Classroom cheating among natural science and engineering majors

The topic of cheating among college students has received considerable attention in the education and psychology literatures. But most of this research has been conducted with relatively small samples and individual projects have generally focused on students from a single campus. These studies have improved our understanding of cheating in college, but it is difficult to generalize their findings and it is also difficult to develop a good understanding of the differences that exist among different academic majors. Understanding such differences may be important in developing improved strategies for combating college cheating. The objective of this paper is to examine the relation between cheating and the choice of academic major with a particular focus on natural science and engineering majors. The data source for this analysis is a study of over 4,000 students from 31 campuses which was conducted in the 1995–1996 academic year.     

Need probability affects retention: A direct demonstration

Recent memory theory has emphasized the concept ofneed probability—that is, the probability that a given piece of learned information will be tested at some point in the future. It has been proposed that, in real-world situations, need probability declines over time and that the memory-loss rate is calibrated to match the progressive reduction in need probability (J. R. Anderson & Schooler, 1991). The present experiments were designed to examine the influence of the slope of the need-probability curve on the slope of the retention curve. On each of several trials, subjects memorized a list of digits, then retained the digits in memory for 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 sec. Some trials ended with a recall test; other trials ended with the message, “no test.” In Experiment 1, the likelihood of encountering a memory test (i.e., the need probability) was made to either increase or decrease as the retention interval increased; in Experiment 2, need probability either was flat (invariant across retention intervals) or decreased as the retention interval increased. The results indicated that the shape of the need-probability curve influenced the slope of the retention curve (Experiment 1) and that the effect became larger as the experimental session progressed (Experiment 2). The findings support the notion that memory adapts to need probabilities and that the rate of forgetting is influenced by the slope of the need-probability curve. In addition, all of the forgetting curves approximated a power function, suggesting that need probability influences the slope but not the form of forgetting.     

Examining the basis for illusory recollection: The role of remember/know instructions

Curiously, studies using the remember/know paradigm to measure recollective experience show that people often vividly remember events that never occurred, a phenomenon referred to asillusory recollection. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that false remember responses in the converging associates, or Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, reflect accurate memory for the study episode, rather than false recollection of critical lures. To test this hypothesis, we used standard remember instructions that emphasized recollection of the study context by allowing participants to use memory of surrounding list items as evidence for recollection, or we used modified instructions that did not include memory for surrounding list items as a basis for recollection. Results showed that, as compared with the standard instruction condition, the modified instructions selectively reduced reports of false remember responses to critical lures, but did not affect remember responses to studied items. By contrast, remember responses to critical lures were unaffected by an instruction condition that excluded the use of voice information as evidence for remembering. These results suggest that remember responses to falsely recognized items are driven partly by retrieval of studied items, rather than illusory recollection of the critical lures themselves. They further point to the importance of instructions in influencing subjective reports.     

Development of a Brief Multidimensional Aversion to Women Who Work Scale

A brief multidimensional measure of aversion to women who work (MAWWWS) was developed using data collected from 175 predominantly lower income Anglo American undergraduate and graduate students attending a medium-sized university located in the southern United States. Findings indicated that the 10-item measure exhibited acceptable reliability, as well as adequate convergent and criterion validities. Consequently, the MAWWWS may be a useful measure of employment-related gender attitudes.     

Applicability of a cognitive model of worry to children and adolescents

BackgroundIntolerance of uncertainly (IU), cognitive avoidance (CA) and positive beliefs about worry (PB) independently predict worry frequency in older adolescents and adults, and when targeted together in treatment produce significant reductions in both worry and anxiety in this age range. The present study addresses a gap in the literature by testing whether a cognitive model of excessive worry and anxiety incorporating these process variables is applicable to children and adolescents.MethodPrimary and secondary school students (n = 515; aged 7–19 years) completed modified self-report measures of worry frequency, anxiety, IU, CA and PB and a path analysis undertaken to test whether IU was a higher order variable for CA and PB and whether the relationship between IU/CA/PB and anxiety was mediated by worry frequency.ResultsSignificant (bivariate) correlations were observed between the measures of IU, PB, CA, worry and anxiety across the age range. However separate path models had to be fitted for children (aged 7–12 years) and adolescents (aged 13–19) with PB being dropped from the child model. CA was related to anxiety only through worry in children while IU showed direct paths to worry and anxiety in both children and adolescents.ConclusionsCognitive models of persistent worry in adults and older adolescents may, with some modification, have applicability to children. Further testing and refinement of these cognitive models of worry may lead to improvements in existing treatments for anxious youth.     

Ceder,S. (2018). Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality. Abingdon; New York,NY: Routledge

Studies in Philosophy and Education -