A microgenetic study of simple division

How simple division strategies develop over a short period of time was examined with a microgenetic study. Grade 5 students (mean age = 10 years, 3 months) solved simple division problems in 8 weekly sessions. Performance improved with faster and more accurate responses across the study. Consistent with R. S. Siegler's (1996) overlapping waves model, strategies varied in their use. Direct retrieval increased, retrieval of multiplication facts remained steady, and addition facts, derived facts, and special tricks marginally decreased. Consistent with previous research, multiplication fact retrieval was the most common strategy, although it was slower and more error prone than direct retrieval. Strategy variability within and across individuals was striking across all of the sessions and underscores Siegler's (1996) assertion that development is in a constant transitional state. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

A microgenetic study of insightful problem solving

An eight-session microgenetic study of acquisition of an insightful problem-solving strategy was conducted. A total of 35 second graders who did not use this insightful strategy initially were assigned to two groups that differed in the frequency of problems likely to facilitate discovery and generalization of the strategy. Children in the facilitative problems group discovered the insightful strategy earlier, used it more often subsequently, and transferred it more often to novel problems than did those in the nonfacilitative problems group. Children generally discovered the insightful strategy on the most facilitative items and extended it progressively to items on which its advantages were smaller but still substantial. The results indicate that experience outside the experimental situation, as well as experience inside the experimental situation, influences use of new strategies.     

Incest: The four letter word. A theological approach to therapy

As those of us in the ministry reach out to counsel in the community, we sooner or later encounter the problem of incest. This article poses the question of possible clergy reluctance to treatment of the incest family. It then provides various theological issues present in incest and attempts to demonstrate the unique contribution brought to such therapy by the theological perspective.Mr. Smith is a pastoral counselor in private practice and may be addressed at 2301 Fifth Ave., Fort Worth, Texas 76110.     

Seeking patterns in dream content: A systematic approach to word searches

This paper systematizes the word search potential of DreamBank.net (Domhoff and Schneider, 2008a, Domhoff and Schneider, 2008b) by formulating and testing a set of word strings that can be used as default analytic categories in future investigations. The word strings are applied to the 981 dream reports of college students gathered by Hall and Van de Castle (1966) and the 136 dream reports of an 80-year old male gathered by Bulkeley (2008a). The results show a basic compatibility with the frequencies identified by Hall and Van de Castle’s labor-intensive method of content analysis employing teams of human coders. These findings support the expanded use of word search technologies for the scientific study of dream content and its relation to forms of waking consciousness.     

ListChecker Pro 1.2: A program designed to facilitate creating word lists using the University of South Florida word association norms

Various areas of research (e.g., memory, metamemory, visual word recognition, associative priming) rely on the careful construction of reliable word lists. ListChecker Pro 1.2 is a computer program that accesses the University of South Florida word association norms (Nelson, McEvoy, & Schreiber, 1998, 2004) to report characteristics of words (e.g., frequency, concreteness), as well as direct and indirect associative relationships (e.g., shared associates, mediators). The present article presents the input requirements, menu options, and output obtained by ListChecker Pro 1.2. In addition, a randomly selected list of words from the associative versus semantic priming literature was submitted to ListChecker Pro 1.2 to demonstrate how seemingly unrelated words can be associated. The zipped file containing the program and database can be downloaded from www .eakinmemorylab.psychology.msstate.edu.     

The priming of word associations: A levels-of-processing approach

Four experiments are reported in which the magnitude of the associative-priming effect is manipulated by varying both the experimental task and the conditions within a given task. The between-task manipulation involved a comparison of priming effects in length categorization on the one hand and lexical decision on the other. The within-task manipulation involved varying the type of letter strings presented as the nonword stimuli in lexical decisions. Pseudowords and two types of orthographically illegal letter strings—namely, consonant strings and random letter strings—served as nonwords. Finally, the effect of varying the proportion of pseudowords to illegal nonwords across four sets of experimental materials was investigated. On the whole, these within-and between-task manipulations turned out to be very effective ways of affecting the size of the associative-priming effect. Also, the size of the lexicality effect (the difference between the RTs to word and nonword stimuli) varied systematically with these within-and between-task manipulations. The results are discussed in relation to both Shulman and Davison's (1977) parallel-processing model and Balota and Chumbley's (1984) account of lexical decision.     

Corpus-based estimates of word association predict biases in judgment of word co-occurrence likelihood

This paper draws a connection between statistical word association measures used in linguistics and confirmation measures from epistemology. Having theoretically established the connection, we replicate, in the new context of the judgments of word co-occurrence, an intriguing finding from the psychology of reasoning, namely that confirmation values affect intuitions about likelihood. We show that the effect, despite being based in this case on very subtle statistical insights about thousands of words, is stable across three different experimental settings. Our theoretical and empirical results suggest that factors affecting traditional reasoning tasks are also at play when linguistic knowledge is probed, and they provide further evidence for the importance of confirmation in a new domain.     

A microgenetic model of paragrammatisms produced by a schizophrenic speaker

A series of papers appearing in Brain and Language ask whether schizophrenic language irregularities can be understood in linguistic terms. This literature is reviewed and the contrary positions of different authors are highlighted. The clinical presentation of a schizophrenic male is described. In a single interview he produced a set of paragrammatical errors which are noteworthy insofar as they indicate sustained epochs of diminished expressivity. In this sense, they differ from schizophasic deviance, which is described by Lecours and Vanier-Clement (Brain and Language, 3, 516-565, 1976) as an enhanced expressivity cooccurring with intact language competence. They are also partially decodable, which distinguishes them from the schizophrenic segments discussed by Chaika. Analyses of the paragrammatisms indicate disruptions at three discrete representational levels. One involves the formation of abstract speaker intentions, while the second organizes syntagms into some serial form, and the third level takes content words belonging to a particular syntagm and positions them in a syntactic frame. A microgenic model of these representational planes is proposed that is based on the theoretical perspective of Brown, as well as Garrett's investigations of normal speech errors. The model is justified insofar as the paragrammatisms indicate "linguistic regressions" back to more "thought-like" linguistic representations. Moreover, a recapitulation of specific linguistic mappings is demonstrated to occur between processing levels. This microgenetic model represents an extension of previous work in aphasiology insofar as it targets combinatorial rather than selectional processes as primary planes of disruption.     

Semantic context effects and priming in word association

Two experiments investigated priming in word association, an implicit memory task. In the study phase of Experiment 1, semantically ambiguous target words were presented in sentences that biased their interpretation. The appropriate interpretation of the target was either congruent or incongruent with the cue presented in a subsequent word association task. Priming (i.e., a higher proportion of target responses relative to a nonstudied baseline) was obtained for the congruent condition, but not for the incongruent condition. In Experiment 2, study sentences emphasized particular meaning aspects of nonambiguous targets. The word association task showed a higher proportion of target responses for targets studied in the more congruent sentence context than for targets studied in the less congruent sentence context. These results indicate that priming in word association depends largely on the storage of information relating the cue and target.     

图形推理任务中儿童策略获得的微观发展过程

运用微观发生学设计,对30名6岁儿童在矩阵填充任务中的策略获得过程进行了研究。结果发现:从策略获得的来源看,实验处理(教育干预)是图形推理策略获得的重要来源;从策略获得的个体差异看,儿童遵循的是学习领会或半学习领会的策略获得发展方式;从策略获得的路径看,快速组儿童在达到策略获得标准后正确率不高,而标准组和延迟组则能保持较高的正确率;从策略获得的速率看,在实验前3个阶段正确率有快速的变化,而到后期则保持正确率稳定不变。