Capture and rumination,functional avoidance,and executive control (CaRFAX): Three processes that underlie overgeneral memory

This article reviews the papers published in this Special Issue of Cognition and Emotion on Specificity in Autobiographical Memory. Together, the studies address some critical issues relating to the etiology of and mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of overgeneral memory. In terms of etiology, there is now substantial evidence of links between overgeneral memory and current or past depression, and between overgeneral memory and trauma history, and suicidal ideation and behaviour, independent of depression. In terms of mechanisms, three factors are emerging as the critical mechanisms underlying the phenomenon: Capture and rumination (CaR), functional avoidance (FA), and executive control dysfunction (X). Each of these has separately been found to produce overgenerality in memory; together they are almost certain to do so.     

Alcohol intoxication impairs eyewitness memory and increases suggestibility: Two field studies

Two field studies tested the effect of alcohol intoxication on memory for a live interaction at immediate, delayed, and repeated testing. In Study 1 (N = 86), one researcher presented bar tenants with (misleading) questions regarding a preceding interaction with another researcher. One week later, participants' memory was tested again. Study 2 (N = 189) added a delayed‐testing only condition. We hypothesized intoxication to impair memory and enhance suggestibility and explored whether time of testing affected the outcome on these variables. In Study 1, intoxication reduced completeness and increased suggestibility. In Study 2, intoxication reduced completeness and increased suggestibility in delayed‐only and repeated testing, compared with immediate testing. Sober participants benefited from repeated testing in Study 2, but not Study 1. Findings lend support for consolidation and decay theory and suggest that immediate (intoxicated) testing is preferable over delayed‐only testing. Findings provide little support for alcohol myopia theory.     

The Elusive Effects of Alcohol Intoxication on Visual Attention and Eyewitness Memory

Alcohol is a contributing factor in many crimes, yet little is known of its effects on eyewitness memory and face identification. Some authors suggest that intoxication impairs attention and memory, particularly for peripheral scene information, but the data supporting this claim are limited. The present study therefore sought to determine whether (i) intoxicated participants spend less time fixating on peripheral regions of crime images than sober counterparts, (ii) whether less information is recognised from image regions receiving fewer gaze fixations and (iii) whether intoxicated participants are less able to identify the perpetrator of a crime than sober participants. Contrary to expectations, participants' ability to explore and subsequently recognise the contents of the stimulus scenes was unaffected by alcohol, suggesting that the relationship between intoxication, attention and eyewitness memory requires closer scrutiny. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Absolut memory distortions: alcohol placebos influence the misinformation effect

Can the simple suggestion that you have consumed alcohol affect your memory for an event? Alcohol placebos affect social behaviors but not nonsocial ones, and have not previously been shown to affect memory. We investigated the effect of alcohol placebos using materials that revealed both the social and the nonsocial influences of memory Subjects drank plain tonic water, but half were told it was a vodka and tonic; then all subjects took part in an eyewitness memory experiment. Subjects who were told they drank alcohol were more swayed by misleading postevent information than were those who were told they drank tonic water, and were also more confident about the accuracy of their responses. Our results show that the mere suggestion of alcohol consumption may make subjects more susceptible to misleading information and inappropriately confident. These results also provide additional confirmation that eyewitness memory is influenced by both nonsocial and social factors.     

Analogue drinking assessment: Sensation seeking and gender

This study assessed the relationship between sensation seeking measured as a trait variable and drinking behaviors observed unobtrusively in the laboratory. It was hypothesized that high-sensation-seeking subjects would consume more alcohol than low sensation seekers and experience greater enhancement of positive moods and body sensations associated with intoxication. Thirty female and 31 male subjects divided into high- and low-sensation-seeking subgroups participated in an ad libitum drinking situation with the manifest task of taste rating three types of vodka (actually 95% alcohol) or tonic. Dependent variables included beverage consumption, positive/negative mood states, body sensations, breath estimates of blood alcohol levels, and self-rated level of intoxication. All subjects reported feeling the effects of alcohol. Contrary to predictions, high-sensation-seeking subjects neither consumed more alcohol than their low-sensation-seeking counterparts nor drank more alcohol than tonic, Paradoxically, low-sensation-seeking women displayed significantly greater alcohol intake and intoxication than all other groups. Possible explanations for findings were considered as well as the necessity for multimethod assessments of both predictor (i.e., sensation seeking) and criterion (i.e., alcohol consumption) variables across time and situations.This research was supported by Grant Award AA04042-03 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to the first and third authors. Special Appreciation is expressed to Anne T. Patsiokas, Susan W. Altman, Victoria Molony-Sinnott, and Pamela J. Thompson for their invaluable assistance in collecting and analyzing the data.     

A meta‐analysis of the effects of acute alcohol intoxication on witness recall

There is widespread belief in the legal system that alcohol impairs witness testimony. Nevertheless, most laboratory studies examining the effects of alcohol on witness testimony suggest that alcohol may affect the number of correct but not incorrect details recalled. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions because sample sizes, testing paradigms, and recall measures vary between individual studies. We conducted a meta‐analysis to address this issue. We found alcohol intoxication had a significant and moderate sized effect on the number of correct details recalled (g = 0.40). The effect of alcohol on the number of incorrect details recalled was not significant. Further, the effect of alcohol on the recall of correct details was significantly moderated by multiple factors like intoxication level, the retention interval length between encoding and recall, and the types of questions asked (i.e., free recall vs. cued recall). We discuss the applied implications of the results.     

Alcohol Reverses Religion's Prosocial Influence on Aggression

The relationship between religion and violence is controversial. Discrepant findings exist between survey studies and the limited number of experimental investigations of religiosity's influence on aggressive behavior. We have attempted to resolve this discrepancy by addressing previous limitations in the literature and assessing a heretofore‐untested moderator of religiosity and aggression: alcohol intoxication. This investigation included a community sample of 251 men and 269 women randomly assigned to either an acute alcohol intoxication condition or a placebo condition. Participants completed a series of questions drawn from standardized instruments of religiosity and spirituality prior to competing on an aggression laboratory paradigm in which electric shocks were received from, and administered to, a fictitious opponent under the guise of a competitive reaction‐time task. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a significant beverage‐by‐religiosity interaction. Religiosity predicted lower levels of aggression for participants in the placebo group and higher levels of aggression for intoxicated participants. Results indicated that high religiosity coupled with alcohol intoxication may be a risk factor for aggression. This novel finding may help to clarify previous discrepancies in studies of religiosity and aggression.     

Domestic violence shelter residents' substance abuse treatment needs and options

The association between intimate partner aggression and alcohol and other substance use problems is well-established in the literature. However, the nature and scope of alcohol and other substance use problems in women who seek or are likely to seek domestic violence shelter services is difficult to ascertain. The first goal of the current review was to identify and synthesize the findings of studies in which alcohol and other substance use, problem use, or diagnoses in shelter residents was assessed. Despite methodological limitations, this body of studies provides compelling evidence that a substantial number of domestic violence shelter residents (22–72%) have current or past problems with alcohol or other substances and may benefit from treatment. The second goal of the current review was to provide an overview of the availability and limitations of options that are currently available to address domestic violence shelter residents' substance abuse treatment needs. Although substance abuse is a largely under-met need of women seeking domestic violence shelter, promising findings from model integrated treatment programs, as well as the knowledge gained through implementation of these programs provide useful future directions for addressing these co-occurring issues.     

Box Scores and Bottom Lines: Sports Data Can Inform Research and Practice in Organizations

In this introduction to the Special Issue on the use of sports data to inform research and practice in organizations, we first outline the state of research in this flourishing area to provide the need for this Special Issue. We note a similarity in the study of organizations and the study of sports and, in turn, how studies of sports can readily be compared to and applied to the study and practice of work in organizations. Next, we describe each of the six articles in this Special Issue, particularly noting that the articles sampled data from a variety of sporting domains, ranging from the National Football League to Olympic ice hockey. Topics of the studies included travel stress on team performance; pay standing and task performance; job hopping, organizational change, and performance of new employees; team work experience and performance; the effect of leadership transitions and changes to performance and human capital quality; and the effects of star performers and core team members. We then outline how these studies fit with the call for this Special Issue and provide common themes, such as methodological sophistication and novel analyses and the opportunity for sports data to provide both academic and practitioner audiences an awareness of evidence-based approaches to studies of work. We end this introductory article by providing some challenges in using sports data to enhance the study of organizations and possible areas for future research.     

Watching the birdie watching you: eyewitness memory for actions using CCTV recordings of actual crimes

In this paper we describe a method of assessing eyewitness performance for actual crimes that could prove a valuable addition to more traditional experimental and field‐based approaches to the study of eyewitnessing. We present the findings of the first reported attempt to assess the accuracy of information contained in police statements given by eyewitnesses to actual criminal episodes using CCTV as a means of verification. Employing the criterion of using only those items that could be verified against CCTV recordings (largely action details), both victims and bystanders from eight incidents of assault were found to be highly accurate in their accounts (96% accurate). These results are discussed in terms of what they might indicate about the relationship between arousal and eyewitness performance and how they compare with laboratory and other field‐based approaches to the study of eyewitness memory. In addition, we consider some of the methodological, technological and practical constraints associated with this novel approach and its possible future applications to the study of everyday memory as well as memory for unusual events. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alcoholism and memory: broadening the scope of alcohol-expectancy research

Current biopsychosocial research on the etiology of alcoholism has begun to focus on memory processes as a possible common pathway for drinking decisions. The alcohol-expectancy construct is rooted both in cognitive psychology and alcohol research and can serve as a vehicle for this study. Reexamination of one recent review of issues in alcohol-expectancy research provides an opportunity to broaden the scope of this research with theoretical and methodological alternatives to those suggested in that review. Most importantly, this article shows that expectancy findings, discussed by Leigh (1989a) as reflecting "psychometric" limitations, are instead quite consistent with recent network models of memory structure. Such models can provide an informative guide to future research activities. It is also recommended that alcohol-expectancy research remain open to inputs from expectancy theories already developed in several psychological domains, as well as to theories of social cognition and attitude structure in addition to those advanced by Leigh.     

Eyewitness memory is still not common sense: comparing jurors,judges and law enforcement to eyewitness experts

Knowledge of factors affecting eyewitness accuracy was examined in a sample of jurors, judges and law enforcement professionals. Participants completed a survey in which they were asked to agree or disagree with 30 statements about eyewitness issues, and their responses were compared to a sample of eyewitness experts who completed the same survey. Participant responses differed significantly from responses of eyewitness experts. Jurors disagreed with the experts on 87% of the issues, while judges and law enforcement disagreed with the experts on 60% of the issues. The findings show a large deficiency in knowledge of eyewitness memory amongst jurors, judges and law enforcement personnel, indicating that the legal system may benefit from expert assistance in the evaluation of eyewitness evidence. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognition and metacognition at extreme altitudes on Mount Everest

The FACTRETRIEVAL2 test battery, which assesses both retrieval of general information from memory and metacognition about that retrieval, was administered to people before and after a recent expedition to Mount Everest and at extreme altitudes above 6,400 m (higher than any mountain in North America or Europe). The major findings were as follows: First, the same extreme altitudes already known to impair learning did not affect either accuracy or latency of retrieval, and this robustness of retrieval occurred for both recall and forced-choice recognition. Second, extreme altitude did affect metacognition: The climbers showed a decline in their feeling of knowing both while at extreme altitude and after returning to Kathmandu (i.e., both an effect and an aftereffect of extreme altitude). Third, extreme altitude had different effects than alcohol intoxication (previously assessed by Nelson. McSpadden, Fromme, & Marlatt, 1986). Alcohol intoxication affected retrieval without affecting metacognition, whereas extreme altitude affected metacognition without affecting retrieval; this different pattern for extreme altitude versus alcohol intoxication implies that (a) hypoxia does not always yield the same outcome as alcohol intoxication and (b) neither retrieval nor metacognition is strictly more sensitive than the other for detecting changes in independent variables.     

Mental lexicon research in the new millennium

This article presents an overview of current research on the mental lexicon, as it is represented by articles in the spring 2002 Special Issue of Brain and Language. We examine current findings in terms of language, task, and population effects associated with how words are presented and processed in the mind. We discuss how such mental representations may be linked to neurological instantiations and address the issue of ecological validity in the field. These discussions are organized in order to both provide an overview of the issues and to enable the reader to locate specific articles that bear on these issues. Finally, we present an organizational framework for the characterization of mental lexicon research within which challenges for advancement are isolated.     

Men's likelihood of sexual aggression: the influence of alcohol,sexual arousal,and violent pornography

Previous research findings have indicated that both alcohol intoxication and violent pornography exposure may contribute to increased sexual aggression by men. This study used an experimental paradigm to examine the effects of a moderate alcohol dose, alcohol‐related beliefs, and victim response on men's self‐reported likelihood of committing sexual aggression. A community sample of male social drinkers (N=84) participated in an experiment in which they read an eroticized rape depiction after completing an alcohol administration protocol. The stimulus story varied whether the victim, who initially expressed unwillingness to engage in sexual activity, expressed pleasure or distress in response to the man physically forcing her to perform several explicit sex acts. A path analytic model illustrated that participants' self‐reported likelihood of behaving like the sexual aggressor in the story was directly related to their own sexual arousal. Heightened sexual arousal was reported by participants who had consumed alcohol, those who read the victim‐pleasure story, and those who believed that drinking women are sexually vulnerable. Results suggest that sexual arousal to violent pornography, as influenced by acute alcohol intoxication and other factors, may be an important component of men's perceptions of their own sexual aggression likelihood. Aggr. Behav. 32:581–589, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the other-‘race’ effect: An attempt at integrating different perspectives

Although different human races do not exist from the perspective of biology and genetics, ascribed ‘race’ influences psychological processing, such as memory and perception of faces. Research from this Special Issue, as well as a wealth of previous research, shows that other-‘race’ faces are more difficult to recognize compared to own-‘race’ faces, a phenomenon known as the other-‘race’ effect. Theories of expertise attribute the cause of the other-‘race’ effect to less efficient visual representations of other-‘race’ faces, which results from reduced visual expertise with other-‘race’ faces compared to own-‘race’ faces due to limited contact with individuals from other ‘racial’ groups. By contrast, social-cognitive accounts attribute the cause of the other-‘race’ effect to reduced motivation to individuate other-‘race’ faces compared to own-‘race’ faces. Evidence for both types of theories is still mixed, but progress in understanding the phenomenon has also been hampered by the fact that there has been little crosstalk between these accounts, which tend to be rooted in separate domains of experimental perception science and social psychology, respectively. To promote an integrative perspective on current knowledge on own- versus other-‘race’ face processing, the present Special Issue bridges different psychological subdisciplines, showcasing research using a large variety of methodological approaches and measures. In this guest editorial, we briefly highlight individual contributions to this Special Issue and offer what we see as important avenues for future research on the other-‘race’ effect.     

Investigating Sustained Visitor/Museum Relationships: Employing Narrative Research in the Field of Museum Visitor Studies

ABSTRACT

Museums today are faced with a number of challenges and are currently searching for ways to attract and retain audiences and engage with the public. In order to address these issues, researchers have called for studies to help construct a more complete understanding of the visitor experience. Few studies employ methodological approaches that provide in-depth accounts of the museum experience. Narrative methodology is one means by which researchers may access rich accounts of the multi-faceted nature of audience relationships with museums. This article reports preliminary findings from a narrative research study that aimed to explore sustained visitor/museum relationships. The narrative methodology adopted for this study provides novel insights into the nature of these relationships and extends our understanding of those museum experiences that build and strengthen relationships with visitors.     

A Maturing of Research on the Behaviour of Eyewitnesses

More than a decade of sustained, vigorous research has resulted in an applied cognitive psychology of eyewitness behvaviour that is a rapidly maturing body of knowledge. Several developments now would police forces to increase the sensitivity, reliability, and fairness of eyewitness memory retrieval. The juror's task of estimating the effects of certain variables on the accuracy of eyewitness report can now be a much more informed one, the relevant research literature now being relatively clear and consistent. Across studies the effect size of a number of these variables is moderate or greater. Equally important has been the consistent failure to document several results that would be predicted from the common-sense intuition of juror and jurist alike.