Expecting to teach enhances learning and organization of knowledge in free recall of text passages

The present research assessed the potential effects of expecting to teach on learning. In two experiments, participants studied passages either in preparation for a later test or in preparation for teaching the passage to another student who would then be tested. In reality, all participants were tested, and no one actually engaged in teaching. Participants expecting to teach produced more complete and better organized free recall of the passage (Experiment 1) and, in general, correctly answered more questions about the passage than did participants expecting a test (Experiment 1), particularly questions covering main points (Experiment 2), consistent with their having engaged in more effective learning strategies. Instilling an expectation to teach thus seems to be a simple, inexpensive intervention with the potential to increase learning efficiency at home and in the classroom.     

Analyzing anger: how to make people mad

Does simple displeasure cause anger without appraisals or agency attributions? The authors offer 8 observations: (a) Appraisal theory also predicts that displeasure promotes anger, (b) An emotion of frustration can be usefully distinguished from anger, (c) Aggressive reactions to norm violations among animals suggest that they too distinguish bad behavior from bad outcomes, (d) Attributions to agency are perceptual and automatic in social situations, (e) It is tenuous to argue that agency attributions are enacted in angry aggression, but absent in anger elicitation. (f) The contextualized meanings of expressive movements, rather than movements themselves, elicit emotion, (g) Expressions may be better seen as constituents than as causes of emotions, (h) Cognitive components of emotion generally come before, not after, eliciting events.     

SSL: a theory of how people learn to select strategies

The assumption that people possess a repertoire of strategies to solve the inference problems they face has been raised repeatedly. However, a computational model specifying how people select strategies from their repertoire is still lacking. The proposed strategy selection learning (SSL) theory predicts a strategy selection process on the basis of reinforcement learning. The theory assumes that individuals develop subjective expectations for the strategies they have and select strategies proportional to their expectations, which are then updated on the basis of subsequent experience. The learning assumption was supported in 4 experimental studies. Participants substantially improved their inferences through feedback. In all 4 studies, the best-performing strategy from the participants' repertoires most accurately predicted the inferences after sufficient learning opportunities. When testing SSL against 3 models representing extensions of SSL and against an exemplar model assuming a memory-based inference process, the authors found that SSL predicted the inferences most accurately.     

In search of how people change. Applications to addictive behaviors.

How people intentionally change addictive behaviors with and without treatment is not well understood by behavioral scientists. This article summarizes research on self-initiated and professionally facilitated change of addictive behaviors using the key trans-theoretical constructs of stages and processes of change. Modification of addictive behaviors involves progression through five stages--pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance--and individuals typically recycle through these stages several times before termination of the addiction. Multiple studies provide strong support for these stages as well as for a finite and common set of change processes used to progress through the stages. Research to date supports a trans-theoretical model of change that systematically integrates the stages with processes of change from diverse theories of psychotherapy.     

Encoder: a connectionist model of how learning to visually encode fixated text images improves reading fluency

This article proposes that visual encoding learning improves reading fluency by widening the span over which letters are recognized from a fixated text image so that fewer fixations are needed to cover a text line. Encoder is a connectionist model that learns to convert images like the fixated text images human readers encode into the corresponding letter sequences. The computational theory of classification learning predicts that fixated text-image size makes this learning difficult but that reducing image variability and biasing learning should help. Encoder confirms these predictions. It fails to learn as image size increases but achieves humanlike visual encoding accuracy when image variability is reduced by regularities in fixation positions and letter sequences and when learning is biased to discover mapping functions based on the sequential, componential structure of text. After training, Encoder exhibits many humanlike text familiarity effects.     

Predictors of how often and when people fall in love

A leading theory of romantic love is that it functions to make one feel committed to one's beloved, as well as to signal this commitment to the beloved (Frank, 1988). Because women tend to be skeptical of men's commitment, this view entails that men may have evolved to fall in love first, in order to show their commitment to women. Using a sample of online participants of a broad range of ages, this study tested this sex difference and several related individual difference hypotheses concerning the ease of falling in love. There was mixed evidence for sex differences: only some measures indicated that men are generally more love-prone than are women. We also found that men were more prone to falling in love if they tended to overestimate women's sexual interest and highly valued physical attractiveness in potential partners. Women were more prone to falling in love if they had a stronger sex drive. These results provide modest support for the existence of sex differences in falling in love, as well as initial evidence for links between several individual difference variables and the propensity to fall in love.     

Computer viruses: What they are,how they work,how they might get you,and how to control them in academic institutions

A computer virus is a program that replicates itself and spreads to computers with the goal of disrupting or destroying normal computer use. In academic computing, viruses represent a serious problem that costs millions of dollars in losses annually and hinders the free exchange of information so critical to education. Viruses operate in incubation, infection, and destroy phases. The nature, mechanisms, and preventive measures for personal-computer viruses are reviewed. Different procedures are recommended to protect research laboratories, instructional laboratories, and software lending libraries. Tradeoffs between providing adequate protection and not having the security become too burdensome are considered.     

Semantic processing of unattended text during selective reading: how the eyes see it

Subjects were instructed to read and comprehend a target (attended) passage while eye movements were recorded. A second (unattended) passage was also present, with attended and unattended passages occupying alternating lines of text. Subsequent multiple-choice questions showed acquisition of semantic information from attended and unattended text. However, a detailed examination of eye-fixation records showed that readers occasionally fixated unattended text, indicating the presence of shifts of visual attention to unattended text. When fixations of unattended text were excluded, there was no longer any indication that readers obtained useful semantic information from unattended text.     

Putting mood in context: Using smartphones to examine how people feel in different locations

Does personality predict how people feel in different types of situations? The present research addressed this question using data from several thousand individuals who used a mood tracking smartphone application for several weeks. Results from our analyses indicated that people’s momentary affect was linked to their location, and provided preliminary evidence that the relationship between state affect and location might be moderated by personality. The results highlight the importance of looking at person-situation relationships at both the trait- and state-levels and also demonstrate how smartphones can be used to collect person and situation information as people go about their everyday lives.     

Exploring the relation of independent and interdependent self-construals to why and how people pursue personal goals

The authors examined whether independent or interdependent self-construals were associated with the way in which individuals pursued personal goals. Individuals with an independent self-construal orient toward personal-goal pursuit, whereas individuals with interdependent self-construal prioritize in-group goals above personal ones. The authors used a 1-week, prospective goal-setting paradigm. The present results revealed that interdependent self-construals were significantly associated with introjected reasons for pursuing goals, experiencing conflict among goals, and achieving less goal progress. Independent self-construals were significantly associated with intrinsic and identified reasons for goal pursuit and greater goal progress. There was some evidence that the relation of interdependent and independent self-construals to goal progress was mediated by goal conflict and goal intrinsic motivation, respectively. The present results also replicated previous research indicating the goal-setting benefits of intrinsic motivation, implementation intentions, and goal harmony.     

A text analysis of the poems of Sylvia Plath

Changes in the words used in the poems of Sylvia Plath were examined using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, a computer program for analyzing the content of texts. Major changes in the content of her poems were observed over the course of Plath's career, as well as in the final year of her life. As the time of her suicide came closer, words expressing positive emotions became more frequent, while words concerned with causation and insight became less frequent.     

试论邪教精神依赖和精神痴迷者的心理治疗

邪教精神依赖和精神痴迷是一种独特的“成瘾”现象,有学者指出精神依赖和精神痴迷者具有精神病样症状,但是治疗这种情况有其独特性,针对邪教精神依赖和精神痴迷者需要进行全面的心理治疗,同时社会支持系统对邪教精神依赖和精神痴迷者起到的作用也非常关键。     

ABA accreditation of graduate programs of study

ABA now offers accreditation for graduate programs of study in behavior analysis. Minimum standards include curriculum topics in (a) the principles of behavior, (b) within-subject research methodology and direct observation of behavior, (c) conceptual issues, and (d) behavioral interventions, as well as a thesis, dissertation, review paper, or general examination that is based on a behavior-analytic approach to problems or issues. Accreditation is viewed as one part of a process concerned with demonstrating that a person trained according to a given set of standards is more effective in utilizing the techniques of a science than a person who is not so trained.     

A methodology to facilitate occupational task grouping: Meeting the demands of training analysis and planning

Methods for grouping occupational tasks are required to support a broad range of personnel actions and organizational planning activities. Having subject matter experts sort tasks into groups is the only methodology generally recognized for these purposes. For many applications, however, and training in particular, analyses that cover large areas of an organization may be required. For such uses, manual sorting is costly and may be infeasible. A new method, based on statistical clustering using task coperformance, is described. Results indicate that this method can replicate much of the structure of the experts’ groups and so can be used to facilitate task grouping. Implications of this new approach are discussed.