A mental practice superiority effect: less retroactive interference and more transfer than physical practice

Two experiments explored the benefits to retention and transfer conferred by mental practice. During familiarization, participants typed 4-digit numbers and took an immediate typing test on both old and new numbers. Participants then typed old 4-digit numbers, either physically or mentally, with either a different response configuration or the opposite hand from that used during familiarization. On a delayed test, participants physically typed both old and new numbers with the same response configuration and hand used during familiarization. Mental practice led to less retroactive interference and more transfer than did physical practice, supporting the hypothesis that mental practice strengthens an abstract representation that does not involve specific effectors.     

Cognitive complications moderate the speed‐accuracy tradeoff in data entry: a cognitive antidote to inhibition

Three experiments explored a speed‐accuracy tradeoff reflecting decreasing response times (RTs) and increasing errors across trials in a data entry task. In Experiment 1, cognitive and motoric stressors were independently added to data entry, with the combination of stressors yielding the greatest decline in accuracy across blocks. Experiment 2 compared mental multiplication and simple data entry and manipulated the provision of feedback. Accuracy improved with both mental multiplication and feedback. Experiment 3 varied only the concluding keystroke; this extra requirement led to overall improvements in accuracy. In each experiment, RTs improved across trials. These results suggest that cognitive complications can serve as antidotes to inhibitory effects and can overcome the decline in accuracy due to continuous work on data entry. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motivational Factors Affecting Fluctuations of Female Sexual Activity at Menstruation

The hypothesis was tested that pre-menstrual and post-menstrua I increases in sexual activity are due to anticipation of deprivation and rebound following deprivation (Ford & Beach, 1951). Thirty-five married women completed daily questionnaires about their sexual activity for at least two menstrual cycles. Evidence supported the hypothesis that the post-menstrual peak in intercourse is a rebound phenomenon. There was less evidence to support the hypothesis that a pre-menstrual rise represents anticipation of deprivation. In addition, there was a tendency to increase autosexual activity during periods of sexual abstention, which may represent a compensation phenomenon.     

Growth mixture modelling in developmental psychology: overview and demonstration of heterogeneity in developmental trajectories of adolescent antisocial behaviour

Recent advances in statistical techniques for longitudinal data analysis have provided increased capabilities for elucidating individual differences in trajectories of change in child behaviours and abilities. However, most techniques still assume that there is a single underlying distribution with respect to changes over time, about which children are normally distributed. If there are multiple subgroups of youth following distinct developmental trajectories with unique predictors, however, the results of these statistical techniques may provide an incomplete analysis of the data. A newer class of statistical techniques, latent growth mixture modelling, provides a robust framework for examining heterogeneity in patterns of development. This paper illustrates the use of latent growth mixture modelling for examining heterogeneity in developmental trajectories of adolescent antisocial behaviour. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bingo! Externally supported performance intervention for deficient visual search in normal aging, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease

External support may improve task performance regardless of an individual's ability to compensate for cognitive deficits through internally generated mechanisms. We investigated if performance of a complex, familiar visual search task (the game of bingo) could be enhanced in groups with suboptimal vision by providing external support through manipulation of task stimuli. Participants were 19 younger adults, 14 individuals with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD), 13 AD-matched healthy adults, 17 non-demented individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD), and 20 PD-matched healthy adults. We varied stimulus contrast, size, and visual complexity during game play. The externally supported performance interventions of increased stimulus size and decreased complexity resulted in improvements in performance by all groups. AD also obtained benefit from increasing contrast, presumably by compensating for their contrast sensitivity deficit. The general finding of improved performance across healthy and afflicted groups suggests the value of visual support as an easy-to-apply intervention to enhance cognitive performance.     

Cognitive strategies in discourse processing: A comparison of Chinese and English speakers

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that, when processing a normative language, individuals tend to adopt the discourse processing strategies that they use in their native language. In a natural language processing task, native speakers of English and Chinese read English passages that were heavily loaded with zero anaphora. Native Chinese speakers found the passages more comprehensible than did native English speakers, presumably because zero anaphora occurs much more often in Chinese than in English. However, in an artificial laboratory task, native Chinese speakers did not find it easier to recover the missing referents than did native English speakers, suggesting that the two groups were equally capable of reference retrieval although they differed in their natural language discourse-processing strategies. These results suggest that the strategies used for processing foreign-language discourse are influenced by those used to process native-language discourse.This research was supported in part by Dean's Small Grants from the Graduate School of the University of Colorado to Liang Tao and United States Army Research Institute Contracts MDA903-90-K-0066 and MDA903-93-K-0010 to the University of Colorado (Alice Healy, Principal Investigator).We thank Barbara Fox, Lise Menn, and Nanfang Jiang for stimulating discussions about this research.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the First International Conference on Chinese Linguistics held in Singapore, 1992.     

Children's influence in the marital relationship.

In a 3-wave longitudinal study, the authors tested hypotheses regarding children's influence on the marital relationship, examining relations between interparental discord and children's negative emotional reactivity, agentic behavior, dysregulated behavior, and psychosocial adjustment. Participants were 232 cohabiting mothers and fathers who completed questionnaires and a marital conflict resolution task. Consistent with theory, interparental discord related to children's negative emotional reactivity, which in turn related to children's agentic and dysregulated behavior. Agentic behavior related to decreases in interparental discord, whereas dysregulated behavior related to increases in discord and elevations in children's adjustment problems. Person-oriented analyses of agentic and dysregulated responses indicated distinct clusters of children linked with meaningful individual differences in marital and psychosocial functioning. Results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms of child effects, such as increased parental awareness of children's distress potentially leading to reduced marital conflict.     

Assessment of the functions of vocal behavior in children with developmental disabilities: a replication

Although experimental analysis methodologies have been useful for identifying the function of a wide variety of target behaviors (e.g., Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982/1994), only recently have such procedures been applied to verbal operants (Lerman et al., 2005). In the current study, we conducted a systematic replication of the methodology developed by Lerman et al. Participants were 4 children who had been diagnosed with developmental disabilities and who engaged in limited vocal behavior. The function of vocal behavior was assessed by exposing target vocal responses to experimental analyses. Results showed that experimental analyses were generally useful for identifying the functions of vocal behavior across all participants.     

No question has a single answer: Integrating discrepant models in family therapy training

Todd and Greenberg use a co-supervisory model with predoctoral psychology family therapy interns, but with Todd using a structural/strategic model and Greenberg a symbolic-experiential model. They focus on the isomorph of cotherapist trainees replaying family problems and the traineers replaying trainee problems. Their model involves using the trainee's creative confusion/tension to help each of them to integrate individually appropriate configurations as their training continues over a year.The authors wish to acknowledge the editorial comments and helpful advice of Carl A. Whitaker, MD, and Milton L. Greenberg, MFT, in the development of this paper from earlier drafts. They would also like to acknowledge significant contributions from Drs. Glenn Bronley, Paul Coleman, Chad Glang, Beverly Keith, Tracy Lewis, Charles Lock-wood, Wesley Matsui, Rita McKenzie, Timothy Weber, Ms. Holly DeVore, Lee Ann Lockwood, and Misty Weber. Christopher Weber made a special contribution as the program's first child therapist.