Effective cue utilization reduces memory errors in older adults

When compared with younger adults, older adults typically manifest poorer episodic memory. One hypothesis for the episodic memory deficit is that older adults may not encode contextual information as well as younger adults. Alternatively, older adults may use contextual information at retrieval less effectively when compared with younger adults. If older adults encode context less well than younger adults, then manipulations that affect context should have little effect on memory performance. To evaluate these 2 hypotheses, the authors used manipulations that promoted effective contextual cue utilization at retrieval. Retention interval and instructions at retrieval were manipulated within the imagination inflation paradigm. Results suggest that older adults encode contextual cues useful in improving memory performance but have difficulty accessing and using those cues.     

Context cue focality influences strategic prospective memory monitoring

Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost (e.g., slower responding) to ongoing activities. However, research suggests that individuals are able to monitor strategically by using contextual cues to reduce monitoring in contexts in which PM targets are not expected to occur. In the current study, we investigated the processes supporting context identification (i.e., determining whether or not the context is appropriate for monitoring) by testing the context cue focality hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that the ability to monitor strategically depends on whether the ongoing task orients attention to the contextual cues that are available to guide monitoring. In Experiment 1, participants performed an ongoing lexical decision task and were told that PM targets (TOR syllable) would only occur in word trials (focal context cue condition) or in items starting with consonants (nonfocal context cue condition). In Experiment 2, participants performed an ongoing first letter judgment (consonant/vowel) task and were told that PM targets would only occur in items starting with consonants (focal context cue condition) or in word trials (nonfocal context cue condition). Consistent with the context cue focality hypothesis, strategic monitoring was only observed during focal context cue conditions in which the type of ongoing task processing automatically oriented attention to the relevant features of the contextual cue. These findings suggest that strategic monitoring is dependent on limited-capacity processing resources and may be relatively limited when the attentional demands of context identification are sufficiently high.     

Organizational factors and work involvement

The aim of this paper is to describe a study which investigated the influence of organizational factors on job involvement and specialization involvement. It was hypothesized that rank, self-expression, participation in decision making, and career factors affect job and specialization involvement. The independent variables were chosen by considering an extension of Schein's (1971, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 7, 401–426) “career cone” concept. The hypotheses were tested using a sample of Australian Army officers (N = 384) in a questionnaire survey. The results showed that job involvement is associated primarily with self-expression, although the latter is influenced in turn by participation in decision making, and that specialization involvement is associated with both self-expression and career factors. Rank does not affect either involvement variable. It was concluded that Schein's concept is a useful guide to theory and research on career attitudes. The results support the proposition that job and specialization involvement are distinct constructs. Implications for organizations are discussed.     

The importance of cue familiarity and cue distinctiveness in prospective memory

Abstract

Both retrospective cued-memory tasks and event-based prospective memory tasks require that cue and target information be associated, and that aspects of that association be reinstated for successful remembering. These functional similarities between retrospective memory and prospective memory were the bases for the hypothesis that the familiarity and the distinctiveness of the target event (cue) would influence prospective memory performance. Experiment 1, focusing on target familiarity, found a nominal advantage in prospective memory with unfamiliar target events. Experiment 2 showed a significant benefit for unfamiliar target events, as well as for target events that were distinctive relative to the local context. Additionally, prospective memory performance did not reliably correlate with explicit retrospective memory tasks (recall and recognition), but did correlate with an indirect retrospective memory task (word fragment completion). This pattern suggests and helps specify the general view that prospective memory processes may be similar to those involved in both direct and indirect tests of retrospective memory.     

Use of base rates and case cue information in making likelihood estimates

In five experiments, we investigated college students' use of base rate and case cue information in estimating likelihood. The participants reported that case cues were more important than base rates, except when the case cues were totally uninformative, and made more use of base rate information when the base rates were varied within subjects, rather than between subjects. Estimates were more Bayesian when base rate and case cue information was congruent, rather than contradictory. The nature of the "witness" in case cue information (animate or inanimate) did not affect the use of base rate and case cue information. Multiple trials with feedback led to more accurate estimates; however, this effect was not lasting. The results suggest that when base rate information is made salient by experience (multiple trials and within-subjects variation) or by other manipulations, base rate neglect is minimized.     

All we need is a cue to remember: the effect of an extinction cue on renewal

In the present study, it was investigated by employing a human fear conditioning paradigm whether an extinction retrieval cue can attenuate renewal of conditioned responding after an extinction treatment procedure, and if so, what the precise role of such an extinction cue comprises. It was hypothesized that such a cue can attenuate renewal and would function as a safety signal capable of directly inhibiting the expectancy of an aversive outcome and conditioned skin conductance responding to a conditioned stimulus. The results demonstrated that the extinguished expectancy of an aversive outcome was renewed when the CS was presented outside the extinction context and that an extinction cue attenuated this effect. This extinction cue, however, only transferred its inhibitory properties to other, non-extinguished stimuli when there was no contextual switch. This safety signal function was not observed after a switch in context. Possible functions of the extinction cue and its application in extinction-based exposure treatments are discussed.     

Fast temporal dynamics of visual cue integration

The integration of information from different sensors, cues, or modalities lies at the very heart of perception. We are studying adaptive phenomena in visual cue integration. To this end, we have designed a visual tracking task, where subjects track a target object among distractors and try to identify the target after an occlusion. Objects are defined by three different attributes (color, shape, size) which change randomly within a single trial. When the attributes differ in their reliability (two change frequently, one is stable), our results show that subjects dynamically adapt their processing. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that subjects rapidly re-weight the information provided by the different cues by emphasizing the information from the stable cue. This effect seems to be automatic, ie not requiring subjects' awareness of the differential reliabilities of the cues. The hypothesized re-weighting seems to take place in about 1 s. Our results suggest that cue integration can exhibit adaptive phenomena on a very fast time scale. We propose a probabilistic model with temporal dynamics that accounts for the observed effect.     

Age-differential effects on updating cue information: Evidence from event-related potentials

Recent models on cognitive aging consider the ability to maintain and update context information to be a key source of age-related impairments in various cognitive tasks (Braver & Barch in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 26: 809–817, 2002). Context updating has been investigated with a modified AX-continuous-performance task by comparing performance and brain activity between context-dependent trials (i.e., correct responses require updating of the preceding cue information) and context-independent trials (i.e., correct responses are independent of cue information). We used an event-related potential (ERP) approach to identify sources of age differences in context processing in the early and late processing of cue information. Our behavioral data showed longer latencies and higher error rates on context-dependent than on context-independent trials for older than for younger adults, suggesting age-related impairments in context updating. The ERP data revealed larger P3b amplitudes for context-dependent than for context-independent trials only in younger adults. In contrast, in older adults, P3b amplitudes were more evenly distributed across the scalp and did not differ between context conditions. Interestingly, older but not younger adults were sensitive to changes of cue identity, as indicated by larger P3b amplitudes on cue-change than on cue-repeat trials, irrespective of the actual context condition. We also found a larger CNV on context-dependent than on context-independent trials, reflecting active maintenance of context information and response preparation. The age-differential effects in the P3b suggest that both younger and older adults were engaged in updating task-relevant information, but relied on different information: Whereas younger participants indeed relied on context cues to update and reconfigure the task settings, older adults relied on changes in cue identity, irrespective of context information.     

The effect of cue Relevance,Ambiguity, and self-reported hostility on tat responses

The interaction of cue relevance and ambiguity was studied. Ss high or low in self-reported hostility were administered 8 T A T cards, half of which were high in hostility cue relevance, half low. Half of each subset, in turn, was high in ambiguity, half low. Highly relevant cards tended to elicit more aggressive content than low relevant cards, and stories to ambiguous cards tended to contain more aggressive themes than unambiguous ones, independent of hostility relevance. Hostile Ss tended to be best discriminated from non-hostile Ss on highly relevant cards, where they responded with more aggressive themes. Results were contrasted with previous findings and it was concluded that consistent with findings where hostility is defined by observation or arousal, highly relevant cues are most sensitive to hostility level. While greater expression of negative content, increments in ambiguity did not add to the sensitivity of the stimuli.     

Feature cues in probability learning: Data base information and judgment

Judgments of probabilistic events are often based partly on some information about past similar events. This study investigates the impact of summarized historical data termed a feature cue on performance in a cue probability learning task. Judges (n = 64) made 150 predictions of a criterion variable (Y_e) from a single cue variable (X). The feature cue variable (Z) provided judges with the “average past criterion” for the cue value on trial i, i.e., the conditional mean . Availability of the feature cue was varied with an AB-BA transfer design. Results demonstrate that the presence of the feature cue greatly imporved prediction achievement and accuracy. Under certain conditions, consistency and cue weighting were also improved by the feature cue aid. Although the feature cue value itself was not used as a prediction, it served as an anchor, around which judgments were dispersed. Implications for decision making with data base information are discussed.     

Information integration in multiple cue judgment: a division of labor hypothesis

There is considerable evidence that judgment is constrained to additive integration of information. The authors propose an explanation of why serial and additive cognitive integration can produce accurate multiple cue judgment both in additive and non-additive environments in terms of an adaptive division of labor between multiple representations. It is hypothesized that, whereas the additive, independent linear effect of each cue can be explicitly abstracted and integrated by a serial, additive judgment process, a variety of sophisticated task properties, like non-additive cue combination, non-linear relations, and inter-cue correlation, are carried implicitly by exemplar memory. Three experiments investigating the effect of additive versus non-additive cue combination verify the predicted shift in cognitive representations as a function of the underlying combination rule.     

Contingent reliance on the affect heuristic as a function of regulatory focus

Results from four studies show that the reliance on affect as a heuristic of judgment and decision making is more pronounced under a promotion focus than under a prevention focus. Two different manifestations of this phenomenon were observed. Studies 1–3 show that different types of affective inputs are weighted more heavily under promotion than under prevention in person-impression formation, product evaluations, and social recommendations. Study 4 additionally shows that valuations performed under promotion are more scope-insensitive—a characteristic of affect-based valuations—than valuations performed under prevention. The greater reliance on affect as a heuristic under promotion seems to arise because promotion-focused individuals tend to find affective inputs more diagnostic, not because promotion increases the reliance on peripheral information per se.     

情境线索对社会认知内容推断的影响

本研究考察了情境线索对社会目标不同内容维度之间的推断的影响。研究一发现,缺乏情境线索时,两个基本维度热情和能力之间呈一种正向推断。研究二发现,当情境线索明确指向高能力时,高热情描述会导致低能力推断,同时也引发了消极的行为倾向。研究三进一步考察了热情的两个子维度社交性和道德性之间的推断,结果发现描述社交性职业的社交性信息或者描述道德性职业的道德性信息时,对目标对象的整体评价和行为意愿都更为积极。本研究表明,情境的预期性线索为社会认知内容的推断提供了基本的认知框架,当信息呈现与情境预期相匹配时,更容易产生积极推断。     

情境线索对社会认知内容推断的影响

本研究考察了情境线索对社会目标不同内容维度之间的推断的影响。研究一发现,缺乏情境线索时,两个基本维度热情和能力之间呈一种正向推断。研究二发现,当情境线索明确指向高能力时,高热情描述会导致低能力推断,同时也引发了消极的行为倾向。研究三进一步考察了热情的两个子维度社交性和道德性之间的推断,结果发现描述社交性职业的社交性信息或者描述道德性职业的道德性信息时,对目标对象的整体评价和行为意愿都更为积极。本研究表明,情境的预期性线索为社会认知内容的推断提供了基本的认知框架,当信息呈现与情境预期相匹配时,更容易产生积极推断。     

The why and when of background checks: Situational factors moderate effects of criminal and financial stigma

Past criminal and financial transgressions, even when of questionable job relevance, can harm job‐seekers' prospects. In three hiring simulation experiments, manipulations of situational factors hypothesized to alter decision focus moderate the effect of background report information on applicant evaluations. In Study 1, emphasizing in‐role performance as a hiring goal decreases the weight placed on transgressions relative to standard qualifications. Study 2 demonstrates this context effect with a different design and experienced hiring professionals, and finds that delaying background checks heightens a transgression's impact. In Study 3, presenting novel positive information in conjunction with a criminal offense mitigates the delay effect. By adopting a behavioral decision perspective, this research illuminates how situational factors shape the impact of a widespread form of stigma.     

The Philosophical Scandal of the Wrong Kind of Religious Disagreement

I argue for the following four theses: (1) The Dread Thesis: human beings should fear having false religious beliefs concerning some religious doctrines; (2) The Radical Uncertainty Thesis: we, namely most human beings in our culture at our time, are in a situation where we have to commit ourselves on the truth or falsity of some propositions of ultimate importance; (3) The Radical Choice Thesis: considerations of expected loss or gain do not always provide guidance as to how to commit ourselves on matters of religious doctrine that are both radically uncertain and of ultimate importance; (4) The Scandal Thesis: radical choice on matters of ultimate importance is neither good nor inevitable, but due to the collective failure of philosophers of religion. Then I consider some inadequate responses: playing the faith card; contra-Pascalian decision theory; spiritual chauvinism; that faith presupposes uncertainty; the older pachyderm; irony, subjectivity, relativism and non-cognitivism; tainted truth; and muddling through. Finally I submit that the way forward is quite simply to become better philosophers.

Differential effects of cue specificity and list length on the prospective and retrospective prospective-memory components

Event-based prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to perform an intended action at an appropriate moment that is indicated by some cue. It has been shown that increasing the number of PM cues as well as decreasing the cues' specificity can impair PM performance. Although both manipulations result in similar detrimental effects to PM accuracy, they may affect different underlying cognitive processes. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated both the number of cues and cue specificity and found the expected detrimental effects on PM accuracy. Analyses with the multinomial model of PM, which considers false PM responses and accounts for guessing biases, imply that the cue-list-length manipulation affected cue singularisation as well as intention retrieval, whereas cue specificity selectively affected intention retrieval. These results are original evidence that the performance decrements from the two manipulations have different cognitive underpinnings.     

Effects of attentional demand,cue typicality,and priming on an event‐based prospective memory task

The main purpose of this experiment was to examine the independent and interactive effects of three variables—attentional demand, cue typicality, and priming—on an event‐based prospective memory task. High attentional demand was expected to lower performance, but cue typicality and priming were expected to improve performance. The prospective memory task entailed writing an ‘X’ after hearing items from four semantic categories (e.g. birds), while performing a free‐association task. Results showed the predicted effects of attentional demand and typicality. Priming did not affect overall prospective memory performance but, as predicted, improved performance under conditions of high attentional demand with a typical cue. Overall, these results show the importance of cue and capacity variables, but they also support the value of examining how different variables in the prospective memory task can interact in affecting performance. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Process by Which Relative Autonomous Motivation Affects Intentional Behavior: Comparing Effects Across Dieting and Exercise Behaviors

A motivational model integrating self-deter-mination theory and the theory of planned behavior was tested in two samples for exercise and dieting behavior respectively. Relative autonomous motivation from self-determination theory was hypothesized to predict intentions to exercise or diet via the mediation of attitudes and perceived behavioral control (PBC) from the theory of planned behavior. It was also expected that attitudes and PBC would predict actual levels of exercise and dieting behavior via the mediation of intentions. Relations in the proposed model were expected to be invariant across the behaviors. Two samples of participants (N = 511) completed measures of the autonomous motives, attitudes, subjective norms, PBC, and intentions with respect to exercise and dieting behavior. Four weeks later, participants self-reported their behavior. Structural equation models supported the replicability of the proposed model in both behaviors. Findings supported the majority of the hypothesized effects in the proposed model across the two health behaviors. However, four effects were significantly different across the two behaviors: the effect of autonomous motives on intentions, subjective norms and PBC on intentions, and intentions on behavior. Findings extend knowledge of the processes by which psychological antecedents from the theories affect health behaviors integral to the maintenance of energy balance.

A test of interpersonal theory of depression in children and adolescents using a projective technique

Using a projective technique among child and adolescent psychiatric inpatients, we tested several hypotheses derived from Coyne's (1976b) interpersonal theory of depression. First, we predicted that depression would be associated with rejection, even controlling for the effects of aggression. Depression and rejection were associated only when aggression effects were covaried. Second, we hypothesized that the depression-rejection relation would display symptom specificity. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that depression, but not anxiety, was related to rejection. Third, we assessed whether an index of interpersonal style—reliance on others—moderated the depression-rejection relation. Results suggested that depression and overreliance were both associated with high rejection scores, whereas the combination of low depression and low reliance on others was associated with low rejection scores. We found that results held across age groups. The implications of our findings for the interpersonal theory of depression in youngsters are discussed.