Unitization during category learning

Five experiments explored the question of whether new perceptual units can be developed if they are useful for a category learning task, and if so, what the constraints on this unitization process are. During category learning, participants were required to attend either a single component or a conjunction of 5 components. Consistent with unitization, the conjunctive task became much easier with practice; this improvement was not found for the single-component task or for conjunctive tasks in which the components could not be unitized. Influences of component organization (Experiment 1), component contiguity (Experiment 2), component proximity (Experiment 3), and number of components (Experiment 4) on practice effects were found. Deconvolved response times (Experiment 5) showed that prolonged practice yielded faster responses than predicted by an analytic model that integrates evidence from independently perceived components.     

Psychometric Properties of Loevinger's Sentence Completion Test in an Adult Psychiatric Outpatient Sample

Little research has been conducted on Loevinger's Washington University Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development in adult psychiatric outpatients. The measure is a promising method of assessing a construct of personality and character functioning that should be useful research on psychopathology and in choosing treatment modalities. The data presented in this study address the question of the psychometric adequacy of the measure in this segment of the subject population. Specifically, estimates of interrater reliability, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability are presented for a sample of 42 adult outpatients. In addition, the relationship between total protocol ratings and item sum scores is explored.     

成人短时记忆发展的实验研究

以数字、图形和颜色为实验材料,测量了青年和老年被试在记忆广度和斯腾伯格任务中的成绩。结果表明随着年龄的增大,三种材料的记忆广度都有显著的下降,记忆的搜索速度也减慢;发现在老年期不同材料的记忆广度与搜索速度也存在反比例关系。作者认为这一结果对短时记忆容量发展研究具有重要意义并进行了进一步的讨论。     

Adult Age Differences in Memory for Verbs and Nouns

Younger and older adults were asked to remember noun pairs (e.g., head – cap), verb pairs (e.g., bounce – throw), and verb-noun pairs (e.g., break – stick). For half of the pairs, participants used imagined objects and performed an action or series of related actions for each pair. For the other half of the pairs, participants read but did not perform the pairs. Free recall and cued recall tests revealed that age differences in memory for both performed and nonperformed items were larger for verbs than for nouns. The recall advantage of nouns over verbs was larger for older than for younger adults. Verbs are hypothesized to be more difficult for older adults to remember because they are more and less specific than nouns and because it is more difficult to integrate verbs with other words than to integrate nouns with other words.     

Patterns and Predictors of Adult Age Differences in Mental Imagery

Adult age differences in, and predictors of, component imagery processes were examined across a broad elderly adult age range (65-86 years). Relative to younger adults, older adults were slower and less accurate on tasks of image generation, maintenance, scanning, and rotation. Ability to maintain mental images in particular was compromised by older age. Manipulations of stimulus complexity produced inconsistent differential age effects across tasks. Processing speed and sensorimotor functioning were prominent predictors of performance and age-related variance in all imagery components, with smaller contributions from working memory and executive function. These findings suggest that age-related decrements in individual imagery processes depend primarily on how quickly information can be processed and on the neurophysiological integrity of the ageing brain.     

Adult Age and Gender Differences in Eyewitness Recall in Field Settings1

Six-hundred-fifty-one citizens were stopped in public places and tested for prompted recall of physical characteristics of a young woman to whom they had spoken for approximately 15 s, 2 min earlier. Recall differed as a function of the two targets used on five of eight characteristics, but no significant differences were found for either target as a function of the gender or age group of the witnesses. Young adults (18-29 years of age) in general were superior to middle-aged adults (30-44), who in turn were superior to older adults (45-65). Women were significantly more accurate than men in accuracy of recall for weight, and for characteristics judged to be more important than less important for person memory. Male and female witnesses were equally confident in their recall performance. Young and middle-aged groups were significantly more confident in recall than the oldest group. Significant correlations were found between confidence and accuracy of recall for men and for women, and for each age group. Women made significantly longer duration estimates of the encounters with the targets than did men. Men overestimated the duration by a 2:1 ratio, and women overestimated by a 3:1 ratio. No significant correlations were found between accuracy of duration estimates and confidence in reports. The results were interpreted in terms of their forensic importance.     

Unitization of Sublexical Components in Implicit Memory for Novel Words

This study examines the role of componential knowledge and unitization processes in implicit memory. In two experiments, subjects studied novel words formed out of morphemes, syllables, or pseudosyllables. They then completed an implicit task requiring a judgment as to which of two items (one old, one new) was a better English word. Experiment 1 replicated previous results showing priming for nonwords formed out of morphemes and syllables but not seudosyllables. This effect was present when orthographic factors were controlled and, unlike explicit (recognition) memory, was equally strong following visual and semantic processing. Experiment 2 showed that little priming was present across a variety of conditions in which the connections between components were altered across study and test. Results are interpreted as evidence for the role of perceptually based activation and integration processes in implicit memory for novel stimuli.     

Gender Differences in Social Dominance Orientation: Gender Invariance May Be Situation Invariance

Most studies of gender differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) have investigated settings more or less hierarchy-enhancing. The aim of this study was to explore gender differences in SDO (1) within social structures varying in equality-enhancement, i.e., communities differing in political equality between men and women, and (2) settings where equality was maximized and held constant, i.e., democratic, voluntary associations, but varying in gender composition, using survey data from a random sample of 831 Swedish adults (median age?=?47 years). There was a significant interaction effect between gender and membership in voluntary associations dominated by women, with men and women displaying equally low levels of SDO. In all other instances the main effect of gender remained statistically significant.     

Definability and Invariance

In his thesis Para uma Teoria Geral dos Homomorfismos (1944), the Portuguese mathematician José Sebastião e Silva constructed an abstract or generalized Galois theory, that is intimately linked to F. Klein’s Erlangen Program and that foreshadows some notions and results of today’s model theory; an analogous theory was independently worked out by M. Krasner in 1938. In this paper, we present a version of the theory making use of tools which were not at Silva’s disposal. At the same time, we tried to keep in mind, so much as possible, the gist of his standpoint.     

Measurement Invariance,Predictive Invariance,and the Duality Paradox

The statistical literature on bias in psychological testing distinguishes at least two forms of bias: measurement bias and predictive bias. Measurement bias concerns group differences in the relationship between a test and the latent variable to be measured. Predictive bias concerns group differences in the relationship between a test and an external criterion. How are these two forms of bias related? For example. if a test is unbiased in the predictive sense, does this fact support the hypothesis that the test is unbiased in the measurement sense? A theorem is given that describes the conditions under which measurement invariance (lack of bias) is consistent with predictive invariance for the linear case. Paradoxically, these two forms of invariance are shown to be inconsistent under realistic conditions. This duality or inconsistency is illustrated in simulated data. The implications of the duality for group differences research are illustrated in real data involving gender and ethnic differences on the SAT. The phenomenon of duality may force a reinterpretation of common empirical findings of test criterion regression slope invariance. and of invariance in test validities. Other implications are discussed.     

Loneliness and Attitudes toward Aloneness in Belgian Adolescents: Measurement Invariance across Language,Age, and Gender Groups

In this study, the factor structure and psychometric properties of a French adaptation of the well-established Loneliness and Aloneness Scale for Children and Adolescents (LACA) was investigated in a French-speaking sample of Belgian adolescents (N?=?641; Mage?=?14.35, SD?=?2.03; 53.4% girls). In addition, measurement invariance analyses across the two main language groups in Belgium (i.e., Dutch-speaking and French-speaking) and across age and gender were conducted on a combined sample of French-speaking and Dutch-speaking Belgian adolescents (N?=?1282; Mage?=?14.36 years, SD?=?2.03; 53.6% female). Subsequently, group mean differences across language, age, and gender groups were investigated. Convincing support was found for the expected four-factor structure of the French adaptation of the LACA and the measure showed good reliability. Results further indicated that Belgian adolescents from the two principal language groups and from different age and gender groups interpreted the items of the LACA similarly. Therefore, analyses of group mean differences could be compared. Given the small effect sizes that accompanied the obtained effects, replication research is needed to further investigate these group mean differences.     

Adult Age Differences in Conscious and Unconscious Influences on Memory for Novel Associations

Forty-eight younger and 48 older adults generated sentences under self-paced conditions for semantically unrelated word pairs. Then they completed word + word stem pairs under inclusion and exclusion instructions for items that appeared in the same or different context relative to study. Performance on the inclusion and exclusion tasks was transformed into estimates of conscious and unconscious influences on memory by a series of equations as specified by Jacoby's (1991) Process Dissociation Procedure (PDP). Three notable findings were obtained. First, younger and older adults displayed a context effect when conscious, but not unconscious, influences on memory were considered. Second, age invariance in the strength of unconscious influences on memory was observed when data analysis was performed on the entire subject sample. In contrast, the estimated strength of unconscious contributions to memory was stronger for younger than older adults when data analysis was restricted to participants who made errors on the exclusion task. Third, conscious influences on memory were stronger for younger than older adults regardless of which method of data analysis was used. Taken together, these findings shed light on previous research which has examined the complex relationship between age, test awareness, and the implicit retention of novel verbal associations. They also highlight some of the methodological issues regarding the use of the PDP to measure age-related differences in the strength of unconscious memory processes.     

Age and Gender Differences in the Sources of Self-Evaluation Valued by Adult Athletes

Researchers have demonstrated that competency judgments can vary depending on the source of self-evaluation used. This study investigated age and gender differences in 459 adult tennis players' importance ratings for ten different competence information sources. As predicted, younger adults were more likely than older adults to value temporal comparisons, both past-to-present (i.e., personal improvement) and present-to-future (i.e., comparisons with future selves). Younger adults were more likely to value feedback from family for self-evaluation. Older adults were slightly more likely to rate comparisons with agemates as important. Women more than men valued feedback from tennis others, effort, and liking for the sport. The findings are consistent with theoretical models and point to new areas of investigation.     

The Turkish Version of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire: Assessing the Measurement Invariance Across Turkish and American Adult Samples

The purpose of this study was to adapt the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ) developed by Steger, Frazier, Oishi, and Kaler (2006) into Turkish and examine the measurement and structural invariance of this scale across Turkish (N = 815) and U.S. (N = 207) samples. Our findings indicated that the hypothesized 2-factor model of the MLQ fit the data well for both Turkish and U.S. samples. Results also provided support for the full metric invariance, partial scalar invariance, and partial invariance of residual variances of the MLQ across the 2 samples (i.e., Turkish and U.S.). Supporting the structural invariance, we found that factor variances and covariances were equivalent across the 2 groups. Internal consistency reliability analyses revealed a Cronbach's alpha value of .88 for the MLQ Presence scale and .90 for the Search scale. Our findings also provided preliminary support for the convergent validity of the Turkish version of the MLQ (MLQ–TR). Contrary to findings in other collectivist cultures, the relationship between Search and Presence was negative in Turkish culture. These results support the psychometric properties of the MLQ–TR and its partial equivalence to the original U.S. version.     

Unitization,similarity, and overt attention in categorization and exposure

Unitization, the creation of new stimulus features by the fusion of preexisting features, is one of the hypothesized processes of perceptual learning (Goldstone Annual Review of Psychology, 49:585–612, 1998). Some argue that unitization occurs to the extent that it is required for successful task performance (e.g., Shiffrin & Lightfoot, 1997), while others argue that unitization is largely independent of functionality (e.g., McLaren & Mackintosh Animal Learning & Behavior, 30:177–200, 2000). Across three experiments, employing supervised category learning and unsupervised exposure, we investigated three predictions of the McLaren and Mackintosh (Animal Learning & Behavior, 30:177–200, 2000) model: (1) Unitization is accompanied by an initial increase in the subjective similarity of stimuli sharing a unitized component; (2) unitization of a configuration occurs through exposure to its components, even when the task does not require it; (3) as unitization approaches completion, salience of the unitized component may be reduced. Our data supported these predictions. We also found that unitization is associated with increases in overt attention to the unitized component, as measured through eye tracking.     

Attitude Toward Own Aging: Age Invariance and Construct Validity Across Middle-Aged,Young-Old,and Old-Old Adults

The Attitude Toward Own Aging (ATOA) Scale assesses an individual’s evaluation of their own aging, and has been widely used in the field of subjective aging literature. The present study examined whether the ATOA scale measures the same construct across middle-aged (40–60), young-old (61–74), and old-old adults (ages 75 or older) and also evaluated the construct validity of the ATOA construct in relation to measures of subjective well-being. Data drawn from the 2008 wave of the German Aging Survey (DEAS; n?=?6091) were used. ATOA was assessed by the ATOA subscale of the Philadelphia Geriatric Center Morale Scale (PGCMS), and subjective well-being was assessed with the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the model fit of the one-factor model consisting of four items fits the data well. Multi-group invariance analyses provide evidence for configural and metric invariance of the ATOA scale across the age groups, but not for scalar invariance. Additional analysis assessing construct validity indicated that the ATOA items exhibited convergent validity. The findings support the utility of the 4-item scale when examining age group differences of ATOA across a wide age range and that ATOA is distinct from measures of subjective well-being.