Positive and negative generation effects,hypermnesia, and total recall time

Self-generated information is typically remembered better than perceived information (the generation effect). Experimental design produces an important limiting condition for this effect: Generation enhances recall in within-subjects designs, but typically not in between-subjects designs. However, Mulligan (2001) found that the generation effect emerged over repeated recall tests in a between-subjects design, calling into question the generality of this limiting condition. Two experiments further delineated the emergent generation effect Experiment 1 demonstrated that this effect does not require multiple discrete recall tests but may emerge on a single recall test of long duration. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the negative generation effect (a reversal of the typical generation effect produced under certain conditions) is abolished by multiple recall tests. In both experiments, the generate condition produced greater hypemnesia (increased recall over tests) than did the read condition.     

Rationality,emotionality, and testing

Controversy and confusion surround the question of the appropriateness of tests for minority groups. The amount of emotion aroused by this question tends to cloud issues and impede rational thinking. It is believed that the matter should be approached rationally and that examining it relative to empirical, construct, and content validity will be helpful. Conclusions are drawn regarding the fairness of tests for minority groups as a result of examining research evidence and authoritative opinion.     

Situational Tests in Student Selection: An Examination of Predictive Validity,Adverse Impact,and Construct Validity

The Flemish Admission Exam ‘Medical and Dental Studies’ is comprised of four cognitive ability tests and four situational tests, namely two work samples (i.e., a lecture and a medical text) and two video‐based situational judgement tests (i.e., a physician–patient interaction and a medical expert discussion). On the basis of the Admission Exam scores of 941 candidates (359 men, 582 women) this study shows that situational tests significantly can predict better than cognitive ability tests, with lecture and text emerging as significant predictors. When situational tests are combined with cognitive ability tests, there are no mean gender differences. Situational tests also enable us to measure a broader range of constructs. For example, in this study, the personality factor Openness is related to better situational test performance. Overall, this study demonstrates that situational tests may be a useful complement to traditional student selection procedures.     

Integrity Tests and Morality: Associations with Ego Development,Moral Reasoning,and Psychopathic Personality

Although past research has shown links between integrity tests and the Big Five personality traits, little is known about the relationship between integrity and other individual difference constructs used to predict moral behavior. The present study expands this research by examining the relationships between ego development, moral reasoning, psychopathic personality, and three commonly used integrity tests. Both overt and personality‐based integrity tests showed the strongest (negative) correlations with psychopathic personality but only modest correlations with ego development and moral reasoning. On the whole, these findings suggest that integrity tests may be more closely related to overt moral behavior than to moral reasoning.     

Correlation of motor skill,mental rotation,and working memory in 3- to 6-year-old children

A relationship between motor processes and mental rotation has been suggested by current research; however, the influence of working memory on this relationship has not yet been determined. Therefore, a correlation between motor tests, paper–pencil and chronometric mental rotation tests, and working memory tests were conducted in 3- to 6-year-old children. A stepwise multiple-regression showed that 55.5% of the variance was explained by the working memory tests: digit span forward and Corsi forward. This indicates that working memory and executive functions may play an important role in mental rotation and motor processes.     

Problems in,and strategies for,evaluating preschool programs

Discusses the difficulty of documenting the effectiveness of preschool programs and relates this to the measuring instruments used and the type of design selected. The limitations of using standardized intelligence tests and the value of using cirterion-referenced tests are reviewed. A variety of methods are provided to assist psychologists and educators who are called upon to evaluate preschool programs. Three studies of preschool programs using different designs which involve published criterion-referenced tests are presented.     

Studying Strategy Effects on Memory,Attitudes, and Intentions

In this experiment, 175 participants generated node-link maps or summaries using multiple, massed, or ad lib schedules while reading text on stress-related information. They rated personal relevance immediately following studying and completed tests on the information and measures of attitudes and intentions 48 hours later. Low-verbal-ability participants who mapped and high-verbal-ability participants who summarized performed best on the tests and reported higher personal relevance. Multiple regression analyses indicated that personal relevance predicted test performance for those who mapped and was consistent in predicting both intentions to learn about and manage stress for all participants.     

Visuospatial working memory,auditory discrimination,and attention

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the degree to which tests of visuospatial storage capacity tap into domain-general storage and attention processes. This was done by comparing performance of visuospatial memory tasks with performance on sound-based sensory discrimination tasks. We found that memory task- and discrimination task performance both tapped into a cross-modality factor (visual and auditory). We further examined the degree to which this common variance could be explained by attention control and sustained attention. These attention factors accounted for roughly 60% of the variance in memory. This indicates that tests of visuospatial memory capacity reflect more than modality-specific memory.     

Underpowered samples,false negatives,and unconscious learning

The scientific community has witnessed growing concern about the high rate of false positives and unreliable results within the psychological literature, but the harmful impact of false negatives has been largely ignored. False negatives are particularly concerning in research areas where demonstrating the absence of an effect is crucial, such as studies of unconscious or implicit processing. Research on implicit processes seeks evidence of above-chance performance on some implicit behavioral measure at the same time as chance-level performance (that is, a null result) on an explicit measure of awareness. A systematic review of 73 studies of contextual cuing, a popular implicit learning paradigm, involving 181 statistical analyses of awareness tests, reveals how underpowered studies can lead to failure to reject a false null hypothesis. Among the studies that reported sufficient information, the meta-analytic effect size across awareness tests was d _z = 0.31 (95 % CI 0.24–0.37), showing that participants’ learning in these experiments was conscious. The unusually large number of positive results in this literature cannot be explained by selective publication. Instead, our analyses demonstrate that these tests are typically insensitive and underpowered to detect medium to small, but true, effects in awareness tests. These findings challenge a widespread and theoretically important claim about the extent of unconscious human cognition.     

Degree of learning,interpolated tests,and rate of forgetting

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to observe the effects of degree of learning, interpolated tests, and retention interval, primarily on the rate of forgetting of a list of words, and secondarily on hypermnesia for those words. In the first experiment, all the subjects had one study trial on a list of 20 common words, followed by two tests of recall. Half of the subjects had further study and test trials until they had learned the words to a criterion of three correct consecutive recalls. Two days later, half of the subjects under each learning condition returned for four retention tests, and 16 days later, all the subjects returned for four tests. Experiment 2 was similar, except that all the subjects had at least three study trials followed by four recall tests on Day 1, intermediate tests were given 2 or 7 days later, and they all had final tests 14 days later. The results showed that rate of forgetting was attenuated by an additional intermediate set of tests but not by criterion learning. Hypermnesia was generally found over the tests that were given after a retention interval of 2 or more days. The best predictor of the amount of hypermnesia over a set of tests was the difference between overall cumulative recall and net recall on the first test of the set.     

情景判断测验的开发程序、构思效度及研究趋势

章详细介绍情景判断测验开发的一般程序,对情景判断测验的多种形式和记分方法进行了总结和比较。同时,从情景判断测验的结果与认知能力、个性和工作经验等关系的角度出发,分析了情景判断测验的构思效度,认为情景判断测验测量的是多维构思。文章最后认为,需要从与其他构思的关系、测评指定构思、影响效度的因素以及跨文化比较等四个方面对情景判断测验开展进一步研究。     

Aging, attention, and intelligence

The aims of this study were (a) to find out if attentional ability factors that are separate from the well-established ability factors (e.g., fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, and short-term acquisition and retrieval function) can be identified, and (b) to establish, through the use of part correlations, whether attentional abilities play a role in the changes in fluid and crystallized intelligence that occur with increasing age. A battery of 36 tests (19 psychometric tests and 17 measures of attentional processes) were given to 100 people. 20 of whom were in each age decade between 20 and 70. Results indicated that three attentional factors--Search, Concentration, and Attentional Flexibility--exist at the primary-ability level and that all three define fluid intelligence at the second-order level. Results also indicate that the decline in fluid intelligence with increasing age disappears if attentional factors are parted-out. Similarly, the increase in crystallized intelligence with increasing age becomes even greater if one controls for attentional processes. I conclude that changes in attentional processes play an important part in changes in human intelligence with age.     

Personal tempo, personality, cognitive speed and cognitive performance

One hundred young males filled in an untimed personality questionnaire. The time needed was taken to be the subjects' personal tempo. They also worked twice on a timed substitution test; their score on this test was taken to be their cognitive speed. It was hypothesized that personal tempo was related to personality and cognitive speed to performance on cognitive tests. The results confirmed the hypothesis. Those whose personal tempo was faster had higher Extraversion and lower Neuroticism and Lie-scores. Those whose cognitive speed was faster, however, did better on four out of five cognitive tests and had a higher Lie-score. It seems that the two speed factors, as hypothesized by Spearman, are indeed two separate and distinct factors, each correlated with different variables: cognitive and personality.     

Relevance of genotype and its environmental counterpart to the theory,interpretation, and nomenclature of ability measures

While the constructs of aplitude and achievement, which are here defined as genotypic and environmental constructs, are potentially useful in psychological theory and in the development of predictors and weights for predictors, the use of these terms for psychological tests is highly misleading. When used for tests, the terms lead to invalid inferences concerning the constructs and to erroneous predictions of later criteria. All psychological tests measure current performance levels which are phenotypic characteristics. Practically all such tests can be used to estimate both genotypic and environmental constructs with nonzero accuracy. The basic error is to use a term which denotes a genetic or an environmental construct for a phenotypic measure. Implications of this position for inferences concerning group differences in aptitude and for construct validity of tests are briefly discussed.     

Assessment of retrieval strategy in incidental, intentional, and inclusion tests with word-fragment cues

The purpose of this study was to assess retrieval strategy in incidental, intentional, and inclusion tests with word-fragment cues following a levels-of-processing manipulation at study. The results of Exp. 1 showed small levels-of-processing effects in incidental tests, and most subjects reported involuntary rather than voluntary retrieval of study-list words. In an intentional test, although levels of processing had a much greater effect, quite a few subjects also reported involuntary rather than voluntary retrieval of study-list words, and these subjects showed a smaller effect of levels of processing than subjects reporting voluntary retrieval. These results suggest that subjects given instructions for both voluntary and involuntary retrieval of study-list words in an inclusion test might not in fact attempt voluntary retrieval at all, but simply adopt an involuntary retrieval strategy. The results of Exp. 2 provided evidence to support this suggestion. The general implication is that where test contamination refers to subjects' failure to use retrieval strategies in accordance with test instructions, inclusion tests can be contaminated, as well as incidental or intentional tests, and that it is always necessary to obtain converging evidence about the actual strategies subjects use.     

Asymptotic clarifications,generalizations, and concerns regarding an extended class of matched pairs tests based on powers of ranks

Recent studies pertaining to an extended class of matched pairs tests based on powers of ranks are discussed. Previous questions regarding the asymptotic properties for this class of tests are clarified and a generalization of this class is described. This generalization raises a previously unanticipated concern about whether or not the analytic comparisons resulting from these tests correspond with an intuitive notion of what is being compared.     

Test-dependent expression of behavioral syndromes: A study of aggressiveness,activity, and stress of chub

Aggressiveness has been one of the behavioral traits most examined with various standard testing methods. We used two distinct methods (the mirror and the real opponent tests) to evaluate individual aggression and relate it to the activity and individual stress of chub (Squalius cephalus L.). Three hypotheses were formulated and tested: (a) there is a significant positive relationship between the aggressiveness of individuals measured with the mirror and the real opponent tests, indicating their convergent validity; (b) the irregularities in response to the aggressiveness and activity tests lead to the context-specific expression of the behavioral syndromes; and (c) there is a significant positive relationship between the stress induced in individuals by both tests of aggressiveness, demonstrating individually consistent stress-coping strategies. The first and the second hypothesis were confirmed, while the third hypothesis was rejected. Our results suggest that particular tests of aggressiveness could act as a situation with high strength, leaving little variation between individual responses. Thus, we propose that for the proper interpretation of various studies using different tests to study identical behavioral traits, it is important to consider the convergent validity of not only the tested behavioral traits but also the individual stress responses. The chub also showed stress relieve through aggressiveness, suggesting the species as a prospective animal model to the study interaction between the stress and the aggressiveness. A detailed aggression ethogram of chub was provided to facilitate the use of this specie in future studies.     

HR Professionals' Beliefs About,and Knowledge of,Assessment Techniques and Psychometric Tests

In all 255 adult professionals concerned with selection, assessment and training completed a questionnaire which asked their beliefs about the validity, cost, practicality and legality of different assessment techniques (i.e., Assessment Centres, Biodata, Interviews) and their knowledge and use of both personality and ability tests. Participants tended to be positive about the tests themselves, how they were used and about test publishers. They rated Assessment Centres, Cognitive ability tests and Work Samples as the most valid, while Interviews were rated as most practical. Results from knowledge of personality and intelligence tests indicated that only a few tests were widely known, more so in personality/motivation than intelligence. Implications of these results for educating and informing practitioners are considered.     

Missing referents, psychotic symptoms, and discriminating the internal from the externalized

The communicative efficacy of the speech of schizophrenia patients is compromised by the presence of references for which there are no referents. There is evidence that this kind of error is positively associated with the genetic substrate of schizophrenia. The present study was an effort to identify a cognitive process source of these errors by looking at their association with performance on an internal source memory task assessing the ability to remember what one has said out loud versus only thought. Their relationship to psychotic symptoms also was examined. A sample of 110 schizophrenic/schizoaffective outpatients, and 23 nonpsychiatric controls provided 10-min speech samples and completed a battery of memory tests. Patients' symptoms also were rated for severity. Patients performed more poorly than controls on the memory tests, and their speech contained much more frequent references without referents. Frequency of missing referents was associated with scores on the test of internal source memory, even after scores on tests of immediate memory, working memory, and external source memory were regressed out. Missing referents were also related to severity of hallucinations and delusions, and internal source memory performance was related to hallucinations. The findings of this study support the idea that missing referents, hallucinations, and delusions have some common process underpinnings. Impairment in internal source memory appears to be one such process.     

Correlations between behavior of mice in Porsolt's swim test and in tests of anxiety, locomotion, and exploration

This study examined whether the behavior of male NIH Swiss mice in a putative animal model of depression, Porsolt's swim test, is related to that in other behavioral tests. The other tests were the plus-maze test of anxiety, the holeboard test of exploration and locomotor activity, and a test of seizure threshold to bicuculline. The immobility of the mice in the swim test did not correlate with their behavior in any of the other tests used. The only significant correlations found occurred between individual measures in the holeboard and plus-maze tests. The data suggest that immobility in the swim test is not related to behavior in the tests of anxiety, directed exploration, locomotor activity, or seizure threshold.