Guided Visualization and Suggestibility: Effect of Perceived Authority on Recall of Autobiographical Memories

The purpose of this study was to investigate a possible component process in the formation of childhood pseudomemories in adults. Participants recounted a childhood event, the details of which came from hearing others tell it (a know event) rather than from their personal experience (a remember event). Then participants were placed in 1 of 4 possible conditions: They completed a guided visualization task led by an expert, a guided visualization task led by a nonexpert, a visual search task, or a verbal list-learning task. For the guided visualization task, participants listened to a middle-aged man on audiotape, who asked them to imagine details about their know event. Half believed the person on the tape was a well-known and esteemed psychologist (an expert), and half were led to believe that he was someone who had gone back to school to study communications (a nonexpert). As predicted, guided visualization led participants to rate their know event closer to a remember event. Planned comparisons demonstrated that the effect was significantly greater for the expert versus nonexpert conditions. Results were applied to the process of false memory formation and the use of visualization procedures in psychotherapy.     

Individual Differences in Susceptibility to Misinformation Effects and Hindsight Bias

The present study examined individual differences in susceptibility to two similar forms of memory distortion: the misinformation effect and hindsight bias. The misinformation effect occurs when individuals witness an event, are provided with misinformation, and recall the original event as containing elements of the misinformation. Hindsight bias occurs when individuals make judgments, are provided with feedback, and recall their original judgments as being more similar to the feedback than they actually were. Seventy-five participants completed a misinformation task, a hindsight bias task, and several individual difference measures related to memory distortions. Working memory capacity was negatively correlated with the misinformation effect and hindsight bias, and the misinformation effect and hindsight bias were negatively correlated with one another. Although the misinformation effect and hindsight bias are measured with similar designs, and both are predicted by working memory capacity, the negative correlation between them suggests these phenomena result from somewhat different processes.     

Habitual Susceptibility to Misinformation and Individual Differences in Eyewitness Memory

A novel multiple-event, multiple-item procedure was employed to identify individuals who were habitually susceptible to accepting post-event misinformation. Using this procedure, it was found that many people succumbed at least once to the effects of misinformation, given enough opportunities. Moreover, some individuals could be identified who showed a pattern of repeated susceptibility, accepting some misinformation for each of three separate events. Several individual difference measures discriminated between individuals who were habitually susceptible to false post-event information and those who were not; these include empathy, self-reported vividness of visual imagery and a memory accuracy measure. © by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social Motives and Susceptibility to Disease: Stalking Individual Differences In Health Risks

This article reviews studies on the relation between social motives and susceptibility to physical illness. The motives examined in the studies include power motivation and affiliation motivation and their related syndromes such as inhibited power and relaxed affiliation. The subject populations include college students as well as adults. Blood pressure, self-reports of illnesses, catecholamines, and parameters of immunologic functioning are among the indices of health outcomes investigated. Taken together, these studies suggest that social motives may be importantly related to susceptibility to illness, that the power motive may be related to heightened susceptibility to illness, particularly when the person is under stress, whereas the affiliation motive may be related to diminished susceptibility to illness.     

Remembering and Knowing in Adulthood: Effects of Enacted Encoding and Relations to Processing Speed

We examined age differences in recollective experience accompanying recognition using Tulving's (1985) remember/know procedure, in a population-based sample of adults ranging in age from 35 to 90 years (N =323). A guided encoding condition (enactment) was compared with a non-guided encoding condition. The relation between age differences in remembering and measures of processing speed was furthermore examined. The results demonstrated higher levels of remembering following enacted encoding, but age- related decrease in remember reports following both non-guided and guided encoding. The frequency of know-reports exhibited an age-related decrease, but this effect was weak. Importantly, a large amount of the explained variance in remembering was shared by age and processing speed. Together, these results are more consistent with a common cause or processing deficiency interpretation, than with a production deficiency interpretation of age differences in recollective experience.     

冲动-思考型儿童在拼图游戏中的问题解决及元认知差异

以小学六年级思考型和冲动型儿童各32名为被试,通过考查儿童在完成不同难度拼图任务时的表现,探讨不同认知风格儿童在问题解决中认知活动和元认知活动的差异。结果发现:(1)在线与离线元认知监控均表现出认知风格与任务难度的交互作用。在简单和中等任务中,思考型的儿童运用更多的在线元认知监控,进行计划和检查的时间更长。离线元认知监控的差异只表现在简单任务中,思考型比冲动型儿童花费更多的时间进行预测和评价;(2)在问题解决结果上,认知风格不同的儿童完成任务的时间没有显著差异;(3)在问题解决过程中,冲动型儿童解决问题的操作步数多于思考型儿童;冲动型儿童更多地使用主体参照策略,而思考型儿童更多使用线索推断策略。     

Knowing When to Say Goodbye: Final Exit and Suicide in the Elderly

The publication of Derek Humphry's Final Exit in 1991 caused a large uproar. Although designed as a suicide manual for terminally ill persons, there has been considerable fear that the book's methods might be used by others, such as nonterminal elderly individuals who have made a “rational” decision to end their lives. This piece, a short story about an elderly couple that commits double suicide, explores rational suicide by using fiction, as opposed to a standard bioethical approach. Fiction does not provide answers, but rather highlights the ambiguities surrounding elder suicide, and reminds us to evaluate this issue in the context of individual life experiences.     

Self-Control: A Function of Knowing When and How to Exercise Restraint

ABSTRACT— To successfully pursue a goal in the face of temptation, an individual must first identify that she faces a self-control conflict. Only then will the individual exercise self-control to promote goal pursuit over indulging in temptation. We propose a new model that distinguishes between the problems of conflict identification and those of conflict resolution. We then review research on the factors that influence conflict identification and those that determine conflict resolution.     

Maternal Style in Reminiscing: Relations to Child Individual Differences

Past research indicates that parents show distinct differences in style while reminiscing with their preschool children; across families, both fathers and mothers tend to be more elaborative (i.e., provide more contextual support) with daughters than with sons. Further, these differences in style are related to children's performance in such conversations. This study examines within-family similarity in maternal style and the relations between maternal style and child gender and temperament. Mothers from 16 families, each with one male and one female child aged 3 and 5 years, participated individually in memory conversations. Results indicated that mothers showed similar use of elaborations across children but used more repetitions and evaluations in conversations with younger children. Contrary to previous research, maternal style was not related to child gender; however, relations were found between child temperament and maternal style. Results are discussed in relation to the social interaction model of autobiographical memory.     

Vanishing Boundaries: When Teaching About Religion Becomes Spiritual Guidance in the Classroom

Abstract. This article revisits the pedagogical dilemma of maintaining neutrality in the religious studies/theology classroom. I argue that if the boundary between teaching about religion and actually teaching spirituality seems to be vanishing, it is because the boundary was inappropriately constructed in the first place. To the extent that the religious concepts, even when compressed into religious studies categories, inherently inspire personal transformation, how can a boundary exist between the ideas students encounter and the power of those ideas to transform? Spiritual guidance emerges naturally in the academic study of religion, and those of us who teach in the field might as well get used to it. In explaining my position, I draw on my experience as a teaching assistant in Professor Walter Capps's course, “Religion and the Impact of the Vietnam War.” I, then, develop a pragmatic teaching strategy, neutral enthusiasm, which preserves the important neutrality of classroom presentation in religious studies courses, yet recognizes the unavoidable evocative power present in the intellectual territory that is religion. Neutral enthusiasm allows the content to do the work.     

Individual Differences in Decision Making Depend on Cognitive Abilities,Monitoring and Control

Decision making is the process by which actions are constructed and initiated. Across many research streams, this can be explained in terms of three broad cognitive processes: cognitive abilities that construct judgements and potential courses of action, and interacting monitoring and control processes that determine when to initiate them as behaviour. The aim of this research was to investigate the generality of individual differences in these processes, and their power to predict patterns of decision behaviour identified in our previous research. Undergraduate participants (N = 364) completed nine tests assessing cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, control thresholds and various patterns of decision behaviour. The tests differed in their cognitive ability requirements and the nature of the payoffs associated with decisions. Cognitive abilities were a strong predictor of individuals' decision competence and optimality, while monitoring confidence and control thresholds were strong and unique predictors of their overall decisiveness, and reckless and hesitant errors. These results were strongest when the measures of cognitive abilities and monitoring confidence were derived from tests with the same cognitive requirements as the tests used to derive the decision behaviours and when the control threshold measure was derived from tests with the same decision payoffs as the test used to derive the decision behaviours. This effect was particularly pronounced for control thresholds, highlighting the domain‐specific nature of cognitive control processes. These findings demonstrate how cognitive abilities, monitoring output and control thresholds interact with cognitive requirements and context‐specific payoffs to drive individual differences in decision‐making behaviour. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Partner-Specific Investment Inventory: An Evolutionary Approach to Individual Differences in Investment

This research advances an evolution-based model of the function and content of investment in romantic relationships. In developing this model, theory testing has proceeded concurrently with the validation of a multidimensional measure of partner-specific investment (PSI). Ten strategies of investment were identified through factor analysis and scaled to form the PSI Inventory. These scales form a diverse set of investment measures that are reasonably independent, internally consistent, and reliable across raters. Both gender and sociosexual orientation predict use of specific PSI strategies. Overall PSI scores correlate positively with partner's feelings of love and felt security in the relationship, correlate negatively with degree of sexualizing of others by partner, and do not correlate with the self's performance of mate retention behaviors. It is concluded that the PSI Inventory possesses adequate psychometric properties and satisfactory convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity, thus suggesting that it constitutes a viable means of assessing individual differences in investment. These investigations show how a multidimensional, adaptationist approach to investment can further our understanding of these individual differences.     

与笑有关的三种个体差异：被笑恐惧、被笑愉悦与笑他愉悦

被笑恐惧、被笑愉悦和笑他愉悦是三种不同的个体差异。被笑恐惧指个体在害怕被嘲笑而产生的恐惧上的差异,被笑愉悦指个体由于被别人嘲笑而产生的愉悦上的差异,笑他愉悦指个体因嘲笑他人而产生的愉悦上的差异。文章阐释了被笑恐惧的概念及相关研究,同时介绍了被笑愉悦和笑他愉悦概念的构建和测量。对三者的研究尚处于初始阶段,但三个概念中所包含的社会文化差异则值得深思。     

动物个体差异研究对人格心理学的贡献

动物个体差异的研究与人格心理学的关系已经引起了很多学者的关注。虽然对动物个体差异有许多相关描述,但文章采用一个广泛的工作定义,即动物在不同的情景下一致表现出来的一套相关行为。对动物个体差异的测量需要考虑物种间的可比较性和物种内的充分性。文章从人格结构的探讨,遗传和环境的作用,理解人格与认知、健康的关系,以及个体与环境的匹配等方面讨论和分析了动物个体差异的研究对人格心理学的可能贡献     

Individual Differences in Personality Conducive to Engagement in Aggression and Violence

This paper examined empirically the value of a conceptual model in which emotional stability and agreeableness contribute to engagement in aggression and violence (EAV) indirectly through irritability, hostile rumination and moral disengagement. Three hundred and forty young adults (130 male and 190 female) participated in the study. The average age of participants was 21 at time 1 and 25 at time 2. Findings attested to the role of basic traits (i.e. agreeableness and emotional stability) and specific personality dispositions (i.e. irritability and hostile rumination) in predisposing to EAV and to the pivotal role of moral disengagement in giving access to aggressive and violent conduct. In particular, the mediational model attested to the pivotal role of emotional stability and agreeableness in contributing directly to both hostile rumination and irritability and indirectly to moral disengagement, and to EAV. Agreeableness and hostile rumination contribute to moral disengagement that plays a key role in mediating the relations of all examined variables with EAV. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resilient Children: Individual Differences in Developmental Outcome of Children Born to Drug Abusers

Since 1977, we have been following the neurobehavioral development of two groups of children: a group born to women on methadone maintenance and a drug-free comparison group. This study used the data on the children evaluated at 36 months of age to determine whether distinct patterns of developmental outcome can be identified, and which medical, familial, or environmental characteristics are associated with developmental differences. The children were clustered on four measures at 36 months: head circumference percentile, Merrill-Palmer Scale score, neurological evaluation, and referrals for developmental problems. Three distinct clusters emerged, with methadone children disproportionately frequent in Cluster 3, the group showing the poorest development. Comparisons of the clusters on a wide range of variables revealed consistent differences between Cluster 1 and Cluster 3 children in maternal responsiveness and incidence of neglect and family violence. These findings indicate that distinct developmental patterns do occur within this predominantly lower-class ghetto population; further, that children born to methadone-maintained women are more likely to show poor development. However, when the environment provides nurturance and stability, methadone children can show resilience and develop well.     

Age differences in suggestibility to contradictions of demonstrated knowledge: the influence of prior knowledge

People maintain intact general knowledge into very old age and use it to support remembering. Interestingly, when older and younger adults encounter errors that contradict general knowledge, older adults suffer fewer memorial consequences: Older adults use fewer recently-encountered errors as answers for later knowledge questions. Why do older adults show this reduced suggestibility, and what role does their intact knowledge play? In three experiments, I examined suggestibility following exposure to errors in fictional stories that contradict general knowledge. Older adults consistently demonstrated more prior knowledge than younger adults but also gained access to even more across time. Additionally, they did not show a reduction in new learning from the stories, indicating lesser involvement of episodic memory failures. Critically, when knowledge was stably accessible, older adults relied more heavily on that knowledge compared to younger adults, resulting in reduced suggestibility. Implications for the broader role of knowledge in aging are discussed.     

How to Exploit Diversity for Scientific Gain: Using Individual Differences to Constrain Cognitive Theory

ABSTRACT— People often show considerable systematic variability in their ability to perform many different cognitive tasks. In this article, we argue that by combining an individual-differences approach with an experimental-cognitive-neuroscience approach one can often further constrain potential theories of the underlying cognitive mechanisms. In support of this proposal, we outline three basic benefits of using an individual-differences approach: validating neurophysiological measures, demonstrating associations among constructs, and demonstrating dissociations among apparently similar constructs. To illustrate these points, we describe recent work by us and other researchers that utilizes each of these techniques to address specific questions within the domain of visual working memory. It is our hope that some of these techniques for utilizing individual variability may be applied to other domains within cognitive neuroscience.