its life? This is a crime that leads to sentencing that is now rarely therapeutic, rehabilitative, or corrective. An examination of the crime, its motives, and its perpetrators precedes a discussion of ways in which the mental health viewpoint in this matter might be brought to the active attention of the courts in order to promote sentencing that is appropriate to both the crime and the transgressor. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is the brain an organ for free energy minimisation?

Philosophical Studies - Two striking claims are advanced on behalf of the free energy principle (FEP) in cognitive science and philosophy: (i) that it identifies a condition of the possibility of...     

Executive cognitive functioning and aggression: Is it an issue of impulsivity?

A large body of research has documented a relation between the executive cognitive functions (ECFs) and interpersonal aggressive behavior. A predominant theory proposes that individuals with poor ECFs are more aggressive because they are unable to inhibit impulsive behaviors. However, evidence for this relationship is typically indirect. In this study, 46 healthy men and women completed measures of ECF, the Taylor Aggression Paradigm, and the Go/No‐Go discrimination task, a behavioral measure of impulsivity. Also, impulsiveness of participant responses during the aggression task was directly assessed by measuring latency of responses to provocation (“set‐time”). It was hypothesized that low‐quartile–scoring ECF men and women would perform more aggressively and more impulsively than high‐quartile peers. Consistent with expectations, results indicated that ECF was related to aggression and to impulsivity on the Go/No‐Go task. However, low‐ECF men and women did not have shorter set‐times; in fact, on this task, low‐ECF participants' behavioral decisions seemed slightly slower than those of high‐ECF participants. In light of these results, the authors speculate that a social information‐processing problem may mediate the ECF aggression relationship rather than altered impulsivity per se. Aggr. Behav. 29:15–30, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Is the matching familiar figures test a measure of cognitive style? A warning for users

A probabilistic model of reflection-impulsivity as measured by the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT) is presented and tested on 77 fourth graders. In testing the model two groups emerged, a random response group (n = 22) and a cognitive response group (n = 55), who use the evaluation process. Correlations among latencies, total errors, initial errors, school-scores, and IQs were compared for our total sample and the two groups. The correlation of MFFT latencies and errors disappeared for the random-response group and new correlations with errors appeared while the cognitive response group kept a statistically significant correlation of latencies with errors and no other error correlation was shown. This last group was classified by Kagan's median-split procedure showing that most reflective subjects kept their classification. Preliminary results suggest a reinterpretation of reflection-impulsivity literature, especially as related to the impulsive style.     

On the unavoidability of power in child-rearing: Is the language of rights educationally appropriate?

I am indebted to Graham Haydon for his help with the correct English wording of my thoughts.     

Is Dunbar's number up?

This article is a commentary on ‘Relationships and the social brain: Integrating psychological and evolutionary perspectives’ ( Sutcliffe, Dunbar, Binder, & Arrow, 2012 ).     

The role of attention in subitizing: Is the magical number 1?

Subitizing, the fast and accurate enumeration of up to about 3 or 4 objects, has often been thought to be dependent on limited-capacity preattentive mechanisms. We used an attentional blink paradigm to investigate the extent to which subitizing requires attentional resources. On each trial, subjects identified a target letter in an RSVP stream and then enumerated dots presented in the stream that were either simultaneous with the target letter or followed it by up to 400 ms. For numerosities from 2 to 9, evidence of an attentional blink was observed; only enumeration of 0 or 1 elements was independent of lag. Thus, even enumeration of 2–3 objects, which is within the traditional subitizing range, appears to require attentional resources. The relation of this work to studies on the attentional requirements of detecting a unique item among distractors, a supposedly preattentive discrimination, is briefly discussed.     

Is the mystery an illusion? Papineau on the problem of consciousness

A number of philosophers have recently argued that (i) consciousness properties are identical with some set of physical or functional properties and that (ii) we can explain away the frequently felt puzzlement about this claim as a delusion or confusion generated by our different ways of apprehending or thinking about consciousness. This paper examines David Papineau’s influential version of this view. According to Papineau, the difference between our “phenomenal” and “material” concepts of consciousness produces an instinctive but erroneous intuition that these concepts can’t co-refer. I claim that this account fails. To begin with, it is arguable that we are mystified about physicalism even when the account predicts that we shouldn’t be. Further, and worse, the account predicts that an “intuition of distinctness” will arise in cases where it clearly does not. In conclusion, I make some remarks on the prospects for, constraints on, and (physicalist) alternatives to, a successful defence of the claim (ii).     

Is there an effect of handedness on the position of the egocentric reference?

Forty normal subjects (20 left-handed; 20 right-handed) were submitted to a proprioceptive straight ahead pointing task while blindfolded to study the effect of the hand used and of the hand preference on the estimation of the subjective sagittal middle. Results showed that left-handed and right-handed subjects both deviated to the left of the objective sagittal middle and presented an effect of the hand used and of the starting point affecting their straight ahead performance in a similar way. In all subjects whatever their manual preference, using the left hand and starting 30 degrees to left induced a tendency to deviate to the same side, whereas using the right hand and starting 30 degrees to right induced a tendency to place the subjective middle to the right of the objective middle. These results are interpreted with regard to the hypothesis of a cortical control of the position of the egocentric reference.