Emotional arousal and memory: a test of the poststimulus processing hypothesis

Emotional arousal is believed to enhance memory for details central to an episode but impair memory for peripheral details. However, new research suggests that arousal induced thematically (i.e., through involvement with an unfolding event) produces only memory enhancements. This article examines whether consciously controlled elaborative processing in the aftermath of an arousing experience is responsible. A dual task manipulation was used to prevent participants from ruminating over a video that depicted an abduction and attack. Several indices of recall showed greater memory for emotional event details than for details from a neutral control video, which remained the case when the opportunity for post-stimulus elaboration was prevented. Thus, superior retention of the content of emotional experiences may arise from the way in which arousal is induced rather than through immediate postevent cognitions.     

Contingency judgements on the fly

The present research was conducted to establish the validity of a novel procedure for measuring human contingency judgements aimed at shortening the length of conventional procedures. Cues and outcomes were simple geometric shapes that were presented in a rapid streaming fashion, reducing the length of a block of trials from several minutes to a few seconds. We establish the reliability of the procedure by replicating two central findings in the contingency judgement literature, and we elaborate on the importance of this method for future research.     

Epistemic conceptions of begging the question

A number of epistemologists have recently concluded that a piece of reasoning may be epistemically permissible even when it is impossible for the reasoning subject to present her reasoning as an argument without begging the question. I agree with these epistemologists, but argue that none has sufficiently divorced the notion of begging the question from epistemic notions. I present a proposal for a characterization of begging the question in purely pragmatic terms.     

Ethics in Research in Mathematics Education

Most scientific domains have guidelines concerning ethics in research. These guidelines are designed to enable researchers to conduct good research while avoiding potential harm to research participants. This paper examines the bases for ethical codes in research and discusses how these codes are operationalized in research conducted in the field of mathematics education.